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Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2

vaccines also produce durable and persistent immune responses. Primary antibody titers wane, but the system itself remembers and can regenerate them when challenged.

see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714 for contra "but muh boosters", which i suspect is what's helping me collect downvotes.

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Not really the anti-body count decays more quickly compared to that of a natural infection and does so dramatically especially for older people: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6.... This is the underlying reason that there is talk of boosters.

Older people has to have some sample bias since those without strong immune systems died.

It is normal for antibodies to decline after an immune response, it doesn't mean the immunity is gone, the immune system remembers how to produce them when needed.

The paper you link actually says that the memory B-cell populations appear to be maintained after the waning of the antibodies. B-cells are the cells that remembers and creates antibodies in response to an antigen (like the spike protein on the surface of the virus).

The dangers of software engineers assuming the role of immunologists. Thanks for bringing clarity to this subthread.

Natural immunity may work better considering the vaccine requires booster shots every 12 months according to the Pfizer CEO.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/15/pfizer-ceo-says-third-covid-...

The requirement for booster shots may be for increasing immunity to variants, not the original virus. If you survived the original virus and got an immunity out of it you are just as vulnerable to variants as anyone who got the vaccine.

Basically, subsequent shots are security updates.

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