Opinion | There's Terrific News About the New Covid Boosters, but Few Are Hearing It - ... - 0 views
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variants evolved to evade the first line of antibody protection generated by earlier vaccines or past infections, even though protections against severe disease remained fairly strong. But the new boosters can greatly decrease that evasion
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While exact numbers remain to be seen, all the immunologists I spoke with told me the updated boosters should again increase such protections.
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Vaccines (and boosters) have already been shown to greatly reduce rates of long Covid among the infected, but obviously, if infection is avoided completely, that would directly sidestep the risk of long Covid
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these boosters will probably further reduce the chances of more severe disease complications, which include long Covid, and says “the higher your level of immunity, the less viral replication you’re going to have, the less viral damage, the less likelihood of long Covid.”
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these new boosters can be expected to do even more going forward — including providing better protection against future variants, by better training both antibodies and memory cells, which are different parts of the immune system. As Bhattacharya told me, being exposed to different versions of the virus (as will happen with these updated boosters) further deepens and broadens the kind of antibodies that get generated, including ones that can work against future variants
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I’ve never understood the second-guessing by public health authorities and doctors about how the public may or may not react. Why not just provide accurate, detailed information and make it easy to get vaccinated? That’s the best response to “vaccine fatigue,” even if committed anti-vaxxers might remain hard to reach.
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There’s much research on vaccine messaging, but most of it comes down to establishing trust, being honest and transparent, and making vaccination easier. Our terrible health care system is a major impediment:
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it’s vaccination, not vaccines, that saves lives — and many more would be vaccinated if given information and easy access. Not having tools against diseases that cause so much suffering is one tragedy, but having them remain unused should be an unacceptable one.