[conspire] 2 Virology professors explain why bivalent vaccine won't stop transmission

[Deirdre Saoirse Moen]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2022, at 9:34 AM, Les Faby wrote:
> Why I asked about transmission 2 months after vaccination:
> There are 12 months in a year and if it is only even somewhat effective 
> less than 17% of the time then an annual booster is close to useless. 

That's not a useful way to look at it, though, nor what one of the public health aims of vaccines is, which is to *prevent hospitalizations* (to prevent systems from being overloaded, rendering them useless). Obviously, Covid *was* overwhelming hospitals. It's not what's overloading hospitals right now, though (and they definitely are overloaded).

If you're sick 5 days instead of 6, and your transmissibility window shrinks by a day, then that is also huge even if you still get sick. Granted, it may not feel huge.

> SARS-2 has evolved. It now is much faster at infecting your cells. 

> You may have an educated immune system but it is too slow to stop 
> infection and transmission.

Viruses are, and always have been, brutally efficient at getting into cells, it's just that now it has been trained by generations to be more efficient (because that's what's survived).

Where SARS-CoV-2 really excelled was in suppressing the immune system's knowledge of its existence, which had the effect of preventing symptoms (as many symptoms are just the immune system's reaction). Make the host infectious for as long as possible before detection.

So it's just a particularly efficient virus, especially in modern America, where wearing masks is still fundamentally seen as weird.

Deirdre