Seems to be more and more of these cases turning up. Does the vaccine work?
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NO. Not really-certainly not in the sense of the general understanding of a vaccine. It is NOT a traditional vaccine based on an inactivated virus, and it is “leaky” ie non-sterilizing - meaning virus can still spread.
The existing vaccines are worthless for building durable immunity since the data is that the nucleocapsid section, which the vaccines do not code, is where most of the pre-existing resistance against serious disease resides. Natural infection can materially strengthen that immunity.
80% of the people have some amount of pre-existing immunity,
A study reported in Nature Immunology, Jan. 2021 shows that while the “spike” facilitates entry into the cell there is evidence that it is, standing alone, pathological — that is, it causes disease in the human body without the rest of the virus.
“This T cell-mediated immune response is even more important as studies on humoral immunity to SARS-CoV-1 provided evidence that antibody responses are short-lived and can even cause or aggravate virus-associated lung pathology”
“Of the SARS donors, 100% showed T cell responses to cross-reactive and/or specific ECs (HLA class I 86%, HLA-DR 100%; Fig. 5d,e), whereas 81% of PRE donors showed HLA class I (16%) and/or HLA-DR (77%) T cell responses to cross-reactive ECs (Fig. 5d).”
The more matches you have, the better you will be able to fight off the disease.
“Taken together, SARS-CoV-2 T cell epitopes enabled detection of post-infectious T cell immunity in 100% of individuals convalescing from COVID-19 and revealed pre-existing T cell responses in 81% of unexposed individuals.”
“Furthermore, evidence was provided for a lower recognition frequency of cross-reactive HLA-DR EC in hospitalized patients compared to donors with mild COVID-19 course, which might suggest a lack of pre-existing SARS-CoV-2 T cells in severely ill patients.”
“Our observation that intensity of T cell responses and recognition rate of T cell epitopes was significantly higher in convalescent patients compared to unexposed individuals suggests that not only expansion, but also a spread of SARS-CoV-2 T cell response diversity occurs upon active infection.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-020-00808-x.pdf
BFLR
The link you gave was published in January of 2021. The work that went into writing it was prior to the roll out of the Pfyzer vaccine, December 2020. It deals with natural immunity in language that is highly technical and something not easily understood by the novice reader. I learned today on Fox that immunity from the vaccine is stronger than natural immunity. The discussion I heard said that those with natural immunity would benefit from a vaccine. I just have not time to investigate that statement. With COVID, time is a thing we don’t have.