I was not originally planning to write this piece here. It just happened as an immune response to a fast-spreading youtube virus.
What is the debate?
The argument of the youtube virus was: “vaccines protect from illness. It is well-known that the current vaccines are not stopping the disease from spreading. The current vaccines only manage the condition from becoming worse. Therefore, they are not vaccines, and the system is cheating people”. He also uses a fallacy called the appeal to authority and invokes high-profile personalities from the Indian Council of Medical Research to support his view (I didn’t think a fact-check was necessary; evidence should lead and not personalities).
The vaccinated are getting infected!
I have made two posts already to show using data that the current vaccines are just delivering as they promised. Also proved mathematically, the reason for the large number of breakthrough infections for Covid, while there are near-zero levels for those vaccinated against traditional illnesses. Some of the old vaccines appear so good because their prevalence is negligible these days. Once you view the present-day covid vaccines in that light (of super high prevalence in society), you appreciate the work they are doing.
Infection vs Disease
Infection happens when pathogens (bacteria, viruses, others) enter the body and multiply. So what can prevent an infection? A barrier around your nose and mouth or by staying at home! On the other hand, disease occurs when the infection begins damaging cells. The signs of symptoms appear, and the body’s immune system acts. It is worth noting that many of the symptoms result from the activities of the immune system; fever is a well-known one.
Prevention vs Mitigation
These are two terms typically used in risk management. Their definitions are below (taken from OALD).
Prevention: the act of stopping something bad from happening. Mitigation: a reduction in how unpleasant, serious, etc. something is.
It is easy for humans to jump into the binary of prevention vs mitigation, or vaccine vs medicine. But life is more than such binaries and is full of things in between. Say the risk of getting a stroke. Doing exercises, eating balanced food, and leading a healthy lifestyle are considered prevention strategies. Suppose you have high blood pressure and you take medicines to control it. You may call it mitigation to the condition called high blood pressure. Or it can also be prevention for the real issue, the chance of getting a stroke or a heart attack or a kidney failure. In other words, prevention vs mitigation becomes a philosophical debate.
A boost to immunity?
The most useless definition of how vaccines work is boosting immunity. As a scientist, you want better. What about this: vaccines trigger immunise response in the body? It sounds better, but what is that?
When pathogens enter the body, they attach to the cell and use their resources to multiply. While all the cohabitant microbes do these (the human body has more microbes than the number of cells), only a few guys are called pathogens for a reason. They spit out antigens that can cause harm to the cell. The body uses a few techniques to mitigate this. Yes, ‘mitigate’ is my word of choice, from the viewpoint of the antigen, but you may use ‘prevent’ from the cell’s point of view. The body may respond with fever (heat inactivates many viruses), a chemical called interferon (which blocks viruses from reproducing), or deploy antibodies and other cells to target the invader.
How do Covid vaccines work?
Most of the Covid vaccines are targetting the production of antibodies against spike proteins. The antibodies, produced by the body, connect to the anchor points of the virus (the spikes), nullify the attachment of the latter, and eventually its proliferation.
One thing is clear: you need to somehow get antibodies to where it is required. Many new-generation covid vaccines work by transferring the genetic information – that produces the protein-spike – to our cells, either through messenger RNAs or by inserting it inside other viruses. Once the body gets the code, it starts making spike proteins, and antibodies follow.
Infection and Reinfection Curves
Several publications are available that quantify antibodies produced from various covid vaccines. To give a personal touch, the following are data from my blood tests, taken at three different intervals after my vaccine jabs.
Laws of mass action – What makes the debate possible?
The reaction rate between A and B forming a product is proportional to their concentrations and rate constant. The higher the concentrations or the rate constant, the faster is the reaction. Any standard chemistry textbooks will give you details. Four reactions are important to consider – the first two are against us, and the last two are with us. 1) virus + resources -> 2 virus, 2) virus + cell -> destruction. 3) blood plasma -> antibodies 4) virus + antibody -> safe product. We want items 3 and 4 to happen faster than 1 and 2.
Suppose an individual gets exposed to a high viral load. It makes the virus concentration of reactions 1 & 2 high and forces the reactions to go faster. The reaction that matters the most, reaction-4, will take some time as the amount of antibody, in the beginning, is zero. If the first reactions manage to destroy more cells, you are in big trouble. This is the trouble with Covid19; it multiplies faster and has a high sticking tendency due to its spikes.
What is the end goal of the debate?
The virus is ubiquitous now that you can see all possible ways it demonstrates in public – from people who get up without any symptoms to people dying even after getting multiple doses of vaccines. We are talking about hundreds of millions of bodies carrying out these reactions in real time. Whenever that happened in the past, they took millions of life along with them.
You will never know the real goal of the debate, but I can tell you the result. It is confusion, mistrust in the system and ultimately vaccine hesitancy. These are proving, once again, that it is easy to confuse people, by using well-known facts, but by taking them out of context and making a louder noise.
Is it prevention or mitigation? The question is not valid, and it is not either-or. Prevention and mitigation are just viewpoints that we might get based on your body’s performance. These vaccines are like any other vaccine; their job is to provide scenarios of the first infection, and are our best weapon to fight the disease, so get it. There are hundreds of data, not opinions, available in public space that support this. The only difference this time? The lab work is happening in front of you, with spotlights on!
Further Read
Safety and immunogenicity of the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine: The Lancet
ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine: The Lancet
Why do only some infect us? National Geographic
Antibody response in covid patients: Nature Scientific Reports
How do vaccines work? WHO
Chemical Kinetics: Wiki Page
Antibody Tests: clinisciences.com
How Infection Works: NCBI
Measurement of Antibodies: J Clinical Microbiology
Types of COVID-19 vaccines: Mayo Clinic
IgG antibody to SARS-CoV-2: BDJ
