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1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Sunday, 24-Sep-2023 12:21:40 UTC Strypey

   • Diane 🕵
   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

   @alienghic
   > the human immune system isn't that great at fighting off coronaviruses and resistance to infection decays pretty quickly

   I suspect this is true of viruses in general. Which would explain why;

   a) historically there were very few vaccines targeting viruses

   b) those that now exist are often promoted as a yearly exercise, like flu vaccines, not a once (or twice) in a lifetime fix

   c) drug companies have been enthusiastically pushing for more vaccination against viruses

   @clacke

   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Sunday, 24-Sep-2023 12:21:38 UTC Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

     in reply to

     @strypey Sorry, there is so much bad information here. I don't know where you're getting it, but I recommend finding better sources.

     The first vaccine was against a virus. All of our common vaccines are against viruses, as we can't attack them with antibiotics.

     Smallpox, measles, mumps, rubella, chickenpox, hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, polio, flu, all viruses.

   • Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅 (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Sunday, 24-Sep-2023 12:21:43 UTC Santa Claes 🇸🇪🇭🇰🎅

     in reply to

     Most of the vaccines provide immunity that lasts a lifetime.

     Flu viruses are sneaky because they recombine to create new variants each season. SARS-related coronaviruses are sneaky in some ways we don't fully understand, both because the infection itself lowers the overall immune system efficacy and because immunity from infection or vaccine degrades over time even against the exact same strain.

     Immunity means a prepared immune system that improves speed and scale of the immune response, not 100% protection against infection and/or symptoms and/or spread.

     Nothing is 100% because the real world is messy, especially biology, but because several of these vaccinations are so effective that vaccination of the general population contains outbreaks, common language has taken immunity to mean absolute protection, and even carried that meaning over to terms in other fields, like e.g. "legal immunity".