How 'super immunity' could help end the pandemic
NEW YORK - We used to think the way out of the COVID-19 pandemic was social distancing, masks, and ventilation. Then the focus turned to vaccines. What if the real way out is by acquiring super immunity, i.e. manmade immunity from a vaccine paired with natural immunity from the virus?
Researchers tested the idea of a super-charged immunity in a lab. The results of the study were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. What scientists found: breakthrough infections enhance an immune response. This study was the first to use live variants to measure immunity levels in blood serum.
Antibody levels were 1,000% more effective than those that only came from the vaccine, according to co-author Dr. Marcel Curlin of Oregon Health and Science University. So being vaccinated and also having COVID gives you more protection against the virus than either one alone.
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"When you get super immunity, that immunity seems to be better at protecting against variants, even those not infected with that variant," Curlin said.
So what does this mean? The more people infected with COVID, the fewer people the virus can eventually feed on. Fewer hosts mean fewer variants.
"In the end, we're going to end up with a population that has pretty strong immune responses, from what we can tell, and we think those immune responses will protect against new variants," Curlin said. "So the big-picture implication is that eventually, the epidemic is going to have to wind down at some point when enough people get this good level of immunity."