Vaccine question

[julietmanchester]

Does anyone have a credible source where it states how long you have immunity from the jab?

I have searched and asked people and no one can give me an answer.

Nobody knows.

There's an ongoing study on those previously infected by the virus - it's called SIREN if you want to Google it. It is currently showing high levels of protection for people 6 months after infection. Obviously as time rolls on, that 6 may become 7, 8, 9, 10 etc...

Because the live virus has measures in place to disguise itself from the immune system, and people's immune "memory" is related to how "visible" the virus is to your immune system - a severe case tends to result in longer lasting immunity, there's a belief that with the vaccines, because the disguises are missing, your immune system will retain the memory for longer, so it's anticipated that for those

That is because they can only measure it from when the jabs were first used to the present day. So the more time that goes on by testing antibodies they can calculate if the vaccine effect is working. Therefore they can't say that at the moment. A educated prediction maybe.

I am sure someone who knows there stuff can explain it better

Predictions wise I have heard it could be a year or it could be 5 years. So nothing helpful. They are saying at least the elderly should have a booster jab in the Autumn. It depends on variants if the rest of us will need a booster

But couldn't the scientist now study the people in the trials that were done, what 8 months ago, to see the results? I'm not understanding why scientists or doctors cannot give an answer.

Because this is a new virus and a new vaccine and no-one knows yet. Obviously.

@julietmanchester

But couldn't the scientist now study the people in the trials that were done, what 8 months ago, to see the results? I'm not understanding why scientists or doctors cannot give an answer.

The clue is in the difference between 8 months, 5 years, 10 years, and 50 years. The answer is clear already that immunity didn't drop off at 6 months, that tells you nothing about affects 10 years' time.

New variants also can lead to a need for boosters if there's enough variation to affect immunity; until we know how many of the world get vaccinated and whether that suppressed the virus, we can't know if there will be an ongoing booster need or just a need to vaccinate those with weakened immune systems / children.

I’m sure I saw that natural immunity was still there at 8 months, and since vaccines provide a more robust response so it’s possible it could be longer than that.

Natural immunity has now been recorded at 12 months after infection.

Vaccine immunity - time will tell, but don't forget, it depends (as does natural immunity) on how much the virus mutates, and in time vaccine immunity may become less effective, as may natural immunity. The advantage with natural immunity is that you will have antibodies to various parts of the virus including the spike protein. Vaccine immunity 'only' gives you immunity to the spike protein.

From what I'm hearing, I'm guessing that after the vaccine, at some point you have to get covid to have the 'natural immunity' from the virus, as the vaccine will ensure people won't become severely ill?

I'm at a loss of where this ends or to be more accurate, when we are 'safe' from the virus.

People who've had a mild case have lower antibody levels than people who've had a serious case, so there are differences in levels of natural immunity as well.

Depending on how many new variants we see and their severity, I wouldn't be surprised if we need a booster annually or once every few years. It's overly optimistic to think that the virus is just going to die out or that immunity will last forever.

Isn’t it the case that until a year, 2 years etc etc have passed since people had the jab (and they haven’t yet) it’s impossible to say the length of immunity.

So first it was stated as 3 months .....and people were depressed it was just 3 months, forgetting, no-one had been jabbed more than 3 months before, so a longer immunity wasn’t possible at that point.

Isn’t it the case that we haven’t go to the point where it has been shown to drop off yet? Ie as the months pass, for those first jabbed, they still have immunity.

How long does the flu jab give immunity for? The vulnerable have that every year. Is that because immunity only lasts a year or because it’s adapted for variants?