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SnooPuppers1978 t1_iu8y6dc wrote

Reply to comment by DillaVibes in Study finds Omicron variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus which appeared at the end of 2021 have marked genetic differences from the ancestral SARS-CoV-2. The many, distinct mutations in their infection machinery have enabled them to escape from antibodies elicited from the original series of vaccines. by MyLifeisAsaJoker

But wouldn't they be counterproductive to use now, if there's immunological imprinting? You would imprint your immune system to be biased towards suboptimal response, which compared to if you used the new vaccine you would get the currently most optimal response, which would imply consequences for many years to come if first times your immune system sees the virus have more weight on what kind of memory the immune system will have?

It could only be beneficial if Wuhan variant was to come back, but it might never because it was so far out of optimal spread and since so many people's immune system is imprinted to be specifically against the Wuhan variant.

Sounds like if you wanted to bias your immune system correctly, even an infection with current variant would be better since it would more likely bias your immune system correctly.

If you bias your immune system incorrectly it will have more trouble responding to any new instances of the infection that is closer to achieving full potential than immune system more accurately biased.

In addition I wonder if it would be better if people were imprinted with different types of vaccines, to avoid making it too easy for the virus to mutate into a combination of mutations that can bypass a single type of immunity of the whole population. You could work out 10 different types of most popular variations and randomly assign this to people for virus to have harder time getting into the optimal state to bypass everyone's immunological imprinting.

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DillaVibes t1_iua9nr8 wrote

Are the original vaccines better than no vaccine against omicron? Absolutely. Studies have proven it's better than nothing.

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SnooPuppers1978 t1_iuaeev2 wrote

What about considering immune imprinting? Although likely matters less now since most everyone, even unvaccinated have likely had their first imprint already. But how would imprinting specifically work? Would it be something like 50 percent weight on the first one, 25 on the 2nd etc, then it seems like it could still matter.

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