What doctors wish patients knew about breakthrough COVID infections

[Nevilledog]

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What doctors wish patients knew about breakthrough COVID infections | AMA

Additionally, “what you’re seeing predominantly is 80% of the patients who have the Omicron variant are unvaccinated & are needing hospitalization” he said.
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What doctors wish patients knew about breakthrough COVID infections
The rapid spread of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has led to more fully vaccinated patients acquiring COVID-19. Learn why that happens and how boosters help.
ama-assn.org
9:58 PM · Jan 22, 2022

https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/public-health/what-doctors-wish-patients-knew-about-breakthrough-covid-infections

*snip*

One reason why fully vaccinated people might develop breakthrough COVID-19 infections “is the characteristics of the vaccine itself and how efficacious the vaccine is, because there is not a single vaccine that we know of that is 100% effective,” explained Dr. Sanghavi. “We know from initial trials from both mRNA vaccines that the effectiveness was somewhere around 94% and 95%—slightly lower in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.”

“The study environment is different because these are patients who were carefully selected when the trial rolled out. After the FDA gave its EUA [emergency use authorization], and it was given to a lot of the general population, we found that the real-world effectiveness of the vaccine is lower at around 90%,” he said. “That means that there are inherent characteristics of the vaccine itself when it reacts with the patient and the comorbidities of the patient that would itself lead to ineffective immunization in certain populations.”

“The virus is mutating and there are new variants trying to escape the antibodies,” Dr. Sanghavi said. “They're going to find a host and mutate to a point where they can survive, so we are always going to be behind the curve, and that's why no vaccine is going to be perfect.

“But our hope is—and what we are seeing is—that there is some cross-reactivity between the vaccine variant and the variant of concern at that point in time,” he added.

*snip*

[roamer65]

1. Every day not being on a ventilator is a good day.

Thank the cloud beings for the mRNA vaccines.

[Pobeka]

2. Good, but I wish he wouldn't say "... variants trying to escape the antibodies"

Makes it sound like the virus is sentient, with a memory and knowledge of its environment.

The virus mutates just through good ol random screwups in the replication process, if a mutation happens to be good (for the virus), it will survive and maybe outperform previous variants. There just a happen to be a boatload of replications going on (all the infected individuals * number of infected cells per individuals).

This is another reason why vaccines are important -- even if you do get an infection, your vaccinated immune system is far more likely to stomp out the virus before it replicates into something not so stomp-able.