University of Minnesota Mini Medical School: Evolving with the Pandemic
Session 1: The Latest on COVID
https://clinicalaffairs.umn.edu/mini-medical-school-evolving-pandemic
Question: Are COVID vaccines more effective than natural immunity?
Answer by: Ryan A. Langlois, PhD
Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology and Immunology
University of Minnesota Medical School
Vaccines are designed to drive an incredibly strong immune response without the downside of potentially becoming sick or dying from the infection itself and so these vaccines just on a sort of pound-for-pound basis will drive more antibodies against the spike protein than if you were to be naturally infected
Uh that being said there are some benefits to natural infection i’m obviously not suggesting that that’s a strategy on any level but uh stars cov2 has 29 proteins your immune system has the capacity to recognize all of these and so you will get a more breath of your response and
You’ll generate an immune response against some of those other proteins as well but it comes at the risk of becoming infected yourself potentially dying and then also you becoming infected and spreading it to another person
