Original antigenic sin Puns

"Original antigenic sin" is the concept that once your immune system learns a particular pathogen, it tends to stick with that original immunity when faced with a new variant, which can potentially result in a failed or weakened immune reaction if the new variant is different enough to evade the antibodies.

The takeaway is that a new vaccine-resistant COVID variant could end up being more harmful to the vaxxed than to the unvaxxed, because the vaxxed have been locked by the vaccine into a failed response that won't update because the body thinks it's still close enough.

>“[T]here is this phenomenon that’s sometimes called ‘original antigenic sin,’ which means it’s not easy to shift over the immune response to something that’s similar but not quite the same,” explained Dr. Peter Hotez to New York magazine. “It’s not a slam dunk. You can’t just assume, ‘Yeah, no worries, we’ll just make an Omicron-specific booster.’ It’s not hard to make, but we don’t know for certain that it’s going to work.”

This is a real thing that is studied: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mSphere.00056-21

>OAS exists because B cells surviving the GCR express BCRs of such high affinity that naive B cells with specificities to new antigens receiving activating signals via their BCR for the first time will stand little chance of competing successfully against seasoned memory B cells that activate at lower signaling thresholds following reexposure to their cognate antigen, independent of the fact that the memory and naive B cells in this scenario likely have BCRs with different specificities (4, 19).

>This potential downside of memory must be considered when attempting to design vaccines lest a vaccine formulation induce an immunological setback that precludes the elicitation of protective immunity or to understand the production of protective or nonprotective immunity to a new strain of a pathogen. This scenario recently played out following the release of the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil 9 that contains four antigens present in the original Gardasil vaccine plus an additional five new antigens. Individuals previously immunized with Gardasil who were later vaccinated with Gardasil 9 mounted poor responses to the five new antigens present in the Gardasil 9 vaccine compared to individuals vaccinated with Gardasil 9 who had no prior exposure to Gardasil (21).

With the waning protection of the vaccines, and a new variant spreading among the vaccinated, peo

>The basis of "original antigenic sin" requires immunological memory, and our immune system ability to autocorrect. In the context of viral infections, it is expected that if we are exposed to a native strain of a pathogen, we should be able to mount a secondary immune response on subsequent exposure to the same pathogen. "Original antigenic sin" will not contradict this well-established immunological process, as long as the subsequent infectious antigen is identical to the original one. But "original antigenic sin" implies that when the epitope varies slightly, then the immune system relies on memory of the earlier infection, rather than mount another primary or secondary response to the new epitope which would allow faster and stronger responses. The result is that the immunological response may be inadequate against the new strain, because the immune system does not adapt and instead relies on its memory to mount a response. In the case of vaccines, if we only immunize to a single strain or epitope, and if that strain/epitope changes over time, then the immune system is unable to mount an accurate secondary response. In addition, depending of the first viral exposure the secondary immune response can result in an antibody-dependent enhancement of the disease or at the opposite, it could induce anergy. Both of them triggering loss of pathogen control and inducing aberrant clinical consequences.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28479213/

Original antigenic sin is a real risk from the current universal covid vaccines, especially as new variants develop and national public health authorities push booster doses of a vaccine designed to target a tiny protein fragment of a viral variant which is now practically extinct, and which gives limited or no protection against the current dominant and upcoming variants. Governments and media are pushing more of the exact same formula on to the public, claiming that what didn't work after two doses will somehow miraculously work after three.

We all remember when we were told that vaccines would allow us to "get back to normal" and were nearly 100% effective. Now, the BBC is publishing article telling us that the protection from 2 Covid vaccine doses against Omicron is practically "zilch" - yet bizarrely, their solution is that everyone must get a third dose as soon as possible.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/health-59639973](https://www.bbc.com/news/healt

https://eugyppius.substack.com/p/more-on-original-antigenic-sin-and?s=09