The San Francisco Chronicle (7/17/20) reports that “infectious disease specialists around the world were surprised and discouraged”—though only one such expert is quoted expressing surprise and discouragement.
“With Coronavirus Antibodies Fading Fast, Vaccine Hopes Fade, Too,” read a recent headline in the San Francisco Chronicle (7/17/20). As of July 20, it was the most popular article on the paper’s website—which isn’t surprising, given that it stokes one of many people’s greatest fears right now, which is that there will be no clear end in sight to their completely upended lives. But is it true? Or just clickbait?
The Chronicle wasn’t alone in its doomsday reporting. At Fortune (7/13/20), under the headline “Vanishing Antibodies Could Doom the Race to Develop a One-and-Done Coronavirus Vaccine, Study Shows,” Katherine Dunn’s lead warned of “a potentially huge blow to the global pursuit of developing an effective COVID-19 cure.” Forbes (7/15/20) ran the headline: “Study: Immunity to Coronavirus May Fade Away Within Weeks.”
Leaning on recent studies, these articles seemed to offer hard scientific evidence to support their suggestions. The Chronicle article began with a dire pronouncement:
Disturbing new revelations that permanent immunity to the coronavirus may not be possible have jeopardized vaccine development and reinforced a decision by scientists at UCSF and affiliated laboratories to focus exclusively on treatments.
The paper’s Peter Fimrite laid out the evidence, with the “latest bad news” coming in a study that found that only 17% of Covid patients in a small study still had “potent” antibodies a few months after the onset of symptoms.
In case you weren’t convinced, Fimrite wrote: “The report is the latest in a growing chain of evidence that immunity to Covid-19 is short-lived,” pointing to a study published in Nature (6/18/20) that came to similar conclusions. Fimrite summarized:
There is still hope that the remaining antibodies will bestow some immunity, but infectious disease specialists around the world were surprised and discouraged by the rapid reduction observed in the studies.
If you read to the end, though, you find that only one source is quoted who seems to take this stance—a molecular biologist whose work on treatments is referenced in the lead. The other expert who opined on the subject returned in paragraph 33 to note that the situation is “not hopeless,” since the human immune system uses both B cells and T cells, and these studies only look at the B cell response: “It may be that a T cell response does not require as many antibodies to be effective, she said.”
It’s a very important point, but Fimrite buried it and explored it no further, leaving one little “not hopeless” to counter the foregrounded “disturbing,” “bad news,” “jeopardized” and “discouraged.”
And Fimrite’s main source certainly seems to be either an outlier or seriously misconstrued. On Twitter, respected public health experts called the Chronicle article “dangerously misleading,” “garbage” and “alarmist kaka.”
Granted, it’s not easy being a journalist covering the pandemic. Scientific knowledge on the virus moves quickly, and experts don’t always agree. But that makes it all the more important to tread carefully and not spread alarmist kaka.
And some journalists are certainly succeeding at that. In the New York Times, for instance, Apoorva Mandavilli (6/18/20) reported the Nature study’s findings, but relayed experts’ cautions that rapidly falling antibody levels “does not necessarily mean that these people can be infected a second time.”
In fact, one of the experts she consulted argued that such studies “highlight the need to develop strong vaccines, because immunity that develops naturally during infection is suboptimal and short-lived in most people.” In other words, it means a vaccination program is even more important.
In the Atlantic (7/20/20), Derek Thompson called for “a bit of skepticism about the most apocalyptic headlines.”
In the Atlantic (7/20/20), Derek Thompson directly worked to allay fears based on the recent reporting, interviewing several scientists to offer a more nuanced take on the research. The upshot—as also described by Mandavilli and other journalists, and hinted at by Fimrite at the end of his piece—is that the immune system is much more than its antibodies, so conclusions shouldn’t be drawn based on those levels alone. As Thompson writes:
Evaluating an immune response without accounting for T cells is like inventorying a national air force but leaving out the bomber jets. And, in the case of COVID-19, those bomber jets could make the biggest difference.
There’s evidence that people can have potent T-cell responses without detectable levels of antibodies.
There are also memory B cells that can be triggered by a second infection and begin producing antibodies, Mandavilli and Thompson both reported. Finally, finding fading antibodies is not even unusual; for some vaccines, antibodies drop dramatically some months after peak levels, but still protect people for decades.
In other words, while there is much that’s uncertain about the search for a vaccine, these antibody studies are not cause for despair. But the problem of the clickbait headline and accompanying reporting goes beyond its impact on readers’ mental health; this kind of story surely promotes a nihilistic outlook and undermines the efforts needed to convince a wary public to participate in a vaccination program—which really is something to panic about.
Any hope for a vaccine against irresponsible reporting?
Thank you! I depend every day on your reporting to sort out the bare facts that have not been spun one way or another to support someone’s agenda.
I’ve been listening to experts talk about vaccines and viruses on the podcast This Week in Virology. There’s a lot of optimism about vaccines because there are so many different types being developed. Yes SAR-COV-2 is a coronavirus and we may only get a few years of immunity or greatly lessened disease from a vaccine — but just about everyone of them (the possible exception is the CANSINO AD05 vaccine) can have you get a booster every few years. It may be that a better vaccine comes out later. And while antibody levels from natural infection or vaccination should get very low, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the vaccine won’t work. All we really care about is whether the vaccine works, not if you have a high level of antibodies.
This lack of clarity from much of media is bad enough—-but if it was an American drug company, we would have to worry about what the HIGH COST blackmail attack from big pharmaceuticasl would be like.
Humans surely must be devolving—thinking back to Dr. Jonas Salk and his refusal to own the patent for the polio vaccine , as humans were too important to be turned into desperate bidders for their lives. Thank you Dr. Salk for being such a logical humanist—–oh —if it were possible to create a love, hope and charity gene for all humans.
I have found that the media have tended to overstate efficacy and minimized risks when it comes to vaccines. 80% of the 100mcg 2nd dose recipients had moderate severity of reactions. And as one vaccine researcher points out: “This whole idea of depending on testing alone for safety, is UNACCEPTABLE.”
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says: Design is the dominant influence on product safety. Product safety starts in the mind of the product designers. If all the elements of manufacturing were ranked in order of their potential effect on consumer product safety, the design function would lead the list. Additionally, design importantly affects subsequent decisions and practices related to materials, production, testing, processes, labeling, packaging and distribution.3
Safety engineering dictates that vaccines must be DESIGNED and design FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) must be published BEFORE any testing in trials. It is impossible to establish long term safety in a 3 month trial. YOU HAVE TO DESIGN FOR SAFETY, you CANNOT just TEST FOR IT.
Nothing has been learned from the Pandemrix induced narcolepsy disaster.
No vaccine should be approved without publishing FMEA and FIXING ALL IDENTIFIED DESIGN ISSUES.
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/editorial/an-mrna-vaccine-against-sars-cov-2-preliminary-report-a-researcher-reacts/
Is your argument that many print media outlets are finding that PESSIMISM about a Covid-19 vaccine, in these past many months, is the moneymaker of the moment?
I haven’t performed any studies or surveys, and I get that, “if it bleeds, it leads” in most situations. But I don’t believe that doomsday vaccine reporting is more prevalent (or accurate) than media outlets who grasp at any optimistic vaccine news.
In understanding all of this one first needs to understand the whole concept of the “Germ theory” and what that caused from the days of Antoine Bechamp vs Louis Pasteur, but let me warn you, most of you have taken the wrong side here on who to chose…Bechamp quite frequently accused Pasteur of being a FRAUD. So the first step in all of this would be to research all that to find out about that fight with the Germ theory…Also the concept of what a virus is and what it is not. Can you catch a virus or does the body internally react to cellular destruction by producing its own viruses to not destroy ones health as most believe but to FIX cellular destruction brought on by various external unseen causes such environmental situations, bad sanitation, bad diet, or last but not least radio waves and the now 5G being implemented around the world…For that problematic story I would read the book “The Invisible Rainbow” by Arthur Fistenberg…It seems he has done a fantastic job correlating serious health problems going back to the invention of the radio and how that one particular invention is wreaking all sorts of health problems being misdiagnosed as other diseases when it is in reality ONE cause is making a myriad of other health issues…
So to even bring up vaccines as some kind of fix it would be another error because VACCINES cause devastation to the human body which again when it happens is blamed on other distractions, so to go the vaccine route wouldn’t be the place to go here for a solution either….this Covid-19 nonsense needs to be dealt with by scientific PROOF not rumor and hearsay and killer vaccines…When in 1888 in Russia an anti-Anthrax vaccine was introduced to sheep 4564 to be exact, and 3696 die then you see how problematic vaccines become when animals and people are the guinea pigs of a flawed science
A good place to start would be a short link QUESTIONING COVID.
Qyestioningcovid.com..
Research the book Bechamp or Pasteur by Ethel D. Hume
Lastly these great articles
ttps://thefreedomarticles.com/5g-iot-technological-control-grid/
https://thefreedomarticles.com/5g-induces-coronaviruses-study-shows-millimeter-wave-dna-influence/
Thank you for this information and the links. This pandemic has been fishy from the getgo.
we dont need your big pharma profit based vaccine. why the pro lobbyist bias? I expect a higher quality of journalism from FAIR.
your own immune system, beefed up with vitamin c megadoses (as China utilized) and vitamin D and zinc – as well as healthy non GMO food and a healthy lifestyle, can beat this likely engineered virus.
Hydroxyquinine with zpack will deal with worse cases, according to Newsweek and a number of doctors
WHY THE RUSH to put more money in Bill Gates’ pockets.
FAIR< you disappoint.
I wish I knew more about the subject but I can’t find adequate information on the subject.
I took a biology course in college and my professor indicated to me that T-cells only last a few months to 90 days. She indicated to the class that is that the flue shots (one reason I don’t accept them being called vaccines) only last 90 days or so because they only have T-cells. On the other hand, B-cells last for the rest of your life (what a real vaccine gives you).
I’ve been noticing the lack of any scientific journalism today and I’m quite fed up. Heck, to me it looks like the pro- and anti-vacciners have been manufactured by big pharmacies in order to hurt any rational debate on the subject. You can’t debate the subject unless you talk about the differences of T and B memory cells.