That sentence is extremely misleading. The study showed people losing more than 80% of their antibody immunity. But they also have T-cell and B-cell immunity which lasts longer.
Here's a third study, from Qatar, based on positive PCR tests in recipients of Pfizer vaccines, which estimated 0% (not a typo) vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection after 20 weeks, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28548322
It seems like a broken record but you don't need active antibodies to have protection from the vaccine. Antibodies give you protection in that moment. If you have no antibodies, you are extremely likely to test positive because the virus -- temporarily -- can freely enter your cells and replicate. However, other immune system components quickly identify the invader, re-boost antibodies, and crush the infection.
Expecting the vaccine to produce high antibody counts for life is not how our immune systems work.
>...estimated 0% (not a typo) vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infection after 20 weeks
That's also extremely misleading. The greatest vaccine benefit is not elimination of merely symptomatic infection, but to reduce serious symptoms (i.e. hospitalization) and death.
Here's what the study says about that:
Meanwhile, BNT162b2-induced protection against hospitalization and death appears to persist with hardly any waning for at least six months following the second dose.
It's good that the CDC updated their definition of vaccine to make it clear to the general population that non-sterilizing Covid vaccines provide "protection" and not "immunity", to reset the expectations of vaccine recipients who may have believed that Covid vaccination provided immunity or stopped transmission.
It’s unfortunate however that public policies in most western countries haven’t adapted to that fact yet (which has been a serious hypothesis since the beginning). they still encourage risk-free patients to get vaccinated in the hope of herd immunity. It’s just sad.
That's interesting. If that bears out, it suggests without antibody immunity people will get infected by COVID. However, that same study also shows that the vaccine still prevents serious illness and death, i.e. those other immunity mechanisms are still there and effective, just not kicking in quickly enough to block infection. So "lose more than 80% of their COVID-19 immunity" is still misleading.
