In the latest Pfizer study, scientists tested the pseudovirus against the antibodies in 12 blood samples from people who had received two shots of Pfizer's vaccine two or four weeks prior. They then looked at how well the antibodies worked against the pseudovirus variants, compared with the original strain.
"The gold standard would be to test antibodies against the variants themselves to understand how their unique constellation of mutations might affect natural immunity or protection from a vaccine," Dr. Jason McLellan, a structural biologist at the University of Texas at Austin, l. McLellan has studied how coronavirus proteins interact with antibodies, but wasn't involved in the Pfizer study. that it was important to keep monitoring coronavirus variants and assess whether vaccines and other treatments might need to be updated, or whether booster shots would be necessary.
"We can't take this virus lightly," he said. "We just don't have enough information so we need to be cautious." We don't know how long immunity lasts for after receiving a vaccine, for either coronavirus variants or the original virus.
Only NN gets to say that DeptofDefense has never met a mission creep it wouldn't approve of.