saying that antibodies in infected people who overcame the infection don' t last long and so a vaccine would be uneffective, is like mixing apples and lemons. The vaccine aims at stimulating the creation by the human body of antibodies hitting a molecular sequence present on the virus membrane. These are not the antibodies that infected people have developed against this fu@@ing chinese virus. The antibodies stimulated by the coming vaccine aim at hitting the spike protein of the virus. Why should they vanish ? Every working vaccine on earth shouldn' t work, then. It's not true that there in no vaccine against flu. Every year there is a new vaccine because every year the flu virus is different. Should we take all the theory that is behind the realization of vaccines and throw it out of the window ? There are vaccines that cover for some time and then must be repeated, but uneffective after three months ? What is that, a joke ?
here is how vaccines are built......
''The Oxford vaccine candidate backed by AstraZeneca has been developed using a weakened strain of adenovirus, which causes common cold and combining it with the genetic material of spike protein of the novel coronavirus to trigger body’s immune system response.''
by year end we will have it.............and it will work
No, it's not a joke. You assume that antibodies last forever. You ask why should they vanish? "Why shouldn't they?" is also a reasonable question. That is one of the more complex questions in immunology with no clear answers, but antibodies don't last forever for all diseases and they are but one part of a complex system of defense against infection.
Antibodies for SARS and MERS disappear in about one year. Fortunately, they do last forever for others. Antibodies for a great many diseases are either ineffective or of short duration and not only because the virus mutates. Vaccines haven't yet been made for a great many diseases that cause untold suffering and death and not for the lack of effort. Also there is a lot of variability among people for how long antibodies last, the different types antibodies made, and differences in the quality of the antibodies.
Also, people mount differing antibody responses with more not always better. More can lead to more serious illness. So far, for COVID19, preliminary evidence suggests that people who were asymptomatic when infected or with mild symptoms mount a weaker antibody response and lose these antibodies very quickly. Some people make high quality antibodies that are effective in binding the antigen, others don't. For others, an immune response can trigger autoimmune diseases such as diabetes type I, M.S., Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and a very long list of others. It's not yet understood which virus triggers most of these.
There are cases when antibodies don't form and instead the frontline defense is the "innate immune system," including cells such as neutrophils, macrophages and dendritic cells cells which are not antigen-specific - ie will attack anything "foreign." If the work is done by these, antibodies may not even get a chance to form.
T-cells are part of the adaptive immune system and can be effective. These are not antibodies but are similar in that they have a "memory" that is specialized for a target. These T-cells can directly kill the pathogen with little help from antibodies. Certain Helper T cells activate B cell lymphocytes for antibody production.
A fascinating new study seems to suggest that there may be three distinct immuno-types of response to C-19 that has therapeutic implications. Without going into the details, the report suggests that one type of response by certain T cells may lead to damage done to the body by the the immune system itself, another type leaves damage by the virus, and another may lead to long term illness. If verified, this could lay the groundwork for identifying different treatments with some requiring immune-boosting agents and some requiring immune suppressing agents.
If anyone is interesting in reading this data-rich study, I suggest you may want to skip to the "discussion" section for an overview: https://science.scie...science.abc8511
Developing an effective and safe vaccine isn't so easy. That's why it's so critical that we do our best to stem the spread of this disease and we have more time to learn more about this novel disease and for therapeutics to be developed to reduce its impact.
Meanwhile, wear a mask and follow safety protocols. Don't rely on speculative nonsense with simplistic answers. Follow the science. Maybe we'll be lucky and develop a vaccine quickly. If it requires two injections/year, do it.