exactly, yet medial and politicians and pushing everyone to get boosted.
What is our "secondary immune system?
The first defense is the innate immune system. This is the one that has failed in most of the sick and old population and is why they have to rely on the adaptive immune system and the belief that it needs to be kept on "high alert" with boosters instead of allowing circulating anitbodies wain and rely on memory t and b cells to do their job. The booster approach is relevant for the sick but if you have anything even close to resembling health you are fine with relying on memory t and b cells.
Omicron is fear porn and statements like this just encourage consumption of it.
You can not avoid infection! This is the whole point I am trying to make. If you get exposed, you are infected. If you are really healthy, your innate immune system kicks its ass and you will probably be asymptomatic, If not so healthy you get sick and the adaptive system learns, If you have already been exposed/vaccinated your adaptive immune system kicks in and you will either have an asymptomatic infection or you will develop mild symptoms. That is the only purpose of this vaccine. It is not to avoid infection. It is to try to make the infections as mild as possible!
External defenses are a poor replacement for a healthy immune system.
What is our "secondary immune system?
Aren't you the healthcare provider?
It depends on how you number them as it has many layers.
The first layer of our immune system is our skin and mucous membranes. That is a barrier system. We could think of masks and handwashing as enhancements of that system.
Our second layer could be what you call our "innate" system. That is the immune system that is just a general surveillance type of system and it will jump on things that the immune system does not believe should be there (as an aside this is the cause of hayfever and common allergies). It will be the first to pounce on colds, covid etc. But it is not a specific response and can be easily overwhelmed by an effective pathogen regardless of your general immune health.
The next layer is our immune system that recognizes a specific threat and produces specific antibodies to address that threat. This is when our immune system really means business. So if you get Covid your body identifies the proteins that characterize that virus and makes antibodies that will kill it. This is our typical response when we get ill and it takes a few days for the body to recognize the threat and then manufacture the antibodies. This is why we get sick and then suddenly get better. Colds and influenza are not self-limiting. It is our immune system that kills them. (here in the case of Covid it gets complicated due to a possible immune over-response--our body starts killing itself in addition to the virus)
It is at this layer that vaccines come into play. Instead of getting infected with Covid, we inject something that looks like Covid, and triggers the same, or similar antibody immune response that we would have had if we were infected.
So why does the immune response fade? As discussed above we are talking about our bodies producing antibodies to kill or stop an infection. The body will maintain that level of antibodies as long as it perceives the threat. However, producing antibodies uses resources and energy and our bodies like to run as efficiently as possible. So when the body thinks the coast is clear it will stop antibody production. Antibodies drop and we can get reinfected.
Why is the length of antibody response longer for some diseases and vaccines than others? This gets more complicated than I have knowledge but there are many unknowns. The body makes the decision and we do not understand all the reasons why. It is a new frontier because if we could answer that we could make better vaccines. This is also why when the experts were asked how long the vaccine would last they always gave some variation of "We don't know but hopefully..............." BMcl and Bob B and such think of this as double talk and the vaccine being a failure but it is just stating the facts. The immune system will only do what it will do. The vaccine protects no one and is gone from the body in hours. Protection is all on our immune systems.
Okay, now to your question what did I mean by the secondary immune system. Well, sometimes everything discussed above is called the primary immune system and what I am about to discuss is called the secondary immune system or adaptive immune system.
If we are low on, or have no, specific antibodies left from a previous covid infection or the vaccine, what happens?
Well, all os not lost, hopefully. Our body also has Memory B Cells and T cells (lack of T cells is AIDS) that respond. The key here is these cells remember a previous bad guy even though the primary antibodies are gone. When I was in school our professor told us to think of them as like photos in the post office. No, we no longer have cops on every street corner but we are watching for this guy. We will be ready fast!
This system can provide some direct response when they see a virus the second time but the biggest thing they do is immediately begin the manufacture of the antibodies. We saw some evidence with the boosters that the antibody level jumped within three to four days rather than two weeks as with the first shot. This would be the secondary immune system firing. We also see that even though vaccinated people have greatly reduced antibody levels over time, they still do much better than the unvaccinated with regard to hospitalization and death. Why? The secondary immune system recognizes the spike protein and fires everything up.
So that is what I meant by relying on the secondary immune system. In the face of a highly contagious sometimes deadly virus, you would love to have your population brimming with antibodies and ready for battle. Hence the boosters, like troop reinforcements on the battlefield. But how long can we keep that up and are we better off retreating to the fort which would be our secondary immune system? That is the big debate right now.
Certainly, if as with the first booster, you think it could greatly extend the period antibodies are effective, then you would by all means booster. But when you find that doesn't work. What do you do?