you said we still need to keep the number 1 priority on getting more americans vaxed. talk to us about that. we haven t decided if we want the vaccine. if we decide what we want from every vaccine, protection against serious illness, the kind of illness that causes you to see a doctor s care or go to the icu, these vaccines do that because they create excellent memory cells. those are long-lived. so you should be protected for a while even against the omicron variant as we learned from the south african studies. you get 70% protection against serious illness. now, kind of provides against mild illness. that depends on anti-bodies that fade overtime. that s where the booster comes. in it helps decrease your child of having mild illness. for omicron, if you have a couple doses of mra vaccine, you re at risk of getting mild
and so the question is, you know, whether or not, which dose is sufficient. one. but also, two, we saw with the larger dose people had adverse effects with that. the other question is how does this translate into clinical outcomes? severe disease, hospitalations, and deaths sf we don t know whether this booster has any impact yet. all we know is lab data showing increase in antibodies. we know the immune system is complicated. there are cells involved. a very sophisticated system. we know they also have memory cells. that may also influence people s long-term outcome and immune response. there is a lot we still don t know. this is incredibly promising. we need real life data as well. given that there is so much we don t know, i ll ask you a question i know people are asking all the time. in advance of the holidays what are you advising people how to proceed with family gatherings? i am advising friends and family to be incredibly
so if you are high in terms of your ability to tackle this virus antibodies you cut down lower but you still have a question. if you ve vaccinate some time ago and he weren t boosted and we did not test directly ourselves i think natural infections does something similar. then you may not be as well protected or maybe not protected from infection. we protected or maybe not protected from infection. protected or maybe not protected from infection. we talk a lot on the news about from infection. we talk a lot on the news about antibodies from infection. we talk a lot on the news about antibodies and - from infection. we talk a lot on the news about antibodies and how - from infection. we talk a lot on the | news about antibodies and how they are blue state and how they waiting and we don t talk a lot about t cells and t cells are the memory cells and t cells are the memory cells in the body that recognize incoming viruses. need to do any research on that and whether in fact that vac
shows that people who have recovered from covid have strong immunity and i mean b-cell data just this week actually and t-cell data, those are called memory cells. antibodies will actually be higher if you ve had a severe infection. lower if you ve had a mild infection. but they come down after vaccination anyway. it s about what is cellular memory. isn t it, dr., gandhi, a very individualized process? in other words, millions have gotten the vaccine and there s a ton of data as to what we can expect in those cases. but for those that have had it, how do we really know, inlay terms, that they re resistant to getting the virus again? is there a way to measure it? there s not because, like i said, the antibodies will come down, given your distance from when you ve been infected and how severe it was. so, what they re doing in
antibodies lasted longer after the pfizer booster. and it helped memory cells, immune memory cells. again, small study done by johnson & johnson. do these differences mean anything? are they significant? who knows. this has not been published in a medical journal or reviewed by anyone. people should not get fussy about what booster they get. boosters help. and it really it doesn t seem to matter in any significant way what booster you get. get boosted. elizabeth cohen, thank you very much. some vaccine skeptics going to extremes to get a vaccine certificate without getting a shot. a man in italy tried to use a fake silicone arm and the nurse nearly fell for it. you know, i almost want to laugh and just be incredulous with this, but this is terrible.