Virologist: Exposure to virus, 'natural' immunity on top of vaccinations will help end the pandemic

A virologist from Harvard University claims that naturally derived immunity to COVID-19, one that sits atop the immunity conferred by vaccines, will be a notable factor in eventually overcoming the pandemic. 

Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard's T. H. Chan School of Public Health, made that assertion in a lengthy interview at New York Magazine this week. 

Mina in the interview argued that the world will in the months ahead see an increasing number of serious "breakthrough infections" of SARS-Cov-2, wherein individuals who have been fully vaccinated will contract the virus, develop COVID-19 and become ill with it. 

"I’ve always said that we’re going to age out of this virus," Mina told interviewer David Wallace-Wells. "People are going to keep getting exposed."

"And whether it’s to Delta or to a variant in five months from now, every time you or I or anyone else gets exposed — they’re really building up a decent cushion of immunity with each of those exposures," he continued. "So it’s only a matter of time before we actually have not only vaccine-derived immunity but natural infection-derived immunity, too."

"When you start coupling all that together, you can picture it kind of like a sandwich, just continuing to stack up," he added. "Then we can start to say, okay, now, you know, even if the virus changes a bit, I’ve built up so much protection already. I’ve got all these antibodies that not only recognize the spike proteins from the virus, which is what we see with the vaccines, but I’ve now been exposed three times."

"And so even if the virus mutates this part, I already recognize these other parts. That’s kind of how we’re going to get out of this."

Mina speculated that the process might be "a couple-year-long endeavor," and that "everyone who’s been vaccinated probably will get exposed — eventually, hopefully, without causing any symptoms."