
If you have had a pre-Omicron infection, then an Omicron infection will fail to induce an immune response against future Omicron infections:
Notably, none (0/6) of HCWs with a previous history of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the Wuhan Hu-1 wave responded to B.1.1.529 (Omicron) S1 protein (Fig. 5A). This suggests that, in this context, B.1.1.529 (Omicron) infection was unable to boost T cell immunity against B.1.1.529 (Omicron) itself; immune imprinting from prior Wuhan Hu-1 infection resulted in the absence of a T cell response against B.1.1.529 (Omicron) S1 protein. These findings were further highlighted in paired data showing the fall in T cell response in individual HCWs across the three antigens: On an individual basis, most HCWs retained T cell recognition of B.1.617.2 S1 but commonly showed impaired T cell recognition of B.1.1.529 S1 (Fig. 5C). Taken together with the data shown in Fig. 4, the findings consistently demonstrate that people initially infected by Wuhan Hu-1 in the first wave and then reinfected during the B.1.1.529 (Omicron) wave do not experience a boost in T cell immunity against B.1.1.529 (Omicron) at the level of nAb and T cell recognition.
[…]
Fourteen weeks after the third vaccine dose, previously infection-naïve HCWs infected during the B.1.1.529 (Omicron) wave showed increased S1 RBD B.1.1.529 (Omicron) binding responses, but previously Wuhan Hu-1 infected HCWs did not, indicating that previously Wuhan Hu-1 infected individuals were immune imprinted to not boost antibody binding responses against B.1.1.529 (Omicron) despite having been infected by B.1.1.529 (Omicron) itself (Fig. 6C).
In fact, infection during the B.1.1.529 (Omicron) wave imprinted a consistent relative hierarchy of cross-neutralization immunity against VOCs across different individuals with potent cross-reactive nAb responses against B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) (Fig. 6, D and E). Comparative analysis of nAb potency for cross-neutralization of VOCs emphasized the impact of immune imprinting which effectively abrogates the nAb responses in those vaccinated HCWs infected during the first wave and then reinfected during the B.1.1.529 (Omicron) wave. The doughnuts in Fig. 6E highlight the extent to which the relative potency of nAb responses are attenuated in previously Wuhan Hu-1 infected HCWs.
But wait a second. Here we find a study, where two infections, one pre-Omicron, the other Omicron, actually DOES lead to increased protection against infection from future Omicron infections!
Take a look at those results:
Cumulative incidence of infection was 1.1% (95% CI: 0.8-1.4%) for the reinfection cohort and 2.1% (95% CI: 1.8-2.3%) for the primary-infection cohort, 135 days after the start of follow-up. The adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) for infection was 0.52 (95% CI: 0.40-0.68), comparing incidence in the reinfection cohort to that in the primary-infection cohort. The aHR was 0.59 (95% CI: 0.40-0.85) in a subgroup analysis in which primary infection in the reinfection cohort was restricted to only the index virus or Alpha variant. In the first 70 days of follow-up, when incidence was dominated by BA.2, the aHR was 0.92 (95% CI: 0.51-1.65). However, cumulative incidence curves diverged when BA.4/BA.5 subvariants dominated incidence (aHR, 0.46 (95% CI: 0.34-0.62)). There was no evidence that immune imprinting compromises protection against Omicron subvariants. However, there was evidence that having two infections, one with a pre-Omicron variant followed by one with an Omicron subvariant, elicits stronger protection against future Omicron-subvariant reinfection than having had only one infection with an Omicron subvariant.
How could two different groups of scientists studying the same question arrive at such different contradictory answers!
Is someone committing scientific fraud here? Is one of the two teams incompetent? What’s going on here? What did the Abu-Raddad group do different, that prevented them from finding harmful immune imprinting? Hint: Four words.

Who could have seen this coming?
Infection number two reduces your risk of another Omicron by about 50%. Your infection will be milder too and last less long, so you’ll have less chance of passing it on too. Apply this to a whole country and you get an Algeria:

And if the Gods withdrew their protection from your people, your population was tipped over into the other direction: The immune system no longer learns new tricks, but it does suffer some damage: T cells are damaged or killed. This damage would seem to set you up for increased risk of reinfection. I suspect the vaccines themselves cause some direct immune damage too. When this happens to the people around you, it means you are also exposed more often and thus also reinfected more often. And when you get this situation, you get an Edinburgh:
Take a look at the ZOE results:

People in Bumfucknowhere Scotland are getting infected at higher rates, than people living in London.
All of this has less to do with SARS-COV-2 being a special virus and more to do with Homo Sapiens Sapiens having committed a very strange experiment. If SARS-COV-2 was intrinsically very nasty, you would be hearing about horror stories in Africa right now. The only horror stories you hear right now, are of unexplained excess mortality in the West, a massive jump in disability claims, a jump in people with memory problems and strange secondary pandemics of other viruses.
You would think that public health departments would study existential threats and take worst case scenarios into consideration. How come the Aztecs succumbed to all these plagues during Columbian contact, whereas these viruses behaved like nothingburgers for the Europeans? How come nations like Peru were worse affected by SARS-COV-2?
It wasn’t hard to see this coming. My posts on this topic are meant less to dissuade people from getting these shots, but more to simply document that it’s not very hard to see the mistake, that the evidence was continually flowing in, as they continued with their insanity. I don’t want them to get away with a “nobody could have seen this coming” argument.
If I can see it, they should have been able to see it. Most people who avoided these shots didn’t see it coming. The vast majority simply lucked out because they had a healthy degree of skepticism. If you have these new shots and they’re continually paused and then restarted because people drop dead, a sane person would be skeptical.
It really just requires being able to draw from different streams of knowledge and skeptically interpreting evidence yourself. But those are not traits modern society favors. As the wave of excess mortality continues, the architects of this disaster are like passengers on a crashing plane who are voluntarily throwing out their most beloved luggage.
Although the system pushed these lockdowns with the consent of 90% of the population, the lockdowns are now blamed for the disastrous wave of excess mortality and declining life expectancy we’re experiencing. This is the limited hangout: Give people something to bite onto that fits their worldview so they don’t sink their teeth in elsewhere.
The unfortunate reality is just that we live in a society where decisions are made by really docile conscientious people who are incapable of seeing the bigger picture. People who are good at jumping through hoops but incapable of ever connecting the dots for themselves and rarely if ever have an original thought to offer. This is the result you get.
This was excellent. Thanks.
Radagast,
Do you have any idea how dose dependent this relationship is?
Is it a switch that is flipped after the first dose, or does the strength of the priming get progressively worse with each dose?
The effect is cumulative, it gets worse with every dose.
See:
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.12.21261952v1.full
Again you seem to be extrapolating non-response to the spike protein (“S1”) to complete immune non-response.
C,mon, you keep talking about “Really docile conscientious people”
You give benefit of doubt as the data and your own work should lead to a hardening facts that this was not accidentally or inadvertently done. Their is massive worldwide coordination from which only maliciousness and evil can be deduced
“Most people who avoided these shots didn’t see it coming. The vast majority simply lucked out because they had a healthy degree of skepticism.”
Raises hand. 🙂 Yeah, so I lucked out. It was obvious the stuff wasn’t properly tested (despite all the fancy arguments about how all they did was cut red tape, and the only reason this stuff typically takes years is bureaucratic inefficiency, and blah blah blah). I was very skeptical about the mRNA technology, since it was completely new, and therefore should have been subjected to more, rather than less, rigorous testing. I was initially hesitantly open to the viral vector vaccines, but then they quickly declared them unsafe for my demographic (young-ish women), and so it was mRNA or bust, and I chose bust. But my gods, the pressure has been intense…
I finally gave in to family pressure (as well as being less than 100% opposed to the vax, and being over 70) and took a single JJ just over a year ago. I am thinking maybe the sweet spot is minimal infection and/or minimal injection, to minimize short- and long-term health risks. Mostly I fear the mRNA system, but am worried about a previous post, which included a mention from Radagast that the viral vector could be worse, because it continues the production of spike protein indefinitely. That would maybe be consistent with J&J having more moderate but longer protection than the mRNAs. Would love to hear an update or further explanation from our host and looking forward to the post with advice on what we all can do about this mess.