Get vaccinated. It’s the latest COVID-19 propaganda message appearing everywhere from TV commercials to social media feeds, and it’s being pushed by celebrities and government officials alike. Yet, a sizeable population of Americans aren’t ready to roll up their sleeve just yet.

A January 2021 poll found 31% were taking a “wait and see” approach to see how the vaccine — or more aptly, gene therapy — is working while 7% said they would get the COVID-19 vaccine only if it became required for work, school or other activities, and 13% said they would “definitely not get it.”¹

A cautionary approach is warranted, as none of the COVID-19 vaccines currently on the market are actually licensed. They only have emergency use authorization — which, incidentally, also forbids them from being mandated, although this is being widely and conveniently ignored — as trials are still ongoing.

The fact is, there’s a lot that’s unknown about these products, including their ultimate effects on your immune response. Increasingly, scientists are asking whether a phenomenon known as original antigenic sin (OAS), or imprinting, may render next-generation COVID vaccines useless.²

What Is Original Antigenic Sin, or Imprinting?

The term “original antigenic sin” was first used by Thomas Francis in 1960, who determined that hemagglutination inhibition assay titers — which are used to determine the antibody response to a viral infection — were highest against strains of seasonal influenza to which different age cohorts had first been exposed.³

In other words, the first influenza virus that you’re exposed to affects the way your lifelong immunity to that virus plays out.⁴ Later infections with virus strains similar to the first one will boost your antibody response against the original strain, and it’s not only influenza that this applies to. Imprinting is also known to occur in children with multiple dengue virus infections, for instance.⁵

In some cases, imprinting can be beneficial, but it can also be problematic. One study found that birth-year cohorts that had a first influenza exposure to seasonal H3 subtype viruses were less susceptible to avian influenza H7N9 virus later in life, while those exposed to H1 or H2 subtype viruses in childhood were less susceptible to avian H5N1-bearing viruses when they were older.⁶

“Using data from all known human cases of these viruses, we show that an individual’s first IAV [influenza A virus] infection confers lifelong protection against severe disease from novel hemagglutinin (HA) subtypes in the same phylogenetic group,” the researchers explained.⁷ Imprinting has been suggested as one reason why flu vaccines are often ineffective.

Scott Hensley, an associate professor of microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania, explained to STAT News, “We’ve all been trained on different influenza viruses. If you vaccinate 100 people, guess what? They’re all going to respond differently. We think a large part of that is that we all have a different immunological imprint.”⁸ He referred to a flu vaccine from 2017, when experts suggested a new H1N1 strain should be added. STAT News reported:⁹

“The one they had been using seemed to work fine for most people. But it wasn’t working well for a slice of the population — adults between the ages of about 30 and late middle age.

Hensley and his lab discovered that the vaccine target was making people who had their first flu exposures between 1977 and 1985 create antibodies to a version of H1N1 that was circulating back then — their imprinting virus. The decades-old H1N1 strains were too different from the 2009 version for the vaccine to work well in these people.”

The same thing could be happening with COVID-19.

Imprinting Could Mean Next COVID-19 Vaccines Won’t Work

While imprinting can enhance your protection against future infections if you’re exposed to antigenically related strains, if you’re exposed to a distantly related strain, it may increase susceptibility to infection. According to researchers in The Journal of Immunology:¹⁰

“OAS-like responses were also problematic during the 2013–2014 influenza season, when H1N1 viruses acquired a mutation in an HA [hemagglutinin] epitope that was the primary target of the Ab [antibody] response mounted by middle-aged individuals.

The cohort generated a focused Ab response against this epitope during early life exposure to seasonal H1N1 viruses that circulated in the 1970s. As reported by the Hensley laboratory, this epitope was conserved in the original 2009 H1N1 pandemic strain.

However, the drifted H1N1 strain that emerged in 2013-2014 contained a mutation in this region of HA that resulted in poor Ab binding and subsequently unusually high mortality for middle-aged individuals.”

In the case of COVID-19, it’s possible that the immune system reaction triggered by the vaccine will act as the original imprint, leaving subsequent COVID-19 vaccines — updated to target emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2 — ineffective.¹¹

Michael Worobey, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, who conducted research on imprinting with influenza,¹² told STAT News, “I do think it’s something that we need to be thinking about. We might actually see lower efficacy five years from now, if people are still locked into recalling the response to the first [SARS-2] antigen that they saw.”¹³

After a year of mostly virtual operation, Minnesota’s federal courts are moving back into the real world.

Criminal and civil trials will resume in the state’s U.S. District courtrooms beginning Monday, a sign that the COVID-19 pandemic’s grip on the justice system is loosening.

On March 13, 2020, Chief Judge John Tunheim issued an order suspending in-person trials, grand jury proceedings and attorney swearing-in ceremonies, an unprecedented move in Minnesota’s federal courts system, in response to early reports of infections in the state.

Tunheim has followed with several orders in the months since, at one point easing restrictions to allow for trials to return but keeping most court appearances to video apps like Zoom.