Target fixation: "Everything else" vs. covid

Reflective intro added April 4, 2023 in italics

April 4, 2023: This post is a “work in progress” insofar as it does not yet include hyperlinks to the various immunology topics referenced.

Recently I had the opportunity to discuss the philosophy of triple-boosting for covid with a man who had done so. His rationale was that he had increased vulnerability to covid due to a lung condition, and therefore was doing his utmost to prevent it.

Apart from my concerns regarding the evidence that triple-boosting will actually accomplish this aim, this reasoning is sound.

Except…

…concerns have been raised about antigenic fixation - where the immune system is trained to respond to a target on a virus to the point where any mutation in that target will lead to impaired immunity…

…there may be a corresponding concept of virus fixation - where the immune system is trained to respond to a single virus, to the point that its resources are over-committed to that virus. This might lead to impaired immunity to other viruses, fungi, bacteria…

These concepts have been explored somewhat in the history of medicine, and Dr. Geert van der Bossche, among others, has said much regarding antigenic fixation and related concepts.

When learning to ride a motorcycle, this anecdote: the rider tends to steer toward whatever she is looking at. Therefore, stop staring at the tree or you will hit it. This was called target fixation when I learned about it.

On a societal level, for over two years, we engaged in target fixation with respect to covid. It is interesting to see that similar errors may occur at the biomolecular level, as at the societal level - not much covid, but lots of RSV right now - as the result of target fixation.