Injected SARS-CoV-2 vaccine induced T cells home to the skin where they are useless. Respiratory infection induced T cells home to the nasopharynx where they protect.

Most immunologists and vaccinologists fail to understand such basic immunology concepts

A preprint was recently published by Elixirgen Therapeutics about their SARS-COV-2 intradermal vaccine. Forbes magazine enthusiastically gushed

“Naked” Self-Amplifying RNA Vaccine Shows Promise As A Booster, Induces Strong Cytotoxic T-Cell Responses

Elixirgen and other vaccine makers check for T cells in serum and ignorantly or fraudulently make claims about the vaccines inducing cellular immunity against SARS-COV-2 which causes a respiratory infection.

There are two main parts of immunity. Humoral immunity which includes antibodies. Celullar immunity which includes T cells. T is for thymus where the cells originate. T cells (specifically CD8+ T cells, also known as cytotoxic killer T cells or cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL)) that recognize a part of a virus, will kill infected cells that are making that virus.

Figure from cebm.net.

There is an important property of T cells (lymphocytes) known as homing.

T cells that originate from the thymus are originally “naive”. They are activated in lymph nodes. When they are activated, they are imprinted with a location, a homing marker or receptor (like a mailing label). If a lymph node received viral antigens from a skin infection, it will imprint activated T cells with a skin homing marker. If a lymph node received viral antigens from a respiratory infection, it will imprint activated T cells with a lung homing marker. T cells will then travel to the location imprinted in the homing marker which is the site of infection.

Injected vaccines induce or introduce viral antigens in the skin. So they induce T cells that home to the skin where they are useless against respiratory infections. Respiratory infections involve viral antigens being present in respiratory tissues and result in induction of T cells that home to the respiratory system. So they can protect against respiratory infections.

So anyone who is claiming that injected vaccines induce cellular immunity against respiratory infections, is ignoring basic immunology. What’s worse? Our “peer-review” system is broken because of ignorant immunologists and vaccinologists. They perform “peer-reviews” that fail to stop such fraudulent claims. So claims of injected vaccines inducing cellular immunity against respiratory infections are regularly published in “top” medical journals like Science.

More examples of such fraudulent claims in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Cellular immune responses are induced by both mRNA vaccines and adenovirus vector–based vaccines and have shown greater durability than serum antibody titers.

In the Nature, Nature Immunology and JAMA journals.

Many studies completely ignore cellular immunity, focus only on antibodies and make ridiculous claims of “immune-evasion”. NPR claims

Omicron keeps finding new evolutionary tricks to outsmart our immunity

It does not. The variants only evade vaccine induced humoral immunity which is narrowly focused against the spike protein alone. The current variants cannot evade infection induced cellular immunity that is directed against every part of the virus.

Many studies misinterpret cellular immunity as discussed above. Medical science is badly broken. A majority of our doctors and researchers need to be sent back to school. A better school this time.