07 Mar 2022
Setting it Straight: Viruses, Vaccines and COVID-19: joining battle in the pneumonic lung
Last week (#94) we discussed how, in someone vaccinated against the spike protein of the original SARS-CoV-2 Wuhan strain who has then been infected with the Omicron variant, enlarged, ‘activated’, immune-effector T cells and B cells will start to move out of the lymphoid tissue in the head and neck region to travel, via the lymph, to the venous circulation. That process takes days and, of course, once the lung is infected, the mediastinal lymph nodes in the chest will also be involved. But this doesn’t mean that any of these new immune cells will move straight to sites of virus replication. Their only access is via the ‘highways, then minor byways’ of the vasculature.