Why Do Respiratory Virus Vaccines Lose Effectiveness so Fast?

By December 3, 2025Commentary2 min read

We have seen in study after study that the CV-19 vax have limited effectiveness to begin with and it lessens quite quickly and is essentially worthless in a few months.  This article again points out how quickly CV-19 vax effectiveness disappears.  (JAMA Study)   We have seen a similar pattern with flu vaccines.  One reason may be that the CV-19 virus, and influenza viruses, mutate very frequently, so that the immune response prompted by the vaccines isn’t capable of recognizing the new variants.  But research shows that another reason, probably far more important, is that the body doesn’t create long-lasting memory cells to generate antibodies against the virus.  And why is that you might ask?

I pointed out when the lack of effectiveness of the vaccines became apparent that our bodies are faced with many threats and they have to decide how much effort to put into defending against those.  In essence, it is a triage system, and only the most threatening viruses or bacteria or allergens get the strongest response.  CV-19 simply isn’t that dangerous to the vast majority of the population so our immune systems aren’t going to waste time creating a lot of memory cells that keep a steady supply of antibodies in our blood streams.  And if it isn’t that dangerous, and it isn’t that effective, why do we keep telling people to get another dose?

And when you see these studies that claim the vax are effective against death or hospitalization, be very suspicious.  The data looks a little better, but there are so many confounders at this point, I don’t trust those studies.  And few studies use an adequate follow-up period, probably because effectiveness would not be shown.  We should mandate that effectiveness be studied for at least a year.  If a vaccine can’t last that long, it is pretty worthless, otherwise we would be constantly poking people every three or four months.  That also carries risks, as that frequent prompting of the immune system may actually make its performance worse.

Kevin Roche

Author Kevin Roche

The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry through Roche Consulting, LLC. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.

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Join the discussion 11 Comments

  • Amalie Borchardt says:

    Exactly!
    Of the 53,402 employees analyzed, 82.1% received the flu vaccine.

    However, the cumulative incidence of influenza climbed faster in the vaccinated than the unvaccinated cohort.

    27% higher in vaccinated, so negative effacy.
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.30.25321421v3

    And, this:
    A 2025 population-based cohort study of more than 2.2 million adults in Catalonia, Spain, published Oct. 21, 2025 in BMC Infectious Diseases, found that recipients of pneumococcal vaccines were more likely to be hospitalized for pneumonia—and, in some cases, more likely to die from pneumonia-related causes.

    Notably, even among the groups most vulnerable to pneumonia—older adults, immunocompromised patients, and those with chronic heart or lung disease—the vaccines showed no measurable benefit, undermining the rationale for maintaining current high-risk or universal adult recommendations.

    Read the full article:

    https://thevaccinereaction.org/2025/11/pneumococcal-vaccines-ineffective-at-reducing-hospitalizations-and-deaths/

  • Jim says:

    What I do not understand is how highly educated people in the medical field did not recognize the weakness of the Covid 19 vaccine and went full in with overselling the product. The historical timeline indicates by the spring of 2021 the data was indicating the Covid 19 had wanning protection and health officials started talking boosters by late summer of 2021. There also was a meeting with top health officials in 2021 on how to address the Covid recovered that have acquired some level of natural immunity. I know this from listening to an interview with Paul A. Offit who was one of the attendees and he mentioned Dr. Rochelle Walensky, (CDC director at the time), Anthony Fauci and I believe Francis Collens being also being in attendance along with others that were not named in the interview. Not all agreed in the meeting the Covid 19 vaccine gave better protection, but they agreed publicly to state natural immunity was inferior to the immunity of the Covid 19 vaccine. This was part of a push for required national Covid vaccination policy. They had to know at the time of the meeting there was questions concerning the efficacy of the vaccine.
    It is just disappointing, people in top positions had an obligation to lead. They did not provide the leadership that was needed at the time.

    • Joe K says:

      Jim’s comment on why do so many “highly educated people in the medical field did not recognize the weakness of the Covid 19 vaccine”

      Perhaps this comment will shed some light on the medical experts myopic vision:

      At my 50th year high school reunion in summer of 2024. One of our classmates became an infectious disease expert & researcher at a major southern california university. His comment to me was that without the mitigation protocols, masking, lockdowns, school closures, etc, there would have been 2m US deaths from covid including 500,000 children.

      This classmate making that statement was an infectious disease expert and the expert opinions from him and other “experts” were what the CDC and other medical authorities relied on for determining the policies advocated. Four years after the onset of covid, like most every medical expert, this medical expert was still clinging to discredited facts.

  • Joe K says:

    Kevin
    I agree that the body adjusts its immunity protection based on some mechanism that accounts for the relative risk. What ever the mechanism, that is beyond my pay grade.

    That being said, With exception of 7 or 8 states, the per capita death rates increased ( or remained relatively unchanged) after the introduction of the covid vaxes. That raises the obvious question as to why the death rates did not drop after the introduction of the vax if it was so effective? The question is even more important considering that the

    The states that had a significant reduction of death rates were concentrated in the NE US (NY, NJ, Mass, CT, ) with reason for the decline most likely due to the large percent of the vulnerable population having died from covid.

    I have attached the link to World O Meters which has graphs of each states cases and deaths by week which should provide some context. Without sounding like a conspiracy nut, there is far too much conflicting data that undercuts the claim that the vax substantially reduced the covid death rates

  • Larry says:

    My background is biomedical research, so my knowledge base touches many facets of the Covid saga. To follow up on your post, some people were skeptical in 2020 that an effective vaccine (either traditional or mRNA) could be developed that could be used in sufficient time, be effective, or have durability against either current or likely future Covid viral variants. All these concerns were eventually true. Next, what is the point of conducting “gain of function” research” to discover the basis of human virulence, especially related to possible viral transmission from animals, such as birds or bats? It would have to kept totally secret, because if discovered, the key gene/protein viral coat sequences AND publishing or disseminating them AND identifying the enabling cell and animal/human models (e.g. transgenic mice with the human ACE2 receptor), such that these could be utilized by “bad actors” anywhere, because the enabling technologies are widely available. Next, anybody with even modest knowledge and insight can see through the hoaxes and lies perpetuated (animal Covid origin), identify the specific roles of US and Chinese researchers to develop the fundamental Covid knowledge base, gene modification and testing strategies (DARPA grant), and concealing the previous work (e.g. removal of Covid-based DNA sequences from databases, etc). Finally, the whole strategy of lock-downs, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, etc. was not in proportion to the level and age-specific health and mortality issues for Covid. Sadly, we have learned nothing from these past 5 yrs of Covid, except that the entire scientific, medical, public health, and intellectual level of our political and medical/scientific leadership is totally broken. It seems to me quite unlikely that these same categories of “leaders” can design any future useful strategies to improve human health, address specific diseases, and make any progress to improve the access, affordability, or equity in our current healthcare system.

  • Mike M. says:

    “CV-19 simply isn’t that dangerous to the vast majority of the population so our immune systems aren’t going to waste time creating a lot of memory cells that keep a steady supply of antibodies in our blood streams.”

    But how would the immune system know how much a threat a virus is? With a natural infection, there could conceivably be a way for the immune system to adjust depending on the severity of the illness. But a vaccine does not make you seriously sick, so the immune system would have no way to know how serious the infection might have been.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      excellent question. You will recall that coronaviruses have been around for a long time, there were four common ones that were one of types of viruses that cause “colds”. So the human immune system has been interacting with them for a long time, generally with mild results. A new strain that causes a very severe infection in a particular individual will prompt a stronger, more durable response, which is likely why infections seem to have been much more protective against future serious infection than the vax. The vax were designed to not cause a serious illness, but just enough to cause the body to create antibody and T cell responses.

  • Mike M. says:

    This is in reply to Kevin’s reply to my earlier comment.

    “A new strain that causes a very severe infection in a particular individual will prompt a stronger, more durable response, which is likely why infections seem to have been much more protective against future serious infection than the vax. The vax were designed to not cause a serious illness, but just enough to cause the body to create antibody and T cell responses.”

    But all vaccines are designed to cause a mild response. So for the immune system to “know” which vaccines might be for something severe, there would have to be some sort of genetic memory.

    And what about polio? That is almost always a mild GI infection. So much so, that until improved sanitation in the 20th century, it was not a problem. Yet both the mild GI infection and the vaccine provide lifetime immunity.

    • Kevin Roche says:

      let me give a longer response to this, such a complex topic and honestly, I am not sure that scientists yet understand all the ins and outs of the human immune system. These viruses, such as polio and coronavirus and flu and many others, have been around for thousands of years as far as we can tell, probably about as long as modern humans. We have co-evolved. A substantial part of the human immune system consists of sentinel type cells that can do pattern recognition against certain biochemical sequences and that capability is genetically coded. It arose because certain bacteria, viruses, toxins tend to have some common sequences. Over time, their are mutations and the rate of mutation and where the mutations occur can vary by bacteria or virus. How a pathogen enters the bodies cells and how it replicates, etc, can affect the immune response and how durable it becomes. There is a lot of variation. Coronavirus was particularly tricky because the receptor binding domain, the way it entered cells, was highly mutable, so we kept getting new strains. Most older vaccines were either attentuated virus or dead virus, so the immune response was to the whole organism or multiple parts of it. The mRNA vaccines focussed on the receptor binding domain, which was likely a mistake and likely accounts for why an infection appears to have produced a better immune response. The polio vaccine is a whole vaccine, and the polio virus is relatively stable in its receptor binding areas. When you say lifetime immunity, it is important to recognize that no vaccine prevents “infection”, that is the entry and replication of a pathogen. What it can do is speed up and strengthen the response to that infection to limit it. So many factors will impact that immune response, including replication rates–CV-19 had very high replication rates, which also increases odds of mutations.

      So all these pathogens have a long history with humans, the result of which is some genetic coding for protection, with the likelihood of that being greater for more serious threats, and remember that initially these were probably all very threatening, even to our predeccessor primates. That genetic coding is part of the innate immune response. The adaptive immune response comes more from an individual reaction to an encounter. As I said, the more I read up on the immune system, the more I saw how complex it is. I continue to believe that one reason neither vax nor infection creates a super-strong response to a future infection is that in general, coronaviruses just aren’t perceived to be that serious a threat. So there is a response but it won’t necessarily stop that infection from having clinical manifestations.

  • Mike M. says:

    “A substantial part of the human immune system consists of sentinel type cells that can do pattern recognition against certain biochemical sequences and that capability is genetically coded.”

    So there is some genetic memory in the immune system! I did not know that. Cool.

    Looks like I gotta read up on sentinel cells.

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