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Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

medrxiv.org

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Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree 100% - whatever reaction posts like yours get, it's important to realize that a lot of people think this way, quite possibly a majority if you could talk to them on their own, despite efforts to pretend anyone against whatever government / corporate orthodoxy is pushing this week is some kind of conspiracy nut

There are a tremendous amount of people who have just been fed the same compounding stuff on YouTube or wherever based on their previous clicks. There's a difference between considering the nature of X with a way to validate or think about it, and simply having watched a netflix documentary while high on acid. The latter of which become conspiracy nuts, and they're really draining to listen to, probably as much as bi…

I think I agree with what you're saying. The more recent challenge though is that calling someone a conspiracy theorist got a lot of traction for shutting down discussions, so it gets applied very liberally to any point of view that the mainstream disagrees with as a lazy way of avoiding debate.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#62
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not public health policy anywhere that I'm aware of? But vaccine rollout would be way quicker, and 'positive test or vaccinated' proportion of populations would be way higher, and that would influence discussion of other aspects, like 'herd immunity' for example.

My one anti-vax friend (who I make fun of constantly for not getting it) is constantly bombarded with people telling him that his previous infection doesn't give him any immunity. I already knew that was false - and I think he knew that too. It probably fed into his (motivated) reasoning to hold out this long if people are telling him so much information they know to be untrue. Still, I don't see how public health wo…

> Still, I don't see how public health would benefit from not recommending shots to everyone as there is no downside

The VAERS data suggests there are numerous groups at very low risk from Covid for which this may not be the case.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#63
post #9
post #8

Note this is to inform public health / prioritization in the short term. (Which is less necessary places like the US where there is excess vaccine supply). We know that past infection greatly reduces risk (and this helps quantify it). At the same time, vaccination is thought to cause a much broader and more durable immune response than natural infection. We'd like people who were previously infected to get vaccinated…

> vaccination is thought to cause a much broader and more durable immune response than natural infection Why? Is there any data to support this assertion? If anything, being ill (symptomatic) means the viral load was high in the body, so the immune system response should be as well, and in addition, infection should cause the immune system to produce antibodies to all parts of the virus, not just the spike protein, a…

Yes! https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2032195

Shows a slow decay in neutralizing antibody titers, with a greater degree of viral inhibition months later than convalescent plasma at a month.

"At day 119, the binding and neutralizing GMTs exceeded the median GMTs in a panel of 41 controls who were convalescing from Covid-19, with a median of 34 days since diagnosis (range, 23 to 54)."

Note that antibodies to all parts of the virus aren't necessarily equally beneficial, because only a few functional areas are neutralizing.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#64
post #35
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vaccination is thought to cause a much broader and more durable immune response than natural infection Why? Is there any data to support this assertion? If anything, being ill (symptomatic) means the viral load was high in the body, so the immune system response should be as well, and in addition, infection should cause the immune system to produce antibodies to all parts of the virus, not just the spike protein, a…

If there was evidence, that "is thought to" would've been replaced with "is proven to".

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2032195

Shows a slow decay in neutralizing antibody titers in those vaccinated, with a greater degree of viral inhibition months later than convalescent plasma at a month.

"At day 119, the binding and neutralizing GMTs exceeded the median GMTs in a panel of 41 controls who were convalescing from Covid-19, with a median of 34 days since diagnosis (range, 23 to 54)."

There's also data showing much higher neutralization titers against variants in those vaccinated vs. those naturally infected.

Of course, this is only one measure of immune response. Many other things are more difficult to measure, so we don't know too much about e.g. T cell responses from natural infection vs. vaccination. So it's hardly proven but there is some highly suggestive evidence.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My one anti-vax friend (who I make fun of constantly for not getting it) is constantly bombarded with people telling him that his previous infection doesn't give him any immunity. I already knew that was false - and I think he knew that too. It probably fed into his (motivated) reasoning to hold out this long if people are telling him so much information they know to be untrue. Still, I don't see how public health wo…

> I don't see how public health would benefit from not recommending shots to everyone as there is no downside. You'd get all the never infected people vaccinated sooner; so 'everyone' (except anti-vax not infected prior to effective 'herd immunity') would be immune sooner.

Yeah, in theory that would be the obvious advantage.

In practice, don't underestimate how much more inefficient or troublesome a seemingly simple additional rule or exception might be to administer... :P

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#66
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person who told your brother this is either a non-expert, or some expert who for some reason is giving medical advice which is incompatible with the scientific consensus (this would really boggle my mind). PS.: my 99.99% refers to the state of human knowledge and is more about what experts in the field know than what the general public knows.

> some expert who for some reason is giving medical advice which is incompatible with the scientific consensus Does that really boggle your mind? We're all human. I don't think there's a relationship between being an expert and being honest.

I know there's always going to be PhDs who believe the earth is flat, because humans are like that... But it's just so hard to relate to super intelligent people believing crazy things. It really does boggle my mind!

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a tremendous amount of people who have just been fed the same compounding stuff on YouTube or wherever based on their previous clicks. There's a difference between considering the nature of X with a way to validate or think about it, and simply having watched a netflix documentary while high on acid. The latter of which become conspiracy nuts, and they're really draining to listen to, probably as much as bi…

I think I agree with what you're saying. The more recent challenge though is that calling someone a conspiracy theorist got a lot of traction for shutting down discussions, so it gets applied very liberally to any point of view that the mainstream disagrees with as a lazy way of avoiding debate.

That's true, and I don't necessarily think it's a good thing to shut down debate, but I don't think it's also perfectly valid to take whatever action you want to avoid argumentation if you choose. I don't want to go do something I enjoy, but feel less inclined to do so on the basis I might get into an argument with some jackass. Not everything requires me to debate in my daily life, and ignoring people I don't care to engage with changes nothing about the outcomes of the subject matter, most of the time.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds uncomfortably like coercion...

It is coercion. People have been coerced at every step of this crisis, by the threat of police violence, by the threat of reputation or job loss, by the the threat of fines and more. Hopefully, like we see with the wuhan lab theory suppression, as time goes on, a lot of what people suffered will come to light, and be contrasted by the benefit of the elite and political class during all this.

COVID restrictions have been coercion just like drunk driving laws are coercion: rules that prevent innocent people from being hurt by reckless people’s bad decisions. A fundamental part of any civilized system is that bad behavior that is likely to hurt others is punished in order to try to deter that bad behavior. Reckless behavior during a worldwide deadly pandemic is similar to reckless behavior on the road.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#69
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However there already exist real people in the world who have had Covid twice, and who reportedly have had a much tougher time the second time around. This study helps us put some bounds on how many people this might happen to (assuming there are no mutations to the virus) but it doesn't rule it out completely, because of the prior existence proofs

I got covid twice. 10 months separated the first and the second infections. Both were mild, the second was worse (English variant).

Were you tested both times to confirm?

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

#70
post #28

Punchline: “The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated, compared with a steady increase in cumulative incidence among previously uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated. Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained u…

That's encouraging! I got COVID a few months ago and got vaccinated recently, seems like I should be unstoppable now.

Hey I'm curious, if you don't mind sharing, how do you think you got it? Throughout this whole pandemic, I'm still kind of amazed how people are getting it
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