Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

Study doesn't seem to check for the B.1351 (SA) variant which has shown a limited ability to overcome natural immunity.

Arguably this variant isn't a big deal for now (compared to spreading out vaccine doses), but I suspect previously infected individuals will need to get a single shot eventually.

> Because openly stating this obvious fact would get you downvoted on here a few months ago.

Attempting to discuss it here will still commonly get you downvoted. HN is not a particularly rational forum. People make the mistake of thinking it is because a lot of engineers hang out here. Engineers are not especially rational, that's a common myth derived from failing to understand the way people mentally compartmentalize; how they can frequently be rational about one subject and irrational about another.

Try this one for example: the numbers they've been reporting about Covid infections the past year are not the actual infection numbers, not even remotely close. Yet they're held up everywhere as being representative of how many infections there have been.

This is still the biggest comedy going about the pandemic. It's hilarious how batshit crazy people can be.

If the US were a sane nation, the people that have been trying to represent the supposedly official infection count as being fully representative of the number of infections that have occurred - those people would be publicly mocked and shamed for being anti-science, the equivalent of flat-earthers. Instead, the flat-earthers dominate the media and national discussion. That's why the lab-leak theory was buried under so much censorship and for so long, those same people have been holding that conversation back very aggressively.

Most people know on some level that the held-up official infection tally is not representative of the real number of infections. And yet the mainstream media, without exception, pretends those are the legitimate infection numbers. Any attempt to discuss how many infections have really occurred, will be shouted down. The shrieking emotionalism that pours out when you open this can of worms, is endlessly fascinating to me.

If you say: how many people in the US have had Covid, they'll point at the magic official number, which is not correct.

If we wanted to have a serious discussion nationally about herd immunity (for example), one of the most important steps is one they intentionally refuse to take: let's try to get a more serious estimate on how many people nationally have actually had Covid.

They won't have that conversation and the media goes out of its way to avoid it (and has done so for a year now). Why? Pick your poison on the why answer. Political psychopaths lusting for control, looking to prolong their ability to take advantage of a disaster (the 'ol never waste a good crisis mentality). Wildly irrational anti-science types in power that pretend they represent science, which is the wing that Fauci belongs to. Maybe a combination. Maybe it's just the fear that if the masses of people think we're anywhere near herd immunity, the vaccination rates will plunge even faster, so some people want to maintain the false illusion (on the actual infection counts) as long as possible.

What a sad way of looking at life. We used to have "if all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you too?", talk about people as sheep, and generally look down on people giving in to peer pressure.

Now it seems to be a badge of honor, or at least a popular opinion, amongst educated people, to lean in to being part of a herd.

Doing stuff because it makes sense is one thing, but praising the abstract act of being peer pressured is ridiculous.

well pack it up boys, lets not make this go viral on social media and just hope the "peers" organically pick this study to review over the next 6 months instead of some other study that appears to be more in the public interest and has more popular people behind it

a while back I looked to see how long it actually took for the peer reviewed studies to come out for previous diseases and outbreaks, such as SARS 1. It was too long and we have to weigh inputs right now and react now.

Most reinfections are milder the second time.

The early Nevada case involved a relatively younger person who caught it once. Then they caught it again while caring for a parent who also had it and was hospitalized. The case was confirmed by PCR analysis of the samples that were taken combined with validating that the samples had the subjects DNA in them.

But they likely had a very mild initial infection and being young they fought it off with mostly an innate immune system response and didn't generate a lot of antibodies or adaptive response.

Then when their parent got sick (in the same household) I would bet money the cared for that parent taking little to no precautions believing that their prior infection granted them survivor-island-style invincible immunity to disease (which is how most people think the immune system works). They likely got a whopping large viral dose which (probably combined with a bit of bad luck) is what caused the second infection to be severe and require hospitalization.

And due to selection effects that unusual case bubbled up to the top early because it was someone in the hospital with covid who had positive evidence that they'd caught it 3 months earlier. A lot of people with mild covid both times would never have landed into a study and the clinicians wouldn't have bothered with genetic sequencing.