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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

#201

Post by tptacek »

rayiner wrote: post #154
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most authorities are downplaying natural immunity, despite evidence like this. OK, I think I can agree with this, I've seen lots of "getting the vaccine provides much better immunity than getting Covid"-type statements that seemed more like conjecture. > The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated. Is this a s…

It rarely results in death. Even men 65-75 have a only a 3% chance of dying if they get covid. To put that into perspective, according to the mortality tables, those people have a 1.5-3.5% chance of dying in a given year even under normal circumstances.

Polio has a death rate in the mid single digits, too.

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

#202

Post by cbsmith »

kbutler wrote: post #159
waterside81 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Son presumably got it at school (high mask compliance). Wife presumably got it from son. 5 days before other son's wedding...

> Son presumably got it at school (high mask compliance).

What was her name? ;-)

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

#203

Post by nradov »

manwe150 wrote: post #194
nradov wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most accurate approach would be to do repeated blood tests of a large nationwide study population looking at both antibodies and memory T cells. The CDC really should have been doing that nationwide for the past year.

The Red Cross Blood Donation centers perhaps come closest to doing this. From their emails, it sounded like they never saw widespread active antibodies (until a few months ago).

The Red Cross only did antibody testing which has a significant false negative rate, especially on patients who recovered from mild infections many months ago. That's why getting accurate numbers would require repeatedly testing the same subjects at regular intervals, and also assaying their memory T cells.

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

#204

Post by whoknowswhat11 »

phkahler wrote: post #101
spion wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that seems like a large number but in the vaccine arm there were 20x more subjects and only 15 cases. So with the 1359 previously infected subjects, assuming identical behavior to vaccinated subjects, we would expect around 0.9 cases if vaccines were approximately equal to infection. So this study doesn't have enough statistical power to say how vaccines compare to previous infection. Could be better, could be…

>> So this study doesn't have enough statistical power to say how vaccines compare to previous infection. Could be better, could be up to 3 times worse within a high confidence interval. Could be. But it would be great if they'd just say having had a confirmed case is equivalent to getting the vaccine because several studies have now shown that to be roughly the case. It's also conventional medical wisdom although it…

No kidding. It's clear to me that protection at some level is provided following infection - which simply makes sense.

You'll notice they say - we don't have enough data. Then data is incomplete. Then we can't really say because study was X / Y / Z.

They ignore the MASSIVE difference in your chance of being infected if you are unvaccinated and have not been infected vs many other combos.

Just treat folks who've been infected as vaccinated, they can get booster / variant shots with everyone else when the time comes.

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

#205

Post by whoknowswhat11 »

stavros wrote: post #98
andrei_says_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that it’s airborne chances are through breathing in proximity with someone who is currently contagious (and possibly asymptomatic). Non-huge indoor spaces, absence of masks, breathing the same air for longer than 15-20 min all increase infection rates. Not OP.

It's even worse than that, my dad got it in an indoor space (office) while both he and the carrier were wearing masks. Then I got it from him in the house, even though I avoided him and kept my distance. He wouldn't wear a mask in the house (because "I'm fine") and kept coughing up the place, though.

You need to be very very clear about the type of mask you are wearing.

I wear an N95 or KF94 - I like the ones with the valve / vents so do a surgical over that if I use one of those.

I've got friends in covid care who had pretty high exposure with a good N95 and face shield without being infected.

So when people say they were masked up and got infected, you need to ask, was this just some fleece cloth or a mask designed for infection control.

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

#206

Post by londons_explore »

wuschel wrote: post #198
reducesuffering wrote: post #2

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…

Two comments: (1) A friend of mine who works as a doctor in one of the vaccination centers in South Germany told me that re-infection rates with problematic outcome after full vaccinations are ~5%. This is what they tell their patients in the information talk before the shot. Note that my friend could not give me a higher resolution of the data (age, etc). (2) I think I wrote that in one of my prior comments ~ 9 mont…

Reinfection rate differing between different studies and populations could partly or entirely be the result of differing error rates in lab processes. Just a 0.1% contamination rate between samples in the lab or hospital would more than explain most of the results.

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

#207

Post by jobigoud »

jquery wrote: post #172
bvinc wrote: post #137

This is really good news. Whenever I see people talking about if previously infected people should be vaccinated, they always mention how we don't know how long protection lasts for previously infected people. This study includes this section: Duration of protection This study was not specifically designed to determine the duration of protection afforded by natural infection, but for the previously infected subjects…

Most “previously infected” people were absolutely not infected at all. If this study involved self-reported previously infected and not confirmed PCR, the results would be very different.

Isn't there also a lot of people that self report as having had covid that actually didn't have it? Why do you assume the rate of false positive to be in one direction or the other?

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

#208

Post by ithkuil »

cbsmith wrote: post #202
kbutler wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Son presumably got it at school (high mask compliance). Wife presumably got it from son. 5 days before other son's wedding...

> Son presumably got it at school (high mask compliance). What was her name? ;-)

High M. Compliance

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

#209

Post by waterhouse »

StavrosK wrote: post #108
Panther34543 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dislike when my own comments within a discussion are not considered in good faith, so I'll extend you the courtesy I often wish was extended to me: Why do you believe that confirming suspected immunity response and subsequent protection, as is the case with so many other diseases, is in any way connected to the belief that COVID is a hoax?

Huh? That's not at all what I said. When I posted that, half the comments section were comments like this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27454154

That comment says "But that wouldn't contribute with the propaganda of the current mainstream narrative, would it?", where "that" appears to refer to "non-necessity of C19 vaccination for previously infected".

I agree with that comment—that there is a mainstream narrative that says those who've already recovered from COVID still need a vaccine as much as anyone else, and that this narrative is propaganda in terms of its truth value and in terms of how it originated and was spread around—and I also think COVID isn't a hoax and that vaccines are good.

It harms rational discussion and thinking, when you take one claim and attribute additional claims the author didn't make and denigrate the author for the latter. It pushes the discussion towards a "declare allegiance to one side, attack others who appear to be on the other side" fight, and away from exploration of any nuanced position other than the two extremes—when such exploration should be one of the attractions of a site like this.

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

#210

Post by KozmoNau7 »

waterside81 wrote: post #70
stavros wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've avoided infection, but some friends of mine didn't, a couple who got infected by an acquaintance who "forgot" to tell people he was infected.

They then went on to unwittingly spread the infection at a small gathering of friends, even though their rapid tests were negative. A subsequent rapid test showed negative for one, positive for the other. PCR tests nailed it down, and they went through the whole contact tracing malarkey to get everyone tested.

It may be as simple as someone not taking it completely seriously, or someone 100% unwittingly becoming a carrier, even with negative tests.

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