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Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, we have reason to believe that over time, the immune defenses from COVID-19 infection seem to decline, particularly in older folks. It'd be great if we had some definitive data on secondary infection rates, but until a lot more people get infected, we just won't have it.

What is the evidence that “we have reason to believe that over time, immune defenses from COVID-19 infection seems to decline”?

I think this is another case where improved surveillance is turning up things that, while they look bad, happen with other vaccines and never turn out to be a problem.

The same goes for variants, which a lot of people expect to break through vaccines because that's how the flu works, but it doesn't actually seem like they will.

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

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated. Well, I'm currently in quarantine from my 4 month old and wife because an acquaintance refused to get vaccinated. "young people don't die from COVID" type mentality. I attended my brother's bachelor party - of which we all thought everyone was vaccinated. Turns out this person, not only refused to get vaccinated - but had COVID exposure and still decided to attend…

> "young people don't die from COVID" type mentality. What mentality is this? It is well known that young people are at extremely low risk of dying, even more so than the average person. > He told us the day after being in close contact for 3 days, that he tested positive and had symptoms during our contact with him. The problem wasn't that your acquaintance refused the vaccine. The problem is that he didn't stay hom…

One of the unfortunate things about SARS2 is that there is reasonable evidence of some asymptomatic spread. Particularly the recent Japanese study[0]

"When taken together, I think these two studies show that people with asymptomatic covid-19 can and do spread the disease, and the best estimate from both studies is that those with symptomatic disease are about three to four times more infectious than those with asymptomatic disease. That is not a huge difference. Even though people with symptoms are a couple of times more infectious than people without symptoms, those without symptoms could still be causing more infections overall."

[0] https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/06/06/can-asymptomatic-p...

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

#273

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…

Is that with AZ or an mRNA vaccine? Also by "problematic", do you know if they meant WHO's "mild" or "severe"? "Mild" is still quite bad, just not enough to hospitalize you.

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

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "young people don't die from COVID" type mentality. What mentality is this? It is well known that young people are at extremely low risk of dying, even more so than the average person. > He told us the day after being in close contact for 3 days, that he tested positive and had symptoms during our contact with him. The problem wasn't that your acquaintance refused the vaccine. The problem is that he didn't stay hom…

> There's also evidence that asymptomatic people don't spread COVID. This would mean that if they don't have symptoms, you won't get it, and if they do and they're like most people, they'll stay home which means no transmission. We wouldn’t be in the middle of a pandemic if this were true.

It's been a pretty mild pandemic. What has been newsworthy about was the removal of freedom, not the number of dead people.

It's flu-like transmission - which is mostly through droplets. If you're not sneezing in the face of people you don't have high chances of passing it around

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

#275
post #7

I have confirmation bias here because this is a result I would have expected BUT.. Preprint, non-peer reviewed.

That confirmation bias extends to the capability of peer review to throw out issues.

We need replication.

If anything has shown up the weakness in science over the last few years it is this veneration of peer review. It ain't working that well any more.

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

#276
post #128

Why is it that so many people seem to be biased against evidence that our immune systems do a pretty good job? It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID.

They do a pretty good job, that's why we don't have a pandemic every year. But the fact that we have a pandemic now is clear evidence that it's not doing a good enough job.

Similarly, if you get a rabies infection you're going to die, even though you have an immune system.

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

#277
post #138
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow really? Do you have positive test results that document the sequence of events? If so you should probably email these researchers or something. Bet they would be interested

There is already a decent understanding of documented reinfections. The first such cases came out a year ago, e.g.: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200406006700320 , or https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-doctor-reinfect... By the end of last summer there were clear documented cases with secondary infection from a different viral strain than the original one, e.g: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstr…

While I agree reinfections are likely to exist in small numbers, the tests we're using are often not great so it's hard to say whether those were covid or something else.

This year I've been heavily sick several times (and the flu almost never caused me all this pain before in my life) and it was never covid.

If one of the test returned a false positive I would have been convinced it was covid. If I actually got covid again I would have believed I was one of the rare reinfections.

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

#278
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID Our immune system didn't evolve to cope with living in incredibly tight spaces surrounded by millions of people. Our immune system also isn't good at dealing with infections as we age: it's simply unnatural to survive past 70. We need to keep vaccinating, to create a collective immunity that protects the vulnerable.

Vaccinating is literally training the immune system to look for a specific protein and treat it as a threat. When your immune system learns how to fight off a virus, it does it by creating antibodies for a specific protein - treating that protein as a threat. They're effectively the same thing. The only thing the vaccine does differently is it doesn't exponentially reproduce in your cells. So anyone who survived Covi…

How does that relate to my point? I said that the vaccination is a matter of public health. Instead of letting everyone get sick, we aim to eradicate the virus by vaccinating as many people as possible. This helps reduce the death toll.

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

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had avoided Covid all 2020, but in February I needed to go to hospital for unrelated reasons -- needed urgent treatment, otherwise potentially life-threatening, had to stay several days. Had three negative Covid tests during the stay, but the fourth came back positive, just a day before my discharge. So I'm pretty sure I caught it inside the hospital. :(

My dad stayed isolated throughout 2020. He had the AZ vaccine in January. About 10 days later a blood clot to the brain caused a seizure and he went into hospital. He was tested when he went in and was not infected, he was kept fairly isolated in hospital for a couple of weeks, obviously no visitors. We had a late night call saying he was unlikely to last the night, so we were allowed in to see him. The next morning…

I'm so sorry for your loss
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