Live data from Hacker News

Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

medrxiv.org

351–360 of 361 posts

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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite amusing that there was such a push at the start of the pandemic to not call it Chinese Flu or Wuhan Flu, but the British, South Africa, India and Brazil strains all caught on quickly in the media.

I wonder which political variable could have left office between then and now to explain that?

The "Kent variant" (later "English", now "Alpha") was first described in Sept 2020, widely publicised as having become the dominant strain in the UK in late Nov 2020.

So a geographic label was widely used before Biden without apparently causing ructions. It was adopted because the released name for the variant, lineage B.1.1.7, was less convenient or distinctively memorable for the public. If it had been repeatedly referred to as the "Kentish virus" by senior politicians then a similarly hostile reaction might have been seen as was for "Chinese virus".

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

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most published results are false even after peer review. It's not actually a very effective process.

That's irrelevant to my question, which merely asked if it was peer reviewed or not. I think it was not, seeing where it was published.

Yeah, I doubt it since it's far too new. Publishing in a journal can take about a year.

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

#353
post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you not want to eradicate Covid?

Obviously we can and maybe should, but at what costs in order to do so? Are there better infectious diseases to invest in and focus on instead?

We can't, and we've known that for months, possibly since the beginning.

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

#354
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…

Here are the numbers: Total participants: 52238. Previously infected: 2579, of whom 1220 vaccinated, 1359 not vaccinated. No subsequent infections in either of these groups. Not previously infected: 49659, of whom 29461 vaccinated (15 subsequent infections), 20198 not vaccinated (2139 subsequent infections). Comparing previous infection with vaccination, we have 0/1359 infections in the previously infected and 15/294…

Thanks for this! Yes there is no doubt that there is an effect, of course, but it doesn't rule out the booster shot being possibly very helpful in strenghtening immunity

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you quarantined if you got vaccinated?

Data indicates actual effectiveness as about 91.5%. However, that's across the population. Factors like extended contact period increase viral load intake, could further decrease the effectiveness. Since my 4 month old can't get vaccinated against COVID yet, we decided it wasn't worth taking the risk.

Infants almost have a 0% chance of encountering any issues with COVID. 8 out of 100,000 children need to be hospitalized. You're talking about a 0.08% chance of hospitalization and for infants it's actually even lower.

Most vaccines have an efficacy lower than the COVID vaccines. Basically you are feeding off of your own fear, and you don't trust science. That's your right, but don't blame anyone for your self-imposed quarantine but yourself at this point.

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

#356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder which political variable could have left office between then and now to explain that?

The "Kent variant" (later "English", now "Alpha") was first described in Sept 2020, widely publicised as having become the dominant strain in the UK in late Nov 2020. So a geographic label was widely used before Biden without apparently causing ructions. It was adopted because the released name for the variant, lineage B.1.1.7, was less convenient or distinctively memorable for the public. If it had been repeatedly r…

"variant" is not offensive than "virus" so possibly it was accepted.

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

#357
post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep in mind that vaccine is not 100% effective.

The measles vaccine is less effective than the COVID vaccine, and for mumps is less than 90% effective. Are you going to quarantine yourself over those lowered percentages? Most vaccines are less effective than the COVID vaccine. To not trust vaccination is to not trust science.

Stating the facts is also science.

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

#358
my theory is that the single dose vaccines and getting infected are about the same effectiveness as a single dose of the two dose vaccines.

If you are infected, you probably have about 85% resistance to infection. Getting an addition shot of moderna, pfizer, J&J is pretty much like getting a booster and gets you to 95%.

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

#359
post #235

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 interesting. Maybe the duration of the trial was too short or sample size too small, because I know two people personally who were re-infected pre vaccination.

You don’t actually know that for sure though. The following paper found PCR positives months after being infected, with a slowly decreasing odds ratio, which is in their words consistent with shedding: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...

Unless someone gets a PCR positive, has the virus sequenced, and then gets a separate positive later, has the virus sequenced again and can confirm they were actually infected again with live virus (perhaps using live viral culture) they can’t really be sure.

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

#360

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…

"Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study." The duration of the study being 5 months. There's no indication from this study what would happen after 5 months.

From the study itself:

> This study was not specifically designed to determine the duration of protection afforded by natural infection, but for the previously infected subjects the median duration since prior infection was 143 days (IQR 76 – 179 days), and no one had SARS-CoV-2 infection over the following five months, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 infection may provide protection against reinfection for 10 months or longer.

Post reply on HN