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Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#11

Post by meheleventyone »

Tangentially related but I’m on day 9 of COVID infection which is easily the longest I’ve been sick in years. I got two shots of Pfizer last one on the 13th of July. If the vaccine has kept this relatively mild then I’m very glad. It sucks. My main symptoms are a stuffed up face, cough, sore throat, aching body and an extremely fuzzy head that seems to come and go. I had a slightly raised temp at the start but otherwise it’s been normal and no problems breathing.

Annoyingly my first test was negative even though I was symptomatic so I was wandering around being infectious for seven days. I’m now in isolation and my wife and kids are quarantined. Thankfully my wife tested negative yesterday, she was a couple of weeks ahead of me in terms of getting vaccinated so hopefully a combo of that and me having a relatively mild case means she stays healthy. I’ve got at least another 13 days of being stuck by myself in an apartment to go before I can rejoin the world.

TLDR; please get vaccinated, this sucks.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#12

Post by IAmEveryone »

benf76 wrote: post #7
michaelhah wrote: post #5

One thing left out of the article is whether we should be vaccinating people to discourage spread simply to keep the risk of a much worse variant from randomly occurring low.

There is a risk of creating variants by mass vaccination. If everyone has a uniform defense generated by a vaccine, this creates selection pressures for a variant that is able to maneuver around the vaccine induced immunity.

There are reasons to believe, and some experience to point to, that this effect doesn’t work with vaccines as much as it does with antibiotics.

It’s a long story, but part of the reason is that bacteria evolve resistance in the presence of the antibiotic, while here, the virus would need to randomly evolve it in the unvaccinated, then sustain useless adaption for a while until it gets the opportunity to infect a vaccinated person.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#13

Post by dsugarman »

>"do children need vaccinating at all, or does a lifetime of encountering build a good immune defence?"

>"However, he said the argument in children had "already been won" as "40-50% have already been infected and most weren't ill or particularly ill"."

This sounds like a pretty different conclusion than CDC guidelines to have children wear masks in school. I understand it might just be to slow the spread but it seems inevitable that the virus has to move through the population and those who aren't vaccinated right now aren't going to get vaccinated in the future.

Another question no one is asking in a lot of these is should people who have had covid get one dose or two? (Pfizer / Moderna) Every study on the subject seems to point to higher immunity after one shot than people who haven't had covid getting 2. This would have greatly increased the supply and rate we could immunize others.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#14

Post by IAmEveryone »

This is the sort of valid point that one will tend to avoid discussing because it is likely to be misused by the ideological critics of vaccination.

As an alternative I haven’t heard much of, updating the vaccines would seem to be a good option, as well? The first round was developed fast enough to almost outrun variants, so it should work quite well second time around.

It’s important to avoid the naturalistic fallacy: infection is not necessarily better protection. That is why, for example, tetanus and rabies vaccines work even when given after infection.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#16

Post by quicklime »

blueflow wrote: post #9
michaelhah wrote: post #5

One thing left out of the article is whether we should be vaccinating people to discourage spread simply to keep the risk of a much worse variant from randomly occurring low.

Cross-reference it to https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/leaky-vac... I suspect we have the deadlier variants not despite, but because we are vaccinating and the vaccination is not effective in preventing spread.

Why do you think that? The Alpha and Delta variants were both first detected in late 2020 - before the vaccines were widely available.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#17

Post by maxerickson »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #12
benf76 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a risk of creating variants by mass vaccination. If everyone has a uniform defense generated by a vaccine, this creates selection pressures for a variant that is able to maneuver around the vaccine induced immunity.

There are reasons to believe, and some experience to point to, that this effect doesn’t work with vaccines as much as it does with antibiotics. It’s a long story, but part of the reason is that bacteria evolve resistance in the presence of the antibiotic, while here, the virus would need to randomly evolve it in the unvaccinated, then sustain useless adaption for a while until it gets the opportunity to infect a vacc…

Vaccinated people are already regularly getting infected, so it isn't quite that simple.

With Covid, many of the vaccines target a highly functional portion of the virus for the induced immunity. This means that mutations that make the vaccine induced antibodies less effective are at least somewhat likely to alter the function of the virus.

My understanding is that we aren't really able to analytically determine the possibility space.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#18

Post by bobthechef »

benf76 wrote: post #7
michaelhah wrote: post #5

One thing left out of the article is whether we should be vaccinating people to discourage spread simply to keep the risk of a much worse variant from randomly occurring low.

There is a risk of creating variants by mass vaccination. If everyone has a uniform defense generated by a vaccine, this creates selection pressures for a variant that is able to maneuver around the vaccine induced immunity.

Yes, I have read this also.

Big pharma also has an interest in promoting booster shots. It would be a steady flow of revenue. If it causes selective pressures that create new variants, that just means a perpetual market for booster shots.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#19

Post by leereeves »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #12
benf76 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a risk of creating variants by mass vaccination. If everyone has a uniform defense generated by a vaccine, this creates selection pressures for a variant that is able to maneuver around the vaccine induced immunity.

There are reasons to believe, and some experience to point to, that this effect doesn’t work with vaccines as much as it does with antibiotics. It’s a long story, but part of the reason is that bacteria evolve resistance in the presence of the antibiotic, while here, the virus would need to randomly evolve it in the unvaccinated, then sustain useless adaption for a while until it gets the opportunity to infect a vacc…

> the virus would need to randomly evolve [resistance] in the unvaccinated

That's only true if the vaccine stops almost all infections, which the COVID vaccines do not.

There's another comment in this thread from someone who's been vaccinated and sick for 9 days. That's a great environment for the virus to evolve immunity to the vaccine. And it's not an uncommon situation.

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