Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#41

Post by gunapologist99 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

meheleventyone wrote: post #11

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 otherw…

I am so sorry for your terrible sickness!

It's probably impossible to say whether "the vaccine has kept this relatively mild", especially since you got it despite being vaccinated twice. At least earlier strains showed no or very mild symptoms in 80% of the infected, and yours doesn't sound very mild.

Maybe you'd be dead if not for the vaccine? or perhaps the vaccine allowed your body to contain it to just your nose, where it replicated like crazy until it overwhelmed your defenses. It seems like there just isn't enough data, but it seems like getting vaccinated is not a silver bullet.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#42

Post by gambiting » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

leereeves wrote: post #19

IAmEveryone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>>That's a great environment for the virus to evolve immunity to the vaccine

Again, like the person above you said, it's not that simple. Bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics because they can either avoid or start to digest the chemical that would normally be harmful to them. Here it's not the vaccine that's killing the virus - it's your own immune system, and every single one is different. So yeah, maybe in this person's body the immune system didn't learn to recognize the virus and kill it - it means literally nothing for how another person's immune system will behave when they encounter it.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#43

Post by nikkinana » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:00 PM UTC

It always was. Johns Hopkins did a study, and catching covid was 6x better protection than any of the vaccines. Furthermore, your body learns how to protect itself differently from catching it.

Unfortunately if you google search, it's buried about 20 pages down. There's no profit in that.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#44

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

I find it unlikely that this would ever even be raised as a question in an American mainstream news source.

A better question, though, would be "who needs a vaccine more now, a 1st world 10-year old, a 1st world 50-year old who's already been vaccinated, or a 3rd world 65-year old?"

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#45

Post by HWR_14 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

Rezwoodly wrote: post #28

meheleventyone wrote: post #11

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 otherw…

Uh, you did get vaccinated and still have these symptoms. You could also fairly end your TLDR with 'did get vaccinated, this sucks'. It seems we are still learning about the efficacy of the vaccines, and the nature of the virus. From this pov I understand why some are hesitant to be vaccinated in this phase of the pandemic

> From this pov I understand why some are hesitant to be vaccinated in this phase of the pandemic

So your take away from someone complaining about the long recovery time from an accident after putting on his seatbelt and having the airbag deploy (which is annoying at the moment) is that we should remove those features because other people in other accidents without them had less severe injuries?

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#46

Post by TrispusAttucks » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #29

ekianjo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should be vaccinating people to discourage spread Vaccinations with current vaccines don't stop infections/spread at all - it's very obvious now with the Delta variant in countries that are already massively vaccinated like Israel and Island. In fact, vaccinated people can apparently carry just as high of a viral load as unvaccinated people (while vaccinated people will likely experience less symptoms). So the v…

Reported your comment for misinformation, this is untrue.

No. You are wrong. I have reported your comment for misinformation.

[1] Study: Fully vaccinated people with "breakthrough" COVID Delta infections carry as much virus as the unvaccinated

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/covid-vaccine-delta-variant...

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#47

Post by zizee » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

cactus2093 wrote: post #29

ekianjo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we should be vaccinating people to discourage spread Vaccinations with current vaccines don't stop infections/spread at all - it's very obvious now with the Delta variant in countries that are already massively vaccinated like Israel and Island. In fact, vaccinated people can apparently carry just as high of a viral load as unvaccinated people (while vaccinated people will likely experience less symptoms). So the v…

Reported your comment for misinformation, this is untrue.

It would be more helpful if you could explain which parts are untrue. A lot of it gels with what I have been hearing experts say I.e. the vaccine is great at reducing the severity of the symptoms/illness, but delta is spreading via the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated, and as such herd immunity is looking out of reach.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#48

Post by andrew_ » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

There is a gross amount of commenting as fact without accompanying data in the comments on this one.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#49

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

dsugarman wrote: post #13

>"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…

Mostly I agree, but vaccination rates in the U.S. have picked up a little in the last few weeks, so there are at least some unvaccinated adults who are persuadable.

Re: Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

#50

Post by elvatoloco55 » Sat, Aug 21, 2021, 1:02 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #30

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.

Absolute nonsense though, as proven by looking at literally any of the diseases we have been vaccinating people for decades. Polio vaccine hasn't caused super polio to emerge, just like vaccines haven't caused super variants of hepatitis B, tetanus or whooping cough - all things that children are vaccinated against. Even the flu vaccine doesn't cause new variants, and that has a spotty coverage at best. Like, what yo…

Its not nonsense. Its possible and it has happened but in this case unlikely.

Though there is still concern due to the focus of these vaccines on the spike protein