Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

sciencemag.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 371 posts

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#131

Post by jinder »

nradov wrote: post #118
CyanLite4 wrote: post #41

The Lancet just published a study yesterday on natural infection still causing symptoms one year later (“long Covid”) for 49% of unvaccinated people. I’ll stick to the vaccine.

I assume you're referring to this study. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... They studied hospitalized patients, who by definition had severe symptoms. We would expect more severe symptoms to take longer to resolve. I don't know the exact numbers in China but in the US 95% of cases were never hospitalized. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... The study also count…

Studies have already linked the inflammatory response in acute COVID to disruptions of the gut microbiome. This is a plausible route for long term, post-COVID neurological complications (anxiety, depression, neurosensory disturbances, insomnia etc).

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#132

Post by gammarator »

roenxi wrote: post #105
ProjectBarks wrote: post #85

This feels like an irresponsible title on behalf of the author. People don’t get the vaccine strictly on the strength of the vaccine. It’s considering the risk of getting COVID, understanding the long term side effects, and minimizing risk for those around you. It’s also about avoiding mutations of the virus as the higher availability of the virus only provides more opportunities for it to mutate into something more…

Based on the number of deaths, a very large percentage of people have already had COVID. Given that there is a non-0% chance of death or harm from taking the vaccine, why should they then get vaccinated? They are already less of a risk to themselves and others than someone who has been vaccinated.

Serological tests have consistently shown that far fewer people have had COVID than have been vaccinated, for instance.

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#133

Post by fncypants »

yodsanklai wrote: post #113
ProjectBarks wrote: post #85

This feels like an irresponsible title on behalf of the author. People don’t get the vaccine strictly on the strength of the vaccine. It’s considering the risk of getting COVID, understanding the long term side effects, and minimizing risk for those around you. It’s also about avoiding mutations of the virus as the higher availability of the virus only provides more opportunities for it to mutate into something more…

> This feels like an irresponsible title on behalf of the author The title describes the content of the article. I think people should be treated as adults (esp. on HN). We should be able to discuss Covid-19 science and data without always fearing misinterpretation from anti-vaxxers.

Sorry, no. This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with. Communication is key. Scientists and health professionals fail at it. Listing cold facts does not effectively communicate to the broad public, because they receive the message not by learning the new facts to change their word view, but by trying to fit it in their world view. Messaging is critical in public communication.

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#134

Post by aww_dang »

CyanLite2 wrote: post #112
jlmorton wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the harm? "I'm very worried about getting Covid, but I'm also worried about the vaccine, so I'll get Covid to protect me against Covid?" This is an important public health topic to model how the pandemic proceeds as more and more are naturally infected.

Some folks are looking for any excuse to not get the vaccine.

I'm not sure the specific rationalizations are as relevant as the moral questions.

Do individuals have a right to their own body?

Does a collective or a technocrat have a right to coerce an individual into a medical procedure?

If we answer "yes" to the second question, only then does it become relevant because we must next ask:

Is there a limit to what a collective or technocrat can medically impose upon an individual, where and why do we draw this line?

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#135

Post by mikem170 »

DavideNL wrote: post #128

Is it still possible to detect whether you had COVID in the past, after already getting the vaccine?

Yes, I believe the right test can differentiate between the different antibody responses, telling you if you reacted to the virus, reacted to the vaccine, or both. I looked into this at one time and think I found one that cost $220. Sorry I don not have the link handy.

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#136

Post by criticaltinker »

jlmorton wrote: post #68
CyanLite4 wrote: post #41

The Lancet just published a study yesterday on natural infection still causing symptoms one year later (“long Covid”) for 49% of unvaccinated people. I’ll stick to the vaccine.

* among patients hospitalized with severe illness in one Wuhan hospital between Jan and Feb 2020, self-reporting at least one symptom from a long list, such as fatigue, joint pain, etc, vs 33% of a control group without Covid infection reporting the same. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Yes thank you. GPs comment is completely inaccurate, and the referenced study does not make any claims about natural infection, only about patients hospitalized with severe illness.

Multiple recent large scale studies have estimated an asymptomatic proportion lower bound of at least ~33% [1], and an upper bound of 65% (and even higher for young adults) [2]. This implies a significant proportion of people infected by SARS-COV-2 will not experience any noticeable symptoms.

Furthermore, there is strong evidence that infections and cases are massively under-reported (by 10x to 100x) [3][4], so it's exceedingly likely that such estimates are underestimates of the true asymptomatic rate.

[1] The Proportion of SARS-CoV-2 Infections That Are Asymptomatic https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/full/10.7326/M20-6976

[2] Estimating the asymptomatic proportion of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the general population: Analysis of nationwide serosurvey data in the Netherlands https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00768-y

[3] Evaluating the massive underreporting and undertesting of COVID-19 cases in multiple global epicenters https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S253104372...

[4] Undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity during the first 6 months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/601/eabh3826

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#137

Post by BoxOfRain »

Pxtl wrote: post #98

Good news for survivors, but this is going to make battles about vaccine passports much worse as anti-vax covid survivors demand exemption from the program.

I don't think being against vaccine passports necessarily makes you an anti-vaxxer. I've had both shots of the vaccine and I strongly oppose any sort of mandatory government ID card health-related or not, to the point I'll avoid patronising domestic businesses that voluntarily (ie without strong government coercion) impose them.

I'm not a fan of any form of authoritarianism really, let alone the overtly authoritarian "papers please" brand of it. One of the key parts of a free country is that you can be anywhere within it without some nosy government inspector (in person or by proxy electronically) demanding that you justify your presence there.

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#138

Post by xyzzyz »

abnorxiouster wrote: post #125
tzs wrote: post #106

Long term it seems pretty straightforward. It is almost certain COVID will become endemic, and no known form of immunity whether from vaccination or prior infection confers sufficient permanent immunity against infection to stop re-infection but prior immunity (from vaccine or prior infection) does greatly reduce the chances that your infection will give you serious illness. You assumption therefore should be that ov…

> The question then is whether you want your first infection to be with or without prior immunity. If you want that first time to be with prior immunity get vaccinated as that is the only known way to get immunity before your first infection. You get vaccinated against an extremely specific variant, that does not guarantee any immunity for other variants unlike immunity from infection. Did you get vaccinated every ye…

The vaccine does not “guarantee” protection from other variants, but it does have some, more for some variants and apparently less for others (delta). But, the same can be said about prior infection: it does not “guarantee” protection from other variants either. The paper here provides evidence that even though neither of them “guarantee” immunity for other variants or reinfection, prior infection provides more protection from COVID-19 than currently used vaccines.

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#139

Post by asah »

fncypants wrote: post #133
yodsanklai wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This feels like an irresponsible title on behalf of the author The title describes the content of the article. I think people should be treated as adults (esp. on HN). We should be able to discuss Covid-19 science and data without always fearing misinterpretation from anti-vaxxers.

Sorry, no. This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with. Communication is key. Scientists and health professionals fail at it. Listing cold facts does not effectively communicate to the broad public, because they receive the message not by learning the new facts to change their word view, but by trying to fit it in their world view. Messaging is critical in public communication.

+1 and an example would make your argument even more persuasive

Re: Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine

#140

Post by seoaeu »

abnorxiouster wrote: post #125
tzs wrote: post #106

Long term it seems pretty straightforward. It is almost certain COVID will become endemic, and no known form of immunity whether from vaccination or prior infection confers sufficient permanent immunity against infection to stop re-infection but prior immunity (from vaccine or prior infection) does greatly reduce the chances that your infection will give you serious illness. You assumption therefore should be that ov…

> The question then is whether you want your first infection to be with or without prior immunity. If you want that first time to be with prior immunity get vaccinated as that is the only known way to get immunity before your first infection. You get vaccinated against an extremely specific variant, that does not guarantee any immunity for other variants unlike immunity from infection. Did you get vaccinated every ye…

Vaccination guarantees some immunity for all existing variants. Just because it is impossible to say for all hypothetical future variants doesn't mean you need to spread misinformation like that
Post reply on HN