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

sciencemag.org

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

#141

Post by newsclues »

esteth wrote: post #99
newsclues wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you got Covid before vaccines were available that risk assessment is irrelevant. If you get COVID after vaccination, your immune system may not learn how to fight COVID-19 as well, because the vaccine is present and doing something.

The vaccine isn't doing anything in your body to fight COVID-19 infection actively. Your immune system is doing the fighting regardless.

That is not what I said.

“ your immune system may not learn how to fight COVID-19 as well, because the vaccine is present and doing something.”

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

#142

Post by pacbard »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #7

>the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher This sounds convincing, but then in the next graf: >For instance, the higher hospitalization rate in the 32,000-person analysis was based on just eight hospitalizations in a vaccinated group and one in a previously infected group. And the 13-fold increased risk of infection in the…

>the risk of developing symptomatic COVID-19 was 27 times higher among the vaccinated, and the risk of hospitalization eight times higher

The denominator in those odds ratios seem to fishy to me. Comparing people who were previously infected with COVID and vaccine recipients does some weird conditioning on getting COVID, so it should hide risks of developing symptomatic COVID and hospitalization for people who got COVID previously. It seems to me that the risks should be "cumulative" for people who were previously infected (i.e., the denominator should include symptomatic infections and hospitalizations for previous COVID variants and not just delta) rather than "zeroing" those risks for this group and just focus on delta re-infection. The decision to only focus on delta infections will bias up the OR estimates for vaccine (in)effectiveness, so we should read the results of this paper as the possible upper bound of the ORs.

Also, the study compares the risk of delta infection, meaning that people cannot really just say "I won't get vaccinated because natural immunity is better" as the variants that provided that natural immunity are not "dominant" anymore, meaning that the opportunity to acquire natural immunity against delta is probably close to zero at this time.

Also also, isn't it something that is known that natural immunity is better than vaccine-acquired immunity? The trade-off is that natural immunity has the "side effect" of actually having to fight off and survive the illness?

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

#143

Post by Aachen »

ramraj07 wrote: post #83

I got downvoted for saying this here a while back. Anyone with good immunology experience would guess this to be accurate no matter what some half baked study says (which was what a bunch of people were telling in that earlier thread). Again doesn’t mean you should go get Covid or avoid the vaccine. The vaccine only helps. If you got Covid and then also got the vaccine it only helps more.

Not sure if it was you but I might have been one of the skeptics (don't think it was with this user though). Many of the comments I saw sounded like conspiracy fuel. I didn't downvote anything that sounded substantial (for example if it had references, or at least the disclaimer that this doesn't mean you shouldn't get vaccinated). Makes me wonder how to tell cherry picking science for conspiracy (I saw that heavily with 5G for example) from reality, especially when official outlets are not agreeing with the latest research yet.

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

#144

Post by jaywalk »

zzleeper wrote: post #69
h2odragon wrote: post #62

Why is "natural infections and recovery produce a better immune response than a vaccine" so controversial? Has it been this controversial for any other disease?

I think it's because people draw the wrong conclusions. Sure, if your body was stuck fighting COVID19 for two weeks and you then survived (i.e. excluding those pesky 700k Americans who didn't make it), then you are better prepared than if your body was stuck "fighting" COVID19 vaccine for half a day (of sleepiness or at most mild fever). The PROBLEM is that people then say "oh well then to protect myself better again…

> Sure, if your body was stuck fighting COVID19 for two weeks and you then survived ... then you are better prepared than if your body was stuck "fighting" COVID19 vaccine for half a day

From what I've read, it's less about severity of infection and more about the fact that the vaccine only introduces one specific aspect of the virus (the spike protein) to the immune system, while the actual virus introduces... all of itself to the immune system. So natural immunity ends up being more comprehensive and resistant to variants than the vaccines.

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

#145

Post by vmception »

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…

> The research impresses Nussenzweig and other scientists who have reviewed a preprint of the results, posted yesterday on medRxiv

Its very irresponsible, look at this nonsense masquarading as peer review of a preprint 24 hours ago

Furthermore, getting a vaccine for last year’s ailment cannot be compared to this year’s ailment, although its obvious people dont really have a choice in the matter the study should at least lead with that. There will be delta specific vaccines soon, compare to natural immunity then.

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

#146

Post by walterbell »

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.

Here is the full conclusion of the paper, rather than the blog post which summarizes the paper:

> This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.

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

#147

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

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.

Sorry, no. This is why there are anti-vaxxers to begin with. Trying to hide crucial information inside the article or censor it altogether just fuels all these misinformation campaigns.

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

#148

Post by walterbell »

gammarator wrote: post #132
roenxi wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's a good source of those numbers?

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

#149

Post by jaywalk »

kaibee wrote: post #73
h2odragon wrote: post #62

Why is "natural infections and recovery produce a better immune response than a vaccine" so controversial? Has it been this controversial for any other disease?

It makes it very easy for people to lie about. Both to themselves, ("well i was a little sick around month X, so that was probably covid, so i don't need a vaccine") and to others.

It's no easier than lying about vaccination status. Antibody tests are widely available, yet none of the pro-vaxers are willing to accept them as evidence of immunity. Why do you think that is?

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

#150

Post by andybak »

polote wrote: post #108
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…

> a much less clickbait title should have been chosen It is not clickbait, (if true) this is just a fact.

Clickbait and truth are not mutually exclusive. In fact I would suggest that most clickbait is true.
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