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

151–160 of 371 posts

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

#151

Post by Trumpi »

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.

No - we have anti-vaxxers because nobody will debate them. Instead we ask them not to post their nonsense and so they just retreat to their echo-chambers and begin reinforcing their views to each other.

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

#152

Post by koheripbal »

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.

The volume of criticism for posting verifiable facts that might be misused in illogical arguments, is really frustrating.

It's as if we need to post a disclaimer in advance that we agree with the consensus first in order to post a fact like OP.

For example, OP's fact correlates with the recent study that demonstrated that getting one shot of Moderna and one shot of Pfizer was more effective than getting two shots of either.

...and none of that is a surprise to virologists, because a diversity of antibodies is obviously going to be more effective at combating infection, and more importantly, provide broader protection against variants.

...but instead OP gets downvotes because of the fear that some imbecile is going to repost this all over Facebook in order to convince people to not get vaccinated.

Think about the consequences of this reflex. We cannot talk about the truth in-depth because less informed people might be mislead by misinterpreting it. This diminishes the quality of our conversations. It puts a cap on the intelligence of this community.

...and when you first identify this phenomenon - you begin to recognize it all over the place on social media. True verifiable facts being downvoted because they might maybe work against the "greater good" agenda in a less sophisticated forum. ...and that ultimately causes a dumbing down of the conversations - something very noticeable on Reddit and Twitter.

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

#153

Post by switch007 »

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…

> 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 resistant or possessing other less desirable traits.

Erm everyone I know under 40 got it because of a huge marketing campaign, wanting to travel with as few restrictions as possible and not wanting a vaccine passport to party.

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

#154

Post by oceanplexian »

lowercased wrote: post #23
mc32 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people in high risk groups should get it, i.e., the elderly and people with weak immune systems or other health issues. Those who are strong health wise ok, they stand a good chance. That said, I am totally against this blanket insistence on passports. There may be some situations which warrant vaccinations where the subject has no acquired immunity, health workers, etc. But being denied access to govt servic…

> But being denied access to govt services because you lack the papers is not a good thing. What gov services are people being denied? legit question - I hear this, but unsure what is being referred to. How about "vaccine proof or wear a mask" to get/access govt services/buildings/etc?

Public funded education is a government service.

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

#155

Post by nradov »

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…

Exactly. The only reason that the other four endemic human coronaviruses don't kill many people today is that most of us get infected as children and build up natural immunity which protects us later. But they can still be deadly to people with weak immune systems.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7102597/

Obviously most people weren't infected with SARS-CoV-2 as children so the smart move is to get vaccinated and jump start your immune system. Non-pharmaceutical interventions like masks and social distancing are only marginally effective so everyone will eventually get exposed to the virus no matter what we do.

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

#156

Post by eplanit »

nogridbag wrote: post #52
eplanit wrote: post #4

One can observe how this topic has become political, and is no longer scientific. Our focus and concerns are now all about existing and forthcoming restrictions and mandates for vaccinations and masks -- so much that information like this is no longer even interesting to most people. Not only uninteresting, but vulnerable to censors.

Comments like these about censorship keep coming up, yet this is the third straight day this topic is being discussed on the front page of HN. I see the same thing on Facebook. Half of my family is still complaining about censorship and how everything is politicized while they continue to post political memes about Hilary Clinton, false or misleading information about vaccines, etc. The other half quit facebook or oc…

Earlier this month Rand Paul, a U.S. Senator and a former physician, was banned from YouTube for a week for simply saying that cloth masks are ineffective.

YouTube et al. could just as easily decide that discussion of natural immunity from prior infection is also "dangerous" (it might discourage vaccination) and ban it.

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

#157

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

siilats wrote: post #121
peteradio wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see survivor bias here at all. This is simply a study that caters to a rather significant population who justifiably want to know what they stand to gain from this vaccine. What this study has done is identified a sub population who stand to gain such minuscule benefit from vaccination that it would be unethical to include them in a study (most studies DO exclude previously infected individuals, huh wonder wh…

Nobody died from vaccine but all the weak ones died from first infection so the surviving infected have survivorship bias.

> Nobody died from vaccine

That’s not strictly true. There have been deaths, but this can be attributed to components in the vaccines that these unlucky people may have gotten at any time. There have been rare and unusual vaccine caused deaths.

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

#158

Post by jaywalk »

lawrenceyan wrote: post #126

Vaccinating everyone was always about protecting the immunocompromised, for those who can’t defend themselves. The way the study is presented is extremely disingenuous in my opinion.

My natural antibodies "protect the immunocompromised" just as much if not more than any antibodies stemming from vaccination.

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

#159

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

seoaeu wrote: post #129
raffraffraff wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Should be "If you survive covid 19, you will have greater immunity to covid that you would get from a vaccine"

Pedantically, dying from covid makes it even less likely you'll catch it again... Really this is all just confusing what the actual goal is: to end the pandemic while minimizing death and suffering

Well, actually pedantic anti-vaxers would formulate it as "If you survive covid 19, you will have greater immunity to covid than you would get from surviving taking the vaccine"

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

#160

Post by jaywalk »

myko wrote: post #80
thom wrote: post #54

Would getting infected _after_ being vaccinated, which doesn't seem totally unheard of, confer an additional boost to one's immunity?

Absolutely it would. Which is why it's a good idea to get vaccinated even if you have been infected or think you may have been. The article backs this position up as well, though the headline belies that: "The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and then received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once…

It's a good idea why, exactly? Because previously-infected people tend to experience worse vaccine side-effects for little to no additional benefit?
Post reply on HN