Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine • Hacker News Board

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

#301

Post by thehappypm » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

nickandre wrote: post #217

fmax30 wrote: post #211

This sounds conflicting I read somewhere else earlier today, that the immunity you get from the actual disease is tailored towards the specific variant/strain. Whereas the vaccines (at least the mRNA ones) confer immunity against multiple strains.

Why? The vaccine is literally a carbon copy of one of the early variants. It just makes the protein without infection. This whole idea that the vaccine has magical properties to substantially exceed natural immunity on basic dimensions is straightforward BS.

It's an interesting concept. When your body makes antibodies against an active infection, it targets more than just the spike protein. Against the vaccine, it targets the spike protein 100% because that's all it has. As variants come and go, you should expect that the spike protein will change -- but it can't change that much because changing too much will reduce its ability to infect cells -- so it's a good thing to have a wide variety of antibodies against. However, having antibodies against other parts of the virus is useful too, since those might be more conserved with variants, but also they could be conserved less -- we don't really know.

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

#302

Post by CarelessExpert » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:03 PM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #290

sjg007 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Minnesota 645k people had covid and 7k died. In contrast 3M are vaccinated and basically nobody has died from the vaccine. In the US 363M vaccine doses have been given and about 7k may have died from vaccination side effects vs 628k who have died from covid from covid. So the vaccine is safe and effective.

Vaccine protection is weakening over time (boosters), mutations evading the vaccine are around the corner (Pfizer CEO), epidemiological profile is vastly different between 70. There are 4 other coronaviruses kids get exposed to when young with no vaccine and naturally build immunity for it for a lifetime. Over 30: Take the vaccine and hope for the best. Under 20: a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resi…

> a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges.

First, this is deeply deeply misleading, to the point of being misinformation. The idea that a version of COVID will pop out that renders the current vaccines completely useless is founded in nothing but alarmist speculation. Could it happen? Maybe. But we have a virus now that's known to be dangerous, for which we have a vaccine that's very effective. To not take that vaccine, now, based on this speculative fear is completely nonsensical.

Second, it's a false dichotomy:

c. Take the vaccine, get a mild breakthrough case of covid later that builds even stronger protection.

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

#303

Post by angelzen » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

CarelessExpert wrote: post #302

angelzen wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vaccine protection is weakening over time (boosters), mutations evading the vaccine are around the corner (Pfizer CEO), epidemiological profile is vastly different between 70. There are 4 other coronaviruses kids get exposed to when young with no vaccine and naturally build immunity for it for a lifetime. Over 30: Take the vaccine and hope for the best. Under 20: a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resi…

> a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges. First, this is deeply deeply misleading, to the point of being misinformation. The idea that a version of COVID will pop out that renders the current vaccines completely useless is founded in nothing but alarmist speculation. Could it happen? Maybe. But we have a virus now that's known to be dangerous, for which we have a vaccin…

This is also a possibility. The open scenario is: take the vaccine, don't get a breakthrough case (vaccines work as intended and quickly suppress it), but do get a vaccine-resistant infection later on.

If there is more information on the long-term behavior of the immune system conditioned on vaccines and/or natural immunity and/or mutations, please share. My understanding is that nobody has a complete understanding and a reliable prediction model. Everybody is making educated guesses in the dark, though I am very open to learn more from credible sources.

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

#304

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

nanis wrote: post #288

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for those numbers to align to such a point where vaccines are more deadly we'd need to either have 1000x more vaccine related deaths or 1000x more infections undetected. Which do you think it would be?

From the perspective of the person who's been OK since the beginning, those numbers don't really matter. What matters is that they are fine now, they've been fine for a while, and now they are being coerced into taking an action which they don't think will benefit them and might hurt them worse than whatever their experience has been. Do not expect resistance to coercion to melt away when you dial up coercion. Add to…

So the death rate is now less than 0.0006% / shot? This is why I started this thread off by specifying "rational individual".

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

#305

Post by criticaltinker » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

pacbard wrote: post #142

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 CO…

You raise a good point that it would be useful to report the "cumulative" risk for people previously infected.

However the goal of this research is specifically evaluating risk of reinfection, not the cumulative risk of SARS-COV-2 infection. The fact is that a vast majority of people survive initial SARS-COV-2 infection, so the pure risks associated with reinfection are also equally useful to know.

The decision to focus on delta infections does impact the OR estimates for vaccine effectiveness as you mention. But again this was one of the primary research goals of the paper - to evaluate the risk of reinfection by comparing natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity in the context of a variant with mutations conferring immune escape.

> the variants that provided that natural immunity are not "dominant" anymore

This was controlled for in the study by censoring data based on the date of previous infection.

> The trade-off is that natural immunity has the "side effect" of actually having to fight off and survive the illness?

Yes, and people need to stop interpreting the title and cited paper as a manifesto against vaccination. Rather, the study provides valuable data on the efficacy of natural and vaccine induced immunity in the context of evolving variants, which will be useful in guiding public health policy and also formulating next generation vaccines that improve upon the current formulations.

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

#306

Post by bananabiscuit » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

myko wrote: post #299

bananabiscuit wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing a 1% chance of re-infection to .5% does not imply that population needs to get vaccinated.

This is why we rely on medical professionals to inform these decisions and they do say the population should be vaccinated: https://www.healthline.com/health-news/people-whove-had-covi... https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/09/covid-...

I disagree and there are also doctors and experts that disagree.

There is no reason to assume medical experts are free of groupthink. There is also no reason to assume the medical industrial and related government regulators are free from corruption. Which makes it all the more important to question the advice we are given by “experts” and ask if it makes any sense. To me it doesn’t.

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

#307

Post by cogman10 » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #300

cogman10 wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, preemptively restricting the rights of healthy people, just because they may eventually catch a disease, is unheard of. It is not. In fact, most quarantines take exactly that form where entire households, communities, or in the extreme case cities are locked down. [1] COVID is unique in that it is both more deadly and more infectious than the flu. That's why the measures have been so extreme. They are warr…

'quarantine' comes from Italian 'quarantina': ‘forty days’. It's not 'persempre'. By its very name it implies a time limited action. Link 3 does not support your point: 'The term “quarantine” refers to the separation and restriction of movement of non-sick persons to see if they become sick.'. There is no blanket support for indefinite restriction of rights. Furthermore, the 'line' is muddy. Vaccines are only 66% eff…

> Link 3 does not support your point: 'The term “quarantine” refers to the separation and restriction of movement of non-sick persons to see if they become sick.'. There is no blanket support for indefinite restriction of rights.

What "rights" are is muddy. I'm not proposing an outright quarantine. Nobody is. However, I thought it prudent to point out that the "quarantining of healthy individuals" is not unique or unjustified. Your previous comment suggested that all quarantines are human rights violations.

However, what I see from all medical experts is social distancing, masking, and getting vaccination. Those are the "rights" being infringed on at the moment.

At one point, the CDC did recommend that someone vaccinated didn't need to mask up. Unfortunately, that changed with Delta as you correctly point out.

A vaccine + mask would be highly effective at stopping the spread of delta.

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

#308

Post by smileypete » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

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.

The opposite view was a mainstream media narrative last year, in that a suggestion as such was very widely reported:

'The rapid waning of antibodies did not necessarily have implications for the efficacy of vaccine candidates currently in clinical trials, Imperial’s [Wendy] Barclay said.'

“A good vaccine may well be better than natural immunity,” she said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-britai...

https://www.google.com/search?q=“A+good+vaccine+may+well+be+...

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

#309

Post by h2odragon » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

thehappypm wrote: post #296

nickandre wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sort of like when the FDA insinuates that Ivermectin is unsafe because it has also been used by veterinarians in addition to its human indications.

Off-topic but does anyone have a mechanism by which Ivermectin would be helpful with Coronavirus? It seems bizarre that an anti-parasite medicine targeting a eukaryote would have any efficacy against a virus.

I'll give you one (total supposition, I Am Not A Veterinarian): most people don't "get infected" with worms, but some have exposure and have immune responses that may not ever rise to the level of "symptoms". anti-parasitcs might assist and allow more robust responses to other health challenges.

Don't look too deep into how much life we host even when healthy; it'll squick you out.

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

#310

Post by CarelessExpert » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 6:31 PM UTC

angelzen wrote: post #303

CarelessExpert wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a. Take the vaccine and be naked when the vaccine resistant variant eventually emerges. First, this is deeply deeply misleading, to the point of being misinformation. The idea that a version of COVID will pop out that renders the current vaccines completely useless is founded in nothing but alarmist speculation. Could it happen? Maybe. But we have a virus now that's known to be dangerous, for which we have a vaccin…

This is also a possibility. The open scenario is: take the vaccine, don't get a breakthrough case (vaccines work as intended and quickly suppress it), but do get a vaccine-resistant infection later on. If there is more information on the long-term behavior of the immune system conditioned on vaccines and/or natural immunity and/or mutations, please share. My understanding is that nobody has a complete understanding a…

> Everybody is making educated guesses in the dark,

We are absolutely not.

Are there many things we don't know about the function of the immune system?

Sure.

Are we "in the dark"? This couldn't be more incorrect, and again, borders on deeply misleading misinformation.

Frankly, this smells a lot like the kind of climate change denial we used to hear. i.e., because there was uncertainty, we therefore can trust nothing and know nothing. And that "logic" was just as flawed, then, as it is now.