Isn't this literally survivorship bias?
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Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
11–20 of 159 posts
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#12That's good news for people who have already recovered from Covid. We should definitely take that into account for policies around opening up again, i.e. by treating recovered people like vaccinated people. Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least.
>Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least.
"Get Covid to better protect others from Covid" - Stronger immunity results in less chances to get infected again and less viral spread when infected. Ie. given that existing vaccines don't protect much against infection by delta, and that once infected the vaccinated spread the virus like unvaccinated, one can see that the people with natural immunity are much more preferable to have around than vaccinated.
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
People should obviously get vaccinated, yes. It does suggest that the vaccines could be improved to be even more effective. It’s also interesting that the people most resistant to delta are people that were both infected and vaccinated.
I seem to recall someone suggested that since a large percentage of the population is vaccinated and are therefore protected against severe covid, we should now actually try to catch it to develop a natural immunity to the virus.
I had skimmed and summarized such an article (submitted by someone else) a few weeks ago. I'm not sure that I would actually agree with it though. You can find it here:
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#14This pre-print study has been discussed a few times on HN recently [1][2].
Many people are commenting that this paper is flawed by survivorship bias. While it would be useful to know the "cumulative" risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, the fact is that a vast majority of people survive initial infection. So it is also useful to know the pure risk associated with reinfection - to inform public health policy and vaccine research.
That is why the purpose of this research is to evaluate the risk of reinfection by directly comparing the effectiveness of natural immunity and vaccine-induced immunity in the context of the delta variant, which has mutations that confer partial immune escape. This research is significant because it is one of the first and largest studies to do so.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28327482 (350 comments)
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317866 (226 comments)
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#15Isn't this literally survivorship bias?
Sure, but for someone who has already /survived/, it's worth knowing the value of those antibodies. And it's worth knowing that governments should not attack those survivors further for "not getting vaccinated" when they already have antibodies.
Worth noting that I'm not anti-vaccine but there's not enough focus on natural immunity. And I'm not encouraging people to forego vaccines and to go lick doorhandles
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#16That's good news for people who have already recovered from Covid. We should definitely take that into account for policies around opening up again, i.e. by treating recovered people like vaccinated people. Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least.
>Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least. "Get Covid to better protect others from Covid" - Stronger immunity results in less chances to get infected again and less viral spread when infected. Ie. given that existing vaccines don't protect much against infection by delta, and that once infected the vaccinated spread the virus li…
>once infected the vaccinated spread the virus like unvaccinated
You are spreading disinformation. Vaccinated people who do get sick are less likely to spread the virus, and have a high viral load in their system for a shorter duration:
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A vaccinated person may have the same viral loads as an unvaccinated person, but that high level of virus lasts only three to four days compared with an unvaccinated person who could be contagious for up to 10 days, said Suresh Mittal, professor of virology at Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine.
“Individuals who are vaccinated have a good immune response. If they get in contact with people who are infected, they might get infected, but the majority may not transmit,” he said.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/11/covid-...
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
People should obviously get vaccinated, yes. It does suggest that the vaccines could be improved to be even more effective. It’s also interesting that the people most resistant to delta are people that were both infected and vaccinated.
I seem to recall someone suggested that since a large percentage of the population is vaccinated and are therefore protected against severe covid, we should now actually try to catch it to develop a natural immunity to the virus.
The “problem” is that vaccinated people with the virus but experiencing no symptoms is that they still spread it to both unvaccinated and vaccinated alike. While many might not feel sympathy for the unvaccinated, a small % can’t get the vaccination, and there will still be that % of vaccinated people that do have a bad health outcome.
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#18Natural immunity comes with a 10--25x greater risk of death, possibly much higher (see update) by COVID itself. (The risk from the vaccine, without a Covid infection, is effectively nil based on hundreds of millions of doses administered.)
Natural immunity comes with a ~9x greater risk of hospitalisation, again from Covid itself. There's effectively no risk from the vaccine, again with hundreds of millions of doses administered.
Among adults aged 65–74 years, effectiveness of full vaccination for preventing hospitalization was 96% for Pfizer-BioNTech, 96% for Moderna, and 84% for Janssen COVID-19 vaccines; among adults aged ≥75 years, effectiveness of full vaccination for preventing hospitalization was 91% for Pfizer-BioNTech, 96% for Moderna, and 85% for Janssen COVID-19 vaccines.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e3.htm
Note that "natural herd immunity" doesn't come without a near-total population infection rate, with a large number of deaths, prolonged medical care, and long-term health consequences. The vaccine-based risks are far, far, far lower.
There's also quite likely a much higher likelihood of long-term Covid symptoms or consequences.
This information is interesting, but a poor basis on which to shift policy from vaccination to infecting the entire population and blessing the survivors.
Update: the article is also a dupe of an earlier substantial discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28307224 (260 comments).
US CDC reports an 0.0016% fatality rate from all causes for vaccinated individuals. That's 100x lower than the incident fatality rate of 0.1% suggested by multiple countries with excellent Covid surveillance and reporting systems. Note that many early vaccine recipients were elderly (65+) and would have a higher natural death rate than the general population.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...
I've clarified the vaccine vs. natural infection risks based on criticism of unclear language.
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#19Sounds a bit like survivor bias. People who have already recovered once (and not died) are more likely to recover a second time (and not die). In the control group, people who have never had the virus, some have a harder time with it. I hope this gets taken into account.
Exactly - “for those who didn’t die”
Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots
#20Sounds a bit like survivor bias. People who have already recovered once (and not died) are more likely to recover a second time (and not die). In the control group, people who have never had the virus, some have a harder time with it. I hope this gets taken into account.
Thankfully quite a small percentage of covid patients die. Certainly not enough for a 16x difference.