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

Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

thinkcivics.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 159 posts

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#31

Post by Gibbon1 »

_Microft wrote: post #2

That'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.

Well you have two options. Either

1) You force everyone to get tested for Covid. Then vaccinate everyone who tests negative.

2) Or you just vaccinate everyone knowing those that had it will just end up with stronger immunity.

Seems like 2 is the cheapest most straightforward option.

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#32

Post by nradov »

throwawaycities wrote: post #17
lottin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At this point the Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect unvaccinated individuals. They're going to get exposed and infected eventually no matter what we do.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#33

Post by throwawaylinux »

tomesch1982 wrote: post #8

Sounds 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.

The story talks about the study finding not only reduced risk of hospitalization but also increased risk of breakthrough infection (i.e., getting it a second time). It doesn't mention death or mortality at all as far as I can see.

What's the basis for your claim that it's about death rates?

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#34

Post by [deleted] »

ianlevesque wrote: post #22
blueyes wrote: post #9

Does this mean that the ideal path for maximum immunity is to get vaccinated and then get a breakthrough infection?

Yes, which is basically how this ends 5 years from now. We’re probably all going to get exposed, but get your vaccine first!

[deleted]

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#36

Post by MatteoFrigo »

tim333 wrote: post #20
tomesch1982 wrote: post #8

Sounds 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.

You cannot conclude anything about the 16x difference (TFA says 13x, by the way) from the number of dead patients.

As a made up example to illustrate this point, assume that people are either "lucky" or "unlucky". Unlucky people die when they get the virus. Lucky people never die. Assume that one person per million is unlucky, and assume that the vaccine does absolutely nothing. Then this experiment on one million people would find one death in the vaccinated and zero deaths in the control group, inferring that natural immunity is infinitely better.

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#37

Post by dredmorbius »

Note that this is a syndicated article from The Federalist a political opinion outlet, not a medical journal.

The submitted link is from "ThinkCivics", a partisan news aggregator.

The source is https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/27/israeli-study-natural-i...

Both sources are highly partisan and not especially given to an unbiased and facts-based interpretation or presentation of issues.

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#38

Post by muttantt »

I know this is a controversial take, but it should be in our national interest to get young children exposed and gain natural immunity, and avoid giving them the vaccine we have so little long-term data on.

According to the CDC, 450 kids (0-18yo) died from Covid-19 since Jan 2020. A total of 4.6M kids tested positive since then. In the much shorter 2017-2018 Flu season, ~650 kids (0-17) died. We really have to keep things in perspective.

Re: Israeli Study: Natural Immunity Is 13x Stronger Than Pfizer Covid Shots

#40

Post by CharlesW »

tim333 wrote: post #20
tomesch1982 wrote: post #8

Sounds 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.

Why do you believe "a small percentage of COVID-19 patients die" (which is only true compared to, say, Ebola) has any relevance to the results of this study?
Post reply on HN