Live data from Hacker News

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

thinkcivics.com

151–159 of 159 posts

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

#152
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You don't have to be looking for death rates to be affected by survivorship via. If the pool of people you're studying is people who got it a second time, they cannot have died when they contracted it the first time by definition (i.e you simply cannot die and then continue living and participate in a subsequent study) That said, you can account for this confounding factor and perhaps the study did account for that (…

> You don't have to be looking for death rates to be affected by survivorship via.

I didn't say you did, but the post I was replying to said it the study here sounded like it. It didn't at all really considering the death rate is vastly lower than the infection rate and the infection rate differences were so huge.

> That said, you can account for this confounding factor and perhaps the study did account for that (didn't read it). I'm just pointing out that the question cannot be dismissed just by looking at whether death rates are part of the study or not

I didn't dismiss it, on the contrary I gave the poster a chance to substantiate their claim.

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

#153

Natural 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…

Anecdotally, I've seen many COVID patients experience re-infection after months on a COVID survival support groups on Facebook. ( assuming that people would not have any incentives to spread fake news on these kind of group ).

This is quite contradictory to the study. I'll guess we will have to wait for the peer-review process.

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

#154
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The argument I was replying to is the numbers are skewed by survivorship bias, but given >98% of people survive that's only going to skew the numbers 2% or so not 600% or whatever.

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

#156
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Vaccinated people who do get sick are less likely to spread the virus https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v... "We find no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections. " >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 may be. Yet it is…

There are lower rates of viral cell culture positivity in breakthrough infections: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.20.21262158v... Viral mRNA loads also decline faster with breakthrough infections: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v... (also replicated by the recent NBA study that I failed to bookmark, which also found that the Ct levels were similar with delta and prior vari…

>The reasonable evidence is still that vaccines work and are effective and safe and the best way to end the pandemic, and that delta is still largely transmitting and killing people through the unvaccinated population.

the publicly available numbers that i mentioned (from MA, Israel, Singapore, UK) show that the chances of vaccinated to get infected is 25% of that of unvaccinated (400 out of 1400 with 65% vaccination rate, and that is without paying attention to an obvious fact that breakthrough infections are heavily undercounted due to vaccine softening the disease symptoms). The 25% chances is absolutely too big to speak about any meaningful effect on slowing the spread. Such conclusion clearly comes from basic statistical arithmetic, as well as from seasonal flu vaccine experience where the efficacy is in the same ballpark.

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

#157
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.

I've had COVID multiple times since this all started, no symptoms, I have positive tests and Antibodies. The pressure of getting the vaccine finally got to me. I didn't want to get it. Coming from a science background, my understanding is that my body is neutralizing COVID before it can cause any clinically expressed inflammation.

The media, politics, and big pharma need to stay out of medicine, but it's too late.

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

#158
post #115
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The AP pegs the average mortality rate at 1.8% for COVID-19, or 1 out of 55 cases. This is nowhere near correct. The global median IFR for Covid-19 is somewhere around 0.3%. It varies substantially by region, but 1.8% is far higher than even the highest legitimate estimate. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/340124

Your source is a sole paper with one author, the guy who "estimated that the coronavirus could cause 10,000 U.S. deaths if it infected 1%" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ioannidis#cite_note-wp-28 Pardon the skepticism, but do you have any other sources?

> Your source is a sole paper with one author, the guy who "estimated that the coronavirus could cause 10,000 U.S. deaths if it infected 1%"

That's an ad hominem, and a complete mis-representation of what he said at the time. The "guy" is one of the most-cited scientists in the world, and the publication is from the WHO. You just don't like what he has to say, so you dismiss it.

But sure, how many other sources do you need? His work is entirely consistent with everyone else...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1

> Our analysis finds a exponential relationship between age and IFR for COVID-19. The estimated age-specific IFR is very low for children and younger adults (e.g., 0.002% at age 10 and 0.01% at age 25) but increases progressively to 0.4% at age 55, 1.4% at age 65, 4.6% at age 75, and 15% at age 85. Moreover, our results indicate that about 90% of the variation in population IFR across geographical locations reflects differences in the age composition of the population and the extent to which relatively vulnerable age groups were exposed to the virus.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0

> We find that age-specific IFRs estimated by the ensemble model range from 0.001% (95% credible interval, 0–0.001) in those aged 5–9 years old (range, 0–0.002% across individual national-level seroprevalence surveys) to 8.29% (95% credible intervals, 7.11–9.59%) in those aged 80+ (range, 2.49–15.55% across individual national-level seroprevalence surveys) (Fig. 2a). We estimate a mean increase in IFR of 0.59% with each five-year increase in age (95% credible interval, 0.51–0.68%) for ages of 10 years and older.

The CDC's current best estimate for US IFR for those under age 65 is 6,000 / 1,000,000 (0.6%). Reduce that by an order of magnitude for those under 50, and another order of magnitude for those under 18:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

And finally, just to show you that the OP's estimate is widly wrong, here's a paper based only on China, from June 2020, citing a correct-for-the-time (but high for today) IFR of 0.66%:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

> Our estimated overall infection fatality ratio for China was 0·66% (0·39–1·33), with an increasing profile with age.

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

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wanna volunteer your kids while you’re at it? 165M vaccinated people. The trial participants have been vaccinated for over a year.

My kids had Covid already, honestly it was surprisingly a non issue.

It’s only a “non-issue” if you’ve no consideration for others. With R(t)>>1 your children presumably spread it to others unless they were completely quarantined immediately after exposure. And the children/adults they infected likely spread it too.

This exponential spread makes it quite likely someone died from the infection chain rooted in your children.

This is why the “unmask the kids” movement I see from other parents is complete nonsense. While it’s nice that kids are at less risk of severe cases, it only matters that they can transmit the virus.

Post reply on HN