Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection • Hacker News Board

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#171

Post by throwawayatwork » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #132

IgorPartola wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. This smells of literal survivor bias. The group that survives the delta variant is a smaller set than all who got infected while all vaccinated persons survived, even ones that wouldn’t have survived without the vaccine.

While true, it's not by much; mortality for covid-19 is less than a percent of all hospitalizations, iirc.

That seems wildly optimistic.

In the UK, 2% of people who tested positive have died. In the US, 1.7% of people who tested positive have died.

The mortality rate among hospitalized people even higher.

[1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#172

Post by Johnny555 » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

randomopining wrote: post #169

Johnny555 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccine is highly effective at preventing severe disease requiring hospitalization, but nothing is 100% (after 6 months, Pfizer is 97% effective at preventing severe disease) -- I'm not going to deliberately expose myself to something that could put me in a hospital. And no point, really. If I'm going to force myself to have the disease to build up immunity, why not just wait until I'm accidentally exposed (which…

The whole point of my strategy would be that perhaps Delta is a precursor to a, let's say, Zeta variant that has almost complete evasion to the vaccine. Let's say in January or something. So what you're doing is giving your body a high chance to crush the Delta and gain some cross-immunity towards the future evasive variant. Whereas if you just relied on the vaccine, it might not even work well in January. Obviously…

Unless, of course, Zeta has almost complete evasion to natural immunity too. Then you've intentionally exposed yourself to Delta for no reason.

I'll stick with my strategy of getting the vaccination (including a booster when eligible), and taking reasonable precautions against exposure.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#173

Post by lamontcg » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

fspeech wrote: post #151

lamontcg wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I have yet to see any convincing scientific evidence that is free from confounding factors which suggests that there is waning immunity. And there's reason to believe from HCoV-229E that immunity against coronaviruses is actually durable and that reinfection is due to mutation and immune escape. https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...

There may be no scientific reason but it would make focusing on mRNA vaccine exclusively look like a strategic mistake. The driving factor behind the approach is the belief that the encoded domain is essential to virulence. Immune escape from mutation would imply failure of that reasoning. Unfortunately other approaches that focus exlusively on a segment of the S protein would face the same challenges.

You're thinking in absolutes, and there very likely will be immune escape eventually against the mRNA vaccines, and that is pretty much expected.

But that doesn't mean the mRNA vaccines would be failures.

Focusing on the spike was also done because mRNA vaccines against the nucleocapsid protein of SARS-CoV-1 showed evidence of ADE in animals models so nobody wanted to go down that road. That decision to run with the spike protein is very unlikely to be shown to ever be a mistake in hindsight and will have been the right choice (and certainly the right choice given the information at the right time and a decision which produced an entirely successful vaccine).

It is also a really pretty safe bet that this virus will evolve to achieve immune escape just like HCoV-229E does and will start reinfecting everyone again. That won't make this vaccine a failure. And that's a good thing since its more likely that forcing it to evolve to achieve immune escape will force it to made tradeoffs between immune escape and transmissibility/virulence/fitness.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#174

Post by strenholme » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:26 AM UTC

logicalmonster wrote: post #142

strenholme wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the linked study [1] is saying is that unvaccinated people who get COVID-19 are even more likely to get Myocarditis than vaccinated people ; it counters the allegation that people should not get vaccinated because of the risk of Myocarditis. Even if the vaccine increased the risk (it doesn’t), the risk of COVID-19 is orders of magnitude higher than the risk of the Myocarditis heart condition. There have been, fr…

> COVID-19, on the other hand, has an overall 1.66% chance of killing someone (38,043,754 cases, 629,644 deaths). An honest, apples to apples statistical comparison here would compare 18-24 year old death rates to 18-24 year old heart problems risk, not lumping all deaths regardless of age together. > I would rather take a 0.002% non-fatal risk than a 1.66% fatal risk. Statistical problems aside, I’m happy if you tak…

That was a reasonable back of the envelope calculation, and I notice that the criticism of my figures was done without providing better figures.

However, I am willing to come up with more suitable figures.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... says there have been 2,630 deaths from COVID-19 for 18-29 year olds (never mind the suffering COVID-19 causes people in this age range). Something that causes 2,630 deaths is more risky than something causing 229 non-fatal hospital visits.

> I think all the unvaccinated want is the same absolute right to decide the same for themselves.

In terms of freedom of choice, I think we would be a lot better off just giving our extra vaccines to Mexico until that have a higher vaccination rate; Mexico has, last time I looked, a 25% vaccination rate compared to the 50% vaccination rate in the US. Once Latin America is well vaccinated, we can circle back to the vaccine hesitant here in the US.

There was recently a rather morbid conversation on Reddit speculating about how much vaccine hesitancy might help Democrats in future elections: https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/pbeigk/desantiss_... Not to mention this graph: https://i.redd.it/4o4i7arucpj71.png (Discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pbzaeg/oc_... )

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#175

Post by rossdavidh » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:28 AM UTC

throwawayatwork wrote: post #171

dnautics wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While true, it's not by much; mortality for covid-19 is less than a percent of all hospitalizations, iirc.

That seems wildly optimistic. In the UK, 2% of people who tested positive have died. In the US, 1.7% of people who tested positive have died. The mortality rate among hospitalized people even higher. [1] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

That's about right for those who tested positive, but current CDC estimate is that for each one that tests positive, 3.3 others got it and never got tested. That makes the actual rate something like 0.38%. Which is a lot more than 0, and is even a lot more than a normal flu, but it's not 1.7%.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#176

Post by rossdavidh » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

IgorPartola wrote: post #129

rossdavidh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the last link: "Conclusions: This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection a…

Hmm. This smells of literal survivor bias. The group that survives the delta variant is a smaller set than all who got infected while all vaccinated persons survived, even ones that wouldn’t have survived without the vaccine.

I wasn't impressed by your point at first, but it occurs to me that the vaccination rate was way higher among older people, at least in the U.S. and probably in many countries. On the other hand, the rate of those who got covid-19 was higher among younger people. So, you may have a point there.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#177

Post by kbenson » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

inter_netuser wrote: post #168

IgorPartola wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The point of the vaccines is to not have to find out if you are in the 99% who survive Covid or the 1% who don’t.

and if virus keeps mutating... twice-annual booster shots all over the earth? I really hope we don't end up with a Marek's disease, but in humans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease#Prevention

It seems more likely that after we've all developed some immunity to it and some variants, we'll have some level of resistance to what most strains bring to bear, and so milder and less lethal, like existing colds (also a coronavirus...) and flus.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#178

Post by mindfulplay » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:33 AM UTC

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #152

mindfulplay wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccines also lack a specific abnormal side effect that the infection may carry: risk of death and hospitalization. Now with death, one could argue that it does provide much longer lasting immunity.... Seriously though, for most people the severity of infection-derived immunity is preconditioned upon them surviving the disease so this looks like the classic "planes with bullet holes" image?

> The vaccines also lack a specific abnormal side effect that the infection may carry: risk of death and hospitalization. This is well-intentioned but false. The vaccines can send you to the hospital (side-effects). It's rare but happens. Similarly, you can be vaccinated, get infected with SARS-2, and end up in the hospital, so it's not even true that they avoid hospitalization from SARS-2 itself completely. (They he…

The risk associated with the vaccine (and the magnitude) are orders of magnitude lower than that of natural infection-based immunity.

The vaccine can almost certainly send a few people to the hospital in the same manner that an airbag could almost certainly cause injuries during an accident.

It's very different from a natural infectionimo.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#179

Post by nicoffeine » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:50 AM UTC

ManBlanket wrote: post #140

baxtr wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I don’t understand why more people won’t argue like you do. We have 4 endemic human CoVs. Why not learn from the experience we had there?

I get the impression anything we could learn which doesn't support a foregone hyperbolic conclusion gets vastly ignored by the media and misconstrued as fringe in the court of popular opinion. All of this started with panic-buying toilet paper and baker's yeast from the grocery stores. I'm not surprised despite a considerable majority of US citizens being vaccinated, all reporting is underscored by pandemic levels of…

Millions of people have died in less than two years, 650,000 where I live in the US. More specifically here in Florida, ICU capacity is at 93%, and cases/hospitalizations/deaths are at record highs for the entire duration of the pandemic. People are being turned away for cancer treatments because there is simply no room at the hospital. The peak of daily deaths and infections in our state is right now.

This is news because the flu doesn’t do that every year or any year since 1919. It’s news because it’s the deadliest pandemic in over a century, and the death rate in some areas is at its peak and climbing, despite higher vaccination rates then a typical flu season.

I cannot understand why denial of this information is so important to you, but if you continue to spread doubt about taking more precautions than the flu, people may listen to you and those people may die.

Re: Immunity Generated from Covid-19 Vaccines Differs from an Infection

#180

Post by EGreg » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 1:55 AM UTC

Let’s look at what these articles are actually saying.. EMPHASIS is mine below:

“Also, it’s POSSIBLE that mRNA delivery may change the way antigens are presented to the immune system, leading to differences in the antibodies that get produced. A third difference is that natural infection ONLY exposes the body to the virus in the respiratory tract (unless the illness is very severe), while the vaccine is delivered to muscle, where the immune system MAY have an even better chance of seeing it and responding vigorously.”

After so many words, what has really been said? Something is possible. MAYBE injecting into a muscle is more effective for a vigorous response. But, folks, the natural infection ONLY exposes the body to the virus in the respiratory tract! (As opposed to ONLY the muscle? Neither is true.)

But hey. We already know before even writing the article… that natural immunity is ONLY this or that, while vaccines are DIFFERENT and HOPEFULLY and MAYBE will give longer lasting immunity than natural one (never mind that studies mostly show otherwise)

How do they get from vacuous statements to a firm conclusion that everyone should take the vaccine?