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

#281

Post by AndrewBissell » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:31 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…

> Also also, isn't it something that is known that natural immunity is better than vaccine-acquired immunity?

Yes, I pointed this out elsewhere in the thread, but it has somehow been verboten until very recently to state it in regards to Covid. My brother-in-law was even told by the people administering his vaccine that having had a prior Covid case put him at more risk and made it even more essential that he get vaccinated.

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

#282

Post by actually_a_dog » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:33 PM UTC

loveistheanswer wrote: post #267

BFatts wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 5 years? Why not 1? Why not 50? What's so special to people about 5 years? I keep hearing people say "it hasn't been tested long enough" followed by "I'd take it in about 5 to 10 years" which is a HUGE difference. Is it just that "time has passed", because a year has passed since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was first given to test subjects. But I guess it's up to people - their body, their choice. Even though we…

>Why 5 years? Why not 1? Why not 50? What's so special to people about 5 years? Clinical trials are conducted over many years (rather than just 1) for historical safety reasons[1] >There is a faction of fools out there who resist being a part of society, but claim all of its privileges. These are sub-human individuals This is hate speech, especially considering the disproportionate rates of black and hispanic people…

> This is hate speech, especially considering the disproportionate rates of black and hispanic people who are unvaccinated.

It is not. Black & hispanic people are vaccinated at lower rates than white people mostly due to access issues, not refusal to get the vaccine. One of those access issues is, in fact, that they are disproportionately members of a part of society we've demanded to take a lot of risk: essential workers.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/04/26/9899620...

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

#283

Post by angelzen » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

wokwokwok wrote: post #202

abnorxiouster wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question then is whether you want your first infection to be with or without prior immunity. If you want that first time to be with prior immunity get vaccinated as that is the only known way to get immunity before your first infection. You get vaccinated against an extremely specific variant, that does not guarantee any immunity for other variants unlike immunity from infection. Did you get vaccinated every ye…

Did you read the article? > Still, Thålin and other researchers stress that deliberate infection among unvaccinated people would put them at significant risk of severe disease and death, or the lingering, significant symptoms of what has been dubbed Long Covid. > The study shows the benefits of natural immunity, but “doesn’t take into account what this virus does to the body to get to that point,” says Marion Pepper,…

These are valid points, not sure why you are downvoted. One more question: What is the epidemiological profile (LongCovid/IHR/IFR) by age group, compared with the flu?

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

#284

Post by myko » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

moistrobot wrote: post #258

myko wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because previously-infected people tend to experience worse vaccine side-effects for little to no additional benefit? This is not the case. Research it yourself: "Evidence is emerging that people get better protection by being fully vaccinated compared with having had COVID-19. One study showed that unvaccinated people who already had COVID-19 are more than 2 times as likely than fully vaccinated people to get COVI…

don't your links directly contradict the article that was posted? The article states infection from COVID seems to produce better immunity than the vaccines.

If I'm understanding correctly, no. These things can both be true:

- Being previously infected with COVID-19 confers greater immunity than the COVID-19 vaccines

- Being previously infected with COVID-19 and being vaccinated confers >2x the immunity than being previously infected alone

The posted article seems to agree as well, but it's unfortunate many folks seem to just be taking the headline at face value:

"The researchers also found that people who had SARS-CoV-2 previously and then received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine were more highly protected against reinfection than those who once had the virus and were still unvaccinated."

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

#285

Post by a0-prw » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

I love these threads about the virus. Where else can you get the thrill of considering your own and your loved ones' mortality, and pump the illusion that what you say matters in the big picture?

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

#286

Post by SideburnsOfDoom » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

h2odragon wrote: post #62

Why is "natural infections and recovery produce a better immune response than a vaccine" so controversial? Has it been this controversial for any other disease?

> Why is "natural infections and recovery produce a better immune response than a vaccine" so controversial?

Why would that be your default assumption? Is it because ""natural infections" are natural and natural "should" be better? That is straight-up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalistic_fallacy

Have you considered the counternarrative that "vaccines are engineered to produce a strongest possible response" and you should therefore expect them to perform as designed, unlike haphazard nature.

Or perhaps consider that either might be true, and discard any prior assumptions about "natural = better".

> Has it been this controversial for any other disease

It's "controversial" because politics this time. It's not the default assumption in this or previous diseases, because it's often not true.

The last time this was raised: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107854

Not to claim now that those links are the whole story, but they do represent a whole lot of prior knowledge.

So it seems that there is some debate and nuance on this topic. My (simplistic) understanding is that vaccines produce a different and in some ways stronger response than the disease that they mimic, as they are literally designed to do. The COVID vaccines mostly contain Spike protein and therefor produce a very strong response ... but only to spike protein. recovery from infection produces response to that and other parts of the virus.

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

#287

Post by SamBam » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:40 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #271

SamBam wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

32,000 people in the study, of which 16,000 had previously had Covid. They found a total of 238 re-infections. Assuming 1% mortality from Covid, that group of 16,000 would have previously been 16,162, before being culled down to the study size by deaths. You don't think an additional 162 would make a difference to the results? (Obviously it doesn't make a difference if you read this study as " given someone survived…

> if you read this study as "given someone survived Covid, what are the odds..." How else are we supposed to read it? I just don't understand what point is being made with "survivorship bias" here. It's not like individuals who have recovered from Covid have gone through some hyperselective winnowing process leaving only those with superheroic immune systems or something. Obviously the study does not support the conc…

> How else are we supposed to read it?

You're assuming everyone read it the same as you, and now can't imagine differently.

There have been several mentions in this thread alone about how people have been using studies like this to recommend "Covid parties" (like chickenpox parties), or generally use it as further fuel to stay away from the vaccine, because they believe catching Covid is safer.

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

#288

Post by nanis » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #263

nanis wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we see that he current 0-59 death rate is 0.2% I made a statement about the percentage of deaths among people over 50 (not death rate). Computing an IFR (infection fatality rate) is difficult because so many infections are unrecorded. For example, consider this paper[1]: > We found that these antibodies were present in 42.4% of the individuals tested and that the majority of these infections, which were generally m…

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 that the fact that very incompletely counted known deaths from Covid19 among those fully vaccinated against Covid19 just jumped 11% since Monday[1], one might ask why one is being coerced to take a discreet step to assume a new risk.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...

[2]: https://archive.is/https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hea...

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

#289

Post by Scoundreller » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #273

Scoundreller wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is still a good argument against double-vaccinating them, at least when vaccines were hard to come by (which is still the case in most of the world). At least that’s how France does it, and that strategy might come in handy again as they plan to give boosters with influenza vaccines to everyone over 65.

Single dose has been the recommendation for a while in the US.

Only for JNJ vaccine which has been 1-shot for everyone.

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

#290

Post by angelzen » Fri, Aug 27, 2021, 5:45 PM UTC

sjg007 wrote: post #207

Buttons840 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The heart of the issue, and the one we seem most unable to talk about productively is "I'm worried about the vaccine".

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 resistant variant eventually emerges.

b. Don't take the vaccine and build wide spectrum immunity to infections from covid family. Considering that the risk of complications from covid infection for this age group is in the same ballpark as the flu.