Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals • Hacker News Board

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by phkahler » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

whoknowswhat11 wrote: post #204

phkahler wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> So this study doesn't have enough statistical power to say how vaccines compare to previous infection. Could be better, could be up to 3 times worse within a high confidence interval. Could be. But it would be great if they'd just say having had a confirmed case is equivalent to getting the vaccine because several studies have now shown that to be roughly the case. It's also conventional medical wisdom although it…

No kidding. It's clear to me that protection at some level is provided following infection - which simply makes sense. You'll notice they say - we don't have enough data. Then data is incomplete. Then we can't really say because study was X / Y / Z. They ignore the MASSIVE difference in your chance of being infected if you are unvaccinated and have not been infected vs many other combos. Just treat folks who've been…

>> You'll notice they say - we don't have enough data. Then data is incomplete. Then we can't really say because study was X / Y / Z.

This is a weird trend these days. Medical science refuses to take an engineering approach to anything and only accepts statements based on controlled studies. That includes rejecting previous understanding of how immunity works in general. Early on when claims were made about HCQ, Zinc, or whatever, they were shot down as "not approved treatment" even though there were no approved treatments! The utter failure to recommend vitamin D supplements is another failure - we know deficiency weakens immune response, we know most (Americans) are deficient in the winter, it's a no-brainer but in their mind it was not "proven" so not even mentioned or recommended for anyone.

The only pattern I see considering all cases like that is the underlying notion that people must not do anything for themselves.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by IanPBann » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 1:36 PM UTC

thombat wrote: post #253

falcor84 wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...with the British strain now being the main one in Sweden Off topic, but at this stage I find this geographical naming of strains being much more confusing than useful.

Recently greek letters were introduced to remove the geographic stigma [1] , so that would read as "the Alpha strain now being the main one in Sweden" Besides risking moral overtones ("the British strain? Typical - when they aren't being Hollywood baddies they're busy incubating viruses") it only tagged where a strain was first isolated, not necessarily its geographic origin (not that it actually matters whether the…

The thing that stikes me about the naming of variants, is that to your standard person on the street, referring to the variants by the place they were first identified is going to be considerably more meaningful than calling them a greek letter, especially with the less common letters. It's also easier to mentally track the variant's progress if you know where it "originated".

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by bartimus » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

Maybe it's not necessary. It's my understanding there's different types of antibodies the body can create. I've already had Covid but I'm still taking the vaccine. My reasoning is that the vaccine offers a hack to ensure those specific antibodies are boosted that target the spike protein. I'm assuming it will further strengthen my immune system. Provide better protection against future variants.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by briefcomment » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

galoisgirl wrote: post #291

jokethrowaway wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's been a pretty mild pandemic. What has been newsworthy about was the removal of freedom, not the number of dead people. It's flu-like transmission - which is mostly through droplets. If you're not sneezing in the face of people you don't have high chances of passing it around

It's the 9th pandemic in human history in the number of deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Major_epidem...

Looks like it's much lower than 9th population adjusted.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by IanPBann » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

waterside81 wrote: post #70

stavros wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's encouraging! I got COVID a few months ago and got vaccinated recently, seems like I should be unstoppable now.

Hey I'm curious, if you don't mind sharing, how do you think you got it? Throughout this whole pandemic, I'm still kind of amazed how people are getting it

I caught it in September when numbers here in the UK were quite low.

I'm not sure how I caught it. I had left my car into the garage a few days before I showed symptoms and had to get an Uber home, then back to the garage to pick it up, so my strongest suspicion is one of the Uber drivers or previous passengers had it or potentially a mechanic had it and it remained in the car.

The strangest thing is my girlfriend and I had spent the day before I showed symptoms together and she slept over that night but she didn't seem to catch it off me. She even had an antibody test about a month after which was negative suggesting she hadn't already had asymptomatic Covid.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by matthewdgreen » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:00 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #128

Why is it that so many people seem to be biased against evidence that our immune systems do a pretty good job? It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID.

Anecdotally: I know a number of people who say they "had COVID" but when you poke a little bit deeper it turns out they never had a formal diagnosis or test result -- they just self-diagnosed based on some symptoms. I have no data about the numbers here, but I suspect that these people make up a non-trivial percentage of the "already had COVID" crowd. Vaccination seems like a pretty good precaution for these folks.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by randomopining » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

whiddershins wrote: post #299

The prior should always have been in favor of natural immunity working. It’s odd that the public health messaging seems to have always been worst-case-least-likely scenario until we can prove differently.

How did the natural immunity path go for those 550k+ that died in the US? lol.

Obv everybody should've worn a mask. Everybody who hasn't had it should get vaccinated etc. Pretty much what the authorities have been saying the whole time.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by Izkata » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

trimbo wrote: post #130

vmception wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well pack it up boys, lets not make this go viral on social media and just hope the "peers" organically pick this study to review over the next 6 months instead of some other study that appears to be more in the public interest and has more popular people behind it a while back I looked to see how long it actually took for the peer reviewed studies to come out for previous diseases and outbreaks, such as SARS 1. It w…

This study backs up the claim that people who had it don't need to get vaccinated. If it gets widely reported, that probably means fewer people will get vaccinated. So let me ask you this, what's the worst case scenario if they're right but had waited 6 months to get it reviewed? Then consider, what's the worst case scenario if they're wrong?

> If it gets widely reported, that probably means fewer people will get vaccinated.

So.. no change? At least in the US, we're already at the point where we have more vaccines than people who want them.

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by ticviking » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

jacobolus wrote: post #197

jdminhbg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised Is it actually the case that immunocompromised people cannot be vaccinated? The ones that I know have been; as far as I know, the mRNA vaccines by virtue of not being based on live virus are not dangerous to those with weakened immune systems.

Immunocompromised people can safely get the vaccine, but it might not work, leaving them still vulnerable to the virus. In recent studies something like half of organ transplant recipients did not produce antibodies after being vaccinated, and there have been a few cases where a group of vaccinated transplant recipients caught Covid (e.g. from a vaccinated nurse who had an asymptomatic infection) and had severe sympt…

Can you provide a link to those cases?

Re: Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals

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Post by jswny » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

cdolan wrote: post #164

daenz wrote: post #128

Why is it that so many people seem to be biased against evidence that our immune systems do a pretty good job? It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID.

Fear is one hell of a drug. But really, I think many people are laser focused on not just minimizing risk of COVID, but now trying to zero out COVID risk, that having any reason to delay receipt of a vaccine isn't a pre-existing medical condition is considered a form of aggression. At some point we transitioned from "bend the curve" to "eradicate the virus", and this seems like a byproduct of that mental shift.

Why would you not want to eradicate Covid?