All: I know it's an activating topic, but this thread has tons of comments breaking the site guidelines. That's not ok.<p>If you're going to comment, make sure you know the rules and stick to them: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>. That means making substantive points thoughtfully.<p>If you want to put down or yell at people on the other side of this $hot-topic, or any topic, please do that somewhere else. We're trying for a little better than internet default here.
Not to disagree with the effectiveness of immunity gained by getting Covid-19, but also:<p>"The evidence shows that protective antibodies generated in response to an mRNA vaccine will target a broader range of SARS-CoV-2 variants ... compared to antibodies acquired from an infection."<p><a href="https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-generated-from-covid-19-vaccines-differs-from-an-infection/" rel="nofollow">https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/06/22/how-immunity-genera...</a><p>"Vaccination offers longer, stronger immunity"<p><a href="https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/why-covid-19-vaccines-offer-better-protection-than-infection.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.jhsph.edu/covid-19/articles/why-covid-19-vaccine...</a><p>"Why a vaccine can provide better immunity than an actual infection"<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/why-a-vaccine-can-provide-better-immunity-than-an-actual-infection-145476" rel="nofollow">https://theconversation.com/why-a-vaccine-can-provide-better...</a><p>"Why You Need to Get Vaccinated Even If You’ve Already Had COVID-19"<p><a href="https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-you-need-to-get-vaccinated-even-if-youve-already-had-covid-19" rel="nofollow">https://www.healthline.com/health-news/why-you-need-to-get-v...</a><p>And also, vaccination is a much, much safer way to get antibodies, than via getting sick with Covid-19.
“Acquiring” natural immunity also has the following side effects at a much higher rate than the vaccine:<p>- Death<p>- Hospitalization<p>- Chronic illness, which can include long-term neurological impairment<p>I feel like it’s important to keep that in mind if you’re either advocating “natural immunity” as a public health strategy, or considering it a personal strategy.
Its important to keep studies like this in mind when talking with people who refuse to take the vaccine because they "already had COVID". In a very real sense, if natural antibodies are durable, persistent, and effective; the vaccine is an unnecessary medical procedure. Doctors would not cut off your legs for no reason; that would be unethical. The vaccine is a medical procedure like any other; if the benefit is questionable, it would be unethical for doctors to administer it.<p>Yet, we have an increasing number of venues, workplaces, and events which are requiring proof of vaccination to participate. This is forcing both people who already have antibodies, and even people who can't make antibodies (e.g. immunocompromised, solid organ transplant, etc), to undergo a medical procedure for little to no benefit.<p>Primum non nocere
Just a note to non-immunologists - Immunity means different things to health and science professionals vs the general public.<p>Edit: I'm not going into detail in this comment because I am not an immunologist and I cannot express clearly and correctly what the difference is, but just be aware that "Immunity" may not mean 100% protection in the way that the general public thinks that word means.
...more or less like most infections, as has been known for centuries. And yet, due to the current "anything which doesn't make people more fearful must be suppressed" attitude, this kind of thing is news. Or would be, if the U.S. newsmedia were willing to report it, which I suspect they will not.
If having COVID imparts as much future protection as the J&J vaccine, there is an ethical argument that one could make:<p>help vaccinate the poor who want it instead of adding to the asymptotic protection of the rich. Else, people might argue we should all have n- booster shots to get even better protection, when we still don’t have enough for the entire world. Vaccines are currently zero sum.
Immunity persists for a while but doesn’t seem to stop the new variants. Another study shows that re-infection with Covid is a lot more likely in unvaccinated people than in vaccinated.
I could see a case to vaccinate people even if they have natural, durable, and long-lasting immunity to Covid-19 after infection if it makes their immunity even stronger.
If twenty percent of the population has had covid, and fifty percent has been vaccinated, say we assume half of the twenty percent isn’t an overlap. Wouldn’t that put us much closer to the herd immunity number of seventy percent than we’ve been thinking? And that if infections continue at a high pace, shouldn’t we reach that level very soon?
Can any of the findings from the properties of how natural immunity works be guided in to future COVID 19 vaccines?<p>Given how the pharma companies are examining anti-body half life, exploring booster shots, and considering vaccinations against variants (like lambda), can any of the learnings go into a more durable, more broad vaccine?
This paper further supports the fact that naturally acquired immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is 1) robust and 2) durable.<p>1) Robust means the immune response recognizes many different parts of the virus.<p>2) Durable means the immune response remains detectable - and likely effective at protecting the individual - for a long period of time.<p>A robust immune response is important because it provides a certain degree of protection against variants of the virus.<p>This robustness is why some people hypothesize that natural immunity provides better protection than vaccination - however this hypothesis has not been conclusively proven in the literature yet. If you're aware of primary sources that say otherwise please share them.<p>For now, all available evidence strongly suggests that individuals with naturally acquired immunity are at least equally well protected as individuals who have been vaccinated. Here are a couple more supporting references [1][2].<p>As a final point - in the literature there is some evidence & concern that the current mRNA vaccines induce an immune response which is highly targeted toward the spike protein [3]. When combined with mass vaccination campaigns, this creates tremendous selective pressure that can further enhance the fitness of the virus, and lead to increasingly infectious or virulent variants [3][4][5][6].<p>It's clear that vaccination poses little additional risk - but also little benefit - to previously infected individuals, and consequently our vaccination campaigns should be highly targeted toward vulnerable demographics to reap the most benefits and minimize the risks to public health.<p>[1] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf</a><p>[2] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
<a href="https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v3.full.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...</a><p>[3] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein
<a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/" rel="nofollow">https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/</a><p>[4] SARS-CoV-2 immune evasion by the B.1.427/B.1.429 variant of concern
<a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/science.abi7994" rel="nofollow">https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2021/06/30/scie...</a><p>[5] mRNA vaccine-elicited antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and circulating variants
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03324-6" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03324-6</a><p>[6] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens
<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1002198" rel="nofollow">https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...</a>
<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03738-2</a><p>vaccines also produce durable and persistent immune responses. Primary antibody titers wane, but the system itself remembers and can regenerate them when challenged.<p>see <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28107714</a> for contra "but muh boosters", which i suspect is what's helping me collect downvotes.