Natural immunity, for the most part, is quite good and useful. The problem is the cost of getting it - you have to survive the disease... I'm immune to all of the major childhood diseases, but I recall spending a few of my early school years getting sick. Somehow, I even got pneumonia and an ulcer, so I guess elementary school can be stressful?!
Specifically with Covid it's a timing issue. During initial stages of Covid before most people had it, it made absolute sense to push vaccines. over time though the number of people who had Covid and survived increased. Moreso with new Omicron variant which spread quickly. In South Africa as much as 80% of the population is estimated to have had Covid. So now that the population who has survived covid is significant guidelines on Covid seem to largely ignore this significant population.
You should when those people will overwhelm the hospital system. Even without people trying to get sick, it was touch and go for quite a while. “Pox” parties would have destroyed healthcare.
Now that omicron is proving to not be overwhelming, you’ll start to see restrictions lifted and the unvaxxed who were/get sick will be able to return to civilized society.
"Public-health officials have a lot of explaining to do. They used the wrong starting hypothesis, ignored contrary preliminary data, and dug in as more evidence emerged that called their position into question. "
> But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear.
Equally clear is the superiority of getting both to either by itself. Throw in the administrative difficulty of establishing just what level of immunity is acceptable, and the safety, convenience, and zero cost of getting vaccinated, and the policy remains sound. No "explaining" necessary.
By "natural immunity" they mean getting COVID and subjecting people to an inordinate risk of permanent disability or death. They are really saying that the best way to not get COVID is to get COVID? I feel like so many people are taking crazy pills.
Like in the childhood, right? It is very likely how it works with other disease that is constantly surrounding us and how we can tolerate many previously deadly epidemic pathogens.
Still the research has displayed that almost any viral infection has undesirable outcomes in the long run so it would make sense to try to avoid as many as possible.
The key word being "possible". So far, everything we've tried to protect people from COVID has only delayed the inevitable. Even New Zealand, everyone's favorite example of how to handle it, appears to have lost this battle back in August. Do you foresee something coming that will let people avoid COVID forever?
But it has far more than “delayed the inevitable.” The things we’ve tried to protect people have (a) enabled us to stave off a lot of infections until this latest less-lethal variant evolved, and (b) helped reduce hospital loads. Things would be orders of magnitude worse had we not tried to protect people.
I don’t like to think people are stupid, so I’m going to believe you are being disingenuous and already know the answer. Nonetheless I’ll spell it out: at a quarter of the the hospitalization rate but 4x the rate of spread, omicron overloads the healthcare system just as much as delta. The math is so very simple and obvious that it’s embarrassing.
In the USA omicron deaths are now outpacing delta’s.
That is why we haven’t stopped doing things to slow its spread.
I see in your post history that you like to downplay the pandemic and the healthcare crisis it has caused. Why are you like this? What do you gain by it?
No, I very specifically mean including the vaccines. Breakthrough COVID exists and isn't at all uncommon. (Remember, if this weren't the case, then there'd be no reason for vaccinated people to have to wear masks anymore.)
>Breakthrough COVID exists and isn't at all uncommon.
The difference between a "breakthrough COVID" case in a vaccinated person and a COVID infection in an unvaccinated person is a complete elimination in the risk of death and greatly reduced chances of severe illness and long-term disability. It's VERY preferable to be vaccinated.
This kind of sentiment gets repeated a lot. Why do you say this? You really think that significant number of people is deliberately self infecting? I don't know anyone who did it on purpose, and majority of my social circle got the covid at one point without trying to catch it. Some before vaccine was available, some after getting their shots.
Even if 1% of population is stupid enough to do it deliberately, and I very much doubt it's that high number, it still leaves 99% of people who did not catch it on purpose. Disregarding their immunity is not scientific at all. And focusing on miniscule Darwin-award population is not very emphatical to 99% who are not like that. Why do focus on Darwin-award subset like that's the most common case?
And know what? If you didn't catch it so far, it's highly likely that you'll get Omicron pretty soon. Or one of future variants. If not in next months then in next years, as we get back to normal and covid variants keep circulating as endemic virus.
How would you feel if you just recovered from the latest strain, you're full of antibodies, but it's not recognized at all by government and you have to take a booster shot made for last year's variant in order to get back to work? Does that make sense?
It looks pretty much insane to me, but I live in Europe where previous infection is more or less equalized with vaccine. I'm baffled it's not like that in the US.
> But after two years of accruing data, the superiority of natural immunity over vaccinated immunity is clear.
This seems like literal survivorship bias.
In the the US, covid kills about 2% of those who get it, so the natural immunity numbers are boosted by the fact that people with weak immune systems have been removed from the pool.
Honestly though, isn't this by design? Isn't the whole point of vaccines to invoke a weaker immune response that does not endanger the receiver?
It’s funny how people use that 2% to reinforce their opinion that COVID isn’t a big deal. But we have a virus that is very communicable just racking up deaths. I feel like we are approaching the point of everyone either being vaccinated or having had COVID.
See https://covidestim.org/ for a quantification of your "feeling". Summary: 80% of the population in California and New York state have been infected. Other states are in a similar range, but I was unable to find a USA-wide figure so I refrain from making a more general statement.
The 2% number is an overestimate. For the US over two years we had about 800K dead and 250M infected (ballpark assuming that 80% holds everywhere), which yields about .3% death probability per individual ever infected. For context, a bit less than 1% of the entire population dies each year (2,854,838 died in the US in 2019 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm#secti...), so about 6M people would have died in two years anyway even without covid.
You are dividing confirmed covid deaths by estimated covid infections, and that's not really valid.
When researchers study those with natural immunity, they examine people who are confirmed to have had covid before, so the CFR is the right number to use.
BTW, In the US covid has a CFR of 2%. It is not an "overestimate." It's not even an estimate. It's just what the number is. Obviously that number changes depending on the time frame, and it is (thankfully) dropping.
You said "covid kills about 2% of those who get it". Are you taking issue with the best available estimate of how many people "got it"? If not, your statement would imply that covid killed 5M people in the US, which is almost all the deaths in the US in the past two years.
The article reads like we knew all along that natural immunity worked better than vaccines. We didn’t, we have data now that provides strong evidence to the protection by having natural immunity. I know it’s really trying to hard to tap into that anger that pushes clicks.
The CDC just published on this, but there were quite a lot of other studies showing this starting from early 2021.
A lot of people wrote them all off as "antivaxxer" talking points since that's what the climate is around this topic, but this isn't a surprise to anyone who was following along (other than the fact that the CDC finally published on this, that was a pleasant surprise).
I think dismissing natural immunity is direct reaction to the stupidity that emerged in beginning of the pandemic: great barrington declaration, Tegnell, UK initial response etc. We know how it worked out - a lot of people died, even worse virus variants appeared. It really did not work, it was not a solution.
But this handling of the issue made the things even worse because it gave fuel for the conspiracy theorists, quacks, pseudo medicine followers etc.
How it should have been handled? By acknowledging possibility that it will give good protection for reinfection and verifying it by studies and constantly verifying it for new variants, by giving convalescents similar treatment that has been given to vaccinated - these people have suffered enough, most likely they did not seek out the disease, they got bad luck, so let them be, by encouraging them still to get vaccinated to improve their likelihood to not catch it again, by explaining that seeking out virus is by any means is really not a good idea and can result in very bad outcomes. That is - treating people as they are not complete morons.
The situation in EU has been a little better. Here at least having confirmed infection has been recognized to provide limited time protection but there are still issues with this.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 78.4 ms ] threadYou shouldn't refuse that just because you are worried people might try to get sick.
Now that omicron is proving to not be overwhelming, you’ll start to see restrictions lifted and the unvaxxed who were/get sick will be able to return to civilized society.
In functioning democracies, heads would roll.
Equally clear is the superiority of getting both to either by itself. Throw in the administrative difficulty of establishing just what level of immunity is acceptable, and the safety, convenience, and zero cost of getting vaccinated, and the policy remains sound. No "explaining" necessary.
Still the research has displayed that almost any viral infection has undesirable outcomes in the long run so it would make sense to try to avoid as many as possible.
In the USA omicron deaths are now outpacing delta’s.
That is why we haven’t stopped doing things to slow its spread.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/omicron-deaths-in-u-s-exceed-de...
I see in your post history that you like to downplay the pandemic and the healthcare crisis it has caused. Why are you like this? What do you gain by it?
You mean except for the vaccines...
The difference between a "breakthrough COVID" case in a vaccinated person and a COVID infection in an unvaccinated person is a complete elimination in the risk of death and greatly reduced chances of severe illness and long-term disability. It's VERY preferable to be vaccinated.
It sounds like you're saying that nobody has ever died from COVID after being fully vaccinated against it, which isn't true.
Even if 1% of population is stupid enough to do it deliberately, and I very much doubt it's that high number, it still leaves 99% of people who did not catch it on purpose. Disregarding their immunity is not scientific at all. And focusing on miniscule Darwin-award population is not very emphatical to 99% who are not like that. Why do focus on Darwin-award subset like that's the most common case?
And know what? If you didn't catch it so far, it's highly likely that you'll get Omicron pretty soon. Or one of future variants. If not in next months then in next years, as we get back to normal and covid variants keep circulating as endemic virus.
How would you feel if you just recovered from the latest strain, you're full of antibodies, but it's not recognized at all by government and you have to take a booster shot made for last year's variant in order to get back to work? Does that make sense?
It looks pretty much insane to me, but I live in Europe where previous infection is more or less equalized with vaccine. I'm baffled it's not like that in the US.
This seems like literal survivorship bias.
In the the US, covid kills about 2% of those who get it, so the natural immunity numbers are boosted by the fact that people with weak immune systems have been removed from the pool.
Honestly though, isn't this by design? Isn't the whole point of vaccines to invoke a weaker immune response that does not endanger the receiver?
The 2% number is an overestimate. For the US over two years we had about 800K dead and 250M infected (ballpark assuming that 80% holds everywhere), which yields about .3% death probability per individual ever infected. For context, a bit less than 1% of the entire population dies each year (2,854,838 died in the US in 2019 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db395.htm#secti...), so about 6M people would have died in two years anyway even without covid.
You are dividing confirmed covid deaths by estimated covid infections, and that's not really valid.
When researchers study those with natural immunity, they examine people who are confirmed to have had covid before, so the CFR is the right number to use.
BTW, In the US covid has a CFR of 2%. It is not an "overestimate." It's not even an estimate. It's just what the number is. Obviously that number changes depending on the time frame, and it is (thankfully) dropping.
A lot of people wrote them all off as "antivaxxer" talking points since that's what the climate is around this topic, but this isn't a surprise to anyone who was following along (other than the fact that the CDC finally published on this, that was a pleasant surprise).
But this handling of the issue made the things even worse because it gave fuel for the conspiracy theorists, quacks, pseudo medicine followers etc.
How it should have been handled? By acknowledging possibility that it will give good protection for reinfection and verifying it by studies and constantly verifying it for new variants, by giving convalescents similar treatment that has been given to vaccinated - these people have suffered enough, most likely they did not seek out the disease, they got bad luck, so let them be, by encouraging them still to get vaccinated to improve their likelihood to not catch it again, by explaining that seeking out virus is by any means is really not a good idea and can result in very bad outcomes. That is - treating people as they are not complete morons.
The situation in EU has been a little better. Here at least having confirmed infection has been recognized to provide limited time protection but there are still issues with this.