4 ms·

I've had Covid-19. As far as I know we still don't know if having it leads to immunity but wouldn't having it and recovering be "better" than a vaccine? If so,

I've had Covid-19. As far as I know we still don't know if having it leads to immunity but wouldn't having it and recovering be "better" than a vaccine? If so, why get a vaccine for something you are immune to?

asutekku 6y ago
There has been people in several countries who have got Covid twice so having it does not equal immunity.
- crispyporkbites 6y ago
  No. You’re talking about 2 or 3 cases out of millions. It’s very rare to get it twice.
  - asutekku 6y ago
    As far as i know, there has been multiple cases in Finland alone. There has been multiple news reports regarding to it. We just don’t know the extent of it yet.
- derekp7 6y ago
  If your immune system failed to get trained by the virus, wouldn't that apply to the vaccine also?
  - NikolaeVarius 6y ago
    No. The vaccine is a concentrated flood of the proteins that are necessary for the immune system to target the virus. There are vaccines that cause better immune response than the disease it protects against.
- throwaway201103 6y ago
  Those "repositives" are not infectious cases though. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w "There was a low repositive rate in recovered COVID-19 patients in Wuhan. Results of virus culturing and contract tracing found no evidence that repositive cases in recovered COVID-19 patients were infectious, which is consistent with evidence from other sources." Same paper also states that asymptomatic cases are much less likely to be infectious.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Better to say the vast majority of them are later viral shedding or very minor, probably not contagious cases. There's probably been a few reinfections, and some decent documentation of a couple. If you repeat an experiment millions of times on diverse individuals, you can expect some variation.
  - dmt0 6y ago
    There have been cases when genomic analysis was performed during the two infections and it "showed genetically significant differences between each variant associated with each instance of infection". So reinfection actually is possible. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30764-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
- thomasahle 6y ago
  As far as I know the number is way lower than the immunization of the Vaccines and the false positive rate of the tests.
freehunter 6y ago
Having it and recovering from it still occasionally leaves your body altered/damaged in a way we're not sure how to predict/treat. As far as we can tell, the vaccine does not cause the same amount of damage that actually suffering from the disease can cause. Getting it early and getting immunity works great for fairly mild things like chicken pox, which is less likely to leave permanent/long term damage. But not for something where so many people report that they've still never fully recovered from even months later.
- wincy 6y ago
  I had it in March at age 33 and I’ve got this barb? Maybe you’d call it in my right lung. X-Rays showed up fine but still noticed it for months where it was a constant pain every breath, even though oxygen levels are fine. It’s finally only a sometime thing now instead of every waking moment. My wife didn’t get off so “easy”, she coughed for about five months straight until one day she just finally stopped coughing.
dustinmoris 6y ago
I’m in the same boat. I had it and it was super mild so I already... - have very likely immunity or at least a much better response the next time - despite having been exposed to it the first time having had super mild symptoms so I don’t need protection from a non threat - coronaviruses mutate a lot slower and people who had sars-cov-1 still had a t-cell immunity even 10 years after their infection and there is little reason to believe that sars-cov-2 couldn’t be similar Given that I won’t be offered the vaccine for a long time I luckily don’t have to decide and know that I won’t have it at least until enough production testing was done.
- thomasahle 6y ago
  > it was super mild It might be that weaker cases give less immunity. If you were exposed to smaller amounts of the virus in the first case.
  - dustinmoris 6y ago
    But I was exposed to a really high dose as my wife had picked up COVID at work and I was caring for her, even sleeping with my face right in front of her face all night probably getting exposed to a shipload of virus with every single breath.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
There are some diseases where the vaccine is more efficient at promoting an immune response than the actual disease. Tetanus is the most well-known example here. That's why it makes sense to vaccinate you even after potential exposure.
- samatman 6y ago
  Tetanus is highly fatal, 2015 saw 209,000 infections with 59,000 deaths. That includes people who are treated with the vaccine after potential exposure. It's not a good example of something to which people develop natural immunity, because if you are infected, you'll probably die, and even if not, suffer life-changing injury.
maxerickson 6y ago
I see immunologists stating that the immunity from the vaccine is likely to be better than from infection (even saying directly that people that have been infected should still get vaccinated). Edit, here ya go: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-covid-survivors-immunity-vaccine.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-covid-survivors-immun...
- thomasahle 6y ago
  > It looked at all these components of immunity up to eight months after infection and found that some of these "memory" cells responded to the coronavirus, or parts of it, in more than 90% of people, said Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist who participated in the study. "This is good news," she said. The decline in response was slow, a sign that immunity could last a long time. But Weiskopf emphasized that "nobody knows" how things will look in a year or 18 months. > Worldwide, there have been less than 30 cases of known re-infection among COVID-19 survivors, although more are suspected. Experts said the numbers would likely be much higher if most people had not developed immunity. > "I think that tells us that there's some level of immunity after you've recovered from the primary infection," Wherry said. "We don't know how durable that is." It's hard to read even this article as anything but "It seems there is a high level of immunity, but we don't know for sure, so let's be careful." I don't know any reason to say otherwise, except if you are afraid people will get infected voluntarily for immunization.
choward 6y ago
Another question you may ask is why get a vaccine for something your body has proven it can fight?
- mthoms 6y ago
  Because you can unknowingly transmit it to someone who simply cannot take the vaccine (allergic people, pregnant women, etc).
  - choward 6y ago
    True. I was just trying to provide an alternative to the "I got it so I'm immune" argument.

asutekku 6y ago

There has been people in several countries who have got Covid twice so having it does not equal immunity.

crispyporkbites 6y ago
No. You’re talking about 2 or 3 cases out of millions. It’s very rare to get it twice.
- asutekku 6y ago
  As far as i know, there has been multiple cases in Finland alone. There has been multiple news reports regarding to it. We just don’t know the extent of it yet.
derekp7 6y ago
If your immune system failed to get trained by the virus, wouldn't that apply to the vaccine also?
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  No. The vaccine is a concentrated flood of the proteins that are necessary for the immune system to target the virus. There are vaccines that cause better immune response than the disease it protects against.
throwaway201103 6y ago
Those "repositives" are not infectious cases though. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w "There was a low repositive rate in recovered COVID-19 patients in Wuhan. Results of virus culturing and contract tracing found no evidence that repositive cases in recovered COVID-19 patients were infectious, which is consistent with evidence from other sources." Same paper also states that asymptomatic cases are much less likely to be infectious.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Better to say the vast majority of them are later viral shedding or very minor, probably not contagious cases. There's probably been a few reinfections, and some decent documentation of a couple. If you repeat an experiment millions of times on diverse individuals, you can expect some variation.
- dmt0 6y ago
  There have been cases when genomic analysis was performed during the two infections and it "showed genetically significant differences between each variant associated with each instance of infection". So reinfection actually is possible. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30764-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
thomasahle 6y ago
As far as I know the number is way lower than the immunization of the Vaccines and the false positive rate of the tests.

freehunter 6y ago

Having it and recovering from it still occasionally leaves your body altered/damaged in a way we're not sure how to predict/treat. As far as we can tell, the vaccine does not cause the same amount of damage that actually suffering from the disease can cause. Getting it early and getting immunity works great for fairly mild things like chicken pox, which is less likely to leave permanent/long term damage. But not for something where so many people report that they've still never fully recovered from even months later.

wincy 6y ago
I had it in March at age 33 and I’ve got this barb? Maybe you’d call it in my right lung. X-Rays showed up fine but still noticed it for months where it was a constant pain every breath, even though oxygen levels are fine. It’s finally only a sometime thing now instead of every waking moment. My wife didn’t get off so “easy”, she coughed for about five months straight until one day she just finally stopped coughing.

dustinmoris 6y ago

I’m in the same boat. I had it and it was super mild so I already... - have very likely immunity or at least a much better response the next time - despite having been exposed to it the first time having had super mild symptoms so I don’t need protection from a non threat - coronaviruses mutate a lot slower and people who had sars-cov-1 still had a t-cell immunity even 10 years after their infection and there is little reason to believe that sars-cov-2 couldn’t be similar Given that I won’t be offered the vaccine for a long time I luckily don’t have to decide and know that I won’t have it at least until enough production testing was done.

thomasahle 6y ago
> it was super mild It might be that weaker cases give less immunity. If you were exposed to smaller amounts of the virus in the first case.
- dustinmoris 6y ago
  But I was exposed to a really high dose as my wife had picked up COVID at work and I was caring for her, even sleeping with my face right in front of her face all night probably getting exposed to a shipload of virus with every single breath.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

There are some diseases where the vaccine is more efficient at promoting an immune response than the actual disease. Tetanus is the most well-known example here. That's why it makes sense to vaccinate you even after potential exposure.

samatman 6y ago
Tetanus is highly fatal, 2015 saw 209,000 infections with 59,000 deaths. That includes people who are treated with the vaccine after potential exposure. It's not a good example of something to which people develop natural immunity, because if you are infected, you'll probably die, and even if not, suffer life-changing injury.

maxerickson 6y ago

I see immunologists stating that the immunity from the vaccine is likely to be better than from infection (even saying directly that people that have been infected should still get vaccinated). Edit, here ya go: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-covid-survivors-immunity-vaccine.html https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-12-covid-survivors-immun...

thomasahle 6y ago
> It looked at all these components of immunity up to eight months after infection and found that some of these "memory" cells responded to the coronavirus, or parts of it, in more than 90% of people, said Daniela Weiskopf, an immunologist who participated in the study. "This is good news," she said. The decline in response was slow, a sign that immunity could last a long time. But Weiskopf emphasized that "nobody knows" how things will look in a year or 18 months. > Worldwide, there have been less than 30 cases of known re-infection among COVID-19 survivors, although more are suspected. Experts said the numbers would likely be much higher if most people had not developed immunity. > "I think that tells us that there's some level of immunity after you've recovered from the primary infection," Wherry said. "We don't know how durable that is." It's hard to read even this article as anything but "It seems there is a high level of immunity, but we don't know for sure, so let's be careful." I don't know any reason to say otherwise, except if you are afraid people will get infected voluntarily for immunization.

choward 6y ago

Another question you may ask is why get a vaccine for something your body has proven it can fight?

mthoms 6y ago
Because you can unknowingly transmit it to someone who simply cannot take the vaccine (allergic people, pregnant women, etc).
- choward 6y ago
  True. I was just trying to provide an alternative to the "I got it so I'm immune" argument.