3 ms·

This seems like one of those situations where we all need to be saying "The plural of anecdote is not data" on the rosary every morning. Assume, for the sake o

This seems like one of those situations where we all need to be saying "The plural of anecdote is not data" on the rosary every morning. Assume, for the sake of argument, that prior infection reduces your risk of future infection by 95%. That's a far sight better than most the vaccines, enough so that a 2nd infection would be noteworthy on a personal level. But then, since this is an Internet forum, we need to throw the law of large numbers at the situation. Those figures still mean that there are perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of people out there who are known to have caught it twice. Which then translates into a certainty that there will be quite a few people mentioning it as an interesting anecdote on public forums like this. Then you throw a novelty effect on top of that. Say that prior infection actually confers 99% immunity. Fewer people will get re-infected, but each of those re-infections is more noteworthy, which makes it more likely that someone will want to talk about it. So the actual rate of re-infection and spread by people who've caught it gets a lot smaller, but the rate of people talking about it on the Internet, and the resulting perception people might infer of how likely it is, might stay about the same. (Disclaimer: I do mean, "for the sake of argument." Until some firmer science on the subject is forthcoming, AFAIC it's still within the realm of possibility that prior infection doesn't confer much practical immunity at all. This study is promising, yes, but I've been around the block too many times to get all that excited over something that doesn't amount to a whole lot more than an in vitro study.)

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
its a young healthy couple, 2nd infection ongoing and much more severe
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  I didn't mean to minimize your friends' experience with a giant Skepty McSkepterson smackdown, and I apologize if that's how it came across. It sounds like it's an awful situation. For the sake of clarification, I was more meaning to say, for the benefit of others, that we need to be cautious about extrapolating from stories like this. Because, where it's a global pandemic affecting 7 billion people all at once, even the unlikeliest of outcomes are guaranteed to happen. So we can't necessarily collect stories from a bunch of different individuals, connect the dots, and expect the result to be an accurate version of the big picture. Perhaps prior infection confers imperfect immunity, perhaps it confers none at all, perhaps it's better than any vaccine. I'm not sure we know yet, but I am pretty sure that your experience is compatible with all of those possibilities.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

its a young healthy couple, 2nd infection ongoing and much more severe

mumblemumble 5y ago
I didn't mean to minimize your friends' experience with a giant Skepty McSkepterson smackdown, and I apologize if that's how it came across. It sounds like it's an awful situation. For the sake of clarification, I was more meaning to say, for the benefit of others, that we need to be cautious about extrapolating from stories like this. Because, where it's a global pandemic affecting 7 billion people all at once, even the unlikeliest of outcomes are guaranteed to happen. So we can't necessarily collect stories from a bunch of different individuals, connect the dots, and expect the result to be an accurate version of the big picture. Perhaps prior infection confers imperfect immunity, perhaps it confers none at all, perhaps it's better than any vaccine. I'm not sure we know yet, but I am pretty sure that your experience is compatible with all of those possibilities.