13 ms·

Punchline: “The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously infected subjects

Punchline: “The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated, compared with a steady increase in cumulative incidence among previously uninfected subjects who remained unvaccinated. Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study.”

msandford 5y ago
In that case it seems like the headline reads wrong based on a colloquial and imprecise but often correct heuristic. Should read more like "non-necessity of C19 vaccination for previously infected..."
- sebastianconcpt 5y ago
  But that wouldn't contribute with the propaganda of the current mainstream narrative, would it?
- OJFord 5y ago
  It says (at least, it does now, as I write) 'evaluating necessity'. [EDIT: I read further down this page, dang commented that he'd edited in the 'evaluating' just 1m before parent's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27453952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27453952 So, yes, fair enough, 'necessity of' is ambiguous, as I went on to say in my original comment continuing below.] Necessity is the concept as well as describing one possible state of it. Another example: when 'my hunger is sated', I do not 'have a hunger', I am 'not hungry'.
Taniwha 5y ago
However there already exist real people in the world who have had Covid twice, and who reportedly have had a much tougher time the second time around. This study helps us put some bounds on how many people this might happen to (assuming there are no mutations to the virus) but it doesn't rule it out completely, because of the prior existence proofs
- tomerico 5y ago
  If this is rare enough, it could fall into the false positive rate of the COVID test they've previously done (i.e. while the test said they had COVID, they didn't)
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    Could be - but the case I remember reading about involved hospitalisation. Remember that immunisation makes antibodies but only provides something like 50-95% protection (depending on the vaccine) - it's not surprising that actually catching it does the same thing
  - lootsauce 5y ago
    The tests are designed to have high false positives because they have to bias toward few false negatives and there are no perfect tests. What gets me is that the negative result is the one bearing meaningful information but not the positive result, yet everyone mistakenly talks about positives as if they are far more informative than they actually are.
    - pama 5y ago
      I'm not sure what test you have in mind, and I'm guessing that such tests with high false positive bias might exist, for example the antibody tests. It's very difficult to get a genuine false positive with a PCR-based test: whatever you're reading out should have the same sequence as the part of the virus you're sequencing. The only reasonable way to get a false positive is that you contaminate the sample, but I don't think that the possibility of contamination is part of the design in any of the commercially available tests.
    - dboreham 5y ago
      There are essentially zero false positives with the PCR test. Only through sample contamination.
  - spfzero 5y ago
    Certainly the case with the PCR test, because it is so sensitive. It can detect Covid fragments at such a low level that no symptoms would show and no adaptive immune response would arise. That's not enough Covid to generate memory and immunity. You could be PCR tested positive, while experiencing a cold or flu (which you would now understandably think were Covid symptoms), but would not have immunity for a future, larger infection from Covid. Though statistically unlikely, it's bound to happen sometimes.
pmoriarty 5y ago
"Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study." The duration of the study being 5 months. There's no indication from this study what would happen after 5 months.
- teachingassist 5y ago
  This comment is right - and the study began shortly after Ohio's peak of infections. As such, most infected participants would have been recently infected in a situation with low and decreasing virus circulation. Nobody thinks there's any risk of reinfection at that point.
- wpasc 5y ago
  why the downvotes on this comment? iirc the vaccine response was shown to diminish over time and health experts discussed the potential need for covid vaccine booster shots. a limited timeframe for reinfection poses an issue considering we may never be truly done with this disease as it could recirculate and require frequent shots like the flu
- big_fat_pp 5y ago
  From the study itself: > This study was not specifically designed to determine the duration of protection afforded by natural infection, but for the previously infected subjects the median duration since prior infection was 143 days (IQR 76 – 179 days), and no one had SARS-CoV-2 infection over the following five months, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 infection may provide protection against reinfection for 10 months or longer.
stavros 5y ago
That's encouraging! I got COVID a few months ago and got vaccinated recently, seems like I should be unstoppable now.
- rolph 5y ago
  i wouldnot call it unstoppable, but i would expect excellent protection, that extends horizontally to provide an unspecified degree of protection across variants.
- waterside81 5y ago
  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
  - andrei_says_ 5y ago
    Given that it’s airborne chances are through breathing in proximity with someone who is currently contagious (and possibly asymptomatic). Non-huge indoor spaces, absence of masks, breathing the same air for longer than 15-20 min all increase infection rates. Not OP.
    - stavros 5y ago
      It's even worse than that, my dad got it in an indoor space (office) while both he and the carrier were wearing masks. Then I got it from him in the house, even though I avoided him and kept my distance. He wouldn't wear a mask in the house (because "I'm fine") and kept coughing up the place, though.
      - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
        You need to be very very clear about the type of mask you are wearing. I wear an N95 or KF94 - I like the ones with the valve / vents so do a surgical over that if I use one of those. I've got friends in covid care who had pretty high exposure with a good N95 and face shield without being infected. So when people say they were masked up and got infected, you need to ask, was this just some fleece cloth or a mask designed for infection control.
spion 5y ago
I know that seems like a large number but in the vaccine arm there were 20x more subjects and only 15 cases. So with the 1359 previously infected subjects, assuming identical behavior to vaccinated subjects, we would expect around 0.9 cases if vaccines were approximately equal to infection. 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. (disclamer: back-of-the-napkin math, did not double check everything)
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> 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 varies by virus.
  - cbsmith 5y ago
    Unfortunately, we have reason to believe that over time, the immune defenses from COVID-19 infection seem to decline, particularly in older folks. It'd be great if we had some definitive data on secondary infection rates, but until a lot more people get infected, we just won't have it.
    - barney54 5y ago
      What is the evidence that “we have reason to believe that over time, immune defenses from COVID-19 infection seems to decline”?
      - astrange 5y ago
        I think this is another case where improved surveillance is turning up things that, while they look bad, happen with other vaccines and never turn out to be a problem. The same goes for variants, which a lot of people expect to break through vaccines because that's how the flu works, but it doesn't actually seem like they will.
js2 5y ago
A couple recent studies indicate that previously infected and then vaccinated individuals may have longer term immunity than those who are vaccinated but weren't previously infected or those who were infected but haven't been vaccinated: > Immunity to the coronavirus lasts at least a year, possibly a lifetime, improving over time especially after vaccination, according to two new studies. The findings may help put to rest lingering fears that protection against the virus will be short-lived. > Together, the studies suggest that most people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who were later immunized will not need boosters. Vaccinated people who were never infected most likely will need the shots, however, as will a minority who were infected but did not produce a robust immune response. Both reports looked at people who had been exposed to the coronavirus about a year earlier. Cells that retain a memory of the virus persist in the bone marrow and may churn out antibodies whenever needed, according to one of the studies, published on Monday in the journal Nature. The other study, posted online at BioRxiv, a site for biology research, found that these so-called memory B cells continue to mature and strengthen for at least 12 months after the initial infection. > “The papers are consistent with the growing body of literature that suggests that immunity elicited by infection and vaccination for SARS-CoV-2 appears to be long-lived,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/health/coronavirus-immunity-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/health/coronavirus-immuni...
refurb 5y ago
I don’t see it in the abstract, but what was the infection rate for the unvaccinated? That’s your comparison. They also mentioned 0 infections in fully vaccinated which is odd as other countries are seeing a number of infections in their vaccinated front line workers. https://twitter.com/sporeMOH/status/1402637555263098884?s=20 https://twitter.com/sporeMOH/status/1402637555263098884?s=20
- phkahler 5y ago
  >> They also mentioned 0 infections in fully vaccinated which is odd as other countries are seeing a number of infections in their vaccinated front line workers. No, they had infections in the vaccinated. They had 0 infections in the previously infected, although another poster pointed out that the vaccinated (but never infected) group is much larger than the unvaccinated but previously exposed. Frankly since the vaccine trains the immune system on the spike proteins I would think they're roughly equivalent and either both will offer similar duration of protection. If that turns out to be only a year I'm going for the vaccine next time, as the infection kinda sucked.
  - Izkata 5y ago
    Immunity from infection does more than the spike protein, so it ought to be more robust against variants, even if one does show up that changes the spike protein enough to escape vaccines.
    - Pyramus 5y ago
      My understanding is that it's not clear at all with respect to variants, hence this study. The spike protein has been picked for the reason that it's unlikely to change.
    - spfzero 5y ago
      That was my thought as well. Natural immune response should have more vectors of attack since all of the virus proteins are available to make antibodies for. As another comment mentioned though, the spike protein is unlikely to change much, and if it did, the virus would loose a major weapon in infecting people. So the vaccine is probably as effective as natural immunity in practice.
wuschel 5y ago
Two comments: (1) A friend of mine who works as a doctor in one of the vaccination centers in South Germany told me that re-infection rates with problematic outcome after full vaccinations are ~5%. This is what they tell their patients in the information talk before the shot. Note that my friend could not give me a higher resolution of the data (age, etc). (2) I think I wrote that in one of my prior comments ~ 9 month or so ago - Another medical doctor aquaintance of mine that was working in the local health department Corona group told me that in the town of Tuttlingen (pop ~ 100K) there habe been 9 re-infections with the SARS-CoV2. At the time there were only 7 known cases in literature.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  Reinfection rate differing between different studies and populations could partly or entirely be the result of differing error rates in lab processes. Just a 0.1% contamination rate between samples in the lab or hospital would more than explain most of the results.
- astrange 5y ago
  Is that with AZ or an mRNA vaccine? Also by "problematic", do you know if they meant WHO's "mild" or "severe"? "Mild" is still quite bad, just not enough to hospitalize you.
  - wuschel 5y ago
    Hi, sorry for the late reply. Had to get back to my contacts re your questions. I did not check or ask for reference / primary data sources, but I was talking to medical doctor directly involved in the German SARS-CoV2 vaccination program on a local level. > Is that with AZ or an mRNA vaccine? It seems to be unclear by now which combination of vaccination dosages (and their timing) gives the best results. When it comes to double shots, I was told that - AZ: 1 in 5 get infected - Biontech: 1 in 20 get infected > Also by "problematic", do you know if they meant WHO's "mild" or "severe"? "Mild" is still quite bad, just not enough to hospitalize you. Unfortunately, I did not ask regarding these specifics, but I believe that the wording was according to WHO standards. According to my source, after two shots: - AZ: 90% less severe cases, 85% less infections - Biontech: 85% less severe cases, 95% less infections. So, statistically speaking, AZ is better to avoid bad cases, while Biontech is better for spread. In southern Germany, it seems that there is increased activity in administration a combination of both vaccines. This is done because there seems to be an indication that a combination might be better than a mono-vaccine, and/or because of the supply situation / available vaccines. There is a meta study coming out in the UK regarding AZ/Biontech/Moderna vaccine combination and vaccination timing effects. Hope it helps a bit.
jquery 5y ago
It’s really, really problematic this study used a hospital database of PCR test results, instead of self-reporting. This study will go viral and every yokel who was on the fence but had flu symptoms back in July will decide they don’t need the vaccine.
Reason077 5y ago
What was the duration of the study? I’m convinced I had Covid twice, in March 2020 and again in December 2020. So in my case, “natural” immunity did not last 9 months. (Although there were presumably different Covid variants at play here. I’m in London where the “Kent” variant was dominant in the December peak) Only the second time was confirmed by PCR test (no testing available in March 2020), but symptoms and progression were nearly identical both times.
- ping_pong 5y ago
  A lot of people were convinced they had COVID in Jan-March 2020. You're not the only one. Without a test though, it's impossible to say because the symptoms of mild COVID, which it sounds like you had, overlap a very large number of other diseases. There was also a very bad flu going around in early 2020 that a lot of people had caught so you probably had that.
  - Reason077 5y ago
    I think if you've had Covid, you'd disagree that its symptoms are similar to other common diseases. It feels quite different from any cold/flu I've ever had - unlike most flus I've experienced, there was no bronchitis, no throat pain, no sinus congestion, only a mild intermittent cough, little snot/phlem, etc. But it has some distinct features: high fever/temperature which lasts < 24 hours, changes in taste (foods which I normally enjoy tasting bitter and disgusting, toothpaste tasting like bitter chemicals, etc), severe fatigue, mild-to-moderate nausea, shortness of breath, and muscle and joint pains. Some of these symptoms lingered for quite a few weeks.
    - ping_pong 5y ago
      I know some people who got COVID and said they felt fine, except for a stuffy nose. Almost everyone I know that had COVID said that the flu was worse. All the symptoms that you mentioned apply to the flu as well. There might have been one day where they felt really worn out, but that was it. I felt the same way after taking the vaccine. Change in taste can be attributed to blocked nose which radiacally changes the taste of food. This has happened to me with bad colds and bad allergy attacks too. I only know 1 person who almost died from it, my friend's mother who had to be put on a ventilator, but she survived.
qrybam 5y ago
That’s interesting. Maybe the duration of the trial was too short or sample size too small, because I know two people personally who were re-infected pre vaccination.
- whizzter 5y ago
  Maybe too short, but also Covid-19 isn't really just one disease anymore, but rather a family of strains. Just yesterday the news had an article about how a national level soccer player for Sweden who had been infected previously in the past managed to get infected again and infect parts of the team. The player in question had been infected about a year ago initially (before the British strain was found) and with the British strain now being the main one in Sweden I don't think it's a far fetch to say that re-infections of a different strain is actually quite likely once a certain amount of time has passed.
  - falcor84 5y ago
    >...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.
    - thombat 5y ago
      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 Kent variant actually came from that Home County) [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/covid-19-variants-delta-kappa-australia-india/100195250 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/covid-19-variants-del...
      - iso1210 5y ago
        It's quite amusing that there was such a push at the start of the pandemic to not call it Chinese Flu or Wuhan Flu, but the British, South Africa, India and Brazil strains all caught on quickly in the media.

msandford 5y ago

In that case it seems like the headline reads wrong based on a colloquial and imprecise but often correct heuristic. Should read more like "non-necessity of C19 vaccination for previously infected..."

sebastianconcpt 5y ago
But that wouldn't contribute with the propaganda of the current mainstream narrative, would it?
OJFord 5y ago
It says (at least, it does now, as I write) 'evaluating necessity'. [EDIT: I read further down this page, dang commented that he'd edited in the 'evaluating' just 1m before parent's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27453952 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27453952 So, yes, fair enough, 'necessity of' is ambiguous, as I went on to say in my original comment continuing below.] Necessity is the concept as well as describing one possible state of it. Another example: when 'my hunger is sated', I do not 'have a hunger', I am 'not hungry'.

Taniwha 5y ago

However there already exist real people in the world who have had Covid twice, and who reportedly have had a much tougher time the second time around. This study helps us put some bounds on how many people this might happen to (assuming there are no mutations to the virus) but it doesn't rule it out completely, because of the prior existence proofs

tomerico 5y ago
If this is rare enough, it could fall into the false positive rate of the COVID test they've previously done (i.e. while the test said they had COVID, they didn't)
- Taniwha 5y ago
  Could be - but the case I remember reading about involved hospitalisation. Remember that immunisation makes antibodies but only provides something like 50-95% protection (depending on the vaccine) - it's not surprising that actually catching it does the same thing
- lootsauce 5y ago
  The tests are designed to have high false positives because they have to bias toward few false negatives and there are no perfect tests. What gets me is that the negative result is the one bearing meaningful information but not the positive result, yet everyone mistakenly talks about positives as if they are far more informative than they actually are.
  - pama 5y ago
    I'm not sure what test you have in mind, and I'm guessing that such tests with high false positive bias might exist, for example the antibody tests. It's very difficult to get a genuine false positive with a PCR-based test: whatever you're reading out should have the same sequence as the part of the virus you're sequencing. The only reasonable way to get a false positive is that you contaminate the sample, but I don't think that the possibility of contamination is part of the design in any of the commercially available tests.
  - dboreham 5y ago
    There are essentially zero false positives with the PCR test. Only through sample contamination.
- spfzero 5y ago
  Certainly the case with the PCR test, because it is so sensitive. It can detect Covid fragments at such a low level that no symptoms would show and no adaptive immune response would arise. That's not enough Covid to generate memory and immunity. You could be PCR tested positive, while experiencing a cold or flu (which you would now understandably think were Covid symptoms), but would not have immunity for a future, larger infection from Covid. Though statistically unlikely, it's bound to happen sometimes.

pmoriarty 5y ago

"Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the study." The duration of the study being 5 months. There's no indication from this study what would happen after 5 months.

teachingassist 5y ago
This comment is right - and the study began shortly after Ohio's peak of infections. As such, most infected participants would have been recently infected in a situation with low and decreasing virus circulation. Nobody thinks there's any risk of reinfection at that point.
wpasc 5y ago
why the downvotes on this comment? iirc the vaccine response was shown to diminish over time and health experts discussed the potential need for covid vaccine booster shots. a limited timeframe for reinfection poses an issue considering we may never be truly done with this disease as it could recirculate and require frequent shots like the flu
big_fat_pp 5y ago
From the study itself: > This study was not specifically designed to determine the duration of protection afforded by natural infection, but for the previously infected subjects the median duration since prior infection was 143 days (IQR 76 – 179 days), and no one had SARS-CoV-2 infection over the following five months, suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 infection may provide protection against reinfection for 10 months or longer.

stavros 5y ago

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

rolph 5y ago
i wouldnot call it unstoppable, but i would expect excellent protection, that extends horizontally to provide an unspecified degree of protection across variants.
waterside81 5y ago
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
- andrei_says_ 5y ago
  Given that it’s airborne chances are through breathing in proximity with someone who is currently contagious (and possibly asymptomatic). Non-huge indoor spaces, absence of masks, breathing the same air for longer than 15-20 min all increase infection rates. Not OP.
  - stavros 5y ago
    It's even worse than that, my dad got it in an indoor space (office) while both he and the carrier were wearing masks. Then I got it from him in the house, even though I avoided him and kept my distance. He wouldn't wear a mask in the house (because "I'm fine") and kept coughing up the place, though.
    - whoknowswhat11 5y ago
      You need to be very very clear about the type of mask you are wearing. I wear an N95 or KF94 - I like the ones with the valve / vents so do a surgical over that if I use one of those. I've got friends in covid care who had pretty high exposure with a good N95 and face shield without being infected. So when people say they were masked up and got infected, you need to ask, was this just some fleece cloth or a mask designed for infection control.

spion 5y ago

I know that seems like a large number but in the vaccine arm there were 20x more subjects and only 15 cases. So with the 1359 previously infected subjects, assuming identical behavior to vaccinated subjects, we would expect around 0.9 cases if vaccines were approximately equal to infection. 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. (disclamer: back-of-the-napkin math, did not double check everything)

phkahler 5y ago
>> 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 varies by virus.
- cbsmith 5y ago
  Unfortunately, we have reason to believe that over time, the immune defenses from COVID-19 infection seem to decline, particularly in older folks. It'd be great if we had some definitive data on secondary infection rates, but until a lot more people get infected, we just won't have it.
  - barney54 5y ago
    What is the evidence that “we have reason to believe that over time, immune defenses from COVID-19 infection seems to decline”?
    - astrange 5y ago
      I think this is another case where improved surveillance is turning up things that, while they look bad, happen with other vaccines and never turn out to be a problem. The same goes for variants, which a lot of people expect to break through vaccines because that's how the flu works, but it doesn't actually seem like they will.

js2 5y ago

A couple recent studies indicate that previously infected and then vaccinated individuals may have longer term immunity than those who are vaccinated but weren't previously infected or those who were infected but haven't been vaccinated: > Immunity to the coronavirus lasts at least a year, possibly a lifetime, improving over time especially after vaccination, according to two new studies. The findings may help put to rest lingering fears that protection against the virus will be short-lived. > Together, the studies suggest that most people who have recovered from Covid-19 and who were later immunized will not need boosters. Vaccinated people who were never infected most likely will need the shots, however, as will a minority who were infected but did not produce a robust immune response. Both reports looked at people who had been exposed to the coronavirus about a year earlier. Cells that retain a memory of the virus persist in the bone marrow and may churn out antibodies whenever needed, according to one of the studies, published on Monday in the journal Nature. The other study, posted online at BioRxiv, a site for biology research, found that these so-called memory B cells continue to mature and strengthen for at least 12 months after the initial infection. > “The papers are consistent with the growing body of literature that suggests that immunity elicited by infection and vaccination for SARS-CoV-2 appears to be long-lived,” said Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania who was not involved in the research. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/health/coronavirus-immunity-vaccines.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/26/health/coronavirus-immuni...

refurb 5y ago

I don’t see it in the abstract, but what was the infection rate for the unvaccinated? That’s your comparison. They also mentioned 0 infections in fully vaccinated which is odd as other countries are seeing a number of infections in their vaccinated front line workers. https://twitter.com/sporeMOH/status/1402637555263098884?s=20 https://twitter.com/sporeMOH/status/1402637555263098884?s=20

phkahler 5y ago
>> They also mentioned 0 infections in fully vaccinated which is odd as other countries are seeing a number of infections in their vaccinated front line workers. No, they had infections in the vaccinated. They had 0 infections in the previously infected, although another poster pointed out that the vaccinated (but never infected) group is much larger than the unvaccinated but previously exposed. Frankly since the vaccine trains the immune system on the spike proteins I would think they're roughly equivalent and either both will offer similar duration of protection. If that turns out to be only a year I'm going for the vaccine next time, as the infection kinda sucked.
- Izkata 5y ago
  Immunity from infection does more than the spike protein, so it ought to be more robust against variants, even if one does show up that changes the spike protein enough to escape vaccines.
  - Pyramus 5y ago
    My understanding is that it's not clear at all with respect to variants, hence this study. The spike protein has been picked for the reason that it's unlikely to change.
  - spfzero 5y ago
    That was my thought as well. Natural immune response should have more vectors of attack since all of the virus proteins are available to make antibodies for. As another comment mentioned though, the spike protein is unlikely to change much, and if it did, the virus would loose a major weapon in infecting people. So the vaccine is probably as effective as natural immunity in practice.

wuschel 5y ago

Two comments: (1) A friend of mine who works as a doctor in one of the vaccination centers in South Germany told me that re-infection rates with problematic outcome after full vaccinations are ~5%. This is what they tell their patients in the information talk before the shot. Note that my friend could not give me a higher resolution of the data (age, etc). (2) I think I wrote that in one of my prior comments ~ 9 month or so ago - Another medical doctor aquaintance of mine that was working in the local health department Corona group told me that in the town of Tuttlingen (pop ~ 100K) there habe been 9 re-infections with the SARS-CoV2. At the time there were only 7 known cases in literature.

londons_explore 5y ago
Reinfection rate differing between different studies and populations could partly or entirely be the result of differing error rates in lab processes. Just a 0.1% contamination rate between samples in the lab or hospital would more than explain most of the results.
astrange 5y ago
Is that with AZ or an mRNA vaccine? Also by "problematic", do you know if they meant WHO's "mild" or "severe"? "Mild" is still quite bad, just not enough to hospitalize you.
- wuschel 5y ago
  Hi, sorry for the late reply. Had to get back to my contacts re your questions. I did not check or ask for reference / primary data sources, but I was talking to medical doctor directly involved in the German SARS-CoV2 vaccination program on a local level. > Is that with AZ or an mRNA vaccine? It seems to be unclear by now which combination of vaccination dosages (and their timing) gives the best results. When it comes to double shots, I was told that - AZ: 1 in 5 get infected - Biontech: 1 in 20 get infected > Also by "problematic", do you know if they meant WHO's "mild" or "severe"? "Mild" is still quite bad, just not enough to hospitalize you. Unfortunately, I did not ask regarding these specifics, but I believe that the wording was according to WHO standards. According to my source, after two shots: - AZ: 90% less severe cases, 85% less infections - Biontech: 85% less severe cases, 95% less infections. So, statistically speaking, AZ is better to avoid bad cases, while Biontech is better for spread. In southern Germany, it seems that there is increased activity in administration a combination of both vaccines. This is done because there seems to be an indication that a combination might be better than a mono-vaccine, and/or because of the supply situation / available vaccines. There is a meta study coming out in the UK regarding AZ/Biontech/Moderna vaccine combination and vaccination timing effects. Hope it helps a bit.

jquery 5y ago

It’s really, really problematic this study used a hospital database of PCR test results, instead of self-reporting. This study will go viral and every yokel who was on the fence but had flu symptoms back in July will decide they don’t need the vaccine.

Reason077 5y ago

What was the duration of the study? I’m convinced I had Covid twice, in March 2020 and again in December 2020. So in my case, “natural” immunity did not last 9 months. (Although there were presumably different Covid variants at play here. I’m in London where the “Kent” variant was dominant in the December peak) Only the second time was confirmed by PCR test (no testing available in March 2020), but symptoms and progression were nearly identical both times.

ping_pong 5y ago
A lot of people were convinced they had COVID in Jan-March 2020. You're not the only one. Without a test though, it's impossible to say because the symptoms of mild COVID, which it sounds like you had, overlap a very large number of other diseases. There was also a very bad flu going around in early 2020 that a lot of people had caught so you probably had that.
- Reason077 5y ago
  I think if you've had Covid, you'd disagree that its symptoms are similar to other common diseases. It feels quite different from any cold/flu I've ever had - unlike most flus I've experienced, there was no bronchitis, no throat pain, no sinus congestion, only a mild intermittent cough, little snot/phlem, etc. But it has some distinct features: high fever/temperature which lasts < 24 hours, changes in taste (foods which I normally enjoy tasting bitter and disgusting, toothpaste tasting like bitter chemicals, etc), severe fatigue, mild-to-moderate nausea, shortness of breath, and muscle and joint pains. Some of these symptoms lingered for quite a few weeks.
  - ping_pong 5y ago
    I know some people who got COVID and said they felt fine, except for a stuffy nose. Almost everyone I know that had COVID said that the flu was worse. All the symptoms that you mentioned apply to the flu as well. There might have been one day where they felt really worn out, but that was it. I felt the same way after taking the vaccine. Change in taste can be attributed to blocked nose which radiacally changes the taste of food. This has happened to me with bad colds and bad allergy attacks too. I only know 1 person who almost died from it, my friend's mother who had to be put on a ventilator, but she survived.

qrybam 5y ago

That’s interesting. Maybe the duration of the trial was too short or sample size too small, because I know two people personally who were re-infected pre vaccination.

whizzter 5y ago
Maybe too short, but also Covid-19 isn't really just one disease anymore, but rather a family of strains. Just yesterday the news had an article about how a national level soccer player for Sweden who had been infected previously in the past managed to get infected again and infect parts of the team. The player in question had been infected about a year ago initially (before the British strain was found) and with the British strain now being the main one in Sweden I don't think it's a far fetch to say that re-infections of a different strain is actually quite likely once a certain amount of time has passed.
- falcor84 5y ago
  >...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.
  - thombat 5y ago
    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 Kent variant actually came from that Home County) [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/covid-19-variants-delta-kappa-australia-india/100195250 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-08/covid-19-variants-del...
    - iso1210 5y ago
      It's quite amusing that there was such a push at the start of the pandemic to not call it Chinese Flu or Wuhan Flu, but the British, South Africa, India and Brazil strains all caught on quickly in the media.