3 ms·

Antibodies from the vaccine are a lot more numerous and longer lasting in one's body. Apparently having had it only gives you a shorter duration of immunity.

breck 5y ago
This is false. Data out of Israel now is that vaccine is ~40% effective (https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-is-less-effective-against-delta-infections-but-still-prevents-serious-illness-israel-study-shows-11627059395 https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-is-less...), while recovery is 99.9% effective (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.06.21253051v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.06.21253051v...).
- Imnimo 5y ago
  These are not comparable quantities. The 99.9% is simply not an effectiveness rate, it's simply a raw calculation of how many recovered people were not reinfected over a time period. To convert that to an effectiveness rate, you would have to compare it to infection rate among unvaccinated & previously-uninfected people. This is what's being done in the 40% calculation. Trying to compare these numbers is flat-out misinformation.
  - breck 5y ago
    The ballparks are indeed comparable, though I agree that I could have used numbers of a closer type. A good back of the envelope guess is that if you've recovered from COVID odds are ~99.9% you won't get it again (for at least a year according to the data, more according to what we know about the immune system). If you haven't had it but gotten the vaccine, odds are [infectionRate]*.6[andRising] that you will get it. Or to put it another way, more vaccinated people in Israel tested positive for COVID just yesterday than all of the reinfections combined (~2K versus ~700). I still think the vaccine is a good bet if you are over ~20 and haven't had COVID, but from the data I see natural immunity is going to be the main thing that gets us out of this pandemic, with vaccine the secondary factor.
    - Imnimo 5y ago
      >Or to put it another way, more vaccinated people in Israel tested positive for COVID just yesterday than all of the reinfections combined (~2K versus ~700). Israel reported about 2K total positives yesterday. Are you trying to tell me that they were all vaccinated?
      - breck 5y ago
        I thought it was 2.6K, not 2K. In which cause I'd adjust my numbers to ~1.5K vaccinated tested positive yesterday. I left myself plenty of margin of safety for the conclusion however. That's based on ~70% of hospitalized cases are vaccinated (https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general). I don't read Hebrew and can't tell if they are reporting immunization status of cases as well as hospitalizations and I'm missing that, which is why I'm estimating. You'd expect the % of hospitalized patients to be less vaccinated (assuming vaccines lower serious cases), but also more vaccinated (since the elderly have higher vax rates). For the ~700 I'm using the ~.1% x ~850K total infections.
        Imnimo 5y ago
        This is not a good way to go about making a comparison. First, hospitalized patients are a very different demographic than the population at large - you can't just hand-wave that away by saying that vaccination probably balances that out. A week ago, around 50% of infections were among vaccinated people, although this number has dropped significantly in the past week as the outbreak has reached communities with lower vaccination rates (ultra-orthodox, arab, etc.) Second, you can't extrapolate reinfection rates studied pre-delta to today. We have seen in other places that delta presents a greater reinfection risk. In the UK, 1.2% of delta infections are among people who had previously recovered. That number is not directly comparable to Israel's 0.1%, because it's measuring a different thing, but it does not suggest a 99.9% protection given the UK's total number of cases (about a tenth of their population over the course of the entire pandemic). I'm not saying that being previously infected doesn't offer strong protection. It clearly does. But you seem insistent on vastly overestimating the protection it offers while simultaneously underestimating the protection offered by vaccines. I think they're a lot closer than you're making them out to be.

breck 5y ago

This is false. Data out of Israel now is that vaccine is ~40% effective (https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-is-less-effective-against-delta-infections-but-still-prevents-serious-illness-israel-study-shows-11627059395 https://www.wsj.com/articles/pfizer-covid-19-vaccine-is-less...), while recovery is 99.9% effective (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.06.21253051v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.06.21253051v...).

Imnimo 5y ago
These are not comparable quantities. The 99.9% is simply not an effectiveness rate, it's simply a raw calculation of how many recovered people were not reinfected over a time period. To convert that to an effectiveness rate, you would have to compare it to infection rate among unvaccinated & previously-uninfected people. This is what's being done in the 40% calculation. Trying to compare these numbers is flat-out misinformation.
- breck 5y ago
  The ballparks are indeed comparable, though I agree that I could have used numbers of a closer type. A good back of the envelope guess is that if you've recovered from COVID odds are ~99.9% you won't get it again (for at least a year according to the data, more according to what we know about the immune system). If you haven't had it but gotten the vaccine, odds are [infectionRate]*.6[andRising] that you will get it. Or to put it another way, more vaccinated people in Israel tested positive for COVID just yesterday than all of the reinfections combined (~2K versus ~700). I still think the vaccine is a good bet if you are over ~20 and haven't had COVID, but from the data I see natural immunity is going to be the main thing that gets us out of this pandemic, with vaccine the secondary factor.
  - Imnimo 5y ago
    >Or to put it another way, more vaccinated people in Israel tested positive for COVID just yesterday than all of the reinfections combined (~2K versus ~700). Israel reported about 2K total positives yesterday. Are you trying to tell me that they were all vaccinated?
    - breck 5y ago
      I thought it was 2.6K, not 2K. In which cause I'd adjust my numbers to ~1.5K vaccinated tested positive yesterday. I left myself plenty of margin of safety for the conclusion however. That's based on ~70% of hospitalized cases are vaccinated (https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general). I don't read Hebrew and can't tell if they are reporting immunization status of cases as well as hospitalizations and I'm missing that, which is why I'm estimating. You'd expect the % of hospitalized patients to be less vaccinated (assuming vaccines lower serious cases), but also more vaccinated (since the elderly have higher vax rates). For the ~700 I'm using the ~.1% x ~850K total infections.
      - Imnimo 5y ago
        This is not a good way to go about making a comparison. First, hospitalized patients are a very different demographic than the population at large - you can't just hand-wave that away by saying that vaccination probably balances that out. A week ago, around 50% of infections were among vaccinated people, although this number has dropped significantly in the past week as the outbreak has reached communities with lower vaccination rates (ultra-orthodox, arab, etc.) Second, you can't extrapolate reinfection rates studied pre-delta to today. We have seen in other places that delta presents a greater reinfection risk. In the UK, 1.2% of delta infections are among people who had previously recovered. That number is not directly comparable to Israel's 0.1%, because it's measuring a different thing, but it does not suggest a 99.9% protection given the UK's total number of cases (about a tenth of their population over the course of the entire pandemic). I'm not saying that being previously infected doesn't offer strong protection. It clearly does. But you seem insistent on vastly overestimating the protection it offers while simultaneously underestimating the protection offered by vaccines. I think they're a lot closer than you're making them out to be.