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>> Do the people who are refusing a vaccine because they were already infected have a good point now? Yes. But this has been speculated about for several month

>> Do the people who are refusing a vaccine because they were already infected have a good point now? Yes. But this has been speculated about for several months now. I'm not an anti-vaxxer but was holding out. On the verge of getting the vaccine I caught covid. I currently see no point in getting the vaccine. With indications that the real deal is more effective at providing future immunity (simple logic suggests that too) I think someone needs to prove some benefit to me getting the vaccine. This is not my fight, I do find it annoying that people forget about us previously infected folks and act like there are 2 categories - vaxxed or not.

maxerickson 5y ago
The J&J and mRNA vaccines (reliably) induce antibodies to the pre-fusion spike protein, so you may have a wider range of antibodies with vaccination than without. (It's the only target they present to the immune system is why I put reliably; there's no saying infection doesn't induce similar antibodies)
- mrtesthah 5y ago
  There have been studies suggesting vaccination indeed provides better immunity to mutations. e.g, Vaccine-induced immunity provides more robust heterotypic immunity than natural infection to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-226857/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-226857/v1
kbenson 5y ago
I'm not sure I care where people get their antibodies from as long as they're effective, but since you're here, mind my asking what the aversion is to the vaccine now? Is it a convenience factor, or not wanting to deal with being sick, or something else? The risks seem fairly well established at this point, from what I've been able to see. Even if there's no proven benefit, there's plenty of things in life we almost all do because of possible benefit, so this just seems like another one of those case. We buy insurance in case we might need it. We wear seat belts even though the crash might be such that they provide no benefit. What's the point that tips you over the edge of not wanting the vaccine in this case? My understanding is that for a short inconvenience (in both time and physical well being) and zero cost you get something that might prove extremely beneficial later.
- hunterb123 5y ago
  It's not zero cost, there is some risk. Maybe someone could do the math but the chances of catching covid again with natural immunity should be lower than the chance of a side effect from the vaccine. More so, the effects of covid with immunity are much more diminished. The side effects of the vaccine range from very mild to very severe (death). https://openvaers.com/covid-data https://openvaers.com/covid-data I don't see a good reason for a person with natural immunity to get the vaccine if there is no benefit and some, even if slight, risk. "Because everyone else is doing it" is not a good reason for people to do it because the more you scale the more side effects you get, the more absolute deaths and critical conditions.
  - mandmandam 5y ago
    I have absolutely no idea why you're being downvoted, other than group-think. It's weird. And it's everywhere.
    - ajkdhcb2 5y ago
      There is no doubt that society is in a state of hysteria. This reaches through the scientific process too, so there is reason to question everything
      - ipaddr 5y ago
        At the heart of science you are taught to question everything. It is a more honest state.
    - cromwellian 5y ago
      Because the serious proven cases of side effects from the vaccine are astronomically low compared to infection by actual COVID, and vaccines don't result in spread to other people, but natural infections do. It's just that simple.
      - beerandt 5y ago
jdnier 5y ago
> I'm not an anti-vaxxer but was holding out. No judgement, just genuinely curious, but what was your reason for holding out?
- busymom0 5y ago
  Not OP but I am in a similar situation where I am holding out too. I am in the 20-29 age group in Canada, healthy, no co-morbidities, I have been regularly exercising for over a decade, eat healthy, don't smoke/drink/drugs etc. Also I believe I have already caught COVID earlier last year (though I wasn't tested so this could be wrong). There's been a total of 67 deaths in my age group for entire Canada in entire 20 months of the disease. Even the hospitalization in the entire 20 months for my age group has been 3,144 which isn't much in my eyes. And vast majority of these occurred in people who had pre-existing conditions. And as it has now been widely reported, vaccinated can not only catch covid, they have the same (and sometimes higher) viral load as unvaccinated and can infect others. And the vaccine is waning off in 3-6 months. So I don't see how me getting vaccinated is "for the common good". Canada is also 2-3 months behind Israel in terms of COVID trends (case peaks). So what's happening in Israel right now will happen in 2-3 months from Canada. So I don't see how I can benefit from it and am willing to take chances. What we should be doing is saving the vaccines for the elders for booster shots and working on improved vaccines for the new variants. There's a huge population in the world which can't even get their first dose of vaccine while here we are giving out 3rd doses.
  - mr_toad 5y ago
    > And as it has now been widely reported, vaccinated can not only catch covid, they have the same viral load as unvaccinated and can infect others. Widely reported and wildly inaccurate. They studied patients with ‘breakthrough’ infections, i.e. where the vaccine didn’t work. And guess what they found? The vaccine didn’t work!!
  - kaitai 5y ago
    Please don't hang out in public & around vulnerable people (kids, elderly) or those who live with them. There's only one way to be responsibly unvaccinated, and that's very cautiously. (This whole "vaccinated people have higher viral loads of Delta in their mouths" thing makes me doubt your understanding of the science, as well.)
omegaworks 5y ago
>With indications that the real deal is more effective at providing future immunity (simple logic suggests that too) Simple logic does not suggest that at all. When you're infected, your immune system crushes up and snorts various pieces of the virus to try to understand how to recognize it. The antibodies it makes "naturally" are only effective for the bits on the virus' surface that it can see. It also does so in a moderated way so it doesn't accidentally kill healthy cells. If it happened to snort up a bit on the inside of the virus, it won't help as much as if it snorted up a surface bit. The RNA vaccine specifically encodes for a highly visible, relatively well-preserved segment of virus (the spike protein), and it comes with an adjuvant that makes your immune system ever so slightly overreact at the site of injection. Your immune system will then go on to "naturally" create antibodies via the same crush and snort process, but they'll tend to be specifically tailored to recognizing the surface spike. So no, it's not simple logic at all. A simpleton's logic maybe, but not simple.
- trhway 5y ago
  the way you describe it sounds like the natural way is more resistant to mutations. And the low efficacy of the current vaccines against delta dovetails well to it. >they'll tend to be specifically tailored to recognizing the surface spike the situation is worse than that. Most of the current covid vaccines are targeting only a segment of the spike protein, and all those segments are largely overlap, ie. union of those segments of different vaccines isn't much bigger than their intersection, so just a couple of mutations (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250780 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...) is enough for the virus to escape almost all of those vaccines.
guhcampos 5y ago
> I'm not an anti-vaxxer but was holding out Yes, you are. I could copy and paste excerpts from your other comments, but that's not my point. Vaccines are not an individual protection tool. They are not a helmet you put on to save yourself from injury while ignoring others. Vaccines are a community level tool to mutually protect everyone, regardless of individual risk. One could even argue that in a pandemic they are a civilization level tool. The benefit of vaccination is not, and is not supposed to be, aimed at your individual interest. It ensures a certain level of immunity for the whole community while being disproportionately safer than just letting people get sick. Vaccine side effects fall largely into the mild two-day inconvenience of some physical discomfort, while leaving it to each individual to acquire natural resistance strains even the most sophisticated health systems in the world. You could argue that once you already got covid you - individually - do not need the vaccine, but there's no rational justification for you not to get it, especially when is offered for free by pretty much any government in the planet. You are putting your own individual convenience above the health of the whole human civilization. So yeah, you are an antivaxxer.
- throwa668898 5y ago
  The choice is not black-and-white as you insist. Yes public policy pronouncements ("get vaccinated") must be simple and unequivocal, but my personal, informed, personal-biology choices do not need to be so. Further, governments and big pharma have made huge mistakes or have perpetrated ulterior motives ask through their history. Recent science is no more immune to politicking and groupthink than the hamfisted past. I'll rationally take my natural immunity as sufficient and not alter my biology further and superfluously with an experimental, non-recourse drug. Side-effect databases severely systematically underreport mild chronic harm, such as, who knows, a couple points of IQ decline or vascular damage in certain internal organs. No thanks. I'll avoid the untestable hypothesis that the my harm is worth the societal good.
- babesh 5y ago
  You are a name caller. There are downsides to getting the vaccine. I know people who were down and out with side effects to the vaccine for a week. If this is accurate, then people who had covid are 18x protected vs those vaccinated. Maybe we should introduce a covid card and only let those with them into restaurants. After all, it is likely that the combination of the reopening and breakthrough caused the spike.
darwingr 5y ago
You're probably better off if what's being said about anti-body monoculture from vaccine acquired immunity is true. You'd have higher probability of resistance to variants given the greater diversity of anti-bodies leftover from naturally acquired immunity.
- walterbell 5y ago
  From a recent BBC article on immunity, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58270098 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58270098 > There is a whole different suite of antibodies (known as immunoglobulin As) in the nose and lungs, compared with those (immunoglobulin Gs) that we measure in the blood. The former is more important as a barrier to infection. Natural infection, because it is in the nose rather than a jab in the arm, may be a better route to those antibodies, and nasal vaccines are being investigated too. Intramuscular (arm injection) vs intranasal (inhaled) vaccines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28165287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28165287 Nasal vaccine trials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28284504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28284504
tigboatnc 5y ago
A friend who got corona in the first wave went to donate plasma to a critical patient, this was 4 months after his infection. His plasma tests indicated that his antibodies had severely reduced and doctors suggested that he take the vaccine as he was not immune anymore (or wouldn't be in a few months). This is one of the many plasma donor cases I've read about, specially in India. I don't really trust word of mouth cases but this one was a real life friend. Maybe try getting some bloodwork done and confirming this with an immunologist. Stay safe nonetheless. edit- this post has made me realize how many people on hn are holding out on th vaccines. Kinda unexpected and sad.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  You don't need antibodies to be immune. The body also develops T-cells which are much longer lasting.

maxerickson 5y ago

The J&J and mRNA vaccines (reliably) induce antibodies to the pre-fusion spike protein, so you may have a wider range of antibodies with vaccination than without. (It's the only target they present to the immune system is why I put reliably; there's no saying infection doesn't induce similar antibodies)

mrtesthah 5y ago
There have been studies suggesting vaccination indeed provides better immunity to mutations. e.g, Vaccine-induced immunity provides more robust heterotypic immunity than natural infection to emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-226857/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-226857/v1

kbenson 5y ago

I'm not sure I care where people get their antibodies from as long as they're effective, but since you're here, mind my asking what the aversion is to the vaccine now? Is it a convenience factor, or not wanting to deal with being sick, or something else? The risks seem fairly well established at this point, from what I've been able to see. Even if there's no proven benefit, there's plenty of things in life we almost all do because of possible benefit, so this just seems like another one of those case. We buy insurance in case we might need it. We wear seat belts even though the crash might be such that they provide no benefit. What's the point that tips you over the edge of not wanting the vaccine in this case? My understanding is that for a short inconvenience (in both time and physical well being) and zero cost you get something that might prove extremely beneficial later.

hunterb123 5y ago
It's not zero cost, there is some risk. Maybe someone could do the math but the chances of catching covid again with natural immunity should be lower than the chance of a side effect from the vaccine. More so, the effects of covid with immunity are much more diminished. The side effects of the vaccine range from very mild to very severe (death). https://openvaers.com/covid-data https://openvaers.com/covid-data I don't see a good reason for a person with natural immunity to get the vaccine if there is no benefit and some, even if slight, risk. "Because everyone else is doing it" is not a good reason for people to do it because the more you scale the more side effects you get, the more absolute deaths and critical conditions.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  I have absolutely no idea why you're being downvoted, other than group-think. It's weird. And it's everywhere.
  - ajkdhcb2 5y ago
    There is no doubt that society is in a state of hysteria. This reaches through the scientific process too, so there is reason to question everything
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      At the heart of science you are taught to question everything. It is a more honest state.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    Because the serious proven cases of side effects from the vaccine are astronomically low compared to infection by actual COVID, and vaccines don't result in spread to other people, but natural infections do. It's just that simple.
    - beerandt 5y ago

jdnier 5y ago

> I'm not an anti-vaxxer but was holding out. No judgement, just genuinely curious, but what was your reason for holding out?

busymom0 5y ago
Not OP but I am in a similar situation where I am holding out too. I am in the 20-29 age group in Canada, healthy, no co-morbidities, I have been regularly exercising for over a decade, eat healthy, don't smoke/drink/drugs etc. Also I believe I have already caught COVID earlier last year (though I wasn't tested so this could be wrong). There's been a total of 67 deaths in my age group for entire Canada in entire 20 months of the disease. Even the hospitalization in the entire 20 months for my age group has been 3,144 which isn't much in my eyes. And vast majority of these occurred in people who had pre-existing conditions. And as it has now been widely reported, vaccinated can not only catch covid, they have the same (and sometimes higher) viral load as unvaccinated and can infect others. And the vaccine is waning off in 3-6 months. So I don't see how me getting vaccinated is "for the common good". Canada is also 2-3 months behind Israel in terms of COVID trends (case peaks). So what's happening in Israel right now will happen in 2-3 months from Canada. So I don't see how I can benefit from it and am willing to take chances. What we should be doing is saving the vaccines for the elders for booster shots and working on improved vaccines for the new variants. There's a huge population in the world which can't even get their first dose of vaccine while here we are giving out 3rd doses.
- mr_toad 5y ago
  > And as it has now been widely reported, vaccinated can not only catch covid, they have the same viral load as unvaccinated and can infect others. Widely reported and wildly inaccurate. They studied patients with ‘breakthrough’ infections, i.e. where the vaccine didn’t work. And guess what they found? The vaccine didn’t work!!
- kaitai 5y ago
  Please don't hang out in public & around vulnerable people (kids, elderly) or those who live with them. There's only one way to be responsibly unvaccinated, and that's very cautiously. (This whole "vaccinated people have higher viral loads of Delta in their mouths" thing makes me doubt your understanding of the science, as well.)

omegaworks 5y ago

>With indications that the real deal is more effective at providing future immunity (simple logic suggests that too) Simple logic does not suggest that at all. When you're infected, your immune system crushes up and snorts various pieces of the virus to try to understand how to recognize it. The antibodies it makes "naturally" are only effective for the bits on the virus' surface that it can see. It also does so in a moderated way so it doesn't accidentally kill healthy cells. If it happened to snort up a bit on the inside of the virus, it won't help as much as if it snorted up a surface bit. The RNA vaccine specifically encodes for a highly visible, relatively well-preserved segment of virus (the spike protein), and it comes with an adjuvant that makes your immune system ever so slightly overreact at the site of injection. Your immune system will then go on to "naturally" create antibodies via the same crush and snort process, but they'll tend to be specifically tailored to recognizing the surface spike. So no, it's not simple logic at all. A simpleton's logic maybe, but not simple.

trhway 5y ago
the way you describe it sounds like the natural way is more resistant to mutations. And the low efficacy of the current vaccines against delta dovetails well to it. >they'll tend to be specifically tailored to recognizing the surface spike the situation is worse than that. Most of the current covid vaccines are targeting only a segment of the spike protein, and all those segments are largely overlap, ie. union of those segments of different vaccines isn't much bigger than their intersection, so just a couple of mutations (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0250780 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...) is enough for the virus to escape almost all of those vaccines.

guhcampos 5y ago

> I'm not an anti-vaxxer but was holding out Yes, you are. I could copy and paste excerpts from your other comments, but that's not my point. Vaccines are not an individual protection tool. They are not a helmet you put on to save yourself from injury while ignoring others. Vaccines are a community level tool to mutually protect everyone, regardless of individual risk. One could even argue that in a pandemic they are a civilization level tool. The benefit of vaccination is not, and is not supposed to be, aimed at your individual interest. It ensures a certain level of immunity for the whole community while being disproportionately safer than just letting people get sick. Vaccine side effects fall largely into the mild two-day inconvenience of some physical discomfort, while leaving it to each individual to acquire natural resistance strains even the most sophisticated health systems in the world. You could argue that once you already got covid you - individually - do not need the vaccine, but there's no rational justification for you not to get it, especially when is offered for free by pretty much any government in the planet. You are putting your own individual convenience above the health of the whole human civilization. So yeah, you are an antivaxxer.

throwa668898 5y ago
The choice is not black-and-white as you insist. Yes public policy pronouncements ("get vaccinated") must be simple and unequivocal, but my personal, informed, personal-biology choices do not need to be so. Further, governments and big pharma have made huge mistakes or have perpetrated ulterior motives ask through their history. Recent science is no more immune to politicking and groupthink than the hamfisted past. I'll rationally take my natural immunity as sufficient and not alter my biology further and superfluously with an experimental, non-recourse drug. Side-effect databases severely systematically underreport mild chronic harm, such as, who knows, a couple points of IQ decline or vascular damage in certain internal organs. No thanks. I'll avoid the untestable hypothesis that the my harm is worth the societal good.
babesh 5y ago
You are a name caller. There are downsides to getting the vaccine. I know people who were down and out with side effects to the vaccine for a week. If this is accurate, then people who had covid are 18x protected vs those vaccinated. Maybe we should introduce a covid card and only let those with them into restaurants. After all, it is likely that the combination of the reopening and breakthrough caused the spike.

darwingr 5y ago

You're probably better off if what's being said about anti-body monoculture from vaccine acquired immunity is true. You'd have higher probability of resistance to variants given the greater diversity of anti-bodies leftover from naturally acquired immunity.

walterbell 5y ago
From a recent BBC article on immunity, https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58270098 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58270098 > There is a whole different suite of antibodies (known as immunoglobulin As) in the nose and lungs, compared with those (immunoglobulin Gs) that we measure in the blood. The former is more important as a barrier to infection. Natural infection, because it is in the nose rather than a jab in the arm, may be a better route to those antibodies, and nasal vaccines are being investigated too. Intramuscular (arm injection) vs intranasal (inhaled) vaccines: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28165287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28165287 Nasal vaccine trials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28284504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28284504

tigboatnc 5y ago

A friend who got corona in the first wave went to donate plasma to a critical patient, this was 4 months after his infection. His plasma tests indicated that his antibodies had severely reduced and doctors suggested that he take the vaccine as he was not immune anymore (or wouldn't be in a few months). This is one of the many plasma donor cases I've read about, specially in India. I don't really trust word of mouth cases but this one was a real life friend. Maybe try getting some bloodwork done and confirming this with an immunologist. Stay safe nonetheless. edit- this post has made me realize how many people on hn are holding out on th vaccines. Kinda unexpected and sad.

akvadrako 5y ago
You don't need antibodies to be immune. The body also develops T-cells which are much longer lasting.