4 ms·

Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies

11 points by mrfusion 5y ago

toss1 5y ago
>>Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies to Share with Employers, Health Officials, and Politicians Right, more bogus anti-vax arguments. Yes, getting infected does provide immunity. NO, getting infected is not better than vaccinated immunity, which is less variable, and more reliable. NO getting infected alone is especially not better than infection+vaccination, which apparently provides the most robust immunity. I don't have the bandwidth or time to accumulate a full list, but [1] is a good start, and then follow up with the studies in the references. I still find it astonishing the amount of effort being put in to evade a safe, effective, convenient, and free preventative step, and even seeking this kind of noise on here. Oh well, let the downvoting frenzy begin. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7032e1-H.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7032e1-H.pdf
- peteradio 5y ago
  [1] is actually pretty poorly conducted, have you read the limitations as noted by the authors? Any other states able to reproduce this outlier result?
- atatatat 5y ago
  > which is less variable, and more reliable. I am reading the opposite, in studies on Delta variant, or those whose last shot was more than 6 months prior....some studies suggesting decreases below natural.
  - toss1 5y ago
    perhaps, which vax program, which set? In any case, it's irrelevant - the article is arguing that previously infected ppl should not have to get the vax, and I've seen nothing indicating anything other than infection+vax is equal or greater than either option, and the infection immunity is highly variable in both strength and duration/decay. This matches the obviously wildly uncontrolled and highly variable factors in infection, including initial exposure load, viral strain, infected viral load, infection response & duration, etc. , vs a controlled standard dose of a highly tested vaccine. Frankly, as an employer, if anyone brought this to me trying to 'educate' me as to policy, they'd be doing themselves a disservice. The last thing any employer is going to want to do is setup some kind of parallel program to exempt previously infected people, checking another set of tests (how do we know you've been infected, was it with a strain that gives immunity to the current wild types?, how does that affect current immune response 8 months on?, etc.etc.etc.,). are you volunteering to run this program in YOUR spare time, and put yourself at personal legal risk? I thought not. Moreover it mostly shows that you want to spend a lot of effort to make some kind of performative 'I don't trust the authorities' virtue signaling, while avoiding a safe, effective, convenient, and FREE public health measure whilst being happy to freeload off both the herd immunity created by the smarter people and freeload off of the full healthcare system that will still treat you when your method fails - and at vastly greater expense than a couple of $20 shots. If you're that interested in freeloading off of everyone else, why won't you be freeloading off of this company too?
m0llusk 5y ago
> the subject of natural immunity (also called post-infection immunity) has been neglected This is false. The effectiveness of infection and vaccine based immunity has been a hot subject much studied from the start. > Once the vaccination became widely available, what began with near silence at the beginning turned nearly into a complete blackout of the topic. This claim of being silenced is not science, but a rhetorical and political tactic. The idea is that by claiming to have been silenced the argument gets outsider rebel status. This particular claim is both false and manipulative. > natural immunity for a SARS-type virus is robust, long-lasting, and broadly effective even in the case of mutations, generally more so than vaccines Again this is a mischaracterization, and oddly enough the listed citations appear to argue otherwise. Most interesting and relevant is citation #22 which notes that infection based immunity lasts longer and has greater breadth, but boosters do markedly increase specific titers. This addresses the difference which is not on a linear scale. Vaccines result in extremely high titers for a prolonged period of at least 6 months and even longer. Infection based immunity according to citation #26 tends to go away after 1.5 to 2 years. The added breadth of defense from infection appears to have been some help against Delta, but vaccination was also significantly helpful against Delta and there is reason to believe that we are not going to see many more variants like Delta in the near future. The increased titers from vaccination are in particular recommended for immunocompromised people like the elderly and cancer patients. Altogether this piece makes false claims about scientific investigations and discussions and then presents evidence that doesn't actually support their apparent attempt to argument that infection based immunity is superior and cannot or should not be boosted with vaccines.
- peteradio 5y ago
  I don't disagree with any of your statements. Yes the scientists have been busy with their thorough study and we see more each month. But broadly the politicians (does this suppress funding?) are rejecting any form of natural immunity in US and Canada. Why? An abundance of caution should cut both ways. Anyway I wouldn't try to interpret this outside of the context of railing against mandates. Yes its true there are people who should get vaccines/boosters, are these guys arguing otherwise? That's a totally different argument from whether its ethical or even in our general interest to vaccinate those who wish not to be. Those who wish not to be tend to be those who are least at risk, young and healthy.
Arnt 5y ago
"For that matter, people who prefer an exposure risk to the virus in order to gain robust immunity deserve the freedom to make that choice." I think that would be fine, if that were everything. But filling the hospitals to capacity so that vaccinated people can't get a bed when they've suffered an accident is something else.
- mrfusion 5y ago
  Couldn’t you make that same argument any poor health choice such as obesity?
  - Arnt 5y ago
    Yes, you could, but most things are in the noise (where I live at least, don't know about the world generally). You may die 20 years earlier without adding a lot of extra working hours for the hospital that treats your final illness, see? Smoking was the only one that made a significant difference, the rest had too small effects to care (when I looked at it, at the time of the great smoking ban debate here, n years ago). Corona is different. It's able to swamp the hospitals, and even the intensive care units, where patients need a lot of expensive working hours in addition to a bed and some floor space.
    - mrfusion 5y ago
      It’s not as different as you’d think. We had a bad flu season in 2018 that strained a lot of hospitals. https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ Limited hospital resources are just a fact of life until we commit to expanding them.
      - Arnt 5y ago
        The flu is hardly a "poor health choice", as you put it, and the well-run countries I know well spend a lot of resources on flu vaccination, so what is the conclusion of what you say?

11 points by mrfusion 5y ago

>>Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Twenty-Nine Scientific Studies to Share with Employers, Health Officials, and Politicians Right, more bogus anti-vax arguments. Yes, getting infected does provide immunity. NO, getting infected is not better than vaccinated immunity, which is less variable, and more reliable. NO getting infected alone is especially not better than infection+vaccination, which apparently provides the most robust immunity. I don't have the bandwidth or time to accumulate a full list, but [1] is a good start, and then follow up with the studies in the references. I still find it astonishing the amount of effort being put in to evade a safe, effective, convenient, and free preventative step, and even seeking this kind of noise on here. Oh well, let the downvoting frenzy begin. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7032e1-H.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7032e1-H.pdf

peteradio 5y ago
[1] is actually pretty poorly conducted, have you read the limitations as noted by the authors? Any other states able to reproduce this outlier result?
atatatat 5y ago
> which is less variable, and more reliable. I am reading the opposite, in studies on Delta variant, or those whose last shot was more than 6 months prior....some studies suggesting decreases below natural.
- toss1 5y ago
  perhaps, which vax program, which set? In any case, it's irrelevant - the article is arguing that previously infected ppl should not have to get the vax, and I've seen nothing indicating anything other than infection+vax is equal or greater than either option, and the infection immunity is highly variable in both strength and duration/decay. This matches the obviously wildly uncontrolled and highly variable factors in infection, including initial exposure load, viral strain, infected viral load, infection response & duration, etc. , vs a controlled standard dose of a highly tested vaccine. Frankly, as an employer, if anyone brought this to me trying to 'educate' me as to policy, they'd be doing themselves a disservice. The last thing any employer is going to want to do is setup some kind of parallel program to exempt previously infected people, checking another set of tests (how do we know you've been infected, was it with a strain that gives immunity to the current wild types?, how does that affect current immune response 8 months on?, etc.etc.etc.,). are you volunteering to run this program in YOUR spare time, and put yourself at personal legal risk? I thought not. Moreover it mostly shows that you want to spend a lot of effort to make some kind of performative 'I don't trust the authorities' virtue signaling, while avoiding a safe, effective, convenient, and FREE public health measure whilst being happy to freeload off both the herd immunity created by the smarter people and freeload off of the full healthcare system that will still treat you when your method fails - and at vastly greater expense than a couple of $20 shots. If you're that interested in freeloading off of everyone else, why won't you be freeloading off of this company too?

m0llusk 5y ago

> the subject of natural immunity (also called post-infection immunity) has been neglected This is false. The effectiveness of infection and vaccine based immunity has been a hot subject much studied from the start. > Once the vaccination became widely available, what began with near silence at the beginning turned nearly into a complete blackout of the topic. This claim of being silenced is not science, but a rhetorical and political tactic. The idea is that by claiming to have been silenced the argument gets outsider rebel status. This particular claim is both false and manipulative. > natural immunity for a SARS-type virus is robust, long-lasting, and broadly effective even in the case of mutations, generally more so than vaccines Again this is a mischaracterization, and oddly enough the listed citations appear to argue otherwise. Most interesting and relevant is citation #22 which notes that infection based immunity lasts longer and has greater breadth, but boosters do markedly increase specific titers. This addresses the difference which is not on a linear scale. Vaccines result in extremely high titers for a prolonged period of at least 6 months and even longer. Infection based immunity according to citation #26 tends to go away after 1.5 to 2 years. The added breadth of defense from infection appears to have been some help against Delta, but vaccination was also significantly helpful against Delta and there is reason to believe that we are not going to see many more variants like Delta in the near future. The increased titers from vaccination are in particular recommended for immunocompromised people like the elderly and cancer patients. Altogether this piece makes false claims about scientific investigations and discussions and then presents evidence that doesn't actually support their apparent attempt to argument that infection based immunity is superior and cannot or should not be boosted with vaccines.

peteradio 5y ago
I don't disagree with any of your statements. Yes the scientists have been busy with their thorough study and we see more each month. But broadly the politicians (does this suppress funding?) are rejecting any form of natural immunity in US and Canada. Why? An abundance of caution should cut both ways. Anyway I wouldn't try to interpret this outside of the context of railing against mandates. Yes its true there are people who should get vaccines/boosters, are these guys arguing otherwise? That's a totally different argument from whether its ethical or even in our general interest to vaccinate those who wish not to be. Those who wish not to be tend to be those who are least at risk, young and healthy.

Arnt 5y ago

"For that matter, people who prefer an exposure risk to the virus in order to gain robust immunity deserve the freedom to make that choice." I think that would be fine, if that were everything. But filling the hospitals to capacity so that vaccinated people can't get a bed when they've suffered an accident is something else.

mrfusion 5y ago
Couldn’t you make that same argument any poor health choice such as obesity?
- Arnt 5y ago
  Yes, you could, but most things are in the noise (where I live at least, don't know about the world generally). You may die 20 years earlier without adding a lot of extra working hours for the hospital that treats your final illness, see? Smoking was the only one that made a significant difference, the rest had too small effects to care (when I looked at it, at the time of the great smoking ban debate here, n years ago). Corona is different. It's able to swamp the hospitals, and even the intensive care units, where patients need a lot of expensive working hours in addition to a bed and some floor space.
  - mrfusion 5y ago
    It’s not as different as you’d think. We had a bad flu season in 2018 that strained a lot of hospitals. https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/15/flu-hospital-pandemics/ Limited hospital resources are just a fact of life until we commit to expanding them.
    - Arnt 5y ago
      The flu is hardly a "poor health choice", as you put it, and the well-run countries I know well spend a lot of resources on flu vaccination, so what is the conclusion of what you say?