18 ms·

"The newly identified antibody was isolated using lymphocytes from COVID-19 patients." So currently, the only people who have this antibody are people who have

by calebm 5y ago

"The newly identified antibody was isolated using lymphocytes from COVID-19 patients." So currently, the only people who have this antibody are people who have had COVID, correct?

fastaguy88 5y ago
Once you have characterized an antibody that works, you can manufacture it.
- macksd 5y ago
  How would it be different from the monoclonal antibody treatments already available?
  - evilpotatoes 5y ago
    Better cross variant effectiveness, longer lived in blood.
- thedrbrian 5y ago
  Given that survivors have already manufactured a shed load of it can they have a vaccine pass?
  - colordrops 5y ago
    How do you make money off of them if you give them a pass? I haven't seen any science at all that indicates vaccines are better than natural immunity. But beware saying that outloud. Other countries acknowledge this and treat natural immunity similar to being vaccinated, but the US will not due to economic interests. I challenge anyone to show data otherwise before they reflexively down vote.
    - colechristensen 5y ago
      I really don’t think it’s economic interests, it’s politicizing and moralizing science by people who don’t know enough.
    - jliptzin 5y ago
      And how do you suppose we figure out who has natural immunity and thus doesn’t have to get vaccinated? Do we trust people to tell us (if they even know for sure that the fever/cough they had a year ago was covid)? That won’t work, I know people who have forged vaccine cards because a talk radio host told them the vaccine will make them sterile or whatever. Only sure fire way would be to first test for antibodies, which requires an additional appointment and test result, followed by the vaccine anyway, if it comes back negative. So that would likely be even more profitable for the drug/health companies.
      - colordrops 5y ago
        A record of positive infection. I'm in LA county and they keep a database. How do you make sure people aren't faking vaccination status, as you say? A positive PCR test on public record is in fact more trustworthy.
        jliptzin 5y ago
        That works in places that kept good records, but I have to imagine the vast majority of counties don't have those records. Plus I'm sure many people got infected and stayed home with mild/moderate cases and never got tested (because they knew they had it and/or didn't want to risk spreading to others), so there would be no record for them anyway. Or their cases were so early on in the pandemic that there were no tests available or the ones that were available were very unreliable (I remember the early ones only had ~50% accuracy)
        colordrops 5y ago
        Easy, don't excuse people who don't have a verifiable record or from a test with a known high false positive rate. What's so hard about that? Airlines have figured it out, limiting which tests you can use. Why can't public health officials?
        lborsato 5y ago
        My family had Covid in January 2020. All of the now known symptoms but there were no tests available yet. Our doctor later confirmed it based on symptoms a couple of months later but we were not eligible for tests then. A year and a half later we would certainly have B-cells but antibodies would likely have faded. So what do people in that situation do?
    - viraptor 5y ago
      > I haven't seen any science at all that indicates vaccines are better than natural immunity. That statement has multiple issues. What does "better" mean? Where did you look? How do you define immunity (risk, falloff time, etc.). There's a new paper every week comparing how the vaccination and infection responses are different. Generalising to one-dimensional "better" is not going to happen in serious publications. We're still at the level of (for example) "Therefore, antibody immunity acquired by natural infection or different modes of vaccination may have a differing susceptibility to erosion by SARS-CoV-2 evolution." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ There's certainly a lot of research around different responses and they're a single pubmed query away. "But beware saying that outloud" is just FUD.
      - colordrops 5y ago
        https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... The study you cite has some major issues. First, it's a proposed benefit based on a hypothetical mechanism, and not empirical data. Second, it does not indicate the likelihood of mutations that would be better treated by the vaccine. Third, it does not indicate how much more effective it would be, just that it's "possible". Please stick to the topic and facts rather than being sneeringly dismissive. I'm not part of some bloc of anti-vaxxers, and open to changing my mind based on new information. In fact I've had covid AND I'm vaccinated, so the intent of my post is to spark discussion and get more data. Dismissing my post as FUD is ad hominem.
        viraptor 5y ago
        The paper was selected at random, it's not really relevant here, so I haven't read it. The point was that it's an example of levels of comparisons we see studied. It can't be an ad hominem since I never said anything about you. Your post was FUD because you stated it very loosely and asked for hard data to refute it. You're quite likely right on infection providing better protection, but we neither have a hard confirmation of that (or you'd link it, right?) nor did you provide any support for "But beware saying that outloud." Not only there's ongoing research on differences (as we both provided), many people do say that outloud.
    - beefok 5y ago
      Personally I'd be worrying about the negative long-term effects of actually contracting COVID-19 [1] [2]. In any case, you're the one making a claim here: can you show the benefits of natural immunity? Can you show the risk vs reward of catching COVID-19, potentially spreading it to thousands, and getting natural immunity rather than just getting a vaccine? Bringing money into it just colors your argument poorly. It's not like getting the vaccine costs you any money personally. Vaccines seem to provide better immunity than previously being infected [3]. In fact, a lot of research shows that getting a vaccine after being infected actually improves your protection against reinfection [4]. Would you argue in good faith this way about any other vaccine? Measles? Mumps? Anthrax? Ebola? [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-long-haulers-long-term-effects-of-covid19 https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-protection.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr... [4] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211010/Research-finds-different-antibody-responses-following-COVID-vaccination-and-natural-infection.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211010/Research-finds-di...
      - thedrbrian 5y ago
        But for the people who've already had it why bother vaccinating them against their will? They've already run the gambit of heart problems and such, why make them run it again?
        lostcolony 5y ago
        "why make them run it again" - the vaccine doesn't have nearly the likelihood nor the severity of complications that COVID has. And it still reduces their likelihood of catching COVID again, and the likelihood of serious symptoms even if they did. And the protections last longer and more predictably than natural immunity does.
        artificialLimbs 5y ago
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      Natural immunity for those who produce antibodies (I think I saw around 30% don't) probably -is- better than the vaccine, in terms of efficacy in preventing COVID again. However, this is a false dichotomy. First, because the same studies that show this ALSO show that getting vaccinated on top of natural immunity is better still ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... ), second because natural immunity prior to the vaccine implies getting COVID and the extremely high risk of complications (from hospitalization, to long COVID symptoms, to death), and third, because there isn't any data around what happens if you get vaccinated first, then get COVID (i.e., is the combination of natural response + vaccine the same if the order is reversed). There is no situation where getting vaccinated does not help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, or suffering serious symptoms.
      - colordrops 5y ago
        > better still Not clear why this is an argument for vaccine mandates when natural immunity is already better than the vaccine alone, and puts individuals in the same or better place as the vaccine. > second because natural immunity prior to the vaccine implies getting COVID and the extremy high risk of complications What does this have to do with people who already had covid? > there isn't any data around what happens if you get vaccinated first, then get COVID Once again what does this have to do with people who already had covid? > There is no situation where getting vaccinated does not help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, or suffering serious symptoms. If you are already in a state where you are at least as protected as vaccinated people, how is this an argument for mandate for those with natural immunity? You won't be able to find any data comparing mandates for those who have had COVID vs no mandate having any real effect on the general population because those who have already had it are very well protected. You can have had the j&j vaccine and be way less protected than natural immunity, and be considered compliant. This is absolutely inconsistent.
        chillwaves 5y ago
        Except one can't reasonably opt in to "natural immunity". Pretty major distinction. It is absurd to suggest that someone deliberately getting covid is a safer way to get immunity.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      One completely unrelated reason is that if you start telling people that they don't need to get vaccinated if they had covid... suddenly everyone who has a cough thinks they don't need to get vaccinated. Then all the anti-vaxxers will just say they had covid... You saw a lot of this at the beginning of covid... lots of people saying "well I had a bad cough for a little while... maybe I already had it" You could maybe specify that people who have had covid need a positive test to skirt any vaccine mandates... but any sort added complexity at this scale is going to create a bunch of additional nonsense. People aren't even capable of understanding how to wear masks correctly. So just get the vaccine so we can all get on with our stupid lives. I get vaccines all the time, this one is free, and in the grand scheme of things if you're right... this is fairly minor when it comes to pharma grifts. Not getting vaccinated because you don't want to support the pharma industry is like driving your car on the sidewalk because you don't want to support the department of transportation. You're not making a point to anyone, and you're putting a bunch of strangers at risk to do it.
      - not2b 5y ago
        I regularly run into people who claim they had Covid back in fall 2019, and it's vastly more likely that they had the flu. And not getting vaccinated because you don't want to support the pharma industry misses that they get $20 per shot for the vaccine, but will get thousands per dose of the expensive meds you'll need if you wind up in the ICU.
        vitus 5y ago
        > they get $20 per shot for the vaccine Strengthening your argument further, the pharma industry already got $20 per shot for the vaccine. The government signed a contract for the shots, so if you're letting them go to waste, you're just wasting your tax dollars which went to pharma companies anyways.
        manwe150 5y ago
        Part of me wonders if anyone has run these numbers at big pharma. I would guess that at some point in July, unvaccinated people became the bigger cash cow, since not only did they have to discard that vaccine that Trump had already brought for them and been produced, we have perhaps gone past the point of having done that a second time with the dose that Biden bought and was produced for them. This comes as the percentage of doses in arms drops. And they are also much more likely to end up in the hospital and buying yet even more expensive experimental treatments such as this one. </rant> Sigh.
    - not2b 5y ago
      The issue is that natural immunity is highly variable, while vaccine derived immunity is much less so. Some recovered patients have antibody levels 1000x lower than others. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/antibody-testing-suggests-immune-response-post-covid-is-very-variable/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/antibody-testing-sug... https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-vaccination-why-everyone-should-get-a-covid-19-shot/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
      - nradov 5y ago
        There's more to immunity than antibodies.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        We will never know without an antibody testing. It can be under acceptable levels after having been vaccinated, too. We have done such studies before with regarding to the hepatitis B vaccine. Most nursing students had no immunity against it after having received two doses of the vaccine. I think antibody levels should be tied to the mandates. For what it is worth, I am against such mandates.
      - rc2634 5y ago
        The body doesn’t keep antibodies around months after an infection but it knows how to create the antibodies if reinfection does happen. So of course a freshly vaccinated person will have more antibodies than a person who was infected months ago but that doesn’t mean the vaccine is more effective.
  - david-gpu 5y ago
    That would create a perverse incentive to get infected to avoid the vaccine. The whole reason we want people to get vaccinated is to reduce the burden that infections cause on our health care system.
    - goostavos 5y ago
      Oh, no! Not a perverse incentive!!? To avoid that, we should definitely sweep basic immunology under the rug and lump all those who've caught and recovered from covid in with the other unvaccinated underclass. They should've thought twice about the ramifications of their actions before deciding catch and recover from covid. Thank god for these mandates. I can't image how society would function, if at all, if a perverse incentive were to exist. People would want to get sick. COVID parties. It'd be like the days before the vaccines when.. when... ... I forgot my point. Lock them all up.
      - m0zg 5y ago
        And there are, according to the CDC over 160 _million_ of such people in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... Under the "man dates" all 160M are considered "unvaccinated", even though "science" shows their immunity is longer lasting than that derived from the vaccine, and a lot of them are currently being thrown out of their jobs.
        abathur 5y ago
        Some people who lack a driver license know how to drive and are quite capable of driving safely. A few of those, I'm almost certain, drive better than most people with a license. When you need a ride home from the airport, do you want a licensed driver, or an unlicensed one?
        m0zg 5y ago
        It's a bad analogy. The current situation is akin to requiring that the _rider_ is a licensed driver or car will drive into a tree somehow.
  - tzs 5y ago
    That's not a given. How strong an immunity you develop from getting a disease varies widely depending on how your case plays out. Here's an article I just came across today on this [1]. It is originally from the NYT, but I saw it reprinted in the Seattle Times so that's where I'm linking (and I think their paywall is more lenient). https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/if-youve-already-had-covid-do-you-need-a-vaccine/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/if-youve-already-h...
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Arstechnica did a rather great writeup of this, no paywall - https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-vaccination-why-everyone-should-get-a-covid-19-shot https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
    - angelzen 5y ago
      > The researchers next looked at a different group of 47 people who had gone a year since a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of those 47, 26 were still unvaccinated and 21 had received one dose of a vaccine. At that point, the unvaccinated 26 had extremely low levels of neutralizing antibodies against any SARS-CoV-2 variants, particularly delta. Many people had no detectable levels of neutralizing antibody against delta. The vaccinated group, meanwhile, had high levels of neutralizing antibody similar to or above the levels seen in people who were fully vaccinated. This is entirely normal. The immune system doesn't keep elevated neutralizing antibody levels forever, that is too expensive. The immune system relies on B cells to kickstart neutralizing antibody production if the need arises. How those people would react to a further infection event would be extremely interesting. Do they produce antibodies? How fast? But the researchers didn't look into that. The linked article is overselling vaccine effectiveness and underplays natural immunity. This is borderline misinformation. https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/learn-immuno-oncology/the-immune-system/components-of-the-immune-system https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/learn-immuno-onco...
      - m0zg 5y ago
        Why "borderline"? It _is_ misinformation written specifically to advance a narrative.
        angelzen 5y ago
        To reduce the temperature on HN :) Technically the article is correct, alas it reads as a half-truth. Mark Twain had some words for half-truths, but those words won't advance a level-headed conversation.
        walterbell 5y ago

by calebm 5y ago

"The newly identified antibody was isolated using lymphocytes from COVID-19 patients." So currently, the only people who have this antibody are people who have had COVID, correct?

fastaguy88 5y ago

Once you have characterized an antibody that works, you can manufacture it.

macksd 5y ago
How would it be different from the monoclonal antibody treatments already available?
- evilpotatoes 5y ago
  Better cross variant effectiveness, longer lived in blood.
thedrbrian 5y ago
Given that survivors have already manufactured a shed load of it can they have a vaccine pass?
- colordrops 5y ago
  How do you make money off of them if you give them a pass? I haven't seen any science at all that indicates vaccines are better than natural immunity. But beware saying that outloud. Other countries acknowledge this and treat natural immunity similar to being vaccinated, but the US will not due to economic interests. I challenge anyone to show data otherwise before they reflexively down vote.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    I really don’t think it’s economic interests, it’s politicizing and moralizing science by people who don’t know enough.
  - jliptzin 5y ago
    And how do you suppose we figure out who has natural immunity and thus doesn’t have to get vaccinated? Do we trust people to tell us (if they even know for sure that the fever/cough they had a year ago was covid)? That won’t work, I know people who have forged vaccine cards because a talk radio host told them the vaccine will make them sterile or whatever. Only sure fire way would be to first test for antibodies, which requires an additional appointment and test result, followed by the vaccine anyway, if it comes back negative. So that would likely be even more profitable for the drug/health companies.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      A record of positive infection. I'm in LA county and they keep a database. How do you make sure people aren't faking vaccination status, as you say? A positive PCR test on public record is in fact more trustworthy.
      - jliptzin 5y ago
        That works in places that kept good records, but I have to imagine the vast majority of counties don't have those records. Plus I'm sure many people got infected and stayed home with mild/moderate cases and never got tested (because they knew they had it and/or didn't want to risk spreading to others), so there would be no record for them anyway. Or their cases were so early on in the pandemic that there were no tests available or the ones that were available were very unreliable (I remember the early ones only had ~50% accuracy)
        colordrops 5y ago
        Easy, don't excuse people who don't have a verifiable record or from a test with a known high false positive rate. What's so hard about that? Airlines have figured it out, limiting which tests you can use. Why can't public health officials?
        lborsato 5y ago
        My family had Covid in January 2020. All of the now known symptoms but there were no tests available yet. Our doctor later confirmed it based on symptoms a couple of months later but we were not eligible for tests then. A year and a half later we would certainly have B-cells but antibodies would likely have faded. So what do people in that situation do?
  - viraptor 5y ago
    > I haven't seen any science at all that indicates vaccines are better than natural immunity. That statement has multiple issues. What does "better" mean? Where did you look? How do you define immunity (risk, falloff time, etc.). There's a new paper every week comparing how the vaccination and infection responses are different. Generalising to one-dimensional "better" is not going to happen in serious publications. We're still at the level of (for example) "Therefore, antibody immunity acquired by natural infection or different modes of vaccination may have a differing susceptibility to erosion by SARS-CoV-2 evolution." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ There's certainly a lot of research around different responses and they're a single pubmed query away. "But beware saying that outloud" is just FUD.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... The study you cite has some major issues. First, it's a proposed benefit based on a hypothetical mechanism, and not empirical data. Second, it does not indicate the likelihood of mutations that would be better treated by the vaccine. Third, it does not indicate how much more effective it would be, just that it's "possible". Please stick to the topic and facts rather than being sneeringly dismissive. I'm not part of some bloc of anti-vaxxers, and open to changing my mind based on new information. In fact I've had covid AND I'm vaccinated, so the intent of my post is to spark discussion and get more data. Dismissing my post as FUD is ad hominem.
      - viraptor 5y ago
        The paper was selected at random, it's not really relevant here, so I haven't read it. The point was that it's an example of levels of comparisons we see studied. It can't be an ad hominem since I never said anything about you. Your post was FUD because you stated it very loosely and asked for hard data to refute it. You're quite likely right on infection providing better protection, but we neither have a hard confirmation of that (or you'd link it, right?) nor did you provide any support for "But beware saying that outloud." Not only there's ongoing research on differences (as we both provided), many people do say that outloud.
  - beefok 5y ago
    Personally I'd be worrying about the negative long-term effects of actually contracting COVID-19 [1] [2]. In any case, you're the one making a claim here: can you show the benefits of natural immunity? Can you show the risk vs reward of catching COVID-19, potentially spreading it to thousands, and getting natural immunity rather than just getting a vaccine? Bringing money into it just colors your argument poorly. It's not like getting the vaccine costs you any money personally. Vaccines seem to provide better immunity than previously being infected [3]. In fact, a lot of research shows that getting a vaccine after being infected actually improves your protection against reinfection [4]. Would you argue in good faith this way about any other vaccine? Measles? Mumps? Anthrax? Ebola? [1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/covid-long-haulers-long-term-effects-of-covid19 https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas... [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/... [3] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-protection.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr... [4] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211010/Research-finds-different-antibody-responses-following-COVID-vaccination-and-natural-infection.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211010/Research-finds-di...
    - thedrbrian 5y ago
      But for the people who've already had it why bother vaccinating them against their will? They've already run the gambit of heart problems and such, why make them run it again?
      - lostcolony 5y ago
        "why make them run it again" - the vaccine doesn't have nearly the likelihood nor the severity of complications that COVID has. And it still reduces their likelihood of catching COVID again, and the likelihood of serious symptoms even if they did. And the protections last longer and more predictably than natural immunity does.
        artificialLimbs 5y ago
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    Natural immunity for those who produce antibodies (I think I saw around 30% don't) probably -is- better than the vaccine, in terms of efficacy in preventing COVID again. However, this is a false dichotomy. First, because the same studies that show this ALSO show that getting vaccinated on top of natural immunity is better still ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... ), second because natural immunity prior to the vaccine implies getting COVID and the extremely high risk of complications (from hospitalization, to long COVID symptoms, to death), and third, because there isn't any data around what happens if you get vaccinated first, then get COVID (i.e., is the combination of natural response + vaccine the same if the order is reversed). There is no situation where getting vaccinated does not help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, or suffering serious symptoms.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      > better still Not clear why this is an argument for vaccine mandates when natural immunity is already better than the vaccine alone, and puts individuals in the same or better place as the vaccine. > second because natural immunity prior to the vaccine implies getting COVID and the extremy high risk of complications What does this have to do with people who already had covid? > there isn't any data around what happens if you get vaccinated first, then get COVID Once again what does this have to do with people who already had covid? > There is no situation where getting vaccinated does not help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, or suffering serious symptoms. If you are already in a state where you are at least as protected as vaccinated people, how is this an argument for mandate for those with natural immunity? You won't be able to find any data comparing mandates for those who have had COVID vs no mandate having any real effect on the general population because those who have already had it are very well protected. You can have had the j&j vaccine and be way less protected than natural immunity, and be considered compliant. This is absolutely inconsistent.
      - chillwaves 5y ago
        Except one can't reasonably opt in to "natural immunity". Pretty major distinction. It is absurd to suggest that someone deliberately getting covid is a safer way to get immunity.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    One completely unrelated reason is that if you start telling people that they don't need to get vaccinated if they had covid... suddenly everyone who has a cough thinks they don't need to get vaccinated. Then all the anti-vaxxers will just say they had covid... You saw a lot of this at the beginning of covid... lots of people saying "well I had a bad cough for a little while... maybe I already had it" You could maybe specify that people who have had covid need a positive test to skirt any vaccine mandates... but any sort added complexity at this scale is going to create a bunch of additional nonsense. People aren't even capable of understanding how to wear masks correctly. So just get the vaccine so we can all get on with our stupid lives. I get vaccines all the time, this one is free, and in the grand scheme of things if you're right... this is fairly minor when it comes to pharma grifts. Not getting vaccinated because you don't want to support the pharma industry is like driving your car on the sidewalk because you don't want to support the department of transportation. You're not making a point to anyone, and you're putting a bunch of strangers at risk to do it.
    - not2b 5y ago
      I regularly run into people who claim they had Covid back in fall 2019, and it's vastly more likely that they had the flu. And not getting vaccinated because you don't want to support the pharma industry misses that they get $20 per shot for the vaccine, but will get thousands per dose of the expensive meds you'll need if you wind up in the ICU.
      - vitus 5y ago
        > they get $20 per shot for the vaccine Strengthening your argument further, the pharma industry already got $20 per shot for the vaccine. The government signed a contract for the shots, so if you're letting them go to waste, you're just wasting your tax dollars which went to pharma companies anyways.
        manwe150 5y ago
        Part of me wonders if anyone has run these numbers at big pharma. I would guess that at some point in July, unvaccinated people became the bigger cash cow, since not only did they have to discard that vaccine that Trump had already brought for them and been produced, we have perhaps gone past the point of having done that a second time with the dose that Biden bought and was produced for them. This comes as the percentage of doses in arms drops. And they are also much more likely to end up in the hospital and buying yet even more expensive experimental treatments such as this one. </rant> Sigh.
  - not2b 5y ago
    The issue is that natural immunity is highly variable, while vaccine derived immunity is much less so. Some recovered patients have antibody levels 1000x lower than others. https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/antibody-testing-suggests-immune-response-post-covid-is-very-variable/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/antibody-testing-sug... https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-vaccination-why-everyone-should-get-a-covid-19-shot/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
    - nradov 5y ago
      There's more to immunity than antibodies.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      We will never know without an antibody testing. It can be under acceptable levels after having been vaccinated, too. We have done such studies before with regarding to the hepatitis B vaccine. Most nursing students had no immunity against it after having received two doses of the vaccine. I think antibody levels should be tied to the mandates. For what it is worth, I am against such mandates.
    - rc2634 5y ago
      The body doesn’t keep antibodies around months after an infection but it knows how to create the antibodies if reinfection does happen. So of course a freshly vaccinated person will have more antibodies than a person who was infected months ago but that doesn’t mean the vaccine is more effective.
- david-gpu 5y ago
  That would create a perverse incentive to get infected to avoid the vaccine. The whole reason we want people to get vaccinated is to reduce the burden that infections cause on our health care system.
  - goostavos 5y ago
    Oh, no! Not a perverse incentive!!? To avoid that, we should definitely sweep basic immunology under the rug and lump all those who've caught and recovered from covid in with the other unvaccinated underclass. They should've thought twice about the ramifications of their actions before deciding catch and recover from covid. Thank god for these mandates. I can't image how society would function, if at all, if a perverse incentive were to exist. People would want to get sick. COVID parties. It'd be like the days before the vaccines when.. when... ... I forgot my point. Lock them all up.
    - m0zg 5y ago
      And there are, according to the CDC over 160 _million_ of such people in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... Under the "man dates" all 160M are considered "unvaccinated", even though "science" shows their immunity is longer lasting than that derived from the vaccine, and a lot of them are currently being thrown out of their jobs.
      - abathur 5y ago
        Some people who lack a driver license know how to drive and are quite capable of driving safely. A few of those, I'm almost certain, drive better than most people with a license. When you need a ride home from the airport, do you want a licensed driver, or an unlicensed one?
        m0zg 5y ago
        It's a bad analogy. The current situation is akin to requiring that the _rider_ is a licensed driver or car will drive into a tree somehow.
- tzs 5y ago
  That's not a given. How strong an immunity you develop from getting a disease varies widely depending on how your case plays out. Here's an article I just came across today on this [1]. It is originally from the NYT, but I saw it reprinted in the Seattle Times so that's where I'm linking (and I think their paywall is more lenient). https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/if-youve-already-had-covid-do-you-need-a-vaccine/ https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/if-youve-already-h...
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Arstechnica did a rather great writeup of this, no paywall - https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-vaccination-why-everyone-should-get-a-covid-19-shot https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
  - angelzen 5y ago
    > The researchers next looked at a different group of 47 people who had gone a year since a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of those 47, 26 were still unvaccinated and 21 had received one dose of a vaccine. At that point, the unvaccinated 26 had extremely low levels of neutralizing antibodies against any SARS-CoV-2 variants, particularly delta. Many people had no detectable levels of neutralizing antibody against delta. The vaccinated group, meanwhile, had high levels of neutralizing antibody similar to or above the levels seen in people who were fully vaccinated. This is entirely normal. The immune system doesn't keep elevated neutralizing antibody levels forever, that is too expensive. The immune system relies on B cells to kickstart neutralizing antibody production if the need arises. How those people would react to a further infection event would be extremely interesting. Do they produce antibodies? How fast? But the researchers didn't look into that. The linked article is overselling vaccine effectiveness and underplays natural immunity. This is borderline misinformation. https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/learn-immuno-oncology/the-immune-system/components-of-the-immune-system https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/learn-immuno-onco...
    - m0zg 5y ago
      Why "borderline"? It _is_ misinformation written specifically to advance a narrative.
      - angelzen 5y ago
        To reduce the temperature on HN :) Technically the article is correct, alas it reads as a half-truth. Mark Twain had some words for half-truths, but those words won't advance a level-headed conversation.
      - walterbell 5y ago