5 ms·

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 bewa

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?
      - colordrops 5y ago
        Get vaccinated. This isn't a political two-sided issue.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        Given that there's significant overlap between COVID symptoms and those of other common winter diseases, you really can't "confirm based on symptoms". (My son had a bout of severe pneumonia around the same time. We wondered, too. Not COVID, it turns out.) Therein lies a significant problem with "I don't need the vaccine, I have natural immunity!"
      - yryan 5y ago
        https://www.t-detect.com/ https://www.t-detect.com/
      - evilpotatoes 5y ago
        T-detect can apparently read your t-cells, so it would be good for a while I would say.
  - foolinaround 5y ago
    Cheapest way is to donate blood/plasma via the Red Cross. You do the society a favor, and the app they provide lets you know if you continue to have covid19 antibodies.
    - manwe150 5y ago
      So that nobody gets angry, be aware that they've stopped doing this test quite recently. Still good to do: I’ve now done it several times this year, and my first time was selfishly motivated in part by the free antibody test. You could even be doing yourself or a friend a favor, you never know!
  - viraptor 5y ago
    > A record of positive infection. The tests used in most places have significant false positives/negatives on a population level. You may think you were infected when you weren't. With vaccination you know whether you were vaccinated.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      Except you don't, because lots of people are faking vaccination status. In fact it's probably less reliable than a positive PCR test. It's extremely common to fake vaccination cards among the anti-vaxx community.
      - nieve 5y ago
        _You_ know whether you've been vaccinated even if you're lying to others about it. Are you presuming now that antivaxxers are convincing themselves they've been vaccinated? I guess it's vaguely plausible.
        colordrops 5y ago
        No I'm suggesting that there shouldn't be a mandate for those who can reliably prove they have had covid.
  - lostcolony 5y ago
    You're in LA County, so you should be aware of https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/ https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/ That's just as trustworthy. Probably more since what it asserts is less variable than how long you maintain antibodies.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      No, you can't prove a negative. People can fake vaccine status from other locations. You can't fake a PCR test result in a public DB.
      - lostcolony 5y ago
        ...what are you even talking about with "you can't prove a negative?" The link I provided "is an electronic vaccination record drawn from the data stored in the California immunization registry." It doesn't accept user submissions; it only accepts data from recognized health organizations. The website allows you to put in your name and birthdate and get a QR code that can be scanned and will take you back to the website, showing dates you were vaccinated. It requires someone confirming that the QR code is directing them to the correct website, and confirm name and birthdate, but that's far more available to actually check than a PCR test. Meaning no need to rely on easily faked vaccination cards; you instead ask for a QR code, scan it, and confirm it took you to the government site, with a name and birthdate that matches some government issued picture ID. Still 'beatable', if you have good fake ID for a person who has been vaccinated, but just as good in 'security' as relying on a PCR test (since it's still ultimately pulling from a publicly readable, only privately writeable DB), and probably a better assertion than "PCR test", since it can work for everyone, and tells you the date of vaccination (whereas date of antibodies being detected doesn't tell you anything about whether they still have natural immunity now).
        colordrops 5y ago
        What I mean is that unless you only accept vaccination status if it's in a public database, any one can fake being vaccinated. Many if not most jurisdictions do not record it, and a piece of paper is all you need. And you can't force people to get it again if it's not on record, because the vaccines aren't approved for arbitrary numbers of shots. The anti-vaxx community is rife with fake covid vaccine cards. So, you can't prove a negative, that being that someone has not been vaccinated. But you can prove that you had covid.
- amluto 5y ago
  In principle, one could get a rapid antibody test and, if negative, get a vaccine a few minutes later. For vaccines for which the vaccine has few side effects, this is, AFAICT, not usually considered worthwhile — providers seem to prefer giving an extra MMR dose to people with unknown vaccination status for example. For COVID, at least with current vaccines, maybe it would make sense. (ISTM, based on available data, people who have had COVID ought not to be required to get two doses, but one might be reasonable from a public health perspective.)
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.

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?
    - colordrops 5y ago
      Get vaccinated. This isn't a political two-sided issue.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Given that there's significant overlap between COVID symptoms and those of other common winter diseases, you really can't "confirm based on symptoms". (My son had a bout of severe pneumonia around the same time. We wondered, too. Not COVID, it turns out.) Therein lies a significant problem with "I don't need the vaccine, I have natural immunity!"
    - yryan 5y ago
      https://www.t-detect.com/ https://www.t-detect.com/
    - evilpotatoes 5y ago
      T-detect can apparently read your t-cells, so it would be good for a while I would say.
- foolinaround 5y ago
  Cheapest way is to donate blood/plasma via the Red Cross. You do the society a favor, and the app they provide lets you know if you continue to have covid19 antibodies.
  - manwe150 5y ago
    So that nobody gets angry, be aware that they've stopped doing this test quite recently. Still good to do: I’ve now done it several times this year, and my first time was selfishly motivated in part by the free antibody test. You could even be doing yourself or a friend a favor, you never know!
- viraptor 5y ago
  > A record of positive infection. The tests used in most places have significant false positives/negatives on a population level. You may think you were infected when you weren't. With vaccination you know whether you were vaccinated.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Except you don't, because lots of people are faking vaccination status. In fact it's probably less reliable than a positive PCR test. It's extremely common to fake vaccination cards among the anti-vaxx community.
    - nieve 5y ago
      _You_ know whether you've been vaccinated even if you're lying to others about it. Are you presuming now that antivaxxers are convincing themselves they've been vaccinated? I guess it's vaguely plausible.
      - colordrops 5y ago
        No I'm suggesting that there shouldn't be a mandate for those who can reliably prove they have had covid.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  You're in LA County, so you should be aware of https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/ https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/ That's just as trustworthy. Probably more since what it asserts is less variable than how long you maintain antibodies.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    No, you can't prove a negative. People can fake vaccine status from other locations. You can't fake a PCR test result in a public DB.
    - lostcolony 5y ago
      ...what are you even talking about with "you can't prove a negative?" The link I provided "is an electronic vaccination record drawn from the data stored in the California immunization registry." It doesn't accept user submissions; it only accepts data from recognized health organizations. The website allows you to put in your name and birthdate and get a QR code that can be scanned and will take you back to the website, showing dates you were vaccinated. It requires someone confirming that the QR code is directing them to the correct website, and confirm name and birthdate, but that's far more available to actually check than a PCR test. Meaning no need to rely on easily faked vaccination cards; you instead ask for a QR code, scan it, and confirm it took you to the government site, with a name and birthdate that matches some government issued picture ID. Still 'beatable', if you have good fake ID for a person who has been vaccinated, but just as good in 'security' as relying on a PCR test (since it's still ultimately pulling from a publicly readable, only privately writeable DB), and probably a better assertion than "PCR test", since it can work for everyone, and tells you the date of vaccination (whereas date of antibodies being detected doesn't tell you anything about whether they still have natural immunity now).
      - colordrops 5y ago
        What I mean is that unless you only accept vaccination status if it's in a public database, any one can fake being vaccinated. Many if not most jurisdictions do not record it, and a piece of paper is all you need. And you can't force people to get it again if it's not on record, because the vaccines aren't approved for arbitrary numbers of shots. The anti-vaxx community is rife with fake covid vaccine cards. So, you can't prove a negative, that being that someone has not been vaccinated. But you can prove that you had covid.
amluto 5y ago
In principle, one could get a rapid antibody test and, if negative, get a vaccine a few minutes later. For vaccines for which the vaccine has few side effects, this is, AFAICT, not usually considered worthwhile — providers seem to prefer giving an extra MMR dose to people with unknown vaccination status for example. For COVID, at least with current vaccines, maybe it would make sense. (ISTM, based on available data, people who have had COVID ought not to be required to get two doses, but one might be reasonable from a public health perspective.)

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.