14 ms·

This has always been my fear. I'm vaccinated (Moderna) and got COVID in September. I recovered quickly - about 3 days. But I'm worried that my body did not get

This has always been my fear. I'm vaccinated (Moderna) and got COVID in September. I recovered quickly - about 3 days. But I'm worried that my body did not get to have a proper immune response and that as such, I'll have to continue get vaccinated forever whereas if I had just gotten COVID without the vaccine maybe I would be set. But I haven't found _much_ data to back up this concern.

ethbr0 5y ago
That's the usual way it goes, as long as relatively high mortality virus is circulating in most of the world population. Both infection- and vaccination-produced immunity decays over time. So everyone's choice is between keeping up their vaccination, or getting COVID repeatedly. Which boils down to a question of whether you think being vaccinated or getting COVID is less risky. Yes, there's some +/- on the decay rate, but in a relative weighting between risk (COVID without immune system primed) and needing more frequent boosters, why pick the COVID option and roll the dice on death or permanent organ damage? Personal choice, I stay vaccinated, at least until (fingers crossed) the circulating strains of COVID evolve to be less dangerous.
- hcurtiss 5y ago
  “Relatively high mortality”? Can you think of any virus even close to COVID mortality that we take these kinds of draconian measures to prevent?
  - creato 5y ago
    Can you think of any virus that caused hospitals around the world to be overwhelmed with patients, compromising their ability to treat normal ailments?
    - nostrebored 5y ago
      Hospitals are frequently overwhelmed and operate at capacity limits basically constantly in large parts of the world
  - smus 5y ago
    Yeah let's play this game! Let me count all the viruses that killed close to a million Americans in the last 2 years! 1. COVID
    - hcurtiss 5y ago
      Transmissivity /= mortality rate
      - smus 5y ago
        Why are we talking about the mortality rate and not the overall mortality of the virus? Seems that the metric that matters is how many people it kills. Especially since we are actively fighting the virus harder than most in the past few years.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - bink 5y ago
    I'm sure you know this but there hasn't been a pandemic virus as virulent and deadly as COVID-19 in modern times. For some perspective, Chicken Pox killed roughly 100 Americans every year and that vaccine was mandated in effectively all schools and universities across the country.
    - hcurtiss 5y ago
      The chicken pox vaccine was invented in Japan in the 1970s, was approved for kids in the US in 1995, and required in schools sometime in the early 2000's, depending on the state -- nearly 30 years after its invention. This is very unlike the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    > Can you think of any virus even close to COVID mortality that we take these kinds of draconian measures to prevent? SARS-CoV-1 (2002), MERS (2012+) "Of the 7 coronaviruses, the former four can cause common cold symptoms, but SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV can lead to severe respiratory syndromes, with about 6.76%, 9.6%, and 35.5% mortality rates, respectively." [0] We just dodged a bullet because they were regionally-contained and/or had lower transmissibility. But if you were in Asia before and after 2002, you noticed. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334925/ Edit: And if we want to go to the more-lethal, less-transmissible end of the spectrum (so roughly equivalent in terms of public health risk), the regularly recurring Ebola outbreaks in Africa. Most recently the 2013-2016 campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks
    - hcurtiss 5y ago
      That paper was a meta-study from July of last year based on papers even older, and it's loaded with problems. This paper in the Lancet [1] and this paper in BMJ on Delta [2] both have mortality at significantly lower. World-o-meter has the mortality rate in New York at 0.28%. [3] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00393-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... (Among RT-PCR-confirmed cases tested by Oct 1, 2020, 342 (2·4%; 95% CI 2·2–2·6) of 14 237 died within 30 days of their positive test. Mortality was 0·4% (95% CI 0·3–0·6) at ages 0–39 years, 2·0% (1·7–2·3) at ages 40–64 years, 7·5% (6·4–8·7) at ages 65–79 years, and 15·4% (11·6–19·6) in those aged 80 years or older (figure 4)) [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 (The absolute risk of death in this group of community identified participants, however, remains relatively low, increasing from 2.5 to 4.1 deaths per 1000 cases.) [3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-...
      - ethbr0 5y ago
        You're confusing case fatality rate (detected infection denominator) with infection fatality rate (total population denominator). The study I cited was (broadly) CFR. That Lancet study is (broadly) IFR. If you proactively surveillance test 13.5% of Madurai's population, you're going to get a different class of people in your denominator, and your calculated mortality is going to decrease. The BMJ study is probably the most broadly compatible, which leaves us at 2.5% (non-Delta) or 4.1% (Delta), which appears to be case fatality rate? If we want to argue apples:apples, we should use EMR-based studies that attempt to calculate IFR, as at least they're reasoning with the same population composition. This [0] has SARS-CoV-2 at somewhere between 0.26% and 0.83% IFR. Which for context, is compared to respiratory flu at 0.0088% (estimated total population EMR due to flu) [1]. So we'd expect about 29.5x as many people to die from SARS-CoV-2 (using the high end estimate of flu and the low end estimate of SARS-CoV-2, to generate the lowest possible multiple). If you want to, you can probably dig European numbers out of this excess mortality calculation [2], although that's all-cause mortality, with no attempt to isolate cause. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543961/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5935243/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5935243/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7346364/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7346364/
foo_barrio 5y ago
It could have also been much worse though no? If those 3 days turned into 5 in a hospital with another long tail of lung issues would it still be worth it just not to get jabbed again?
- toyg 5y ago
  Or rather if those 3 days turned into death. I'd rather take boosters every year than risk a horrible death.
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    No matter how small the risk?
    - toyg 5y ago
      At "peak times", it isn't that small - even in my ridiculously small social circle, in Italy, there was one death and a couple of very severe cases. And peak times are determined largely by the pressure on health services, which is determined by vaccination rates (since vaccines remove the need for hospitalization). So it's a vicious circle: if you don't vaccinate, you increase the mortality risk to very significant levels.
lordlimecat 5y ago
By the time you're experiencing symptoms, the infection has been present for some time. Most of the symptoms you experience are from the immune response mounted, but do not represent the time your immune system was exposed to the virus.
peter422 5y ago
There is little evidence right now that immunity through a natural infection is better than immunity from a vaccine. Given the strains circulating now I don’t think your concern is valid. Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid. Maybe that will change with a future strain (though I’d bet against it), but it isn’t the case now.
- landemva 5y ago
  What does 'better' mean to you? I am in relatively lower risk group, and in good health. I got it and recovered on my own. I got blood test and have Dr. letter to prove it. It appears I now have sterilizing immunity, which is not available with the present vaccines. I suggest sterilizing immunity is better for everyone around me.
  - nly 5y ago
    Bullshit of course. You can get COVID multiple distinct times, with or without a vaccine
- arcbyte 5y ago
  > Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid. Agreed. However, many people are not in that position. For those who have been infected but not vaccinated, they have experienced immune systems and must evaluate information from that starting point.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
    Except all available safety and efficacy data shows that those who have been infected but not vaccinated should get vaccinated.
- AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
  > There is little evidence right now that immunity through a natural infection is better than immunity from a vaccine. This is a very strong claim to make without any evidence or proof. To the contrary, there is strong evidence that natural infection brings considerably better immunity than any vaccination does. [0] Study analyzed: > 2.5 million people in Israel, spanning March 1st 2020 to August 14th 2021. Full study can be read in detail: [1] [0] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/312538 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/312538 [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
johnvaluk 5y ago
I got vaccinated because I didn't want to die from COVID. I'm okay with getting an annual booster, as I am with getting an annual flu vaccine. The risks of not getting vaccinated were too high for me to accept. I'm still interested in how resistance to the disease emerges in the unvaccinated population. It will help to inform our response to the next pandemic.
jessriedel 5y ago
Isn't the reason a vaccinated person's immune system might not specialize to wild covid as much during infection as an unvaccinated person's that the disease in the former is shorter lived? Like, the way the never-vaccinated person would get slightly lower risk in the future is by taking a much larger risk now. You're still way better off with the vaccine.
- monopoledance 5y ago
  Also selecting for survivors. In the group of vaccinated survivors there will be more folks who would have died from infection without the vaccine, because of insufficient immune response. People who survived an infection without prior vaccination are more likely to have a good immune response to the disease.
mitchdoogle 5y ago
We get flu vaccine every year, what's wrong with getting vaccinated forever?
- jaspax 5y ago
  Who's "we"? I don't intend any hostility here. But I have never gotten a flu vaccine in my life, and it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of mild illness. A quick poll of my acquaintances reveals that almost no one in my social circle gets flu shots, either. This makes me wonder whether the antagonism to mandatory COVID boosters is just an intensification of an existing divide between people who already get yearly jabs and people who don't, a divide which was mostly unobserved until now because it wasn't politically relevant. (Minor grammatical edits.)
  - dahart 5y ago
    > it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of a mild illness. Is it silly to get a shot in order to cut down on the chance of someone else having a mild illness turn severe or fatal?
  - tallanvor 5y ago
    "We" are people intelligent to recognize that vaccination against diseases like the flu is a good idea even if we're healthy and unlikely to have significant complications. "We" know that the shot will make it less likely for us to get sick, and that we're more likely to have a mild case if we do get it after being vaccinated. "We" also recognize that getting vaccinated helps reduce the number of people who spread a virus that can be deadly to other members of society, particularly the very young, very old, and those with compromised immune systems. Getting vaccinated not only helps yourself, it helps those around you.
    - jaywalk 5y ago
      "You are not intelligent because you make different personal medical decisions than I do."
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
ohyes 5y ago
You had the vaccine so you recovered quickly, if you didn’t have the vaccine you might not have recovered and needed hospitalization. I mean, the alternative where you don’t get the vaccine includes much higher risk of lung damage, nervous system damage and total organ failure. I think even if there was data to back this up (that somehow vaccine gives less protection than a real infection…), getting a booster every year or 6 months is well worth it given what happens with an unvaccinated covid infection. People do seem to get reinfected and die after already having it once. I don’t think that your model of how vaccines work really makes sense. I mean, the point is to prime your immune system with antibodies to something similar but relatively harmless so you can fight off the disease immediately rather than waiting for it to get a strong foothold… in a way that is safe. Saying it is less effective than getting sick is like totaling your car to avoid regular maintenance.
- hcurtiss 5y ago
  Except for many cohorts, the overwhelming — near certain — odds are that they’d be fine after contracting COVID.
  - arisAlexis 5y ago
    Why draw a deadly roulette ticket?
    - artificialLimbs 5y ago
      Because this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/feds-pay-zero-claims-for-covid-19-vaccine-injuriesdeaths/?sh=1450c36a4a87 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/fed... despite this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&feature=youtu.be Oops, you can't watch that. Senators holding an expert panel is "dangerous misinformation". Here you go: https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-federal-vaccine-mandates.html https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-feder...
      - 5y ago
r00fus 5y ago
> whereas if I had just gotten COVID without the vaccine maybe I would be set You might be "set" with long COVID, sure [1]. It's like wishing to be mugged so you can learn to fight the muggers next time you get mugged instead of practicing mugging defense with say, a martial arts teacher. The act of being mugged could injure you for life or kill you. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monumental-acknowledgment-cdc-reports-long-term-covid-19-patients-n1234814 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monumental-acknow...
- newsbinator 5y ago
  … well a good martial arts teacher would tell you to either run away if possible or give the mugger your wallet, no?
wbsss4412 5y ago
What do you think a “proper” immune response entails exactly? Keep in mind that reinfection was always still possible after getting Covid, regardless of vaccination status.
hcknwscommenter 5y ago
Long-lasting original antigenic sin (e.g., an immune system trapped for years (or forever) in a sub-optimal state by a vaccination event) is a very unlikely scenario. I don't think we have ever seen something like that for any other virus? So, it's no surprise you haven't found much data. I would also suggest you critically examine whatever data you have found that supposedly backs up this concern of yours.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Long-lasting original antigenic sin is well documented at least for dengue. "Original antigenic sin has the advantage that a response can be rapidly mobilized from memory. However, the downside is that in some cases, such as dengue, the response is dominated by inferior-quality antibody. In influenza, original antigenic sin has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of vaccination (13, 34, 51). In dengue, the effect of original antigenic sin has considerable bearing on vaccine strategies. Once a response has been established, it is unlikely that repeat boosting will be able to change its scope, meaning that balanced responses against the four virus serotypes will need to be established with the first vaccine dose." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014204 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014204
  - hcknwscommenter 5y ago
    your link only reports on primary and secondary dengue. There is no analysis of how long of a gap there was between primary and secondary, and whether that length of time matters. I don't see any evidence whatsoever in that link of a "long-lasting" original antigenic sin.
    - angelzen 5y ago
      From the paper I originally linked: "Infection with one serotype likely elicits lifelong immunity to that serotype, but generally not against the other three." Dengue researchers routinely talk about lifelong original antigenic sin effects in dengue. You seem to want to split hairs and ask instead "but which papers specifically established the duration of the original antigenic sin in dengue". I can't help you with that beyond linking to the seminal Halstead 1983 paper. From there on you are on your own. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6824120/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6824120/
IgorPartola 5y ago
There are other studies suggesting that infection + two doses of Pfizer could be effective whereas just two doses aren’t.
bsder 5y ago
Would you have preferred to have a 103F fever for 2 weeks, your stamina be shot for almost a year, and a bunch of auxiliary symptoms? Speaking as someone who got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines, I'd gladly trade our positions. And my case would be considered "mild"--I never lost my sense of smell, for example.

ethbr0 5y ago

That's the usual way it goes, as long as relatively high mortality virus is circulating in most of the world population. Both infection- and vaccination-produced immunity decays over time. So everyone's choice is between keeping up their vaccination, or getting COVID repeatedly. Which boils down to a question of whether you think being vaccinated or getting COVID is less risky. Yes, there's some +/- on the decay rate, but in a relative weighting between risk (COVID without immune system primed) and needing more frequent boosters, why pick the COVID option and roll the dice on death or permanent organ damage? Personal choice, I stay vaccinated, at least until (fingers crossed) the circulating strains of COVID evolve to be less dangerous.

hcurtiss 5y ago
“Relatively high mortality”? Can you think of any virus even close to COVID mortality that we take these kinds of draconian measures to prevent?
- creato 5y ago
  Can you think of any virus that caused hospitals around the world to be overwhelmed with patients, compromising their ability to treat normal ailments?
  - nostrebored 5y ago
    Hospitals are frequently overwhelmed and operate at capacity limits basically constantly in large parts of the world
- smus 5y ago
  Yeah let's play this game! Let me count all the viruses that killed close to a million Americans in the last 2 years! 1. COVID
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    Transmissivity /= mortality rate
    - smus 5y ago
      Why are we talking about the mortality rate and not the overall mortality of the virus? Seems that the metric that matters is how many people it kills. Especially since we are actively fighting the virus harder than most in the past few years.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- bink 5y ago
  I'm sure you know this but there hasn't been a pandemic virus as virulent and deadly as COVID-19 in modern times. For some perspective, Chicken Pox killed roughly 100 Americans every year and that vaccine was mandated in effectively all schools and universities across the country.
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    The chicken pox vaccine was invented in Japan in the 1970s, was approved for kids in the US in 1995, and required in schools sometime in the early 2000's, depending on the state -- nearly 30 years after its invention. This is very unlike the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  > Can you think of any virus even close to COVID mortality that we take these kinds of draconian measures to prevent? SARS-CoV-1 (2002), MERS (2012+) "Of the 7 coronaviruses, the former four can cause common cold symptoms, but SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV can lead to severe respiratory syndromes, with about 6.76%, 9.6%, and 35.5% mortality rates, respectively." [0] We just dodged a bullet because they were regionally-contained and/or had lower transmissibility. But if you were in Asia before and after 2002, you noticed. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334925/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334925/ Edit: And if we want to go to the more-lethal, less-transmissible end of the spectrum (so roughly equivalent in terms of public health risk), the regularly recurring Ebola outbreaks in Africa. Most recently the 2013-2016 campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ebola_outbreaks
  - hcurtiss 5y ago
    That paper was a meta-study from July of last year based on papers even older, and it's loaded with problems. This paper in the Lancet [1] and this paper in BMJ on Delta [2] both have mortality at significantly lower. World-o-meter has the mortality rate in New York at 0.28%. [3] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(21)00393-5/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3... (Among RT-PCR-confirmed cases tested by Oct 1, 2020, 342 (2·4%; 95% CI 2·2–2·6) of 14 237 died within 30 days of their positive test. Mortality was 0·4% (95% CI 0·3–0·6) at ages 0–39 years, 2·0% (1·7–2·3) at ages 40–64 years, 7·5% (6·4–8·7) at ages 65–79 years, and 15·4% (11·6–19·6) in those aged 80 years or older (figure 4)) [2] https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n579 (The absolute risk of death in this group of community identified participants, however, remains relatively low, increasing from 2.5 to 4.1 deaths per 1000 cases.) [3] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-...
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      You're confusing case fatality rate (detected infection denominator) with infection fatality rate (total population denominator). The study I cited was (broadly) CFR. That Lancet study is (broadly) IFR. If you proactively surveillance test 13.5% of Madurai's population, you're going to get a different class of people in your denominator, and your calculated mortality is going to decrease. The BMJ study is probably the most broadly compatible, which leaves us at 2.5% (non-Delta) or 4.1% (Delta), which appears to be case fatality rate? If we want to argue apples:apples, we should use EMR-based studies that attempt to calculate IFR, as at least they're reasoning with the same population composition. This [0] has SARS-CoV-2 at somewhere between 0.26% and 0.83% IFR. Which for context, is compared to respiratory flu at 0.0088% (estimated total population EMR due to flu) [1]. So we'd expect about 29.5x as many people to die from SARS-CoV-2 (using the high end estimate of flu and the low end estimate of SARS-CoV-2, to generate the lowest possible multiple). If you want to, you can probably dig European numbers out of this excess mortality calculation [2], although that's all-cause mortality, with no attempt to isolate cause. [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7543961/ [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5935243/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5935243/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7346364/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7346364/

foo_barrio 5y ago

It could have also been much worse though no? If those 3 days turned into 5 in a hospital with another long tail of lung issues would it still be worth it just not to get jabbed again?

toyg 5y ago
Or rather if those 3 days turned into death. I'd rather take boosters every year than risk a horrible death.
- hcurtiss 5y ago
  No matter how small the risk?
  - toyg 5y ago
    At "peak times", it isn't that small - even in my ridiculously small social circle, in Italy, there was one death and a couple of very severe cases. And peak times are determined largely by the pressure on health services, which is determined by vaccination rates (since vaccines remove the need for hospitalization). So it's a vicious circle: if you don't vaccinate, you increase the mortality risk to very significant levels.

lordlimecat 5y ago

By the time you're experiencing symptoms, the infection has been present for some time. Most of the symptoms you experience are from the immune response mounted, but do not represent the time your immune system was exposed to the virus.

peter422 5y ago

There is little evidence right now that immunity through a natural infection is better than immunity from a vaccine. Given the strains circulating now I don’t think your concern is valid. Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid. Maybe that will change with a future strain (though I’d bet against it), but it isn’t the case now.

landemva 5y ago
What does 'better' mean to you? I am in relatively lower risk group, and in good health. I got it and recovered on my own. I got blood test and have Dr. letter to prove it. It appears I now have sterilizing immunity, which is not available with the present vaccines. I suggest sterilizing immunity is better for everyone around me.
- nly 5y ago
  Bullshit of course. You can get COVID multiple distinct times, with or without a vaccine
arcbyte 5y ago
> Vaccines are better and less risky than having your naive immune system deal with covid. Agreed. However, many people are not in that position. For those who have been infected but not vaccinated, they have experienced immune systems and must evaluate information from that starting point.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  Except all available safety and efficacy data shows that those who have been infected but not vaccinated should get vaccinated.
AndrewUnmuted 5y ago
> There is little evidence right now that immunity through a natural infection is better than immunity from a vaccine. This is a very strong claim to make without any evidence or proof. To the contrary, there is strong evidence that natural infection brings considerably better immunity than any vaccination does. [0] Study analyzed: > 2.5 million people in Israel, spanning March 1st 2020 to August 14th 2021. Full study can be read in detail: [1] [0] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/312538 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/312538 [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

johnvaluk 5y ago

I got vaccinated because I didn't want to die from COVID. I'm okay with getting an annual booster, as I am with getting an annual flu vaccine. The risks of not getting vaccinated were too high for me to accept. I'm still interested in how resistance to the disease emerges in the unvaccinated population. It will help to inform our response to the next pandemic.

jessriedel 5y ago

Isn't the reason a vaccinated person's immune system might not specialize to wild covid as much during infection as an unvaccinated person's that the disease in the former is shorter lived? Like, the way the never-vaccinated person would get slightly lower risk in the future is by taking a much larger risk now. You're still way better off with the vaccine.

monopoledance 5y ago
Also selecting for survivors. In the group of vaccinated survivors there will be more folks who would have died from infection without the vaccine, because of insufficient immune response. People who survived an infection without prior vaccination are more likely to have a good immune response to the disease.

mitchdoogle 5y ago

We get flu vaccine every year, what's wrong with getting vaccinated forever?

jaspax 5y ago
Who's "we"? I don't intend any hostility here. But I have never gotten a flu vaccine in my life, and it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of mild illness. A quick poll of my acquaintances reveals that almost no one in my social circle gets flu shots, either. This makes me wonder whether the antagonism to mandatory COVID boosters is just an intensification of an existing divide between people who already get yearly jabs and people who don't, a divide which was mostly unobserved until now because it wasn't politically relevant. (Minor grammatical edits.)
- dahart 5y ago
  > it seems deeply silly to me to get a yearly shot just to cut down on the chance of a mild illness. Is it silly to get a shot in order to cut down on the chance of someone else having a mild illness turn severe or fatal?
- tallanvor 5y ago
  "We" are people intelligent to recognize that vaccination against diseases like the flu is a good idea even if we're healthy and unlikely to have significant complications. "We" know that the shot will make it less likely for us to get sick, and that we're more likely to have a mild case if we do get it after being vaccinated. "We" also recognize that getting vaccinated helps reduce the number of people who spread a virus that can be deadly to other members of society, particularly the very young, very old, and those with compromised immune systems. Getting vaccinated not only helps yourself, it helps those around you.
  - jaywalk 5y ago
    "You are not intelligent because you make different personal medical decisions than I do."

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

ohyes 5y ago

You had the vaccine so you recovered quickly, if you didn’t have the vaccine you might not have recovered and needed hospitalization. I mean, the alternative where you don’t get the vaccine includes much higher risk of lung damage, nervous system damage and total organ failure. I think even if there was data to back this up (that somehow vaccine gives less protection than a real infection…), getting a booster every year or 6 months is well worth it given what happens with an unvaccinated covid infection. People do seem to get reinfected and die after already having it once. I don’t think that your model of how vaccines work really makes sense. I mean, the point is to prime your immune system with antibodies to something similar but relatively harmless so you can fight off the disease immediately rather than waiting for it to get a strong foothold… in a way that is safe. Saying it is less effective than getting sick is like totaling your car to avoid regular maintenance.

hcurtiss 5y ago
Except for many cohorts, the overwhelming — near certain — odds are that they’d be fine after contracting COVID.
- arisAlexis 5y ago
  Why draw a deadly roulette ticket?
  - artificialLimbs 5y ago
    Because this: https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/feds-pay-zero-claims-for-covid-19-vaccine-injuriesdeaths/?sh=1450c36a4a87 https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/11/04/fed... despite this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lepqvdXoA2E&feature=youtu.be Oops, you can't watch that. Senators holding an expert panel is "dangerous misinformation". Here you go: https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-federal-vaccine-mandates.html https://rumble.com/vokrf7-sen.-johnson-expert-panel-on-feder...
    - 5y ago

r00fus 5y ago

> whereas if I had just gotten COVID without the vaccine maybe I would be set You might be "set" with long COVID, sure [1]. It's like wishing to be mugged so you can learn to fight the muggers next time you get mugged instead of practicing mugging defense with say, a martial arts teacher. The act of being mugged could injure you for life or kill you. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monumental-acknowledgment-cdc-reports-long-term-covid-19-patients-n1234814 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/monumental-acknow...

newsbinator 5y ago
… well a good martial arts teacher would tell you to either run away if possible or give the mugger your wallet, no?

wbsss4412 5y ago

What do you think a “proper” immune response entails exactly? Keep in mind that reinfection was always still possible after getting Covid, regardless of vaccination status.

hcknwscommenter 5y ago

Long-lasting original antigenic sin (e.g., an immune system trapped for years (or forever) in a sub-optimal state by a vaccination event) is a very unlikely scenario. I don't think we have ever seen something like that for any other virus? So, it's no surprise you haven't found much data. I would also suggest you critically examine whatever data you have found that supposedly backs up this concern of yours.

angelzen 5y ago
Long-lasting original antigenic sin is well documented at least for dengue. "Original antigenic sin has the advantage that a response can be rapidly mobilized from memory. However, the downside is that in some cases, such as dengue, the response is dominated by inferior-quality antibody. In influenza, original antigenic sin has been shown to reduce the effectiveness of vaccination (13, 34, 51). In dengue, the effect of original antigenic sin has considerable bearing on vaccine strategies. Once a response has been established, it is unlikely that repeat boosting will be able to change its scope, meaning that balanced responses against the four virus serotypes will need to be established with the first vaccine dose." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014204 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3014204
- hcknwscommenter 5y ago
  your link only reports on primary and secondary dengue. There is no analysis of how long of a gap there was between primary and secondary, and whether that length of time matters. I don't see any evidence whatsoever in that link of a "long-lasting" original antigenic sin.
  - angelzen 5y ago
    From the paper I originally linked: "Infection with one serotype likely elicits lifelong immunity to that serotype, but generally not against the other three." Dengue researchers routinely talk about lifelong original antigenic sin effects in dengue. You seem to want to split hairs and ask instead "but which papers specifically established the duration of the original antigenic sin in dengue". I can't help you with that beyond linking to the seminal Halstead 1983 paper. From there on you are on your own. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6824120/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6824120/

IgorPartola 5y ago

There are other studies suggesting that infection + two doses of Pfizer could be effective whereas just two doses aren’t.

bsder 5y ago

Would you have preferred to have a 103F fever for 2 weeks, your stamina be shot for almost a year, and a bunch of auxiliary symptoms? Speaking as someone who got Covid Original Flavour(tm) before vaccines, I'd gladly trade our positions. And my case would be considered "mild"--I never lost my sense of smell, for example.