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"Omicron is acting like a super booster," Unnasch said. "People who have gotten omicron are going to be really well protected against infection, not just diseas

• rllearneratwork 5y ago
  didn't you get a memo. "super booster" is a newspeak for "natural immunity" which is politically irresponsible now. /s
  • jdkjs 5y ago
    • efnx 5y ago
      Contracting the virus isn’t a safe way to gain immunity.
      • rllearneratwork 5y ago
        depends on the age group, co-morbidities, and virus variant. Isn't it?
      • throwaway09223 5y ago
        For healthy, already vaccinated people it's reasonably safe to contract omicron. I haven't gotten omicron (I don't think) but it's not at all something I would worry about at this point. Concern is still warranted for high risk groups. It's important to vaccinate to reduce symptoms. It is safe for most people to contract omicron.
        • Vivtek 5y ago
          So safe, in fact, that more people are dying in Puerto Rico this week, due to the omicron spike, than at any earlier point in the pandemic.
        • zamalek 5y ago
          Modern medicine weights the benefit of a treatment against its side effects. Chemotherapy, as one example, absolutely ravages a person but the alternative (ongoing cancer) is significantly worse: that is why chemotherapy is a recommended treatment for cancer. The current consensus is that we shouldn't be intentionally infecting ourselves with COVID as an inoculation. The side effects of this treatment aren't well understood and we have evidence that they can be pretty bad (long COVID). Remember that we are currently only counting deaths. You should continue to do everything in your power to avoid catching COVID... and vaccinate, obviously.
          • PathOfEclipse 5y ago
            The death counts aren't even accurate: https://www.dailywire.com/news/jordan-peterson-absolutely-no-excuse-cdc-director-cant-say-how-many-deaths-are-from-covid-versus-with-covid?itm_source=parsely-api https://www.dailywire.com/news/jordan-peterson-absolutely-no.... And the evidence that long COVID is generally bad is lacking as well. The virus has no doubt been bad for many groups of people, but when the leading cause of death in the U.S. for adults 45 and under is drug overdose from a single drug, fentanyl, and when the excess deaths over the pandemic from suicides far outstrips COVID deaths for teenagers, it's time to pause and reconsider health from a more holistic perspective. COVID kills the elderly and those with a few other comorbidities like obesity and diabetes, but, for many, the risk factor is too low to justify the outrage people have over the unvaccinated, as much as it is the fault of the media and the established government for stoking this outrage.
            • zamalek 5y ago
              The outrage over the vaccinated is equally as high, case in point: I was talking about intentionally catching it.
      • ihsw 5y ago
      • deleted 5y ago
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      • xiphias2 5y ago
        Why not? I'm triple vaccinated with Pfizer, and I was seriously considering getting infected. I still don't see any data on hospitalization rate between getting infected with delta vs omicron variant for triple vaccinated people. At the same time getting infected with a variant would prepare my body for newer mutations.
      • ifyoubuildit 5y ago
        How many people out there do you think are making that decision? In order for them to do so, they would have had to avoid being vaccinated and getting infected this whole time. There just aren't that many of these people left at this point. There are however millions upon millions of people who have already gone through the ordeal of an infection and are tired of being harassed, badgered, shamed, attacked, etc, even after the talking heads are finally admitting that these people are not the plague rats they led everyone to believe they are.
    • nerevarthelame 5y ago
      "Natural immunity" is lining the pockets of gravediggers and coffin makers. Imagine if Pfizer's vaccine caused 7,000+ deaths every day.
    • bryanlarsen 5y ago
      Pfizer will make a lot more money if you need Pavloxid to treat your COVID than it would have made from the vaccine.
  • lghh 5y ago
    Love catching a virus so I don't catch a virus.
    • whatshisface 5y ago
      Sources are divided on the statistics, but catching Omnicron so you don't catch Delta would be a winning trade (not a big a win as catching one-time-use mRNA, haha, but we're talking strict economics.)
      • lghh 5y ago
        Fair, but you don't get to choose what you catch and it's extremely unlikely (like, < .001% in the US) that you'll catch Delta instead of Omicron. I'd for sure choose Omicron, though.
        • whatshisface 5y ago
          I think the "Omnicron will protect us" statements are meant to be understood by comparison to a counterfactual world where there's only Delta.
    • bpodgursky 5y ago
      The snark is unwarranted, because there's actually a huge benefit to reducing your ability to be infectious to the people around you. It allows you to live your life without social distancing and without any risk to people you engage with.
      • lghh 5y ago
        But to do that you first have to become infectious, right? I'm no longer being snarky, I'm curious what I'm missing in the thought process.
        • bpodgursky 5y ago
          Sure, so you become infectious and quarantine for 10 days (at a time you can test and control), and then don't have to worry about it in the future. Removes a burden going forward.
• deleted 5y ago
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• orblivion 5y ago
  It always felt a bit off to use the label "natural immunity" for a virus that many (especially whose who use this label) believe to have originated in a lab.
• soco 5y ago
  Natural immunity is not always natural immunity, depending on so many factors: the individual, expectations, infection variant, which disease... I appreciate when they are more exact with the wording.
  • _vertigo 5y ago
    What, and "super booster" qualifies as exact wording here?
  • PathOfEclipse 5y ago
    What you meant to say is that natural immunity varies between individuals. Of course, the same is true with vaccine immunity. The CDC's propaganda campaign to convince people otherwise has about zero science backing it. What is also true is that just about every study published concludes the same thing: natural immunity works better than vaccine immunity alone in fighting off COVID re-infection.
    • mcphage 5y ago
      > natural immunity works better than vaccine immunity alone in fighting off COVID re-infection. By "natural immunity", you mean, "getting infected"?
      • PathOfEclipse 5y ago
        No, I mean, the immunity achieved after fighting off infection, which includes antibodies in the blood stream for a period of time, and, as far as we can tell, long-lasting, probably permanent, T- and B-cell memory.
        • HoobaTemp 5y ago
          And post-infection immunity is achieved not just by production of s-protein antibodies, but antibodies to proteins of the membrane, the nucleocapsid, and the envelope of the virus.
        • 5y ago
• _Microft 5y ago
  There is an appropriate xkcd now: https://xkcd.com/2557/ https://xkcd.com/2557/
  • PathOfEclipse 5y ago
    The comic was pretty unfunny and ignorant. For most people, COVID never was a major threat, and getting infected and getting immunity was always a valid approach. Read the great Barrington declaration, signed by over 10,000 scientists and thoroughly attacked by people like Dr. Fauci without any science backing the attack. Also read all the studies on the matter, which almost universally conclude those with natural immunity fare better against re-infection than those with vaccine immunity alone. Speaking as an unvaccinated with natural immunity, along with all my immediate family and friends in the same boat. Edit: adjusted signature numbers for Barrington declaration.
    • 908B64B197 5y ago
      > which almost universally conclude those with natural immunity fare better against re-infection than those with vaccine immunity alone Almost as if the immune system... worked as intended. Shocking. This begs the question, why not simply use immunity status instead of vaccination status? If someone has the right antibodies to fight COVID, does it matter how these were obtained?
      • PathOfEclipse 5y ago
        Other countries, notably Israel do allow it. Their scientific establishment is apparently a lot smarter than the one in the U.S. Or maybe less corrupt? We can only guess at the motivation behind apparent incompetence of these agencies, often referred to as "conspiracy theorizing".
      • Karsteski 5y ago
        > This begs the question, why not simply use immunity status instead of vaccination status? If someone has the right antibodies to fight COVID, does it matter how these were obtained? Because humans love any opportunity to discriminate against another group of people. Despite this discrimination making zero sense, since clearly us vaccinated people are still spreading COVID at very high rates.
• superkuh 5y ago
  Natural immunity is not an acceptable solution. Not for sars-cov-2 just the way it wasn't for Polio. With Polio ~70% of people infected were asymptomatic. ~29% had bad diarrhea and gastrointestinal discomfort. 0.5% had that and then were paralyzed for life. It's a pretty apples to apples comparison. Natural immunity is the worst possible outcome and it leaves millions with their lives ruined. Omicron, even in vaccinated populations, is not in any sense good or even less bad.
  • ipspam 5y ago
    Your comparing sar-cov-2 to polio? It's a horrible comparison. Polio strikes the young because it was endemic and older people already had Immunity. It doesn't kill but maims. The average paralytic polio case meant closer to 50 years of productive life lost, whereas the average COVID death represents maybe 10 years at most. Polio has no animal reservoirs, only human reservoirs, therefore it is defeatable. COVID has many animal reservoirs, therefore it is undefeatable. It was also accepted fact that polio vaccines killed children. It is not yet accepted fact that COVID vaccines kill people. At least they were honest back then.
• arn 5y ago
  I believe this is in reference to those who have breakthrough infections while already vaccinated, hence acting as a "booster". Unvaccinated with an omicron infection is not necessarily the same thing, and isn't likely to have as strong an immune response.
  • ankushnarula 5y ago
    “During May–November 2021, case and hospitalization rates were highest among persons who were unvaccinated without a previous diagnosis. Before Delta became the predominant variant in June, case rates were higher among persons who survived a previous infection than persons who were vaccinated alone. By early October, persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone.” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm
    • arn 5y ago
      I’m not sure what you think you are saying. But vaccinated + previous infection is superior to either alone. Hence the “super” booster nomenclature.
• beebmam 5y ago
  I agree, but it's also straight up an inaccurate statement. No one knows for sure if natural immunity from Omicron will protect from future variants. Given that having Delta does not make you immune to Omicron, I think it's straight up lying. My dear friend just had Delta in early December 2021 and got Omicron in early January 2022. Immunity also wanes, and we have no idea if someone who had Omicron will even be immune to Omicron in 10-20 years.
  • robrorcroptrer 5y ago
    What is natural immunity? Can it only be achieved by anti body response? Or also T-cell response?
• michaelmrose 5y ago
  Instead of reading a reporter from CBS with a limited education it might be better to read the work of scientists https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.13.22269243v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.13.22269243v... > Limited cross-variant immunity after infection with the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant without vaccination Such natural immunity is both safer and more effectively obtained not as an alternative to the vaccine but in addition to it. There is a real risk of either a second act for delta or a new variant either downstream from omicron but different enough or downstream from delta or both.
  • peteradio 5y ago
    I no longer trust the applicability of sera studies. Publicized sera studies have not accurately forecast severe outcome statistics.
• tablespoon 5y ago
  > Instead of "super booster", you can just call it what it is: natural immunity. No. A booster comes after vaccination (since it boosts the immunity acquired from the earlier doses), but the term "natural immunity" implies being unvaccinated (because pretty much only anti-vax people emphasize natural immunity, as part of their grab-bag of reasons to justify not getting vaccinated).
• echelon 5y ago
  Immunity is a complicated word. It feels dichotomous in nature -- you're either immune or you're not -- but this betrays the underlying complexity of the molecular interactions of the immune system. Different variants my trigger, with some probability, recognition of some epitope which may or may not be conserved as the virus evolves. The entire course of the infection and clearance plays out dynamically based on a multitude of factors ranging from initial viral load to immune activity and health. Depending on which cell populations are involved in the response, the response kinetics, and the degree of activation, they may proliferate this recognition for a long time or not. It's messy.
• Jansen312 5y ago
  This discovery and reporting will be suppress or downplay. We expect big pharma to give up the vaccine sales? We expect government to give up lockdown+controls? We expect our congress to be fiscal responsible and not going for round 2, 2T budget build abck America better sequel?