> 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.
>There is NO reason to not be vaccinated at this point if you can be.
If you've already had COVID, especially recently, that's a pretty damn good reason to not get vaccinated given that your immunity is likely far stronger and more durable than a vaccinated-but-COVID-naïve person. [1]
While getting vaccinated on top might help (there is not definitive data on this yet AFAIK [2]), it is also not 100% risk-free. So why would you do that if you're already more immune and thus less of a risk / less at-risk than the vaccinated population?
For some people it might make sense to still get vaccinated after COVID recovery. But for those who choose not to, it's not at all fair to say they are all "idiots" or that there is "no reason" not to still get the shot. That's not accurate based on what the actual science tells us at this time.
SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected.
>Also just in terms of baseline beliefs based on the physical world, I would assume that the vast majority of the time an infection would be more protective than a vaccine.
It is also orders of magnitude more deadly. Vaccines are proven to be much safer than getting Covid.
This is one preprint study comparing natural immunity to the Pfizer vaccine. It is interesting and may hold up after peer review. However, we have to be careful drawing broad conclusions and over interpreting these results.
The danger is that we are already seeing many groups pointing to this study and trying to read this as meaning we should not be getting vaccinated, because obviously getting covid is better. We should not forget that in 2020 and into 2021, despite significant lock downs and enforced/encouraged masking, and without widely and globally available vaccinations we lost about 5 million people to Covid. Skipping vaccines in favor of "natural" immunity is a path to continued carnage.
> Getting vaccinated, then getting COVID is always an option.
The point of your immune system is to fight a virus when you conduct it and the point of getting vaccinated is in very simplified terms to "train" your immune system for when that happens.
So, would you rather conduct the virus without having been vaccinated or after having been vaccinated?
I only had some biology in school so I'm far from an expert but it seems pretty weird to me that people think a vaccine will give them actual immunity, as in, they won't even be able to get that virus anymore.
Now in terms of mRNA and DNA vaccines, I personally think that this is how vaccines will generally work in the future, for many reasons. Although do note that there are all kinds of COVID-19 vaccines, about 30 around the world with different technologies being used. Only the "top" ones use this new technology and they are mostly used in more wealthy and developed nations. I can't really comment on your last paragraph, personally I don't know anyone who has had any complications from these vaccines, although here we only have Pfizer-BioNTech (mRNA based) and Moderna (mRNA based). AstraZeneca which is DNA based did not pass trials in my country.
> Also also, isn't it something that is known that natural immunity is better than vaccine-acquired immunity?
Yes, I pointed this out elsewhere in the thread, but it has somehow been verboten until very recently to state it in regards to Covid. My brother-in-law was even told by the people administering his vaccine that having had a prior Covid case put him at more risk and made it even more essential that he get vaccinated.
> Therefore, it is unfair to suggest that an individual who sees themselves as low risk to COVID, and potentially exposing themselves to a yet-to-be-fully-understood drug, does not have a valid dilemma in the choice around vaccines.
Especially if the person has already had Covid, since natural immunity is arguably comparable to vaccine protection, and vaccine side-effects are arguably more pronounced in those who have already had the infection.
> The risks of complications from the virus are many orders of magnitude higher than risks of complications from the vaccine, even for people in their 20s.
For those who already had the virus and developed an immune response the risks are different.
> I can understand immuno-compromised people, an underlying medical condition, for whom a vaccine may not work or may be dangerous. Undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer? Got it: vaccines won't help you (or anyone else) until you can get past the cancer.
This is exactly backwards from reality. The groups you mentioned are at much higher risk from covid and ergo it is much more important to vaccinate. The risk in absolute terms will remain much higher even with vaccination but this is a poor reason not to vaccinate. The reason you vaccinate is the degree of risk mitigated not the expectation of reducing that risk to zero.
> Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity.
We don't know how much, though. There are cases in which vaccine performs better than a natural infection, there are cases in which the vaccine performs worse than natural infection. Without time for a study, it's impossible to know where we lie with Covid.
> ... take a risk. As far as I know nobody guarantees that those COVID vaccines are without any dangerous side-effect, therefore there is a risk.
Covid is a risk as well. And it's a risk not only for yourself, but for other people, both around you and complete strangers. There are some people that are can't be vaccinated at all, they are at higher risk of dying or having severe long term side effects if they get Covid.
> To me this indicates their immune systems are doing a great job and we should rather avoid teaching them (their perfectly competent immune systems) how they should do it.
This makes no sense from an immunological perspective, and sounds like one of those pseudoscientific ideas that "natural" immunity is somehow stronger than "vaccination" immunity.
A vaccine is nothing more than exposing the immune system to the antigens. If their immune systems are already geared up to fight Covid, they will simply respond to the vaccine as another Covid infection and fight it accordingly.
As for whether there is any benefit, there absolutely is. Multiple exposure events greatly increase the storage of the antibodies in the memory cells of the immune system. This is why most vaccines require at least two shots, and why the CDC is now recommending a third booster shot for some people.
Plenty of studies show that the immunity of people who are vaccinated is stronger than those who were infected naturally (e.g. [1]), and that the immunity of people who have had Covid is significantly more robust after subsequent vaccination (e.g. [2], [3]).
2. https://apnews.com/article/science-health-coronavirus-pandem... ("The survivors who never got vaccinated had a significantly higher risk of reinfection than those who were fully vaccinated, even though most had their first bout of COVID-19 just six to nine months ago.")
I haven't done the sums but I suspect the risk of harm from the vaccine is less than the benefits the vaccine gives (especially when you factor in the duration of protecection depending when you had Covid vs when you had the vaccine).
I know people who've recovered from serious Covid and still got vaccinated. I would.
> The PROBLEM is that people then say "oh well then to protect myself better against COVID19 what I should do is get infected
Both approaches carry risk, yet your statement presents as if the risk of vaccination is 0. And also excludes the idea that opting not to be vaccinated is a legitimate choice for the millions and millions of “cases” that have already been infected.
> But not getting a vaccine is not like going to meet all people in town and hoping for the best.
Absent vaccines the disease only goes away when too many people have caught the illness; that means you can only avoid catching it with your approach (regardless of what it is!) if you are an unusual and exceptional case.
> There are alternative strategies that reduce your risk of getting COVID and risk of severe health results from COVID immensely
The best way to reduce the of risk of severe health results from COVID is literally take one of the twenty different vaccines with a variety of different operating principles behind them.
> Well, isn't the most OBVIOUS thing to notice the fact that this study proves that the vaccines are not worth getting
Absolutely not. The point is that immunity from natural infection is as good or possibly better than immunity from vaccination, but the protection of both is very strong and the cost of getting that immunity is not remotely similar. Natural immunity, while potentially stronger, also has a much, much greater chance of causing hospitalization, death, or negative long term health outcomes than vaccination for those with no pre-existing immunity. There would be orders of magnitude more people getting severely ill and dying were we to just count on everyone getting sick naturally, rather than utilizing vaccination.
What this means is that there is a potentially good argument for not requiring those who have gotten sick naturally to get vaccinated. It also has implications for vaccine boosters and variant specific vaccines. If vaccine protection against hospitalization and death remains strong over time, then even if protection against infection wanes, like is already being seen, there isn't much of a point for giving boosters. Instead, initial vaccination can be seen as a way of priming the immune system for Covid, allowing individuals to eventually acquire natural immunity without the naked risk associated with infection up until this point.
> The only concern in theory is that a vaccine-immune covid variant could develop amongst unvaccinated populations. Is there any evidence for that though?
Considering that also vacinated people get covid, this doesn't help at all, and since they're mostly asymptomatic, they can even spread it more.
Otherwise, I agree... vaccines are available for everyone, if you want to risk it, it's your risk to take.
> [current medical consensus says] "If you need to gain protection from covid, we recommend getting it via vaccine rather than illness." That doesn't apply in this scenario, since protection has (as it seems to me we see empirically here) already been attained.
Apologies if my edit in quotating you is misrepresenting what you're saying, but it's how I read it.
Okay.
If people have already been infected with COVID, is vaccination going to do them any good?
I think so. I'm not a doctor, nurse, anything. But I expect anyone who hasn't seen COVID for a year, it would help. Probably the same benefit as a booster that follows vaccination for people who [think they] have never been infected.
Vaccination has its own risks. I believe there is very slight risk from the injection itself.
But -- I just got booster dose, my third shot, this week. I had to go to a pharmacy a couple of blocks from my house. I walked. I had to cross a street, with the traffic signal, but there were a couple of cars. They didn't hit me. This time. Then I had to go inside the pharmacy talk to some people, wait about ten minutes. Everyone was wearing masks, but honestly it was the most contact I've had with a random mix of people all week...
If I'd needed to drive miles out of my way to get the vaccination, that's also nonzero risk.
And then... well, it seemed to hit me pretty hard, the vaccine, this time. I felt awful for two days. Then I was fine. But it seemed like a bigger reaction than previous doses. I think that's supposed to happen, actually.
Anyhow, I thought about it, and made my choice. I think it was the right way to go for me.
>Is that relevant if most people who get the jab also later get covid?
You do realize that the whole point of a vaccine is to either prevent or improve the symptoms of a disease right? So if you're nearly guaranteed to get covid then you definitely want to suffer a smaller number of complications from a vaccine and then reduced post-vaccine covid complications versus the much worse complications of un-vaccinated covid. The math is different if you're unlikely to catch covid but as you admit yourself that isn't the case nowadays.
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.
reply