The best vaccines on the market have an efficacy rate of 95% and the reinfection rate is less than 1% in unvacinated covid survivors (a year later). Doesn't that make the natural immune response better at preventing infection? What am I missing?

I know there are a lot of lazy people out there who "think" they got infected and never confirmed. But should the med community still be out telling "everyone" to get vaccinated or very rarely mentioning natural immunity?

*If you say many natural reinfections are mild and unrecorded, I could say same thing about vaccinated infections. So let's stick with the existing numbers, studies and trials.

The issue is that vaccination is safe and statistically harmless for all demographics. Initial covid infection is not.

Salute The Marines said:

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The issue is that vaccination is safe and statistically harmless for all demographics. Initial covid infection is not.

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That's a sidestep of the question. If someone is confirmed and documented to have had infection, there is likely nothing to gain by requiring vaccination of that person.

Agree. I think it's pointless for recovered persons to get a vaccine. But the OP isn't clear that's what he's suggesting.

Your natural immune response and the immune response caused by the vaccine are the same thing. That's the brilliance of vaccination in general... our bodies are already really good at fighting infections.

The reinfection rate and the breakthrough rate after vaccination seem to be comparable. A large observational study looked at this in the Qatar (here). Comparable means - very low.

People who have recovered and people who have been vaccinated probably have similar resistance to infection. But its complicated, yo. The truth is we don't really have a ton of evidence about either reinfection OR efficacy vs variants. This kind of stuff normally happens slowly, we're cramming decades worth of study down into weeks and months. We want to have clarity about this now, but it's just not there.

On the other hand, we know that multiple vaccinations produce more immunity, and there's been evidence that a person who has gotten sick plus a booster is ultra-double-secret protected. The downside to the shot is low-to-none, we have the vaccines, so there's no policy reason not to. Particularly if, for example, a triple vax or recover+one shot produces sterilizing immunity (which means you straight up don't get infected any more).

Your last paragraph is not really correct. A very mild actual infection may not trigger a strong immune response. In some way the mildness of the infection implies a mild immune response. The various vaccines are designed to trigger a strong response - otherwise they don't work. The response from the vaccine with regard to triggering spike protein antibody production looks to be even stronger than a natural infection. But antibodies aren't the only part of the immune system... that's why the vaccine causing aches, etc is good - that means your body's immune system is being recruited to respond to the spike protein the vaccine is making your produce. Immunology is stupid complicated.

cisgenderedAggie said:

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Salute The Marines said:

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The issue is that vaccination is safe and statistically harmless for all demographics. Initial covid infection is not.

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That's a sidestep of the question. If someone is confirmed and documented to have had infection, there is likely nothing to gain by requiring vaccination of that person.

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Correct. And any rational person knows this. Public health refuse to acknowledge this because it is harder for someone to prove and for them to track. I've been saying on this bird for months now that natural immunity is real at least near as good as the vaccine (learning now it's better).

Now, it's safer and better to achieve immunity via vaccine, but that wasn't possible for many.

Salute The Marines said:

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The issue is that vaccination is safe and statistically harmless for all demographics. Initial covid infection is not.

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We aren't talking about unvaccinated at risk. They obviously should get vaccinated. We are talking about unvaccinated covid recovered.

I watched a 20 min interview with Fauci yesterday and not one time did they even segregate unvaccinated uninfected from unvaccinated covid recovered. Just like you did here. It proves my point that there is a widespread effort to conceal the fact that natural immunity is better than vaccine.

The only reason I can think for doing this is lack of trust in public to actually confirm their natural immunity with antibody test vs assuming they might have been imfected. So they purposely divert and distract from truth.

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the fact that natural immunity is better than vaccine.

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This is not a fact.

Zobel said:

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In some way the mildness of the infection implies a mild immune response.

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Ok, maybe in the lab. But if that were true in real life we would see higher reinfection rates, as mild infections would reinfect. But we aren't.

Just like how they said the lab tests showed natural immune response didn't protect from Delta. If true, where is the spike in reinfection rate?

It's starting too look like a lot of the lab testing is like climate change computer models. They work backwards to prove a conclusion in a petri dish.

Zobel said:

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the fact that natural immunity is better than vaccine.

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This is not a fact.

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In terms of preventing infection, natural immunity is almost always more effective than vaccines in general. The numbers show it is better with covid too, in terms of both effectiveness and durability. These are facts. I waited over a year start claiming it as fact. I donated life saving covid plasma for 9 months while medical community said my immunity only lasted 2 weeks, then 3 months, then 6 months...

Everything I have read to the contrary with covid has to do with lab studies on concentration of spike protein etc., not actual patient studies. The same "scientific community" that said this most likely originated in animal to human transmission.

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The findings of the authors suggest that infection and the development of an antibody response provides protection similar to or even better than currently used SARS-CoV-2 vaccines. Although antibodies induced by SARS-CoV-2 infection are more variable and often lower in titre than antibody responses induced after vaccination,this observation does make sense considering current SARS-CoV-2 vaccines induce systemic immune responses to spike proteins while natural infection also induces mucosal immune responses and immune responses against the many other open reading frames encoded by the approximately 29 900 nucleotides of SARS-CoV-2.

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https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00782-0/fulltext

Zobel said:

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the fact that natural immunity is better than vaccine.

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This is not a fact.

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One paper != fact.

We can even say it seems like, or it's probable. But there's as many studies that show one way as there are another.

Both breakthrough and reinfection rates are very low. But there's no definitive answer to the question of which is lower, especially when you add in the complexity of variants.

Zobel said:

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One paper != fact.

We can even say it seems like, or it's probable. But there's as many studies that show one way as there are another.

Both breakthrough and reinfection rates are very low. But there's no definitive answer to the question of which is lower, especially when you add in the complexity of variants.

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(Edit to be more clear about using 'laboratory study' - I removed those words)

This is where messaging needs to break from waiting for scientific certainty. The reinfection rate is super low, and it seems like durable immunity is a thing. But the hiccup is the above - no definitive answer, to a scientific certainty. Which has led to statements that include the 2 weeks, then 3 months, etc as another poster said.

What should have been put out in the public is something like 'while we don't know about this specific corona virus, all the corona viruses previously did X after infection. We have no reason to believe covid will be any different. If covid acts in the same way, durable immunity will be a thing.' and go from there. Fauci even said exactly that in an early interview, then never said it again.

The reason this is important is the level of fear continuing to drive public policy. Imo we cannot continue to make public policy based only on scientific certainty. At some point, good enough needs to BE enough.

The assumption that high concentration or high titer makes for better protection is an assumption not based on re-infection rates. That's what I mean by "in the lab".

Vaccines are awesome. A no brainer on being better for anyone at risk to get vaccinated vs waiting to get infected. The adverse risks of vaccines to covid recovered are extremely low, much lower than risk of reinfection. However, that does NOT change the fact that so far the natural infection immune response has proven superior to the vaccine induced immune response, in preventing covid infection. No doctor or Fauci supporter should be afraid to acknowledge that.

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fact that so far the natural infection immune response has proven superior to the vaccine induced immune response, in preventing covid infection

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And again I'm telling you this is not a fact. It is unclear. There's evidence that points both ways, and I think your sentence is too broad to be useful.

I think it's safe to say they're comparable, which is to say, natural immunity is robust and durable.

eric76 said:

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Zobel said:

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the fact that natural immunity is better than vaccine.

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This is not a fact.

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Exactly. For some diseases, a vaccine will typically result in a greater level of immunity than will having had the disease. For others diseases, having the disease can provide a greater level of immunity.

I wonder if there are any characteristics of diseases that can be used to get a bit of an idea whether one is likely to acquire a better immunity from one method over the other.

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I'm pretty sure that the early statements about other corona viruses were aimed at doing exactly that - Fauci himself said durable immunity after infection should be a thing if this is like all the other similar viruses.

Interesting paper. There were only 3 with previous covid and unvaccinated, 3 with covid and one shot. Not sure how much we can extrapolate from that.

The authors of the paper note that real world effectiveness was previously estimated at 75% for Beta which has a similar mutation as Gamma, and there's been low counts of breakthrough in the US ("real world") by Gamma variant. So, they say, perhaps the working conditions contributed (heat, humidity, aerosol, sharing of cabs).

Again...one paper doesn't make scientific fact, certainly not a paper with a sample size of 3 in the unvaccinated, previous covid "control" group and 25 in the fully vaccinated group.

Zobel said:

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fact that so far the natural infection immune response has proven superior to the vaccine induced immune response, in preventing covid infection

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And again I'm telling you this is not a fact. It is unclear. There's evidence that points both ways, and I think your sentence is too broad to be useful.

I think it's safe to say they're comparable, which is to say, natural immunity is robust and durable.

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Just curious, what metric or stat in humans would confirm which is in fact superior?

When you start using words like fact you'd need to have a large amount of good evidence. Good evidence would be large sample sizes, replication, and controlling for confounders.

The challenge to the previously vaccinated vs previously infected is to control for what vaccine / variant was used the first time, then what exposure variant happened the second time. Ideally you'd also want to know the severity of infection the first time because that may make a difference.

The challenge to a question like this is that both breakthrough and reinfection seem to be very rare, so you need a lot of good data to compare them with any kind of confidence. That Qatar study is good because it is a huge sample size screening of a relatively random population without sorting for symptoms - just PCR. That eliminates a lot of issues like ascertainment bias (for example if previously recovered are less likely to get a second test than breakthroughs). And in that very large sample the numbers are really really close, but vaccinations seem to be maybe slightly better.

I wouldn't bet the farm either way.

Do you have any broad studies that back up what you're saying? I'm not opposed to the idea, I just don't think we know what you're saying with any confidence.

For example. You may look at "all variants" and find that up til May, vaccination was better than previous infection. But then you may look from may to July and find that previous infection was better. That doesn't mean you can make a blanket rule about one or the other, it means that hypothetically the vaccine isn't as good vs the now-dominant strain (delta for example) as previous immunity. But that could flip-flip and lambda or who knows what could become the dominant source of infections and the original vaccine might do better against that than people who were infected with delta.

What you're talking about is complicated. That's ok. We don't need black and white answers - actually in most cases those kind of answers don't exist. I think we can say, for now, previous infection is good, and vaccination is good too. Beyond that you need to get more specific about what you're comparing.

https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid/ciab345/6251701

The problem is that there is a vested interest to make everyone think they must get vaccinated. Evidence of natural durable immunity, is harmful to that effort.

A year ago Fauci himself said that he would bet his entire experience that there was certainly a few years of durable immunity in anyone who recovered from covid. He has since become incredibly political and no longer even mentions natural protection as Biden pushes the vaccine target. There has been no evidence to dispute his original claim a year later. I doubt there will be 2 years later either.

7.07 mark

I question the 95% efficacy claims when we hear about vaccinated groups becoming reinfected in high percentages (famous example- the Texas dems who flew to DC). These clusters shouldn't happen.

Salute The Marines said:

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The issue is that vaccination is safe and statistically harmless for all demographics. Initial covid infection is not.

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But if you've had Covid, there is no reason to get a vaccination. That is being ignored by vaccine pimps.

bones75 said:

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I question the 95% efficacy claims when we hear about vaccinated groups becoming reinfected in high percentages (famous example- the Texas dems who flew to DC). These clusters shouldn't happen.

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Were they the J&J vaccine? Were they an mRNA vaccine. Would a crowd of unvaccinated people in a tight confined space like that expect to have 60 cases, but we only got 6 (or whatever) due to the vaccine?

It's pretty clear now that the mRNA is 60% effective at preventing COVID infection, but well over 90%+ at preventing hospitalization and death.

The problem with "natural immunity" is that the dataset can never be as robust or clear as a vaccine when evaluating immunity and efficacy. It's significantly better to have the vaccine than nothing, and it's entirely possible the vaccine causes a better immune response both to the original virus and the new variant. But there is a problem with people running around and blindly saying natural immunity is better. It very well might not be and it doesn't help when people assume they caught the virus. It's much harder as a society to verify natural immunity than it is to say evaluate whether somebody got a very good vaccine. That's the ultra cynical incentive for the government and others to push the vaccine. Definitely not the people needlessly dying because they read on the internet that their immune system is healthy so it'll just be a cold. It's a giant conspiracy for big pharma to get rich of course.

Gordo14 said:

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bones75 said:

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I question the 95% efficacy claims when we hear about vaccinated groups becoming reinfected in high percentages (famous example- the Texas dems who flew to DC). These clusters shouldn't happen.

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Were they the J&J vaccine? Were they an mRNA vaccine. Would a crowd of unvaccinated people in a tight confined space like that expect to have 60 cases, but we only got 6 (or whatever) due to the vaccine?

It's pretty clear now that the mRNA is 60% effective at preventing COVID infection, but well over 90%+ at preventing hospitalization and death.

The problem with "natural immunity" is that the dataset can never be as robust or clear as a vaccine when evaluating immunity and efficacy. It's significantly better to have the vaccine than nothing, and it's entirely possible the vaccine causes a better immune response both to the original virus and the new variant. But there is a problem with people running around and blindly saying natural immunity is better. It very well might not be and it doesn't help when people assume they caught the virus. It's much harder as a society to verify natural immunity than it is to say evaluate whether somebody got a very good vaccine. That's the ultra cynical incentive for the government and others to push the vaccine. Definitely not the people needlessly dying because they read on the internet that their immune system is healthy so it'll just be a cold. It's a giant conspiracy for big pharma to get rich of course.

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It's entirely possible that it doesn't either. A response to an infection will lead to a diversity of antigens against which the antibodies may be raised. The mRNA vaccines provide what, maybe 2? You can develop new vaccines ($$) quickly now against variants, and that's great, but how much harder is it for a virus to escape immune response through selective pressure against a variety of surfaces rather than one spike protein?

Absent evidence that one isn't worth anything, arguing which is better is a dick measuring contest that has no real world value. The only point that matters is that there is zero evidence that natural acquired immunity is meaningfully different from a vaccine, but there's still a good bit of side stepping that even in this thread. This is also not a hard thing to document. The RT-PCR tests are quite sensitive. You just test people and put it in a medical record. Start testing children at random, while hopefully back off of the bureaucratic freak outs a bit (and I realize that most of you in Texas don't have that but it's real elsewhere). I'd bet money your going to find that this **** is everywhere already without making a lot of people, relative to actual prevalence, sick.