Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why not use all of the tools we have at our disposal?

Rex Racer said:

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Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why not use all of the tools we have at our disposal?

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Rex Racer said:

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Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why not use all of the tools we have at our disposal?

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I believe that is what OP is suggesting and that others are not doing by ignoring natural immunity.

Welcome back man!

I think it's less about ignoring natural immunity and more about bullying people into getting vaccinated.

Bruce Almighty said:

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I think it's less about ignoring natural immunity and more about bullying people into getting vaccinated.

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My apologies. I don't mean to imply otherwise. I wish we could get the politics out of the medicine.

Is there a good test for measuring natural immunity? I think natural immunity should count. But not everyone who has natural immunity has the SAME level of natural immunity. And I'm thinking there are some who think they have had COVID but perhaps never really did.

Here is my natural immunity anecdote. I had Covid in January. Symptoms were pretty mild. My wife and 2 of my 3 kids had it a month ago. We stayed in a hotel room for 5 nights and over that course of time, the earliest symptoms arrived. Didn't think anything of it. My wife started feeling poorly the day we got home and got tested. Slept in the same bed as her that night. Next day, positive. The kids also got it one showed symptoms before her and one after. My wife isolated once she tested positive. I cared for the kids and worked from home. No mask ever from any of us. I never caught it and I'm not vaccinated. My 3 year old never caught it and didn't really stay away from his brothers.

Just a note - that study compared "natural immunity" from prior infection only to immunity from the Pfizer vaccination, not to the other vaccinations.

I had COVID in January and tested negative two weeks ago. Have since gotten the vaccine just in case.

The real problem is that natural immunity is wonky. It seems to have HIGHLY variable duration from patient to patient. So, as an employer, you can decide to require or monthly/quarterly/ ?? interval blood tests for immunity or vaccine.

That is if you decide to require anything at all.

The wife and I had COVID last November and tested with LabCop on Wednesday because our parents keep crying that they read that antibodies for natural infection only last 90 days or so.

We got the test results back yesterday. Positive for antibodies.

No vaccines for us.

The medical community's treatment of immunity from natural infection has severely damaged their reputation for honesty.

A couple of thoughts I had after reviewing this study. I'm not epidemiology expert, but i do work with large statistical data sets for a living.

• First, here is the actual preprint study for any who are curious https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1.full.pdf
• I 100% agree that natural immunity needs to be discussed more as from multiple studies it seems to be at least on par with vaccine immunity and is possible better in many scenarios. With antibody testing so wide spread and easily available, it really needs to be a bigger part of the discussion. In many areas vaccine+natural probably puts us closing in on herd immunity.
• while this study does show that natural immunity seems to be much better than vaccinated immunity, it does point out that this natural immunity does wane over time. when they stopped controlling for time of infection being "recent" and allowed all previous infections to count, the benefit fell from 13x better to 6x better. caveat, the vaccine immunity is all recent so there is no guarantee that vaccine immunity doesn't decline at the same rate.
• the other thing this study showed was that being vaccinated and having a prior infection cut the risk of future infection in half relative to just natural immunity. so while we are talking about reducing a smaller risk to a tiny risk, there is a measurable benefit to the vaccine if you have already had the virus.
• finally, I think this study should be taken with a bit of caution for a couple of reasons. first is that it is a preprint still. second, I did a brief check on this data and tried to scale it up to a population level. during the period of study, Israel reported 95,421 cases. i did some scaling up to population levels, and depending on what you assume for how many are in the "previous infection + vaccine" group, at the start of this study Israel had between 3.08MM and 3.86MM people with no immunity at all from any source. this would mean using the straight infection rates from the study and scaling up, vaccine only were 60-90% more likely to test positive for infection than the group with neither vaccine nor previous infection. This can't rationally be true and so i present it as a caution about using the data outside of what the study specifically was designed to test.
• finally, i did a bit more playing with the data since rationally, it can't be true that the vaccine so drastically increases your chances of getting the virus. so i played with the assumptions of how much overlap there is of previously infected that also got vaccinated, and what the multiplier is of country level recorded cases since it is likely that on a population level outside this study all cases are not being recorded. I put a table below of what the efficacy of vaccine only immunity would be at each one of the assumption points. The summary conclusion is that even against delta, the vaccine is likely still somewhere between pretty good and excellent.

for reference on the measured cases to true cases multiplier, 1 would mean as of 5/31/2021 9% of Israel had been previously infected and a 4 pushes that number to 37%. USA serology studies indicate that here in the states our base "previously infected" percentage would be in the 30-40% at that time so take that into consideration as you look at this and decide what you think is most likely

Is spike protein/vaccination immunity not also highly variable from patient to patient?

Honest question.

No it does not appear to be variable outside of the very elderly or immunosuppressed. . Especially pre-Delta spread when the vaccines were amazingly effective. It does wane over time which is why there is a booster discussion and research over time.

The_Fox said:

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The wife and I had COVID last November and tested with LabCop on Wednesday because our parents keep crying that they read that antibodies for natural infection only last 90 days or so.

We got the test results back yesterday. Positive for antibodies.

No vaccines for us.

The medical community's treatment of immunity from natural infection has severely damaged their reputation for honesty.

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This X1000. Gives the impression that control is more important than results.

WesMaroon&White said:

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I am all for it getting out of politics. However, if it is just health care, then it goes to cost of treatment. The cost of treatment effects insurance rates. I have no problem with health insurance companies saying that if you are not immunized then you will be burdened with more of the cost of that care. More people look at the cost of things when deciding what they will do. Insurance companies are looking at that and it might increase rates to over $200 more a month for those not immunized to recoup that expense. All free market.

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I am all for this with one caveat. Get the government out of healthcare. No EMTALA, no Medicare, no Medicaid. You can get all the healthcare and insurance the free market wants to sell you.

I'm in the camp that some level of immunity can be derived from both and very annoyed that natural is being ignored. All stories are anecdotal but here's ours.

June 2020 - I get COVID; 3-4 day illness; didn't know it was COVID until two days later but did test positive on PCR; also took antibody test same time as PCR and was negative for antibodies; wife sleeps in same bed with me the whole time I'm sick and doesn't get sick; kids are out of town at times and not exposed to me;

Early August 2021 - I enter the Texas Cares study - first blood draw is positive on both antibody tests;

August 21 - middle schooler gets a little sick, tests Corona positive;

August 22 - youngest kid gets sick, tests Corona positive;

Today - both wife and third kid have tested negative; I've also not been sick this week as expected; sick kids fought it off after a couple of days and are doing fine;

I don't understand how my third kid did not get COVID. She's the one with allergies and Symbicort from time to time. We were most concerned about her getting it but she didn't even catch it.

My wife has now been pretty intimately exposed on two different occasions in our home and does not appear to have contracted it either time. I have no idea what superpower she has. O- blood?

With my close exposure this last week with two COVIDs and my recent positive antibody tests, it appears to me natural immunity has legs at least on par with vaccine.

Neither wife or I are vaccinated. I'm not concerned about me as of now. Question that's tougher is what about the wife? Vaccinate? Super Power?

I know all people are different but natural immunity is a thing and we should be given credit. I have positive antibody tests 14 months after infection. Infected doesn't count in today's political world even with positive antibody tests whereas vaccinated counts even if antibody tests are negative. That's not logical.

There needs to be three categories if we're going to keep up this medical caste system. Vaccinated, infected and unvaccinated. It's not right to automatically demand an infected person with antibodies be vaccinated (unnecessary medical treatment).

One size does not fit all when you're talking about 7B different immune systems and healthy/unhealthy lifestyles.

MSM starting to report on this now:

Contracting and beating COVID provides better protection against delta variant than Pfizer shot, new research shows (msn.com)