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Comment by _djo_ | Hacker News Reader

Natural immunity is not as well understood as vaccine response and longevity for COVID-19. There's also increasing evidence that newer variants like Delta present a significant reinfection risk for those who were infected with the wildtype or even Alpha six or more months before.

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Delta also presents a risk of breakthrough infection for vaccinated people.

And that seems likely to lead to the development of new strains against which the current vaccines are ineffective, as the virus mutates in vaccinated people.

I'm vaccinated myself, but I don't count on that providing protection for long. I expect it to be more like the flu, for which yearly vaccines are required against whatever strains are expected to be common that year.

Breakthrough infections with Delta remain relatively low amongst fully vaccinated people, with most cases not resulting in serious infections.

But isn't it true that most cases don't result in serious infections, regardless of vaccination status? I recall reading at one point that 80% of infections are asymptomatic or very mild.

However there are many more studies of variations for vaccinated people than for natural immunity. It may be because the laboratories themselves are interested commercially for those studies, while natural immunity doesn't bring them any commercial benefit, but this doesn't change from the information we have right now.

So TL;DR, it is just better to be vaccinated right now.

That TL;DR doesn't follow from the main paragraph, which simply says we don't know if it's better to be vaccinated.

Yeah, sorry, what I meant was that in conclusion it was better to be vaccinated considering the studies we have (not a TL;DR).

But there's also evidence it presents a significant risk for people who were vaccinated against the earlier variants too.

Agreed, it may well make sense to have people get boosters at some point.

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