Interesting that they only studied vaccine-induced immunity. Not a single word about natural immunity.
There’s major, major hesitance to giving natural immunity any credibility. The reason for that is an exercise left up to the reader.
[1] https://www.statnews.com/2020/08/25/four-scenarios-on-how-we...
> The whole point of immunity is not to get infected/sick in the first place
That is a description of sterilising immunity, which none of the COVID-19 vaccines provide, they attempt to provide acquired immunity. You can't have a whole point where half of it is not true.
The efficacy of the vaccines is measured in several ways, basically on how well they prevent severity of symptoms, e.g. death, needing ICU, hospitalisation, mild symptoms, asymptomatic.
As to this:
> they are vastly preferable to natural infection without vaccination.
that is not settled science, there is still much debate and research going on regarding this point with outcomes that support both "sides" (probably because different people have different immune responses, both could be true in different people), and you've overstated the case by a long way anyway.
No, it's a description of both sterilising and non-sterilising immunity. Note that I wrote "infected/sick," not just "infected." The vaccines significantly reduce your chances of both.
> that is not settled science
Are you seriously suggesting that the science isn't settled on whether getting vaccinated is preferable to contracting SARS-CoV-2 as an unvaccinated person? The rates of severe disease and death are orders of magnitude higher for unvaccinated people. If you have a choice of how to acquire immunity, vaccination is always preferable to infection, because infection carries significant risks. If you haven't yet been infected, the science is absolutely settled that you should get vaccinated.
I really don't know what's happened to HN, and how anti-vaxxers became so vocal here.
> No, it's a description of both sterilising and non- sterilising immunity.
I know, that's why I wrote "You can't have a whole point where half of it is not true." The sterilising part isn't correct, the vaccines do not act to produce neutralising antibodies, they work to produce acquired immunity. That is why we have this[1] via the CDC:
> "High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus," Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC's director, said in a statement Friday.
and this[2] from Public Health England (PHE):
> The Technical Briefing also includes some initial findings which indicate that levels of virus in those who become infected with Delta but have already been vaccinated may be similar to levels found in unvaccinated people. This may have implications for people’s infectiousness, whether they have been vaccinated or not. However, this is early exploratory analysis and further targeted studies are needed to confirm whether this is the case.
So your statement:
> The vaccines significantly reduce your chances of both.
is factually wrong.
The vaccines *do not* provide sterilising immunity. Rates of transmission are not the same thing, sterilising immunity is a type of immune response[3], transmission can be lowered by any part of the immune response simply because it shortens the period that a carrier is infectious to others, they are not synonyms, so stating "The rates of severe disease and death are orders of magnitude higher for unvaccinated people" - which is to compare efficacy and severity with infectiousness is beside the point and only goes to show your lack of understanding or ability to hold a good faith argument.
> “The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated. And that does mean that anyone who’s still unvaccinated at some point will meet the virus … and we don’t have anything that will [completely] stop that transmission.”
Those are the words[4] of professor Andrew Pollard[5], an immunologist, and Chief Investigator on the University of Oxford COVID-19 Vaccine (ChAdOx-1 n-CoV-19) trials.
Again:
> “The Delta variant will still infect people who have been vaccinated”
That is not the case with sterilising immunity. Is he anti-vaxx? Do behave.
As to the second half of your comment:
> Are you seriously suggesting that the science isn't settled on whether getting vaccinated is preferable to contracting SARS-CoV-2 as an unvaccinated person?
If it's settled then why are experts saying things like this[6], from last week:
> “It appears that natural immunity is better against the Delta variant. When you get infected with COVID, your body’s immune system develops antibodies to the entire surface of the virus,” Makary said. “Not just the slight protein that the vaccines gives you, but the entire surface. And so you get a more diverse antibody portfolio in your system.”
That is from, as the article points out, "Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at John Hopkins School of Medicine", but he has a Wikipedia page too[7] where you can check out his credentials, long list of awards, and try to find some kind of controversy section (or even start one).
He's quoting evidence from Israel's health ministry (via a news report[8], if you finally overcome your aversion to challenging information then you might find me the data from the ministry itself, I'd appreciate that):
> With a total of 835,792 Israelis known to have recovered from the virus, the 72 instances of reinfection amount to 0.0086% of people who were already infected with COVID.
>By contrast, Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection, with over 3,000 of the 5,193,499, or 0.0578%, of Israelis who were vaccinated getting infected in the latest wave.
and he's not anti-vaccine either:
> Makary has still encouraged those who are not vaccinated and not immune to get the vaccine.
and I remind you of the end of the quote above by PHE:
> However, this is early exploratory analysis and further targeted studies are needed to confirm whether this is the case
When was it published? 6th of August, 2021.
And at the end of that Israeli news report:
> According to a report by Channel 13, the disparity has confounded – and divided – Health Ministry experts, with some saying the data proves the higher level of immunity provided by natural infection versus vaccination, while others remained unconvinced.
When was it published? July the 13th, 2021. That is not settled science.
On the other hand - and as I am so very anti-vaxx I don't know why I'd share this - this is from PHE's technical briefing[9]:
> - sera from vaccinees shows decreased ability to neutralize B.1.621 compared to first wave virus and Alpha, with a magnitude of change similar to Beta - sera from individuals who have been infected with Delta does not have strong neutralising activity against either Beta or B.1.621 - sera from individuals who have been vaccinated and have had subsequent recent Delta infection have a high level of neutralising activity against all variants tested (including beta and B.1.621)
So it looks like those who have been vaccinated and were subsequently infected (where were those neutralising antibodies?;) are then given some neutralising immunity.
As professor Makary stresses wherever he seems to be quoted, the different populations to be considered should be the immune and the not-immune, not the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
Those without immunity who are at risk should get vaccinated - this is my view. Is that an anti-vaxx message? Again, behave.
Take it down a notch, read more widely and with much more attention, please.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/confirmed-cases-of-covid-...
[3] https://www.accessscience.com/content/neutralizing-antibody/...
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/delta-variant-...
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Pollard_(biologist)
[6] https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/dr-makary-says-natu...
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Makary
[8] https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762
[9] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
You cite a bunch of people saying that vaccinated people can transmit the virus. They can, but they're far less likely to, as multiple studies have now shown. If they get infected, fully vaccinated people are about 70% less likely to transmit the virus,[2] and even partially vaccinated people are 40-50% less likely to transmit the virus.[3] There are some obvious reasons why this should be the case (e.g., vaccinated people clear the virus much more rapidly, meaning that they're infectious for a shorter span of time - see the recent study from Singapore: [4]).
This is on top of the fact that vaccinated people are far less likely to get infected (even with Delta) in the first place. Uninfected people don't transmit, of course. Overall, the effectiveness of the vaccine in reducing transmission in a population is high. Recall that most vaccines do not confer sterilizing immunity, but many still generate herd immunity, regardless.
You also argue that people who get infected are less likely to get infected later than people who acquire immunity through vaccination. This does not mean that getting immunity through infection is preferable to getting immunity through vaccination. If I can use a rather crude analogy, imagine the following argument: "People who jaywalk and get run over by cars are less likely to get run over a second time than people who use the crosswalk." The whole point of vaccination is to avoid the negative effects that come from getting infected without pre-existing immunity. Getting infected so that you can avoid getting infected just makes no sense. The worst case with vaccination is that you later get infected, probably have very mild disease, and get a boost to your immune response.
1. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03653-6
2. https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...
3. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2107717
4. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...
Yes, and no one was arguing that.
> This does not mean that getting immunity through infection is preferable to getting immunity through vaccination.
Yes, and no one was arguing that.
> The worst case with vaccination is that you later get infected, probably have very mild disease, and get a boost to your immune response.
That is neither the worst case nor the best case. It's also irrelevant because, again, no one was arguing about it.
I can see now why you think that HN has vocal anti-vaxxers, you think that anyone who disagrees with you is anti-vaxx. Protecting one's ego is a terrible trap and a fool's errand.
> The vaccines all induce production of neutralizing antibodies
Thanks for that Nature paper that I'd already read. The question is, are the presence of neutralising antibodies the same as sterilising immunity?
The answer is no. If you have a paper from Nature showing sterilising immunity, that would help you. Otherwise, my original statement holds true, you were incorrect.
> If they get infected, fully vaccinated people are about 70% less likely to transmit the virus
You missed the bit where the Dutch study in your second link mentions that "The Alpha variant… was the dominant variant in the area at that time." The CDC and PHE stuff I cited was regarding delta.
Not only that, the third study you linked to was led by someone at PHE… Do you even read these things? Perhaps you put as much effort into reading that as you do with all the "vocal anti-vaxxers" posts on HN.
And again, it's irrelevant, unless you're trying to disprove any "science is settled" claims you've made by showing disagreement within weeks by people at the same health agency. Great work there!
> There are some obvious reasons why this should be the case…
And here again you will show you didn't bother to read what I wrote:
> There are some obvious reasons why this should be the case (e.g., vaccinated people clear the virus much more rapidly, meaning that they're infectious for a shorter span of time
and this is mine, from the comment you replied to:
> transmission can be lowered by any part of the immune response simply because it shortens the period that a carrier is infectious to others
Maybe you'll paraphrase me some more later.
I also wrote this:
> Take it down a notch, read more widely and with much more attention, please.
I didn't think you'd try and prove it right in your very next response.
Finally, and bringing us round nicely to the start:
> You also argue that people who get infected are less likely to get infected later than people who acquire immunity through vaccination.
No, that's not my argument, that's someone else's. I'm pointing out that disagreement exists, something you with your black and white thinking are unable to process. Well done for completely missing the point repeatedly while showing yourself to be wrong repeatedly.
Unless you're going to apologise - which clearly you're not - then I won't be partaking in this conversation any further, you're wasting everyone's time, not just mine.
----
Edit, a typo. Would my interrogator have noticed anyway?
Any way you parse it, vaccination is preferable to infection. The worst case with vaccination is that you get a breakthrough infection. But that's far less risky than getting infected in the first place.
Can you source this claim? In the original Pfizer, Moderna, etc studies, they never tested for transmissibility, only reduction of COVID-like symptoms.
>Any way you parse it, vaccination is preferable to infection.
And I disagree. I would rather have SARS-COV-2 injected into my arm personally. I'm not at risk, so taking on additional poorly defined risk such as the vaccine makes little sense from a self-preservation standpoint. From what I've seen there's not enough data to support vaccines reducing spread, but I'd like to see what you may have. And then we have the issue of variants that go right around the vaccine.
Here's a relevant quote from Fauci: "Even though you’re vaccinated, because you could get infected, not know it, and be completely without symptoms because the vaccine is preventing you from getting symptoms, but you can have virus in your nasal pharynx and then inadvertently and innocently, pass it on to someone else who’s not vaccinated. That’s the problem we’re facing."
I don't know where we're at now, but early on when the vaccines were being first deployed, it was unsure if they'd reduce transmission, even between vaccinated populations. And you see Fauci here certainly implying that's the case.
If you do get a breakthrough infection, the time window during which you're infectious is far shorter.[1]
There's more and more data now on how much vaccination lowers transmission. For example, a recent study found that vaccinated people who caught the virus are 40-50% less likely to pass it on to their family members than unvaccinated people are.[2]
> I would rather have SARS-COV-2 injected into my arm personally.
This is insane.
1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261295v...
This is what I'm asking about, transmission. The data on this is woefully limited however.
Here's another Fauci quote:
So far, the available Covid-19 vaccines have not been judged primarily on their ability to prevent transmission – though this is now being evaluated as a secondary endpoint for many of them. Instead, their efficacy was assessed by whether they could prevent symptoms from developing. “This means that we set our targets kind of pragmatically,” says Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London.
…
There isn’t yet any conclusive evidence that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine can prevent people from being infected with the coronavirus – and therefore halt its spread. But there are some early signs that it might.
>There's more and more data
There's also data building to the contrary. Take a look at Israel's number of cases vs vaccination status, for example. We're not at a stage where data is conclusive either way, and in that case I'm fine with waiting things out.
For example, this is what you're study says:
>The mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19 associated with B.1.617.2 infection
This is not about reducing SARS-COV-2 transmission, but symptomatic COVID. These mistakes lead to misinformation spreading.
Further, this is all your second study concludes:
Among index patients, those who had been vaccinated were likely to be less severely symptomatic2 and might have been less infectious than those who were unvaccinated.
The most effective way to not transmit is to not get infected in the first place. The vaccines drastically reduce chance of infection.
> For example, this is what you're study says:
>> The mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing symptomatic and severe COVID-19 associated with B.1.617.2 infection
The very next sentence states,
> Vaccination is associated with faster decline in viral RNA load and a robust serological response.
This means that infections in vaccinated people are typically much shorter-lived than infections in unvaccinated people. The time during which you have high viral load is drastically reduced.
> it's possible that vaccinated individuals were simply practicing better viral hygiene
Reducing infections of family members by 40-50% is a massive effect, especially when you consider that the vast majority of people in this study had only even received their first dose. There's an obvious explanation that fits with everything else we know about vaccination (e.g., that vaccinated people who get infected are far less symptomatic and that the time during which they have high viral load is much shorter).
Most vaccines do not confer sterilizing immunity. Nevertheless, many of them still produce herd immunity. Immunity is not an all-or-nothing thing. You're far less likely to get infected if you're vaccinated, and if you do get infected, you're far less likely to transmit the virus. Even if you don't care about dramatically reducing your own risk of getting seriously ill or dying, the vaccine significantly reduces your chance of ever transmitting the virus to others.
The point is that you're attributing this to vaccine effectiveness, when it may have been viral hygiene. The authors of the study did not attribute this reduction to the vaccine directly as you are.
There's more more and more research that strongly points to transmission by vaccinated people who get infected (which, remember, is much less likely) being substantially lower than transmission by unvaccinated people. This study [1] came out just last week, for example:
> Our study showed that the COVID-19 vaccines not only protect the vaccinee against SARS-CoV-2 infection, but also offer protection against transmission to close contacts after completing the full schedule.
This study finds an even stronger reduction (70%) in transmission by fully vaccinated people. The first study that I posted primarily studied partially vaccinated people.
1. https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...
Note, I am NOT saying that the vaccine isn't worth getting, I am very glad I got vaccinated, the infection sucked as it was with my immune system primed to fight it off. I don't think I would want to experience the counterfactual where I had been infected without vaccination.
Sort of like how we could talk about genetics and IQ if it were not for racists. I could list a dozen more like this.
We now have to whisper about certain topics for fear of providing anything that can be quoted out of context and twisted by bad faith actors to promote destructive nonsense.
I personally think the best option might be to slather these topics with such thick academic and technical jargon that papers and messages about them contain nothing that can be quoted in a meme and shared on Facebook.
https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210811/COVID-19-vaccines...
Covid has 3 protein markers. After you get infected your antibodies will continue to recognise all three.
However the vaccines don't have all three, so the antibodies generated are not as all encompassing as they would be if you contracted Covid.
Therefore, if it doesn't kill you, having Covid puts you in a better position to fight off variants.
At least that's how I understand it from all the articles I read about the various vaccines, that said, IANAD, so don't take this post as medical advice.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
There is a big public health motivation (completely understandable) for why they don't talk much about natural immunity.
A lot of people, my lovable but dumb as a rock sister included, who had some symptoms after socializing with people who end up testing positive, who never got the test themselves. They just assume they were infected. We definitely don't want these people to skip the vaccines. But again, managing the behavior of morons is a separate activity from determining the actual truth of the matter.
This says that a combination of having been infected and vaccinated is better than just having been infected.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.20.21255670v...
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/341241
The meta-conclusion is that natural immunity is at least as effective as the Pfizer/Moderna, and more protective than the J&J vaccine.
There isn't a collection of billion dollar multi-national pharma companies pushing studies on natural immunity, nor are public health experts talking about it, creating a false impression in the mind of the public.
Trust me, I got the "redneck vaccine" in February, before I was eligible for the real vaccines. I still haven't recovered all of my sense of smell, and don't recommend it. That being said, I am also at increased risk of complications from the vaccine due to having a sky-high level of antibodies in my blood according to my doctor. I visit him monthly, and at his recommendation I will be getting the shot as soon as the antibodies wane.
Edit: Here is clinical evidence of worse side effects for previously infected individuals getting vaccinated
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
Really obnoxious that my comment is getting downvoted with no rebuttals.