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Comment by jojo2000 | Hacker News Reader

jojo2000

there's nothing like natural immunity.

this paper is about natural immunity + getting the vaxx, so technically theres nothing like artificially boosted natural immunity

As others have pointed out, it also includes adding the vaccine, so that's better than simply natural exposure, and it's a catch-22 - in order to best prevent yourself from catching a life threatening virus you first need to catch the virus?

That's not really true, and furthermore, the virus-induced immunity is far more dangerous than vaccine-induced immunity.

Once one has acquired immunity that way, what practical and moral case is there to force them to also take a vaccine which may not add significantly more protection and may cause other problems?

What case is there to refuse a vaccine that is likely to add significantly more protection to the individual and community while remaining extremely unlikely to cause “other problems “?

It’s important to distinguish events that are likely from those which are unlikely. Otherwise you may mislead someone.

Note that the comparison is asymmetric. Forcing someone to do X is qualitatively different from that person not taking any action.

If the naturally immunity wanes quickly then that would be a good reason. Having said that, I do agree that advice and regulations around vaccination ought to be different for those who have previously been infected with the disease.

We can split hairs about which one wanes fastest, but it's not like vaccine provided immunity is bullet-proof or lasts forever: As of 10/4, COVID19 cases resulting in death or requiring hospitalization are up to 1/10,000 among the fully vaccinated and the trend has been going in the wrong direction for a while.

[1]: https://www.covid2020.icu/vaccine-breakthrough/

This person believes the pandemic is a lie.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27975053

Please don't comment with ad hominems. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That doesn't seem to be an ad hominem: it seems to be directly addressing their previous statements, which are clearly germane to debate.

An ad hominem is when you attack the person (such as by bringing up their previous comment history) rather than the substance of their argument.

Who the poster is and what they've said in the past are completely irrelevant.

Good rule of thumb: Would the rebuttal remain the same if responding to a different poster? If no, then the rebuttal is probably an ad hominem.

Yes, if that different poster believed the same thing.

There is a whole army of people out there who have a serious problem with accepting reality and it is useful to point out that someone is arguing with someone else who does not accept reality as it is commonly experienced. That saves everybody time, just like we don't feed the trolls we also should not waste cycles on engaging people who refuse to accept evidence anyway. Think of it as a PSA rather than an ad-hominem attack, you are assuming that the argument was brought in good faith, I don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

Natural immunity has a lower survival rate than vaccine-assisted natural immunity. In covid's case, notably so.

Copying my reply downthread to here:

> The vaccine makes the death complications less likely. You might still get Covid after being vaccinated, but you probably won’t get the full vascular infection if you were vaccinated beforehand. That’s all I mean.

I have no idea why this is a topic of debate, no doubt there's some wording error, hooray English. I don't really have anything else to say so I'll leave y'all to it.

That's simply not true. At all.

Edit: I was totally off base.

Original: Sorry, are you arguing that the vaccine has killed more people than the virus? Because there's no way you have numbers that actually support that. Given that there are now far more vaccinated than infected in America, you'd need to find near on a million vaccine deaths.

I don't get how you could possibly come to the conclusion that that's what they are arguing.

Yeah, upon rereading, neither do I. I thought it was a vaccine vs natural immunity thing.

What? No. The vaccine makes the death complications less likely. You might still get Covid after being vaccinated, but you probably won’t get the full vascular infection if you were vaccinated beforehand. That’s all I mean.

ok, if thats not true, and we know that its very rare to suffer from covid twice, why is the rate of death in the UK much lower post vaccination (and without lockdown) vs before (and with)?

How rare is it actually though? Just a bit of anecdotal evidence, but my office has had several outbreaks in the last several months. Many in the office have caught it multiple times in the that timeframe, a couple of which I know are fully vaccinated.

> Many in the office have caught it multiple times in the that timeframe.

If thats the case, and those are confirmed with PCR test, then we are catastrafucked. In the UK double infections are pretty rare. Given the routine level of testing (~1million tests a day) I'd expect to see some sort of indication or worry from the statisticians.

> a couple of which I know are fully vaccinated.

Again, I'd expect this to see some level of data to support double infections in vaccinated people with "normal" immune systems. I'd expect to see that data in the UK or Israel, possibly south korea as well.

I'm sure it happens, but at a scale that we would see in a normal office, suggests something really quite common. But I can't find evidence to support that (I have a lot of doctor friends, who'd i'd expect to get re-infected, especially as they have been more lax with the little PPE they have. )

So to give a bit more insight. We've been back in the office since May of 2020. The vast majority of the office works in close contact, and no mitigation efforts are taken to prevent infection. The vast majority of the office is also unvaccinated. What we do have is a response protocol. If you wake up and feel unwell at all, you're asked to go take a COVID test. Most will simply go take a rapid test on their way into work, and they'll wait in the parking lot until they get their results.

The last 2 outbreaks have been among the exact same group of people: the office bible study group. That group meets at least once a week in close quarters for an hour or two at a time.

As of right now, at least 5 of the people that are currently out and have positive PCR tests have had it at least one other time in the last three to four months, with another positive PCR test to confirm. Our company requires everyone send in their proof of a negative or positive tests each time they're taken, and you cannot return to work until it's been submitted.

Here's a recent study on reinfection: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8373524/

They found a "suspected" reinfection rate at 270 days of 0.8% so yeah, it's pretty rare.

How is it not? Compare the number of people who got immunity through COVID infection / those who died of COVID vs. number of people who got immunity through vaccination / those who died of the vaccination.

I'm not talking about the vaccine itself killing people, and I don't believe the comment I replied to was either. I'm saying that more people have died from Covid after being vaccinated than have died from Covid after having gained natural immunity. Meaning they survived the first infection, got infected again, and then died from that second infection.

>I'm saying that more people have died from Covid after being vaccinated than have died from Covid after having gained natural immunity. Meaning they survived the first infection, got infected again, and then died from that second infection.

Can you cite nay sources for that conclusion?

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