Immunity from Covid-19 Infection May Be as Strong as from Vaccination | Hacker News Reader

Immunity from Covid-19 Infection May Be as Strong as from Vaccination

wsj.com

The concern I have with COVID vaccines (and I am vaccinated and boosted) is that they're typically just targeting the spike protein. Immunity to a natural infection can potentially include antibodies to all the proteins of the virus, not just the spike protein. So if the spike protein becomes highly mutated, I could see natural immunity possibly being less affected.

The nucleocapsid (the rest of the viral body) is mutating too. But targeting the spike attacks the point of entry for the cells and neutralizes them before they attack cells. So there’s benefits to argue both ways

I thought the argument was that the spike protein may be "better" to target than some other aspect of the virus the body might learn because of how closely it is linked to the infection method, I.e. a virus without a spike protein would (may) not be able to infect the way covid does and so mRNA vaccines should offer broader protection.

This is just what I read, I don't know it actually makes the vaccine better than a normal immune response, which I imagine is also robust.

Sure, it's a better target, but the other proteins may not be entirely useless as targets. Natural immunity at least has a chance to do something with them; a vaccine that includes/produces only the spike protein does not.

There was recently (but pre-COVID) a problem with a vaccine (I think TDAP?) that was reformulated to use specific proteins instead of whole killed bacteria, and produced less persistent immunity as a result.

Yeah, ever since they changed the pertussis component from whole inactivated bacteria to a protein subunit method, it does not do much (or anything? confidence intervals, etc) regarding infection and transmission. They really need to go back.

> This is just what I read, I don't know it actually makes the vaccine better than a normal immune response, which I imagine is also robust.

I'm sure the powers that be have their reasons for not going into detail, but I am interested as well. I'm sure I only understand a simplified version, but I thought that a vaccine worked pretty much by invoking an immune response. As a curious layman, I'd like it explained to me. Just to satisfy that curiosity. Web searches give me the "CDC says it's better" without going into the "why."

The point of a vaccine is to not get the actual virus, or at least to minimize its effects if infected.

When you are infected with anything, you do not always develop anti-bodies. If you do develop anti-bodies, they might not be effective at actually stopping you from being re-infected.

Everything about the virus can mutate, but the virus will always target the ACE2 binding site. The spike protein can mutate to bind to it differently, but it will always require a spike protein. (Biology is Analog, not digital)

Thus targeting the spike protein is more efficient as it will be highly conserved.

There is a video series that does a nice job of breaking down how your immune response works: https://youtu.be/lXfEK8G8CUI

The vaccine is more effective at developing anti-bodies for the spike protein as it is the only protein exposed during the process.

An analogy that has helped some of my family: The virus is like a missile, and your immune system is a anti-missile system. Regardless of what the missile looks like, it has to have a warhead, and that warhead is what really defines what the entire thing does. So, if your defense systems targets the fuel of the missile, the enemy can change what fuel it runs on and evade your defense system. They can change the material it is made of, the shape of the overall device, change the propulsion and navigation systems…but the warhead can only have minor changes as it has because it it makes too many, it becomes ineffective and is no longer a threat.

Thus, if your defense system targets the warhead none of the other changes matter.

It's an easy target that neutralizes point of entry, but that also adds a great deal of selective pressure for mutations of the spike proteins, which we already know have an effective/successful mutation rate much higher than the rest of the virus. (Likely for the same reasons.)

But the ACE2 receptor is relatively lenient in what it will pair with compared to the immune system.

So a spike with multiple mutations is more likely to be able to continue infecting cells via ACE2, than the mrna-vaccine-induced-immuno-response (targeting only the spike region) is able to block it.

And because of this "fuzzy" matching, less than perfect mutations can perpetuate until other helpful mutations occur.

But each of these mutations is also a step closer to evading detection by the immune system, so they can be helpful over multiple iterations of mutations, even if there's no selective pressure/benefit provided per mutation. That it can continue to bind to ACE2 is enough, until it reaches a point where the immune system doesn't recognize and must re-learn that target.

Czech Republic data from ÚZIS report from 27.11.

New covid cases:

13736 - nonvaccinated, no previous covid

6579 - vaccinated, no previous covid

493 - nonvaccinated, already had covid

185 - vaccinated, already had covid

Current covid hospitalizations:

3302 - nonvaccinated, no previous covid (607 in ICU)

2777 - vaccinated, no previous covid (264 in ICU)

44 - nonvaccinated, already had covid (3 in ICU)

46 - vaccinated, already had covid (3 in ICU)

Source: https://twitter.com/dostalondrej/status/1464533409515114502 a report for the Czech MPs and senators from the Institute of Health Information and Statistics of the Czech Republic (ÚZIS)

The data speak for themselves.

The stats in Zürich Switzerland are very similar.

Even though it shows natural immunity is strongest as one would expect one can not risk getting covid being unvaccinated as we can see from the same stats.

In Switzerland at least you are given a certificate if you have recovered from covid just as you would get one for vaccination.

You can also get 3 month long certificate based on positive antibody test that is an improvement upon EU side where you can only get 6 month long certificate based on previous positive PCR test result.

The Swiss win again. Why this country is so much more reasonable compared to others? I want in!

Unless that is corrected for the age of the patients it won't tell us much. In particular, older patients are more susceptible to COVID, and also more likely to have been vaccinated, and similarly for patients with compromised immune systems.

This data is completely useless to draw any conclusions.

Archive with full text of article: https://archive.vn/YyCld

Thanks, I was about to post the same URL. At a glance, it seems like a surprisingly balanced, well sourced, and accurate article.

The insistent downplaying of natural immunity reminds me of an old soviet scifi novel, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Air_Seller, if one can get past the on-the-nose soviet motives.

I wonder — what is the dose when exposed to covid? If you get a small dose, test positive — but have a weak immune response, is your future protection small? One detail about the vaccine would be that it is a known dose. Would be great to have a metric like: “how likely are you to spread covid following either getting the vaccine or having covid” (beyond whether you personally are protected from severe disease). In a world where the variants are popping up fast, for sure we are going to have a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people — whether it’s unvaccinated against a new strain or whatever.

Looking at economics just evaluating your immunity (doctor, test, doctor) is probably far more expensive and inconvenient than just getting vaccinated using mass vaccination facilities.

In France a non specialist doctor visit is 25 EUR, analysis of simplest kind is about 100 EUR, then you need another visit then may be another action (medication, more analysis).

Mass vaccine is about 20 EUR a shot.

In 2021 so far testing for COVID costed more than vaccine in France (6.2 vs 5.8 billions EUR).

Well, health is more valuable than any money. But I would not think, that maintaining health and knowledge is cheap. it sure is cheaper than being stupid and ruining lives of other people.

Next gen medicine requires DNA sequencing to understand what you have to look out for and what you actually do not need to care about. Since governments are lagging behind in this(though to be fair, that is planned eventually in some uncertain future date), it is up to you to do DNA sequencing today. Get your DNA sequenced and look on results - maybe you need to worry about something else and not covid.

You can get full DNA sequencing from 200$ up to 700$ of whole DNA from nebula: https://nebula.org/whole-genome-sequencing-dna-test/

My thinking is that 90% of people in general DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT COVID. Actually, worrying about covid and feeling uncertain is making people more stressful and that damages immunity. So, essentially, people who are making other people fear about covid and are INSISTING that everyone should be vaccinated are responsible for some % of the deaths from covid and from other diseases, because their immunity has been damaged from too much stress. Just stap stressing yourself and others.

>> Well, health is more valuable than any money.

Not really. The healthcare system in every country has to make decisions how much is QALY worth for in monetary terms.

If that will hold you back to look after your health, then there are easier choices to make a suicide.

Unlike in your country, my country is not providing free medical help, so no matter where you are looking for it - with private doctor or goverment subsided(that you still have to pay for, unless you are a citizen of different EU country), you still have to pay money to receive medical services.

“may be”, that’s this issue. The variation of the immunity means that it cannot be relied upon. This is why it’s still important to get vaccinated.

Downside to natural immunity: because you've necessarily been infected, you put yourself and others, and their others, in danger from covid.

This doesn't happen with, at least, the viruses used in the US, because it doesn't use killed or weakened covid.

I would think real danger to self and others would greatly outweigh any theoretically greater efficacy of natural over vaccinated.

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