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Comment by sonotathrowaway | Hacker News Reader

I don’t understand what you’re saying- infection from omicron probably only provided limited protection from other variants (we agree so far) - isn’t that protection valuable in and of itself? You’re saying that we should forfeit partial protection because it’s not complete protection? To my thinking, if the partial protection you get from omicron is greater than the damage caused by omicron, that protection is valuable.

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Why do you expect the partial protection from omicron to be greater than the damage caused by omicron? While it's looking significantly less dangerous than delta (though even that isn't completely certain), that doesn't mean it's anything like safe.

And even if omicron is drastically less severe than delta, its going to have a hard time being less dangerous or more effective vs delta than vaccination.

Because omicron has resulted in much less severe symptoms than Delta, and much less hospitalization/death- so far only one American death, compared to Delta which is much more lethal. If the incidences of long covid from omicron are correlated with it’s lethality, it’d only have to confer modest protection against delta to be a net benefit.

I’m not comparing it against the efficacy of vaccines, I’m saying that if you wanted the most protection against extreme covid outcomes (death/long covid), you’d want all the antibodies you can - so vaccination + omicron antibodies.

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