I heard those who had it and recovered have sterilizing immunity. Is that better or worse than the vaccine non-sterilizing immunity for getting us to herd immunity?
Citations needed for that claim. Based on the articles below, natural immunity seems to be vastly longer lasting...
Lasting immunity found after recovery from COVID-19 https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...
Had COVID? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9
"the persistence of antibody production, whether elicited by vaccination or by infection, does not ensure long-lasting immunity to COVID-19. The ability of some emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants to blunt the protective effects of antibodies means that additional immunizations may be needed to restore levels, says Ellebedy. “My presumption is, we will need a booster.”"
I think the bone marrow cells are indicative of long-term protection from severe illness. They have long ramp up time from the point of latest exposure.
Blood boosted antibodies will be there to thwart an infection and continue to be there to prevent reinfection but the body turns off the pump because it becomes a waste of resource without an active enemy.
So the lifecycle of a (non-boosted) person going through endemic sars-cov2 will be slow activation followed by an afterburner which will tend to get you through a wave. Or you can try to time a booster to get you through a wave without getting triggered by the actual virus.
So in a sense, there is evidence long term "slow" immunity which is less effective at preventing transmissions and so allows for waves which indicates a certain lack of immunity by another defintion. I think that leads to conflict because of fuzzy definition on either side of the conversation.
Anyway that's my mental model of this whole thing. Any glaring holes?
But those details are completely besides the point for endemic state, endemic state is endemic state wether reinfection, on average happens every quarter or wether it happens every five years. The only difference is that anything larger than a few months will lead to massive seasonality, and longer cycles will lead to a larger severity spread. This severity spread will be the decisive factor in the question of revaccination thresholds (maybe higher than current flu shot habits, maybe lower, maybe about the same), but there are far too many uncertainties to bother with concrete predictions.
What we do know: a year or two from now there won't be any vaccine-only immunities left, everybody will either be vacc+infection or infection only.
You said something like this in another thread, but I've yet to see sources for this. Can you provide some?
Look at how prevalent pre-delta variants are now: no, they have not disappeared because almost everybody had delta, they have disappeared because of vaccine shots combined with moderate (compared to 2020) NPI. A virus strain does not simply disappear because there's a new one in town, it keeps replicating until it runs out of hosts. And virions are certainly not defecting to a newer, more glorious flag (like humans might do)
> Before the change, the definition for “vaccination” read, “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.” Now, the word “immunity” has been switched to “protection.” The term “vaccine” also got a makeover. The CDC’s definition changed from “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease” to the current “a preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases.”
Most just achieve enough reduction in transmission to end or prevent outbreaks by bringing the r0 well below 1.
[0]https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/09/steriliz...
It starts off with some Danish guy observing a measels outbreak in Scotland and how the people that had the measels 65 years earlier were not affected by the current outbreak. You can stop reading at that point because it totally ignores that critical part of the story. It then uses this observation as the catalyst for the 'myth' of sterilizing immunity of the measels vaccine. Then it goes into testimony from experts on how we can't prove an infection took place, blah, blah, blah... Right.
So here we go with the wiggle room that eventually justifies the Covid vaccine being given to everyone on earth. Never mind that 65 years later the old people didn't get infected with the measels. Their bodies must have had some seasoned immunity workers who remembered how they handled it last time.
It's never ending. "We don't have proof." "There's not enough evidence." "We can't quantify what defines that." But just to be safe, give this to everyone and punish those that refuse. I can't believe people actually suggest that unvaccinated people not be allowed in the hospital or should just suffer their 'bad decisions.' Really? Is that what it's come to?
For all the damage that COVID has wreaked, it’s providing a huge increase in the amount of attention, effort, and investment going into studying the immune system, vaccination, and infectious diseases in general. It’s not surprising that some older ideas and theories are being overturned or modified.
You’re also wrongly treating the vaccines’ effect on transmission as binary, either being fully sterilising or not. In truth they’re all able to reduce transmission somewhat from 20-50%, and that alone might be a good enough benefit to mandate full vaccination across the population.