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Comment by estearum | Hacker News Reader

So why did you claim to be treated like a leper?

And yes, all studies have limitations, especially observational studies done in the middle of an emergency.

Here's your claim: "There was never any indication in the data that a previously recovered person posed any kind of heightened threat to anyone else"

That is quite obviously false.

If you believe there was superior data available at the time, please share it. Otherwise, yes that is exactly what the data showed (imperfect as all data is).

> Eventually things calmed down enough that studies could actually be published showing the efficacy of a prior infection without risking careers.

Like which studies? (Not that more recent studies could've possibly time-traveled to inform your decision-making in the past, of course).

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A reasonable prior (which my doctor ascribed to) was that immunity after recovery from an infection with a coronavirus would be pretty durable and effective, and you can find plenty of reporting to support the effectiveness early on.

To believe otherwise would take some solid evidence, and maybe the Kentucky study is enough to convince you, but it was not enough to convince me (or apparently my doctor, though we didn't talk about that).

It even said this: Finally, this is a retrospective study design using data from a single state during a 2-month period; therefore, these findings cannot be used to infer causation.

So maybe "any indication" was too strong. How about any convincing indication?

Meanwhile you had things like this demonstrating that prior infection was pretty damn protective as early as late 2020: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034545

There were others as well, I was following this very closely because it seemed pretty important to not be wrong, and all of the messaging was very insistent.

The study you linked is evidence that prior infection reduces the rate of reinfection. Yes, this would be surprising if it were not true.

Your prior claim was that prior infection is equivalent to or superior to vaccination (i.e. relying on prior infection was not "heightened risk"). That was, and remains, completely false.

That's not quite my claim, but its close enough.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9047157/

"Conclusions: Naturally acquired immunity confers stronger protection against infection and symptomatic disease caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 2-dose vaccine-indued immunity."

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm

"What is added by this report?

During May–November 2021, case and hospitalization rates were highest among persons who were unvaccinated without a previous diagnosis. Before Delta became the predominant variant in June, case rates were higher among persons who survived a previous infection than persons who were vaccinated alone. By early October, persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone."

"That was, and remains, completely false."

Would you like to amend your claim? You might have an argument if you stick to "could have been false for short periods of time after people were freshly vaccinated", but otherwise that's pretty indefensible.

You are again misunderstanding the data and its relevance to what we're talking about.

The vaccine protection was not superior for a short period after vaccination. It was superior for the initial variant. We've already established the vaccines became much less effective at reducing transmission in subsequent waves. You've just shared an article that says the Delta wave evaded vaccines for transmission. Yes, that's correct.

How on earth could the Delta variant's evasion have informed your decision not to get vaccinated?

By my "that was and remains false", I am saying it was not only apparently false at the time, but it has been confirmed to be actually false retrospectively as well.

OK, so I think I understand your position now: I made a single decision early on in the pandemic that I wasn't going to get vaccinated, and somehow your links from late 2021 (ie weak evidence that didn't even exist when I was deciding) were sufficient evidence that my one decision was obviously and completely wrong.

In reality, it was a continuous decision: does the totality of evidence coming out suggest I should go get the shots today? And it never definitvely got to that point, and over time the decision became better supported, not less.

You seem to understand the evidence differently. I'll grant you that maybe at some point early on I could have bought a couple months where I would have had a marginally lower chance of infection. This would have had no appreciable effect on the people around me in the grocery store. We'll have to agree to disagree otherwise.

I don’t disagree with your assessment of your individual contribution to overall risk.

The problem is that if everyone decided the same way, then it absolutely would have produced a gigantic difference.

So we’re back to the fundamental point of this being a (true) indicator of someone’s selfishness or attitude toward their neighbors.

Me individually choosing to dump my trash into the local drinking reservoir doesn’t have any appreciable effect on others. There’s a reason, nonetheless, that it’s frowned upon.

So if I don't do a thing that has no appreciable benefit for me or the people around me, I'm being selfish, because if everyone who was in a different context did the same thing, this would somehow produce a gigantic difference?

You dumping your trash in the local drinking reservoir would probably have a couple orders of magnitude more of an impact on others than me not vaccinating after recovery (depending on what's in your trash).

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