AlanSubie4Life
Efficiency Obsessed Member
Note this study does not cover boosters, nor does it cover Omicron. I believe it did not look at severe disease and outcomes.
I wonder what all the pro vaxxers have to say about this recently posted research by the CDC. What was once considered a conspiracy is now being acknowledged by CDC. Go figure.
It has never been a conspiracy. Infection-acquired immunity has always been acknowledged as providing some protection. Just look at this thread starting in 2020; it tells the story. The issues are:
1) Not as strong as a boosted response, in particular against variants.
2) Has substantial downside risk both personally, and to the society in which we live (increased transmission of infection vs. breakthrough). This is obviously the biggest issue.
3) The response is clearly less consistent than the response to a vaccine, boosted or unboosted (distribution of responses), and depends on the individual’s disease severity. This is supported by a great deal of data at this point. This is potentially relevant for rates of protection against severe disease upon breakthrough or reinfection; there could be a divergence from the infection rates looked at in the study.
I think two infections will provide very substantial durable immunity against severe infection in most individuals, unless we see a variant with very significant immune escape (which we have not seen yet). But such a variant would also cause problems for the strength of protection against severe disease of current vaccines.
A couple advantages of infection-acquired immunity:
1) Mucosal immunity might provide some benefits in some people. You can get this by infection after vaccination though.
2) (Hypothetical) The nucleocapsid proteins maybe could provide some targets which provide cross-protection against very mutated versions of the virus in future. But very hypothetical, and you might be able to get this to some extent by infection after vaccination, which is safer.
3) People who get infected then get vaccinated have some of the very strongest levels of protection in studies (probably due to nucleocapsid targets).
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