Some of your cites don’t exactly say what you think they say.
It appears that they are comparing a recent (at the time of the study) infection to a two shot regimen of mRNA vaccines from a possibly significant amount of time previously and measuring them against one variant.
The proper comparison is a recent booster and a recent infection both sync’d up to Day 0, and measuring protection going forward against all of the circulating variants for efficacy against infection, hospitalization, and death. Everything I’ve seen so far says vaccination is going to be superior, broadly speaking, while infection may be superior in some narrowly defined way (like against the exact same variant within a short period of time).
One of your excerpts from your links actually seems to say that a vaccine sans infection is more protective than an infection alone once they were both 90-179 days in the past, so it seems to counter your and churchill’s position, unless I’m misreading it.
And of course all of this ignores the risks of an infection being far greater than the risks of vaccination.
He’s needling Wookie for wanting to get his daughter vaccinated, and suggesting there’s no point in doing so. Or at least that’s how I interpret it, his posting is always a bit inscrutable.
You posted some yourself, which I think basically makes my point. I’m confident there’s more out there because I’ve read plenty of articles citing studies on this, but none of them are perfect studies and I’ve got stuff to do right now, so I’ll stick with the point that the broad consensus seems to be that vaccination + infection > vaccination > infection in terms of the combination of quality and duration of protection against the broad range of variants circulating, and that experts agree vaccination and boosters is the best way to stay protected going forward against the likely range of possible variants.
Obviously the virus can throw curve balls at us, but that’s the best science and consensus at present.
It seems like we agree about this and your main point is that it’s possible to find studies to back up churchill’s take. Well, it’s also possible to find studies that say hydroxychloriquine and ivermectin work. They’ve been discredited on their scientific methods and/or aged poorly, though.
I would say the same is the case for stuff that you posted that applied to a very narrow and specific set of conditions and timing during the Delta wave.
I also assume you agree based on your post that at every point since vaccines have been available, the best way to maximize health and safety was to get vaccinated and then boosted when available.
Survivorship bias doesn’t matter. Unless you don’t understand the point in dispute.
I’ve got a lot of sympathy for gregorio here, it must be like banging his head against the wall.
The only thing he is curious about is whether people who recover from infection have more or less immunity (defined in a certain way) than someone similar who had vaccination(s). Being interested in that doesn’t mean that he thinks or cares about any of the following
You should try to get COVID instead of getting vaxxed
If you got COVID then it means you shouldn’t get vaxxed
COVID can kill you, in which case you can’t become immune
Churchill is a great poster
It seems like a lot of people want to do that super annoying thing that Fly used to do in the old country: “Well the only reason anyone would bring this up is if they are trying to advance the argument that people who got COVID don’t benefit from vaccination (or whatever). We know what your agenda really is.”
That’s not necessarily true. It’s probably true sometimes for some people, but if someone is telling you explicitly they don’t think that, then I think we should believe them.
I mean, if you want to charitably cobble together churchill’s poo flinging into an argument, it’s basically this, that my daughters should fuck off because not everyone else in the world has gotten vaxxed yet (nevermind that a huge amount of low vaccine usage in poorer countries is from disinformation-fueled anti-vaxx attitudes and not just American hoarding, and that authorization for children helps everyone everywhere)
We also had that argument here with Keeed. It’s hardly an unheard-of attitude even around here, and combating that is a fight worth fighting.
Here’s a review of the literature. In general, it’s a lot better to look at these than any individual study since you can always find anomalous studies that show Ivermectin works for COVID.
Comparison of Infection- and Vaccine-induced Immune Responses
A systematic review and meta-analysis including data from three vaccine efficacy trials and four observational studies from the US, Israel, and the United Kingdom, found no significant difference in the overall level of protection provided by infection as compared with protection provided by vaccination; this included studies from both prior to and during the period in which Delta was the predominant variant [79]. In this review, the randomized controlled trials appeared to show higher protection from mRNA vaccines whereas the observational studies appeared to show protection to be higher following infection.
A more recent analysis of data from a network of 187 hospitals in the United States found that, among more than 7,000 COVID-19–like illness hospitalizations whose prior infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days beforehand, there was a 5.5 times higher odds of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 among previously infected patients than among fully vaccinated patients [80]. This study included data on persons more recently infected and/or vaccinated than the studies in the systematic review, though the authors noted one limitation of the design was the potential of missing testing that may have occurred outside of the healthcare network.
The Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom used data from a large-scale longitudinal community survey of COVID-19 to compare the risk of infection among fully vaccinated, partially vaccinated, unvaccinated/previously infected, and unvaccinated/uninfected persons during two different periods 1) when Alpha was the predominant variant (December 2020–May 2021) and 2) when Delta was the predominant variant (May–August 2021) [81]. Based on results that included over 26,000 RT-PCR positive tests, they found full vaccination to provide the greatest protection during the Alpha predominant period (79% vs. 65% reduction in risk), but equivalent protection from full vaccination and infection during the Delta predominant period (67% vs. 71% reduction in risk).
If we’re going to call strikes and balls here, both Wook and Church seem to be far more certain than the evidence supports. imo it’s not going to be settled for quite some time.
In the context of Wookie wanting to get his kids vaccinated, it’s absurd to needle him for that. There is nothing in the research that suggests he shouldn’t rush out to get them vaxxed. The benefit to “natral” immunity is minimal if anything and carries the risk of getting sick and spreading the bug.
I’m not sure if you’re annoyed with my response or pointing out that you presented both sides initially. If it’s the second, it seemed to me that your post was suggesting that Churchill was right, and thus I thought the last link that you posted (the contradictory one) was a mistake or you misunderstood it or something.
If not then I misunderstood your post.
Or is it door #3 and you’re unsure and want sources to examine? If it’s #3 I’ll make a point to take the time to do so, either tonight or Sunday.
I’ll oversimplify this to avoid writing a novel. If the 5% of unvaccinated people with the weakest immune systems die, whereas only the 1% weakest die after vaccination, then the sample of people with natural immunity only may have less natural vulnerability than the sample of people with vaccinated immunity only.
So that’s hard to account for.
Also, the % of people over 60 or with health risks who got vaccinated >>>> the % of people under 60 without health risks who got vaccinated. So the vaccinated group may be inherently less healthy.
Now, I believe most good studies would at least adjust for age. But I’m not sure there’s an easy, scientific way to adjust for pre-existing conditions - especially on a weighted basis.
I’m not sure what you mean as I think that all applies to this:
The “someone similar” part is hard to quantify perfectly in a study. Also if someone is weighing whether or not to get vaxxed (I know ggoreo is not weighing that personally), the outcomes of those who don’t recover are the essential, as are the other adjustments.
Given that I know he’s vaxxed and boosted, I’m confused by what the point in dispute is and why he’s curious, unless we’re litigating the drama? I’m confused.
The bolded is key because it was a much different environment in terms of range of needed protection (more variants now) and we hadn’t really gotten to test the limits of duration of immunity yet. I would lean towards tossing these conclusions from this study, or at least weighting them much lower.
So this is showing a pretty damn big advantage for the vaccine vs infection for preventing hospitalization.
Third one is also pre-Omicron so the same caveats apply as did to the first IMO.
I can’t read greg’s mind so I guess I can’t really tell you what he is curious about. But as far as I’m personally concerned, that doesn’t matter to what I’m interested in (assuming this weakness in immune system is due to some unknown factor and not something we are able to identify with any kind of test or observation). I’m interested in the immunity of survivors only (regardless of why they may have survived). Why? Mostly as a curiosity. The answer to that question doesn’t have much applicability as I don’t think people should intentionally get COVID or people who got COVID shouldn’t get vaxxed.
If I thought one of those things, the point you are making might be relevant. But I don’t.
Agree completely. That actually matters to what I’m interested in and I wouldn’t suggest otherwise.
Yes, that is also true.
The issue is exactly what you quoted me saying. My point was stuff like this (which was in one of the first responses [not from you] to greg) is not relevant to that issue:
She’s OK so far. Also I am like 95% sure my immune system is currently engaging it in battle. I spent several hours in the middle of the day in bed with the sort of listless fatigue a lot of people described getting after vaccine shots (though I never had anything but a sore arm). I’m hopeful this immediate DEFCON 1 means that the virus is going to get crushed before it manages to do any damage.
So China’s cancelled the passports of green card holders attempting to leave China.
Its finally getting some attention that China is blocking a lot of people from leaving. My wife’s passport expired in 2020 and she hasn’t been able to renew it.
China already withdrawing as host of the 2023 Asian Cup is some dreary news.