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"The COVID–19 vaccines...offer a...more reliable means of protection than natural immunity."

This is false. She even goes on to say "Pfizer vaccine blocked 90% of infections after both doses" but we're seeing 99.9%+ protection from natural immunity.

She also doesn't put her logic on git (not surprising). If she had built a simple spreadsheet with the important data she'd realize her mistakes (assuming good faith).




The paper you cited looks at re-infection at up to 100 days. She cites a paper indicating up to 5% of people have no signs of immunity at 6 months:

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/371/6529/eabf4063.ful...


No, it looked at reinfection for up to a year. "Out of 149,735 individuals with a documented positive PCR test between March 2020 and January 2021". The 100 days was the threshold they used for recovery.


Oops, you're right. But this is still just one paper with a number of limitations that concludes with "health policymakers should acknowledge the possibility of reinfection and reconsider the differential message to recovered population."

Still, it's clearly the case that people who have been infected are at reduced risk. I've been vaccinated and was never infected, so it's not a personal decision for me, but given the extremely low risk of the vaccine, even with this paper, I'd still likely get vaccinated and have family members who have done so. I don't think we have enough data yet to say they made a moronic decision.


This paper found a 0.65% re-infection rate in Denmark:

"Among eligible PCR-positive individuals from the first surge of the epidemic, 72 (0·65% [95% CI 0·51-0·82]) tested positive again during the second surge compared with 16 819 (3·27% [3·22-3·32]) of 514 271 who tested negative during the first surge (adjusted RR 0·195 [95% CI 0·155-0·246]). Protection against repeat infection was 80·5% (95% CI 75·4-84·5). The alternative cohort analysis gave similar estimates (adjusted RR 0·212 [0·179-0·251], estimated protection 78·8% [74·9-82·1])."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33743221/

This paper indicates 95% efficacy due to natural infection for at least seven months in Qatar:

"Reinfection is rare in the young and international population of Qatar. Natural infection appears to elicit strong protection against reinfection with an efficacy ~95% for at least seven months."

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33937733/

Relative risk is still in favor of being vaccinated: "In addition to not knowing the clinical course of reinfection, we do not know the variants' role in reinfection – primarily because they were not known to be “in play” during the study period. Overall, natural immunity is protective. Perhaps not as protective as vaccination. More importantly, vaccination comes with a far lower risk of morbidity (hospitalization) or death."

https://www.acsh.org/news/2021/03/24/how-protective-natural-...




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