Our 13yo son got his second shot of Pfizer yesterday. Other than a sore shoulder he has no complaints, was worried this one might knock him for a bit of a loop but he’s totally fine.
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12 y.o. daughter got her 2nd shot yesterday. Only a bit of sore arm so far. No other side effects for shot #1 either.
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I’m hoping that all of my nieces and nephews can get vaccinated before school starts in the fall. Youngest just turned 6. Fingers crossed!
Last I saw, Pfizer is planning to ask for Emergency Authorization for 2-11 in late August/early September, so probably not by school start, but by Thanksgiving all school kids should be good to go.
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This summary of studies says
Natural infection works well against the original strain, and the alpha strain, although for those over 65 maybe it’s not as effective as a vaccine.
Natural infection severe enough to require hospitalization works well to protect from the beta and gamma strains. Milder infections do not provide much protection.
There don’t seem to be studies yet of the efficacy of natural infection against the delta and kappa stains. I’ve heard anecdotal stories from India suggest there are a lot of breakthrough infections among those who previously recovered from covid, but there are a lot of anecdotal stories and you can probably find some supporting any position you favor.
Thanks, @Marcie, I quickly read through the abstract. I’ll have to read through the rest to see if I see answers to a few other questions.
@Lucy interesting table. Almost looks like the only “natural infection” study is the one from the UK hospital workers that was posted earlier. And that one was from last December.
I’m still on the fence about getting vaccinated. Considering getting a first Moderna so I will be at least 2 weeks out by July 4th. But I really have no expectations of being in crowded places with lots of people in the near future either. Possibly church, but that is currently still available online so no requirement to attend in person yet. If I go, I may mask up though I won’t be extra strict about it. I’ll be willing to remove it if someone isn’t able to hear a comment I might make, though I probably would just be less likely to make a comment.
Hmm, if not being vaxxed is going to prevent you from going to church, or from participating when you go, I think you should get vaxxed. That seems like a large cost.
I wouldn’t plan to get more than one dose, though, unless you will need proof of two doses for something. I think it was Marcie who linked to some study showing that recovered people who had a single dose had an extremely robust immune response.
There was a large-scale study from Israel posted in April that concluded
This study suggests that both the BNT162b2 vaccine and prior SARS-CoV-2 infection are effective against both subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and other COVID-19–related outcomes. Moreover, the effectiveness seems similar for both cohorts. This puts into question the need to vaccinate recent (up to six month) previously-infected individuals.
The Cleveland Clinic study I posted followed over 50k employees for ~5 months (Dec '20 - May '21) & divided the subject employees into four categories:
- Previously infected*, vaccinated** (n ≈ 1,220)
- Previously infected, unvaccinated (n ≈ 1,359)
- Not previously infected, vaccinated (n ≈ 29,461)
- Not previously infected, unvaccinated (n ≈ 22,777)
*Previously infected = positive SARS-Cov2 test prior to 11/4/20. CCHS was not routinely testing asymptomatic employees, but about 12% of these previous infections had no symptom onset date in the data.
**“Fully Vaccinated” = 14 days after 2nd dose (81 employees who got J&J were censored on date of receipt), treated as a time-dependent variable, so as the study went on the unvaccinated cohort shrunk while the vaccinated grew.
2,154 SARS-Cov2 infections were observed in the 5 months of the study. 2,139 of those were in group 4 while the other 15 infections were in group 3, so 0 infections in the previously infected groups (1 & 2), regardless of vaccination.
Some interesting (to me) items in this paper:
Roughly 50% of previously infected employees chose to get vaccinated, and about 60% of non-previously-infected employees were vaccinated by the end of the observation period. These are employees of a major Ohio health system.
The study was not designed to determine duration of protection from natural immunity (nor from vaccines) but the median duration from previous infection to start of study was about 5 months, plus the 5 months of the study, suggests natural immunity protects against reinfection for at least 10 months (probably longer).
The discussion section is particularly interesting (to me, at least), when the authors get into what they perceive as strengths & limitations of their study:
Strengths:
- large sample size
- follow-up of up to 5 months, which is longer than the period in the published mRNA efficacy studies
- health system tracked infection among employees (relatively) accurately (but see limitation 1)
Limitations:
- no regular screening testing, so asymptomatic infections may have gone undetected - both in the classification as “previously infected” as well as during the observation period
- No children, few elderly subjects, few if any immunosuppressed subjects
- Lack of access to detailed clinical information on employees (e.g. severity of illness)
Conclusion
Individuals who have laboratory-confirmed symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.
So now comes the $64,000 question. Now that there seems to be no shortage of the vaccine to require prioritization, should those who have had a laboratory-confirmed symptomatic SARS-CoV2 infection get vaccinated?
Or are they ok to go maskless like vaccinated people without getting vaccinated? And should that be the position of the CDC?
Sorry, it’s not all that difficult.
Yes.
No.
No.
Just get your shot(s) and be done with it.
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I don’t know. The US is pushing for full vaccination. Israel says natural infection is good enough. I believe the EU is suggesting a single dose of vaccine.
My gut tells me the US position is wrong, just as it’s been wrong on a lot of other covid issues. On the other hand, if it’s more convenient to you to follow the local guidelines, you can do that. On the third hand, there is some extremely indirect connection between demand for vaccine in the US and how much vaccine we ship to the rest of the world.
YMMV.
The data seem to suggest that the medical benefit of “boosting” natural immunity with a vaccine is negligible.
There are the risks of side effects from the jab, ranging from non-existent to serious.
There may be social benefits to getting jabbed if governments, businesses, sports/concert venues, & churches continue to segregate the vaccinated while ignoring natural immunity.
Given the efficacy of masks and the protection afforded by natural immunity, this is a no-brainer, Mr Contact.
You’ll never be told a product is unnecessary by someone in Sales.
My brain agrees with your gut, Miss Van Pelt.
too, & I believe this is related to the point of the Cleveland study: by recognizing the effectiveness of natural immunity, we can prioritize those who were not previously infected for getting the jab, to maximize our chances of reaching herd immunity more quickly.
This is an optimization problem that can be looked at locally or globally. The global view would say it’s better to ship shots overseas to vaccinate vulnerable seniors & others than to give them to American low-risk covid-recoverers or children.
Yes, but the connection between his getting jabbed and what we ship overseas is extremely weak. Right now we are awash in partially opened shipments, that aren’t going anywhere. (Each vial needs to be used in a short amount of time, but a shipment is a package of several vials, most of which can sit in the freezer for some time.)
If you think it will be convenient for you to be jabbed, this seems like a good time to do it, as your marginal impact on demand will be pretty close to zero, and at the moment there are lots of places where you can walk up and get it.
Also, while i agree with Marcie that in a perfect and completely unbiased world we would protect all the elderly and front line health care workers and everyone who works in a nursing home or houses an elderly parent before moving on the the rest of us, in practice, everyone cares most about their own family and friends, and every nation wants to protect their own.
And i disagree with Marcie about the benefit of vaccinating the young. Young adults are the primary vectors of the pandemic, and if we vaccinate enough of the population then we can approach herd immunity and protect the immune compromised.
And there are a lot of immune compromised people out there. I just sent out an invitation to a moderately large group for an event to which i am only inviting vaccinated people. I’ve already heard back from two who can’t come for medical reasons. (“I can’t be vaccinated until future date for medical reasons”, “I’ve been vaccinated, but due to the immune suppressing drugs I’m on it probably didn’t help me”) My mother is also immune suppressed. This is not a rare condition.
Fwiw, Marcie, no one has written back and said, “I recovered from covid, can I come.” I’m not sure what my answer would be. It’s not just my opinion that matters, but also the comfort of the other people coming, some of whom believe the CDC more than I do. I think I’d they recovered and had at least one dose of any vaccine, I’d be willing to push the issue and include them. With no vaccine I’d email the others who said “yes” and check if they are okay with it.
Honestly I think this point has been at least as much a driving principle throughout COVID as anything else
New answer:
Millions of J&J Covid-19 Vaccines Are at Risk of Expiring in June Millions of J&J Covid-19 Vaccines Are at Risk of Expiring in June - WSJ
Check with your doctor as to whether they think it’s reasonably safe for you to get the J&J jab. But we apparently have a lot of doses lying around that are going to expire and be thrown away.
For almost anyone else I would recommend an mRNA vaccine, as they seem to provide better immunity, and have, for most people, a better safety profile. But I think you are a guy, and J&J is likely quite safe for you. It would be one and done, and you’d be able to tick that “fully vaccinated” box. And if you don’t take it, odds are it will just be thrown away at the end of the month.
My city has had a ton of pop up J&J clinics — this is probably why.
This seems like a weird comparison. The CDC isn’t in any way a sales department.
The vaccine is available for anyone who wants it now (excluding children). Nobody is going to be taking away a vaccine from an American who is unvaccinated and wants to get vaccinated.
America will never reach herd immunity with that logic.