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 = 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:
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.
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.
I am honestly curious why are are afraid of getting vaccinated? If you never had Covid, would you be this hesitant?
I’m not afraid of getting vaccinated. But why am I being hit with so much pressure about it? It annoys me that natural immunity is so discounted in favor of vaccination. Had I not had the infection I would have been in line as soon as I was eligible. It just seems like initially TPTB were high on the fact that those who had been infected, rarely if ever are reinfected. But once the vaccine was available that seemed to get super discounted as a factor in reaching herd immunity.
There was one article I read where a doctor was talking about natural immunity vs the vaccine and he went on and on about how much more risky it was to get the virus than to get the vaccine. But never addressed those who had previously recovered from the virus vs getting the vaccine. I totally agree, if the issue were between no immunity vs vaccination I would go with vaccination. But my question is between natural immunity and vaccinated immunity. And the natural immunity version is discounted because “we don’t know enough about it.” That is because no one is going to make any money or get any political power from natural immunity so it is much less studied.
Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.
Natural immunity may be enough, or not. It is being studied, but like everything else it is inconclusive. especially with so many levels of illness
So, basically you are saying you would rather gamble it is enough, rather than take the more proven cure. to me that is silly, unless you have a way to get your antibodies tested regularly.
and to get COVID tested everytime you want to go.to a venue that requires it
Still at 65% with the data through 6/7
Not looking like 70% for 16+ will be hit by 7/1…
If you look at the chart i posted, there seemed to be more entries for “natural immunity” than for J&J, at least with respect to performance vs. the variants of concern.
so, the % given was originally for those eligible (adults)
When the age was lowed to 16, then 12 - did the denominator get increased? Meaning did the % vaccinated actually decrease on those declarations?