On the heels of last month’s news of stunning results from Pfizer’s and Moderna’s experimental Covid-19 vaccines, Senator Rand Paul tweeted a provocative comparison.
The new vaccines were 90 percent and 94.5 percent effective, said Mr. Paul, Republican of Kentucky and a trained ophthalmologist. And “naturally acquired” Covid-19 was 99.9982 percent effective, he claimed.
Interestingly, the article did not dispute those percentages.
The article then said this:
Which produces a stronger immune response: a natural infection or a vaccine?
The short answer: We don’t know. But Covid-19 vaccines have predictably prevented illness, and they are a far safer bet, experts said.
The article then went on to talk about whether it is safer to risk getting the virus or getting the vaccine. And of course, the answer is, it is less risky to get the vaccine. And they also talk about which is more protective, getting the virus and recovering or getting the vaccine. They claim getting the virus gives a more variable response than getting the vaccine which may indicate having had the virus provides less protection than getting vaccinated. But again, they do not ever dispute Senator Paul’s numbers.
If the question is, would I risk getting covid to aquire immunity or get the vaccine, my answer is “here is my arm, please jab me.” But if the question is having already recovered from a covid infection am I as protected as someone who did not have the infection but did get vaccinated, I would say the jury is still out on that.
I know it is just N=1, but I personally know somebody who got Covid twice, so while 99.9982 percent is possible, seems unlikely to me. I am not that popular, sample size not too big.
Against that, he also got the vaccine afterward, and the side effects hit him hard.
Just an FYI - these are an apples and oranges type of comparison on the numbers. The 90%/94.5% numbers cited for vaccines are relative to cases in the control group. Rand Paul’s numbers are relative to total people contracting COVID.
In the Pfizer study ( Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine | NEJM) 8 cases of COVID were found out of the 18,198 individuals in it. Using Rand Paul’s method that would be 99.96% effective. It is instead listed as 95% effective since the comparison group had 162/18,325 people contract it. So on a rate of getting it basis, it is 95% lower. Using Rand’s calculation method not getting any vaccine would be 99.12% effective. So it’s silly for him to compare those two types of numbers as if they were the same thing.
That is actually an interesting question. I cannot come up with any worries about getting vaccinated. My wife is now fully vaccinated (2+ weeks after second Moderna jab) and she is fine. None of the rest of us who got it at the same time are vaccinated yet. She got it because her work requires unvaccinated to go through the front door and the COVID protocol of answering questions and having temp taken. She was sick of that but they also told her she couldn’t get the vaccine until she was 3 months past her infection.
If anything, I might say I feel protected enough from my recent infection that I’m willing to risk my natural immunity vs the vaccinated immunity until there is more certainty about how natural immunity compares to vaccinated immunity. The scientists keep saying things like: “So that immune response might be bigger, better and longer lasting than just getting the infection one time,”
But even in the English study that was referenced by someone (maybe me) they came to the conclusion that the natural infection conferred immunity was about the same as the vaccine reported numbers though probably with more variability.
I’m not disputing the natural infection immunity at all. I think the English study was like 85%, and a different Denmark study was around 80% or so. A bit better than J&J, a bit worse than the 2-dose ones, but ballpark pretty good.
I was just taking issue with Rand Paul using a completely different denominator / calculation method when trying to compare two numbers - bad statistics and all. If he had said “natural is 80-85% and vaccine is 90-95% and 80-85% is good enough for me” I wouldn’t have an issue. Saying natural is “99.99%” effective is a perfect how to lie with statistics case though.
I think ‘silly’ is a very generous word choice, particularly considering that he tries appeal to the authority of his medical degree, yet completely misrepresents medical data.
We really need to stop doing this, wrt comparing the vaccination efficacy.
The designed tests were so different that it is not reasonable to compare, and that is even disregarding any temporal impact.
Lol. I figured you were playing nice, I just find myself frustrated with his culture following that screams “he is a medical doctor!!! He knows the medicine stuff!!”
The real life effectiveness is mostly pretty similar to the testing effectiveness. I think it’s become okay to compare. I was just looking at a chart of several vaccines against a number of variants (where several cells said, “unknown”, to be fair, including a lot of the j&j cells). We have a lot more data now than just the daya the jabs were approved based on.
Apparently you are correct. I must have underestimated the distance of his move to the loony wing of the party during the Trump years. Either that or the incident from the article caused him to lose support among Republican voters, so he’s using COVID as a chance to convince those voters he’s dedicated to following the party line?
I should have been more precise with my description. Her employer would not let her get vaccinated when most of the rest of her coworkers were vaccinated when they had a clinic come into their workplace and administer the vaccines. There was no issue with availability at the time or qualification. They would not allow her to be vaccinated because she had not cleared 90 days since testing positive or clearing symptoms. They then told her that if she went out and got it on her own she had to wait that 90 day period to properly qualify as vaccinated.
Anyone want to guess who her employer is?
The State of Utah. But they and the CDC are the same ones who are telling everyone else how to handle their vaccinations. It is unfortunate that I have such little trust in the government because of their incompetence. But I also happen to have little trust in the companies that created the vaccines and are telling me how great they are because they are biased with a financial interest.
I believe they thought they were following the protocols that had been passed along. They were just doing what they had been told to do. What else would you expect from government bureaucrats?
BTW, interesting study I found following some of DTNF’s links.
Results: It is too early to have any meaningful information on the duration of vaccine immunity against SARS CoV-2. For those who already had the infeciton, the rate of reinfection is very low. Most reinfections are due to laboratory errors, to incomplete cure of the primary infection, to the supervening immunodeficiency of the host, or to pre-existing immunodeficiency made evident by the SARS CoV-2 infection. The available studies on the immunology of the infection converge in indicating that it generates a robust and persistent immunity. This behavior does not differ from that of respiratory viruses known to date: in naturally occurring viral respiratory infections, reinfections are exceptional.
Conclusions and implications: The civil community awaits suggestions from scientists not only to protect susceptible people, but to be able to safely resume activities made uncertain by the pandemic. From the information we have to-date, we suggest that, in principle, patients who have already overcome the infection should not be prioritized to the SARS CoV-2 vaccine. Instead, they could be provided with an immunological passport that allows them to resume a normal social life.