Natural Immunity

[nett]

I'm confused by what you are saying here.

Are you claiming that Christians should use anti-vax messages as a form of evangelism? That the "Great Commission" should contain an anti-vax message? or else, as you put it "we have nothing more to offer for the unbelievers out there." That seems to be to be an enormous and obscene distortion of Matthew 28. The fact of the matter is that large majorities of both Christians and non-Christians support modern medicine and vaccines.

Or, are you claiming that accepting modern medicine in the form of vaccines somehow means that God has nothing to offer humanity? Do you feel the same about say...automobiles, electricity, computers, satellites, airplanes, the internal combustion engine, solar power, etc. etc.? Those are all human inventions too. Does acceptance of those technologies mean that God has nothing more to offer? Or is it only in the field of vaccines that technological advancement threatens belief in God?

Ken, you've voiced support for abortion, christian acceptance of homosexual marriage, and pre-marital sex. You've argued any having a set-apart church, the headship veiling, and upholding of all manner of Godly traditions. I wouldn't expect you to understand what Wade is saying here.

Talk to me like I'm dumb then. What is he saying?

I'm not going to talk for Wade, but I believe Christianity is an alternative for worldly wisdom, and that applies to almost every area you've mentioned.

[ken_sylvania]

... you kept on pretending/insisting that there was no difference in effectiveness.

I doubt I made that claim. And to be blunt, I think you know that I am not pretending, that I try to steer close to the facts as I know them. It's probably better to stick with the facts.

If the quote below isn't a claim that there is not difference in effectiveness, then what is it supposed to mean? This in the context of a study where vaccinated people got sick but previously infected folks didn't.

The conclusion also says this:

COVID-19 did not occur in anyone over the five months of the study among 2579 individuals previously infected with COVID-19, including 1359 who did not take the vaccine.

That does not show one to be superior to the other. In this particular setting, Employees of the Cleveland Clinic Health System probably took a lot of other precautions as well.

[Bootstrap]

If the quote below isn't a claim that there is not difference in effectiveness, then what is it supposed to mean? This in the context of a study where vaccinated people got sick but previously infected folks didn't.

The conclusion also says this:

COVID-19 did not occur in anyone over the five months of the study among 2579 individuals previously infected with COVID-19, including 1359 who did not take the vaccine.

That does not show one to be superior to the other. In this particular setting, Employees of the Cleveland Clinic Health System probably took a lot of other precautions as well.

I'm simply stating the conclusions provided by the authors of the paper. Here is the entire conclusions section - it does not make the claims others want to make on their behalf:

Conclusions Individuals who have had 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.

The paper does not make the claim that prior infection is better than vaccination. There are at least two reasons for that. As I said before, 15 cases out of 28102 = 0.00053376983445662, if you round that to the nearest 1,000th, you get zero. And their study is not designed to prove what people want to prove from it. I doubt that this can be turned into a statistically significant result, I would sure want to see the math and the model if someone wants to claim it can. It's the sort of thing you notice in a study that makes you want to do further research.

So the conclusion of this paper, according to the authors, is that there's no difference they choose to defend between the vaccinated group and the previously infected group. I mean, this is as simple as reading the "Conclusions" section of a paper to see what it says.

Again, the smart thing to do is give the research community a few months to sort this out. And to pay attention to the main conclusions of a paper.

[Josh]

15 people infected with covid is not "zero". It shows breakthrough infections are actually quite common in vaccinated people.

0 people infected with covid, on the other hand, is indeed "zero". It shows that people who already have immunity from a prior covid infection are, indeed, immune.

I know plenty of people who got vaccinated. Many of these people seem to be getting covid infections.

On the other hand, I don't know anyone who's gotten infected with covid twice.

It is painfully obvious that natural immunity is more effective than the vaccine. I don't think it's even up for debate - I'm pretty sure this is settled science at this point. I do not know why Bootstrap is fighting so hard on this point.

[Bootstrap]

15 people infected with covid is not "zero". It shows breakthrough infections are actually quite common in vaccinated people.

15/30 is quite common - 0.5. 15/28102 is not common - 0.00053376983445662.

Seriously, try taking your arguments to a scientific forum, see how people respond. Or do the math to demonstrate a statistically significant result, show your work, explain the model and assumptions just like scientists have to. Better yet, do both, do that work and post it on a scientific forum, tell us how they respond.

Try using words like "settled science" to describe the state of our understanding on this topic. See what they have to say. Or just look at the FDA hearings or read the scientific literature to see how they describe the state of our understanding. Show me some literature reviews that say this is settled science.

Better yet, let's wait a few months.

[Josh]

15 people infected with covid is not "zero". It shows breakthrough infections are actually quite common in vaccinated people.

15/30 is quite common - 0.5. 15/28102 is not common - 0.00053376983445662.

Seriously, try taking your arguments to a scientific forum, see how people respond. Or do the math to demonstrate a statistically significant result, show your work, explain the model and assumptions just like scientists have to.

Yet breakthrough infections are indeed now understood to be fairly common. Lots of people know someone who has been vaccinated, and then comes down with COVID anyway.

There is no scientific debate about whether breakthrough infections exist. They do.

And we don't need to go discuss in a "scientific forum". In your data set, there are zero repeat infections amongst people with natural immunity. There is a non-zero amount of vaccinated people with breakthrough infections. There is no need to mock me by saying "take that to a scientific forum and see how people respond!"

The data simply supports what nett is asserting. Breakthrough infections exist. Re-infections with COVID don't. The vaccine is less effective than natural immunity. The end.

[Ken]

The data simply supports what nett is asserting. Breakthrough infections exist. Re-infections with COVID don't. The vaccine is less effective than natural immunity. The end.

This is simply false. Many thousands of people have caught Covid twice and sometimes three times, including some who participate on this very forum. Are they all lying? So re-infections with Covid clearly do happen. It might well be the case that they are less common than breakthrough infections of vaccinated people. That is not a question that I have personally taken a deep dive into because the idea of catching Covid to avoid getting Covid seems rather self-defeating. And I’m not searching for any excuse to avoid the vaccines.

There is a lot of data out there on the re-infection rates for people who have previously caught Covid. But most of it was gathered prior to the recent Delta wave so only really applied to catching the Alpha variant twice. It appears that re-infections are becoming more common with the current Delta wave which stands to reason because the Delta variant is much more infectious. And possibly because natural immunity, like vaccine immunity, wanes over time.

[ken_sylvania]

If the quote below isn't a claim that there is not difference in effectiveness, then what is it supposed to mean? This in the context of a study where vaccinated people got sick but previously infected folks didn't.

The conclusion also says this:



That does not show one to be superior to the other. In this particular setting, Employees of the Cleveland Clinic Health System probably took a lot of other precautions as well.

I'm simply stating the conclusions provided by the authors of the paper. Here is the entire conclusions section - it does not make the claims others want to make on their behalf:

Conclusions Individuals who have had 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.

The paper does not make the claim that prior infection is better than vaccination. There are at least two reasons for that. As I said before, 15 cases out of 28102 = 0.00053376983445662, if you round that to the nearest 1,000th, you get zero. And their study is not designed to prove what people want to prove from it. I doubt that this can be turned into a statistically significant result, I would sure want to see the math and the model if someone wants to claim it can. It's the sort of thing you notice in a study that makes you want to do further research.

So the conclusion of this paper, according to the authors, is that there's no difference they choose to defend between the vaccinated group and the previously infected group. I mean, this is as simple as reading the "Conclusions" section of a paper to see what it says.

Again, the smart thing to do is give the research community a few months to sort this out. And to pay attention to the main conclusions of a paper.

You apparently do rounding differently than how I was taught to do it in school. If I rounded that number to the nearest 1,000th I would come up with 0.001. But do you really want to play that game? If you do, let me know and I'll calculate the percentage of Americans that are likely to die from COVID next month. (Hint - rounded to the nearest 1,000th you'll get zero.)

If I'm understanding you correctly, you are saying you are not making the claim that there's no difference in effectiveness - you're just repeating what the authors of the paper have stated, which is that there's no difference in effectiveness. Is that what you're saying?

Perhaps it is a small difference in effectiveness, but then again perhaps it is a huge difference in effectiveness. You mentioned that perhaps the Clinic employees were taking additional safety precautions - if so that would have perhaps kept the number of breakthrough cases abnormally low. Of course the demographic taking part in the study would also be expected to have fewer breakthrough cases than the general public due to age.

Well, we could all speculate until the cows come home.

Sure enough, we could! The possibility of the additional safety precautions affecting the study was, of course, your idea.

[Biblical Anabaptist]

The data simply supports what nett is asserting. Breakthrough infections exist. Re-infections with COVID don't. The vaccine is less effective than natural immunity. The end.

This is simply false. Many thousands of people have caught Covid twice and sometimes three times, including some who participate on this very forum. Are they all lying? So re-infections with Covid clearly do happen. It might well be the case that they are less common than breakthrough infections of vaccinated people. That is not a question that I have personally taken a deep dive into because the idea of catching Covid to avoid getting Covid seems rather self-defeating. And I’m not searching for any excuse to avoid the vaccines.

There is a lot of data out there on the re-infection rates for people who have previously caught Covid. But most of it was gathered prior to the recent Delta wave so only really applied to catching the Alpha variant twice. It appears that re-infections are becoming more common with the current Delta wave which stands to reason because the Delta variant is much more infectious. And possibly because natural immunity, like vaccine immunity, wanes over time.

Question. There is a lot of noise about the Delta variant. When someone is tested for Covid, does the test differentiate between the Alpha variant and the Delta variant, or is it simply assumed that most or all current cases are the Delta variant?

[Josh]

There is a lot of data out there on the re-infection rates for people who have previously caught Covid. But most of it was gathered prior to the recent Delta wave so only really applied to catching the Alpha variant twice. It appears that re-infections are becoming more common with the current Delta wave which stands to reason because the Delta variant is much more infectious. And possibly because natural immunity, like vaccine immunity, wanes over time.

No, there's not data supporting what you're claiming. Point to any reliable data showing people who get COVID twice (where they get both symptoms and a positive COVID test). It simply doesn't happen. Re-infections are a unicorn.

Most alleged cases of re-infection involve getting a different respiratory disease (possibly a different coronavirus). It is surprising when someone thinks they are re-infected, go get a test, and it comes up negative, but re-infections simply are not something that happens.

Breakthrough cases, on the other hand, are extremely common, which is why the vaccine is worse than useless.