Au Natural

[Glenn]

"The analysis showed, as expected, that full mRNA vaccination plus a booster dose, atop natural immunity due to infection by an earlier variant, was associated with the strongest protection from Omicron infection. However, vaccine immunity against new infection appeared to wane rapidly, whereas people with a prior-variant infection were moderately protected from Omicron with little decline in protection even a year after their prior infection."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220615192108.htm

Perhaps it is better to be exposed to viruses before being subjected to RNA vaccination, irregardless of health or age.

[Lawyer Daggett]

I can't help but point out that this last statement is a complete non sequitur.

Here's how it could be rescued. You would have to qualify it with "provided that your prior exposure
did not result in any serious ill effects, such as death, lengthy illness, long covid, or other sequalae
that have been associated at times with even mild infections. " That and dropping the "irregardless ..."
clause, which would obviously contrast with the caveat supplied just above as we know that the
risks of serious consequences to a SARS-CoV-2 infection do depend on health and age.

Simply put, there's risk in getting infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The risk is greatest in
someone naive to vaccine based immunity, or infection acquired immunity.

I also have to take some issue with how that study uses the term "immunity". It presses
what is a simplistic notion, that of preventing infection (as defined by a positive PCR
test). This is often also seen as matching the surrogate measurement of circulating
anti-body levels.

The problem is, this concept of immunity ignores the memory immune response ---
that fact that your system retains a suite of memory B cells and T cells that retain
their specifically trained ability to very rapidly respond to an infection. This permits
your immune system to rapidly produce new antibodies, and new T cells so that
a breakthrough infection can be rapidly attacked and eliminated. This is also immunity.
It remains even when circulating antibody levels have waned. And, as this study and
many others have demonstrated, this type of immunity provides steady and strong
protection against severe disease, hospitalization, and death.

I belabor the point because far too many gloss over this aspect of immunity when
attempting to think about the benefits of vaccination. Now having written that, I'm
sure I've been awkward in stating a few points too but at least it's not grossly wrong.

[Glenn]

Can you say with conviction that the overall number of deaths and serious long term injuries would not have changed?

[*Hemidactylus*]

Sounds good to me. Glad to see you still posting (~lurking).

[Lawyer Daggett]

I can say that the study you quoted, and the known pathology of infection to a naive person,
a vaccinated person, and persons first infected and subsequently vaccinated, taken together
say you shouldn't wait to get vaccinated until after recovering from an infection, or go out
and try to get an infection. That's simply the numerical result from the risk factors. Most
of that is in the paper your citation references. Do you need help understanding the paper?

Regardless, your claim is absolute nonsense. Consider your claim about "(ir)regardless of
health or age. The mortality rate for people unvaccinated people over 80 ranged between
5 and 8%. It improved after better therapeutic treatment was developed. Some of those
numbers also reflect the presence of comorbidities such as obesity, diabetes, and more.
But then you also claimed both health and age.

No, you wouldn't be better off with a 5% chance of dying then first getting vaccinated
where you chance of dying from a breakthrough infection is down around 20 fold.
And this doesn't even consider the other impacts of those with severe covid who
took many months to recover from pneumonia and other severe side-effects. Further,
studies have shown significantly increased risks of heart disease in those who survived
"natural" infections. This is pretty well known, and so I urge you to stop spreading
what is superficially bad advice about things you really have no understanding of.

[*Hemidactylus*]

I haven’t been keeping up lately but this one caught my eye. Seems immunity
toward SARS-CoV-2 is becoming a highly contingent confusing mess depending
on your specific infection and vaccination history. Having a previous
infection could help or hinder response to future exposure, but I had a
difficult time mapping the implications of this mess in my head:

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq1841

“Abstract

The Omicron, or Pango lineage B.1.1.529, variant of SARS-CoV-2 carries
multiple spike mutations with high transmissibility and partial
neutralizing antibody (nAb) escape. Vaccinated individuals show protection
from severe disease, often attributed to primed cellular immunity. We
investigated T and B cell immunity against B.1.1.529 in triple mRNA
vaccinated healthcare workers (HCW) with different SARS-CoV-2 infection
histories. B and T cell immunity against previous variants of concern was
enhanced in triple vaccinated individuals, but magnitude of T and B cell
responses against B.1.1.529 spike protein was reduced. Immune imprinting by
infection with the earlier B.1.1.7 (Alpha) variant resulted in less durable
binding antibody against B.1.1.529. Previously infection-naïve HCW who
became infected during the B.1.1.529 wave showed enhanced immunity against
earlier variants, but reduced nAb potency and T cell responses against
B.1.1.529 itself. Previous Wuhan Hu-1 infection abrogated T cell
recognition and any enhanced cross-reactive neutralizing immunity on
infection with B.1.1.529.”

You or Bill Rogers would be better suited working through the
implications…and this is just one article with perhaps limited
generalizability. Still made me wonder how someone surviving earlier
variant who then got vaccinated would compare to a naive vaccinee to Wuhan
spike (also boosted) who then contracted Omicron… my brain cell hurts.

[erik simpson]

That abstract ought to win some kind of prize. I think my immunity has been compromised
just from reading it.

[Lawyer Daggett]

I recall the abstract. I looked through the paper in a skimming mode. My
question about the claims in the abstract was "compared to what?"

I don't think the answer there was especially coherent. For example,
> "... Previously infection-naïve HCW who

> became infected during the B.1.1.529 wave showed enhanced immunity against
> earlier variants, but reduced nAb potency and T cell responses against
> B.1.1.529 itself.

As I recall, they mean that a B.1.1.529 infection produced a lesser nAB titre
against B1.1.529 than a Beta infection produced against Beta.

My take-home at the time was that Omicron is less immunogenic. There were
some more in there that was interesting and I thought consistent with what I
felt was a growing trend to see this lesser immunogenicity. Meanwhile, I was
really fishing for studies on booster vaccination with mRNA customized to
Omicron Spike sequences because some early studies there suggested that
they weren't going to be especially effective because of immune dominance
effects. But the metric there was purely measures of neutralizing antibody
levels and potency.

I realize I'm not really addressing your question but I'm tired right now and
frankly not up to facing that paper again. I just didn't like their writing style.
(but I think studying the figures worked).

[Glenn]

You really have an attitude problem. And the claims you make are just that.
Instead of flapping your lips you should support such claims if you think they are relevant.

Yes, I am aware of older people being more susceptible. My view does include all, including children. That will undoubtedly push a button or two of yours, but the question stands. Some will die of viruses, some will get sick and require care. But as you may not have noticed in your zeal to look superior, you seem to have missed the fact that I gave no advice, but merely posed a conditional scenario.
Had their not been a doomsday attitude toward COViD and more people were allowed to be exposed to the virus, perhaps a light load, could it possibly be that not as many died and suffered?

[Lawyer Daggett]

It's like you don't understand what even the words you write actually mean.

glen > Perhaps it is better to be exposed to viruses before being subjected to RNA vaccination, irregardless of health or age.

Perhaps you should support that claim rather than issue it after citing an article
that contradicts it. Pretending that a suggestion that something would be better
isn't giving advice is nonsense, even by your standards. And you don't appear
to understand how appending (ir)regardless of health or age alters your claim.

Here's some simple math for you. At age around 80-90, the death rate upon infection
is about 5%. That 50,000 for a million infected. Vaccination reduces that by about 20-fold
with a subsequent reduction over time to about 10-fold. We'll use the smaller effect.
Vaccination then saves about 45,000 lives per million infected in that age group.
Now consider what happens if we split up into two groups of 5 million each.
The five million play devil may care, 1M get infected. 50,000 die (more suffer severe
consequences but we'll even ignore that for simplicity). The next 5 M get the vax. We'll
ignore the protection against infection and say a similar number, 1M get infected. Only
5,000 die. Now that first set that survived a natural infection subsequently get the vax.
They have this longer lasting extra protection. So their rate of death per infection is,
here exaggerated beyond the paper you referenced, twice as good as those just vaxed.
So that's 20-fold below the original 5%. 0.25% or 2500 per million. You just have to ignore
the 50,000 per million you sacrificed. But with 1 million break-through infections in that
group the sum is the first 50,000 plus 2,500 more 52,500.

In the just vaxed group who only have vax immunity, their current levels only give them
an protection of 0.5% (instead of super-duper 0.25% in that age bracket). Thus if 1M
of that cohort get a breakthrough infection 5,000 will die. Add that to the 5000 we scored
earlier and now it's 10,000. The death if we pursue the vaccination first produces 10,000
which is significantly less than 52,500 dead. I think saving 42,500 lives saved is the
preferred outcome.

And this is exaggerating thing in favor of your "perhaps it is better ..." scenario.
This is all pretty obvious stuff. Writing it down in a possibly pedantic enough way
for it to make sense even to a reluctant audience is the hard part.

And less anyone misunderstand, there's lots of other damaging consequences to
a "natural infection" beyond just death directly related to the infection. It is absolutely,
clearly, unquestionably, better to get vaccinated prior to getting an infection.

It reduces your chance of getting an infection. It reduces your chances of suffering
serious infection or death if you do get an infection. It reduces the time you are
infectious to others if you do get an infection and thus help reduce the spread in
the population (you know, caring for others). The fact that you may, on average,
have slightly better immunity if you survive an infection first will seldom add up
to an overall advantage if you include the disadvantages associated with the
morbidity and mortality associated with an actual infection. It's not controversial
given the only slight improvements to immunity imparted by surviving an infection.

[Martin Harran]

Glenn and his fellow travellers choose to ignore that we know
first-hand the impact of letting people get Covid naturally. We saw
it in the early days of the pandemic, for example in Northern Italy
where hospitals were overwhelmed and mortality rates soared.

[Glenn]

Do you even know what being subjected to viruses means?

[Glenn]

You taut you taw a putty tat.

[Martin Harran]

On Fri, 17 Jun 2022 07:25:25 -0700 (PDT), Glenn <GlennS...@msn.com>
wrote:

Typical display of what Glenn considers erudition when he can't come
up with a sensible response.

[Mark Isaak]

There's a simpler analysis which, I expect, leads to the same conclusion:

Hey Glenn, have *you* gone out of your way to get infected? If not, I
guess you don't believe what you yourself are saying.

--
Mark Isaak eciton (at) curioustaxonomy (dot) net
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred
to the presence of those who think they've found it." - Terry Pratchett

[Lawyer Daggett]

I guess I should apologize if my actions have led you or anyone else to believe that
I think what he does or doesn't believe is of any consequence. In my defense, I was
just taking advantage of an invitation of sorts to write what I felt like writing regardless.
His own words are the only things really needed to weigh the value of his words.

[Glenn]

Defending yourself from being a self righteous know it all prick doesn't usually carry much weight.

[Glenn]

"Getting infected" is not the same as "exposed to virus", and Lawyer Daggett appears to have had an epiphany in that regard.

Yes, I have been exposed to live and inactive viruses several times in my life. I suspect most have, and have "gone out of their way" to get infected.

And "only slight improvements to immunity imparted by surviving an infection" may not be accurate, either short term or long term.

[Glenn]

And what make you think you should be regarded as an authority on COVID? Aren't you a paramedic married to a lab tech?

[Lawyer Daggett]

What a bizarrely obtuse claim. Your nonsense is untethered to reality.
Discrediting Glenn equal letting him write. Wise advice: stop digging.

[Martin Harran]

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/06/24/how-many-lives-have-been-saved-by-covid-19-vaccines

"The study—published on June 23rd in Lancet Infectious Diseases—found
that in the first year of vaccine rollout, jabs saved the lives of
19.1m-20.4m people. Without vaccines, the study estimates, roughly
three times as many people would have died from covid in 2021 alone.
And 6.8m-7.7m of the prevented deaths were in countries covered by
covax, an initiative created to ensure vaccines were sent to poorer
countries.

Still, a lack of vaccines in some parts of the world still led to
avoidable deaths. Around 100 countries failed to reach the World
Health Organisation’s goal of vaccinating 40% of their eligible
populations by the end of 2021. The researchers estimate that this
cost around 600,000 lives."

[RonO]

The recent estimate is that probably around 20 million people survived
because of vaccination.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-saved-nearly-20-million-lives-in-a-year-study-says/

You don't want to get covid in the first place, but if you do get
exposed vaccination is much better than nothing.

Ron Okimoto

[jillery]

Your comment above makes it sound like vaccinations are an alternative
treatment post exposure. I expect you know that's not the case.
There are treatments available post exposure, but they are more
expensive and must be started as soon as possible for best effect.

Some people play the odds and hope they won't catch Covid, or if they
do, it won't develop into long-term effects or death.

--
You're entitled to your own opinions.
You're not entitled to your own facts.

[RonO]

"Exposed" is not the same as contracting the disease. If you are
exposed to the virus in a high enough number of virus to cause an
infection, vaccinations reduce the probability of contracting the
disease, and if you do start to express symptoms the severity is
decreased (fewer hospitalizations) and the mortality is decreased. That
is what saved an estimated 20 million people.

Ron Okimoto

[broger...@gmail.com]

Vaccinations for covid are not meant for post-exposure prophylaxis (as they are, for example for rabies). You could have fixed the wording problem jillery complained about by clarifying that you meant to have written,

"You don't want to get covid in the first place, but if you do get exposed, it's better to have been vaccinated than not to have been."

[jillery]

On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 05:29:01 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

>On 6/26/2022 11:31 PM, jillery wrote:
>> On Sun, 26 Jun 2022 08:42:48 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 6/16/2022 11:25 AM, Glenn wrote:
>>>> "The analysis showed, as expected, that full mRNA vaccination plus a booster dose, atop natural immunity due to infection by an earlier variant, was associated with the strongest protection from Omicron infection. However, vaccine immunity against new infection appeared to wane rapidly, whereas people with a prior-variant infection were moderately protected from Omicron with little decline in protection even a year after their prior infection."
>>>>
>>>> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/06/220615192108.htm
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps it is better to be exposed to viruses before being subjected to RNA vaccination, irregardless of health or age.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The recent estimate is that probably around 20 million people survived
>>> because of vaccination.
>>>
>>> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-vaccine-saved-nearly-20-million-lives-in-a-year-study-says/
>>>
>>> You don't want to get covid in the first place, but if you do get
>>> exposed vaccination is much better than nothing.
>>>
>>> Ron Okimoto
>>
>>
>> Your comment above makes it sound like vaccinations are an alternative
>> treatment post exposure. I expect you know that's not the case.
>> There are treatments available post exposure, but they are more
>> expensive and must be started as soon as possible for best effect.
>>
>> Some people play the odds and hope they won't catch Covid, or if they
>> do, it won't develop into long-term effects or death.
>>
>
>"Exposed" is not the same as contracting the disease.

I acknowledge your comment above is factually correct. However, any
treatment is unnecessary if exposure doesn't cause infection. A
reasonable precaution is to presume any exposure leads to infection.

My point here is vaccines are preventives, not treatments. By
analogy, it does no good to put on a condom *after* a woman is
inseminated, whether or not she later becomes pregnant.

> If you are
>exposed to the virus in a high enough number of virus to cause an
>infection, vaccinations reduce the probability of contracting the
>disease, and if you do start to express symptoms the severity is
>decreased (fewer hospitalizations) and the mortality is decreased. That
>is what saved an estimated 20 million people.
>
>Ron Okimoto

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Monday, June 27, 2022 at 10:05:22 AM UTC-4, jillery wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jun 2022 05:29:01 -0500, RonO <roki...@cox.net> wrote:

> >"Exposed" is not the same as contracting the disease.

> I acknowledge your comment above is factually correct. However, any
> treatment is unnecessary if exposure doesn't cause infection. A
> reasonable precaution is to presume any exposure leads to infection.

Or a bit more than 50%, if you're into data and experiments.
https://www.science.org/content/article/scientists-deliberately-infected-people-coronavirus-here-s-what-happened

One could hedge on precaution and its meaning such that this is in
no way a correction in the context of "reasonable precautions" but
this seemed like a reasonable opportunity to offer an interesting data point.
34 healthy volunteers deliberately exposed to covid19. 18 ended up
testing positive with detectable viral RNA.

[RonO]

There is nothing about post infection vaccination in my statement. You
obviously have to be vaccinated before exposure in what I claimed. You
and Jillery are just messing up what I wrote for some reason. I was
talking about getting vaccinated before exposure. Vaccination isn't for
after you get the disease, how would vaccination avoid getting the
disease if you already have it? It is better to have been vaccinated

than not to have been.

Ron Okimoto

[*Hemidactylus*]

I charitably read it as you implying vaccination came before exposure to
actual virus.

[RonO]

There was no reason to misinterpret what I wrote. Vaccination efficacy
trials do not start until 2 weeks post vaccination. If you are infected
by the virus before that, you aren't included in the results.

Ron Okimoto

[broger...@gmail.com]

I understood what you meant, but your sentence was open to misinterpretation. It's an easy fix. You change "You don't want to get covid in the first place, but if you do get exposed, vaccination is much better than nothing," to "You don't want to get covid in the first place, but if you do get exposed, having been vaccinated is much better than nothing." Not a big deal.

[jillery]

I understood what you meant. You and I both know there are some
people who don't. I regret that you think I "messed up" your
comments.

[Martin Harran]

What perhaps confuses this a bit is that a person who has been
vaccinated and goes on to get the virus will be significantly less
likely to get seriously ill with it as reflected in the reduced stress
on hospitals in recent surges.

Am I right in thinking that wasn't fully anticipated when the vaccines
were being developed, that the focus was solely on preventing people
from getting the virus rather than stopping them from getting very
sick if they did get it?

[broger...@gmail.com]

I would not say that the focus was solely on preventing infection. There are other vaccines, for example the malaria vaccine that's being used in Africa, which do not greatly reduce the risk of infection but do reduce the risk of severe disease and death. THe flu vaccines are like that, too. I'm sure the people working on the covid vaccine hoped they'd get one that completely blocked infection and thus serious illness and onward transmission as well, but they were all people familiar with the vaccine development field and I expect they were quite aware that one possibility was that the vaccine would have a bigger impact on severe disease than on infection as such.

[RonO]

OK, open to misinterpretation if you wanted to misinterpret it. I will
agree with that. If you took it as being consistent with reality, you
would not have misinterpreted it.

Really, have you heard of any successful studies on the efficacy of the
vaccine if given after infection. The antibody treatements don't even
work if it isn't applied as soon after infection as possible. For
vaccination you have to evolve the antibodies and produce enough of them
antibody producing cells to be effective.

Ron Okimoto

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 5:25:23 AM UTC-4, martin...@gmail.com wrote:

Bill has already answered but I'll add, no, they weren't just "hoping" to
prevent infections. This is reflected in the design of their clinical trials.
They identified endpoints including seeking and getting a positive PCR
test, metrics for severity of illness, hospitalization, and death.

They did not add frequent asymptomatic surveillance testing. That means,
by design, the study would be ignorant of asymptomatic infections. Such
phrasing is prone to misunderstanding. I don't mean they wanted to be
ignorant, I mean that the design of the study was such that they just would
not know. To excuse them for this aspect of the design, it's really prohibitive
to try to get people to come in for weekly (or more frequent) covid tests in
a large study with 60,000 people, from all walks of life, spread over so many
geographic locations. Logistics in these things is a significant concern.

So only "sick" people, not infected people showed up in the clinical testing
and these were generally people who sought out testing people they felt ill.

Luckily, there were places that were already doing routing surveillance testing,
mostly health care networks including hospitals. Thus when vaccinations
became available, follow-up studies were done where they could look at
the incidence of asymptomatic infection with and without vaccination.

The criticisms of such studies is that health care workers might not be the
most representative patients from which to draw broad conclusions. On the
one hand, you want to believe they are smarter and more careful about taking
precautions, on the second hand they are in a high risk environment, and on
that tricky third hand, they are more prone to getting very high dose exposures,
especially those involved in care of covid patients.

Those studies have shown two important things. Yes, the vaccine does
significantly reduce the odds of infection (including asymptomatic
infection). And vaccinated individuals are less likely to pass on an infection
to close contacts such as spouses and family members they live with
even if they get a breakthrough infection.

[Lawyer Daggett]

You mean like the rabies vaccine Bill already mentioned?
Look, fairly friendly people offered a clarification where your writing was
ambiguous over a point where people have been shown to often get confused.
It looked like constructive criticism to me. I agree with them. Take it that way.
Perhaps, just perhaps, old as many of us are, we aren't too old to learn some lessons
on how to communicate more clearly.

[Martin Harran]

Ok, thanks you and Bill, that all makes sense.

[broger...@gmail.com]

Come to think of it, the vaccine against shingles is another example of a post-exposure vaccine, in its case, very long after exposure indeed.

[Martin Harran]

As I've said before, when I was lecturing and students failed to
understand me, my starting point was always that I was at fault for
not explaining properly; I didn't blame them for being stupid and
certainly not for wanting to misunderstand me. I apply the same logic
here except for people like Glenn and his ilk who just want to stir
shit. I can understand you getting crotchety with people like that; it
beats me why you get crotchety with those who agree with you.

[Lawyer Daggett]

On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 7:05:23 AM UTC-4, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 6:45:23 AM UTC-4, Lawyer Daggett wrote:
> > On Tuesday, June 28, 2022 at 6:20:23 AM UTC-4, Ron O wrote:
> > > On 6/27/2022 7:37 PM, broger...@gmail.com wrote:
> > > > On Monday, June 27, 2022 at 6:35:23 PM UTC-4, Ron O wrote:


> > > Really, have you heard of any successful studies on the efficacy of the
> > > vaccine if given after infection.
> > You mean like the rabies vaccine Bill already mentioned?

> Come to think of it, the vaccine against shingles is another example of a post-exposure vaccine, in its case, very long after exposure indeed.

There are therapeutic HPV vaccines that have been used against
various cancers caused by HPV. One can google therapeutic vaccines
and find many more examples including anti-cancer therapies which
were, and remain, a significant topic in mRNA vaccines. And of course
much effort went into attempting to develop a therapeutic HIV vaccine.

A common theme is to rescue a therapeutic immune response from
what one might call successful immune evasion.

[jillery]

So there is some basis for some people to believe vaccines are used to
treat infection.

[jillery]

I acknowledge that for most vaccines generally and for Covid-19
vaccines specifically, they don't help prevent infection post
exposure. However, there are people who believe vaccines work to
treat infection.

[jillery]

On Tue, 28 Jun 2022 02:49:18 -0700 (PDT), "broger...@gmail.com"

I can't recall the sources, but I read some articles which described
data that suggests immunity from Covid-19 infection is longer lasting
and responds to a wider variety of strains, as contrasted to immunity
from current vaccines. And those who had infection *and* vaccines had
the longest-lasting and most robust immunity. This suggests the
current vaccines have room for improvement.

>> >You could have fixed the wording problem jillery complained about by clarifying that you meant to have written,
>> >
>> >"You don't want to get covid in the first place, but if you do get exposed, it's better to have been vaccinated than not to have been."

[*Hemidactylus*]

I had read something suggesting that if you’ve already been vaccinated
against COVID a while back and you happen to be exposed to SARS-CoV-2 not
long before getting boosted, the antibody generating immune response might
beat the virus to the punch so to speak. But definitely not the same as a
vaccine naive person getting exposed to the virus as it takes a while for
immunity to kick in and a second shot improves the response.

[Lawyer Daggett]

There are dozens upon dozens of papers on this topic. Some are more specific
but others cover the full spectrum of just convalescent, convalescent then vax'd,
just vax'd (with or without boost), vax'd then convalescent to breakthrough, etc.

An actual viral infection produces a broader spectrum of anti-body specificity
(and t-cell responses). The just convalescent immune response is, on average
slightly stronger in terms of over-all antibody concentration at first but is also
quite variable between people. The just vax'd cohort produces a more consistent
response, and in many cases more neutralizing antibodies, but it does tend to
fade faster as measured by circulating antibodies. However, the vax'd cohort
seems to generate more robust t-cell responses.

There's a seeming conflict here. Natural infection t-cell responses, when they
occur, are broader in the sense of involving more than just spike. But the
t-cell response is quite variable between people post infection. So some
infected people will have very good t-cell profiles and some really crappy ones.
Vax'd patients are much less likely to have poor t-cell based immunity.

An advantage to immunity from infection is that it will include epitopes that
are more conserved and so less likely to be mutated and avoid your immunity.
However, one of the design considerations in the vax was to focus on spike to
maximize neutralizing antibodies. That looks to have been a good decision.
There's a further reason to focus on spike based on a somewhat rare problem
where your immune response actually helps the virus invade immune cells that
had been observed in SARS1. I'm unaware of reports of it happening with SARS2
or any of its vaccines.

At this point with Omega, it seems like even vax'd and boosted there are lots of
breakthrough infections. And the same for the mixtures of convalescent with
and without vax, in either order. The reasons for this I'll set aside but a consequence
of this is that focusing on anti-body titres is misguided. People will get nascient
infections and the more significant consideration is the effectiveness of the
cellular memory response. This of course means your immune system detecting
the beginning of an infection and quickly activating memory B-cells and T-cells
to reproduce, and in the case of B-cells become antibody producing factories.
This is the response that shuts down the infection and prevents you from becoming
seriously ill.

From all I've read, the vaccine has a perhaps small advantage here, perhaps due
to the less consistent T-cell responses in some people. That is speculation as
I don't know of a study that has systematically studied enough people where they
had sufficiently documented their T-cell profiles prior to breakthrough infections.

[Lawyer Daggett]

I would hedge on what is meant by basis.
I would note that it's clear that some do believe that, as determined by
listening to and observing behavior, irrespective of there being any
(sensible?, rational?, defensible?) basis for them believing that.
I'd say that those who do believe such a thing are, to the first approximation,
just lumping vaccination in with medication and treatment in general, failing
to understand much (or bother to think about) mechanisms of action. There's
a reason snake-oil salesmen have such an easy job.

[RonO]

If you wanted to misinterpret what I wrote you could, but you absolutely
have no justification that the vaccine was ever advocated to be useful
for treating infection. It was simply a non issue. There was no reason
to misinterpret what I wrote. It isn't constructive criticism when it
is a not an issue, and I simply stated that such criticism is not only
unwarrented, but not anything worth doing in the first place in this
instance. Was it worth doing considering that they knew that they would
have been misinterpreting what I wrote? What kind of constructive
criticism is that?

Ron Okimoto

[RonO]

There was absolutely no reason to misinterpret what I stated. The post
was about covid vaccination estimated to save 20 million lives. What is
the definition of vaccination? Could I have possibly been talking about
treatment after infection saving 20 million lives?

Ron Okimoto

[*Hemidactylus*]

They should have read your words more charitably. I can see what you
originally intended to mean.

[DB Cates]

From what I see, they *did* read him charitably. They just pointed out
that the phrasing he used made it possible for someone (not them) to
honestly misinterpret him. They were trying to be helpful.

--
--
Don Cates ("he's a cunning rascal" PN)

[Martin Harran]

Why would anyone *want* to misinterpret what you wrote?

[*Hemidactylus*]

They might not know the underlying motive themselves. Long term aggravation
with Ron? Addiction to taking microtomes to follicles for microscopic
examination? Whether or not they recently ate? I just had lunch so don’t
look at me.