[HN Gopher] Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in prev...
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       Evaluating necessity of Covid-19 vaccination in previously infected
       individuals
        
       Author : bananapizza
       Score  : 50 points
       Date   : 2021-06-09 21:50 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.medrxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.medrxiv.org)
        
       | trimbo wrote:
       | I have confirmation bias here because this is a result I would
       | have expected BUT..
       | 
       | Preprint, non-peer reviewed.
        
       | epgui wrote:
       | Any other result would have been surprising. Why is this
       | interesting, beyond just confirming what we were already 99.99%
       | certain we knew?
       | 
       | -- biochemist
        
         | StavrosK wrote:
         | It's just nice for us laymen to have more confirmation.
        
         | symlinkk wrote:
         | Because openly stating this obvious fact would get you
         | downvoted on here a few months ago.
        
         | OJFord wrote:
         | Because it's not public health policy anywhere that I'm aware
         | of? But vaccine rollout would be way quicker, and 'positive
         | test or vaccinated' proportion of populations would be way
         | higher, and that would influence discussion of other aspects,
         | like 'herd immunity' for example.
        
       | mlyle wrote:
       | Note this is to inform public health / prioritization in the
       | short term. (Which is less necessary places like the US where
       | there is excess vaccine supply).
       | 
       | We know that past infection greatly reduces risk (and this helps
       | quantify it). At the same time, vaccination is thought to cause a
       | much broader and more durable immune response than natural
       | infection. We'd like people who were previously infected to get
       | vaccinated _eventually_ for these benefits, but they 're not who
       | you'd want to vaccinate _first_.
        
         | tomp wrote:
         | _> vaccination is thought to cause a much broader and more
         | durable immune response than natural infection_
         | 
         | Why? Is there any data to support this assertion?
         | 
         | If anything, being ill (symptomatic) means the viral load was
         | high in the body, so the immune system response should be as
         | well, and in addition, infection should cause the immune system
         | to produce antibodies to _all_ parts of the virus, not just the
         | spike protein, as with mRNA vaccines.
        
           | akomtu wrote:
           | If there was evidence, that "is thought to" would've been
           | replaced with "is proven to".
        
           | jjgreen wrote:
           | "it is thought" I guess comes from nonsense like this:
           | https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/does-the-vaccine-
           | give...
        
         | mikedilger wrote:
         | Not that I have any knowledge on this subject, but why would a
         | vaccine that stimulates the creation of a bit of spike protein
         | create a "much broader and more durable immune response" than
         | the actual virus which I presume creates a hell of a lot more
         | of that exact same spike protein? Genuinely curious, because my
         | simpleton assumption would be the opposite.
        
           | variaga wrote:
           | The rough theory - as I understand it - is that the virus is
           | composed of other things as well as the spike protein e.g.
           | the proteins in the viral shell. The immune system can learn
           | to attack _whatever_ foreign materials it encounters. So a
           | person that clears the infection might have a strong immune
           | response to the spike protein, but the response could also be
           | focused on some other part of the virus (or a mixture of
           | different viral features).
           | 
           | Problem is, the "some other part" can mutate more easily into
           | a form that the immune system no longer recognizes than the
           | spike protein can, because the spike protein has to keep its
           | form in order to react with the ACE2 receptors and enter a
           | human cell. So the concern isn't that a real infection
           | doesn't leave you immune to the virus you got sick with, but
           | that the immunity might not apply or be as robust against a
           | variant where the "some other part" has mutated into a
           | different form.
           | 
           | The mRNA vaccines only cause your cells to make the
           | (difficult to significantly mutate) spike protein, so the
           | expectation is that vaccinated people would have a robust
           | immune response against any variants which have that spike
           | protein, regardless of whatever else changed, and a variant
           | with an unrecognizable mutation of the spike protein would be
           | less infectious anyway, as it could no longer successfully
           | enter human cells either.
           | 
           | The results of the paper seem to indicate that this is not a
           | problem in practice (so far - new variants are still
           | evolving), but it's nice that someone checked.
        
           | jdavis703 wrote:
           | The mRNA vaccines (among others) include adjuvants that
           | enhances the immune response.
        
             | maxerickson wrote:
             | No, they don't. The lipid nanoparticles they use seem to
             | have an adjuvant effect, but they are also directly
             | functional, and there's not anything else in the mRNA
             | vaccines.
        
           | maxerickson wrote:
           | It's not entirely the same. The Pfizer, Moderna and J&J (and
           | Novavax) vaccines adjusted the protein to present a more
           | consistent target than the viral spikes:
           | 
           | https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/tiny-tweak-
           | behi...
        
           | sdflhasjd wrote:
           | Also no knowledge on the subject, but I can image a case
           | where it is more durable:
           | 
           | If the spike protein is absolutely critical to the virus, but
           | can't change too much without affecting function, an immune
           | response that is specifically targetted against it would be
           | better than an immune response against any other protein that
           | could change without affecting the function.
        
           | microtherion wrote:
           | My mental model of this (and I'm not a medical expert) is
           | that (a) for a given amount of spike protein, the immune
           | response is similar, whether the protein originates from the
           | vaccine or the actual virus, but (b) since the vaccine is
           | lacking the actual health threatening properties of the
           | virus, you can expose people to massive doses of it without
           | incurring much risk.
        
       | rolph wrote:
       | the problem with live covid as the antigenic character is of
       | course the mortality, and the morbidity risk.
       | 
       | there is also the instability of the spike protien in its natural
       | form. when spike is cloven at it cleavage site it changes
       | conformation, thus there are two faces available to the immune
       | system; the default state, the cloven prefusion state. This makes
       | a Naturally aquired immunity biased toward opsonizing antbodies.
       | 
       | the vaccine version of spike has been stabilized so as to remain
       | in the default state resulting in a bias toward neutralizing
       | antibodies.
       | 
       | so neutralizing antibodies bind to the viral spike at locations
       | that interfere with receptor docking thus ideally preventing
       | viral entry, while the immune system operates upon the many other
       | viral epitopes, to produce a variant array of antibodies. This
       | gives Tcell based [longterm] immunity.
       | 
       | the naturally aquired immunity involves Tcell activity upon
       | infection, but that is the risk, as virus is capable of entering
       | the cells before immune system begins to work against it.
       | 
       | this is why boosting is required beyond initial vaccine dose.
       | 
       | and this is why i believe it would be a good idea to take a
       | vaccine along with naturally aquired immunity due to recovery,
       | and you can have the best of both worlds, while not relying
       | solely on naturally based immunity.
        
       | StavrosK wrote:
       | What's up with all the antivaxxer/COVID hoaxer comments lately?
       | Every COVID-related thread seems to be at least half-full of
       | antivaxxer comments, and that's being optimistic.
        
       | np_tedious wrote:
       | I did have covid (not diagnosed while active but shown in
       | antibody test), and I got vaccinated significantly later. This
       | was not driven by belief in medical need, but by social/rules
       | need. You get no "points" for being recovered like you do for a
       | proof of vaccination.
        
         | joshuahughes wrote:
         | Sounds uncomfortably like coercion...
        
           | isaacremuant wrote:
           | It is coercion. People have been coerced at every step of
           | this crisis, by the threat of police violence, by the threat
           | of reputation or job loss, by the the threat of fines and
           | more.
           | 
           | Hopefully, like we see with the wuhan lab theory suppression,
           | as time goes on, a lot of what people suffered will come to
           | light, and be contrasted by the benefit of the elite and
           | political class during all this.
        
             | version_five wrote:
             | I agree 100% - whatever reaction posts like yours get, it's
             | important to realize that a lot of people think this way,
             | quite possibly a majority if you could talk to them on
             | their own, despite efforts to pretend anyone against
             | whatever government / corporate orthodoxy is pushing this
             | week is some kind of conspiracy nut
        
       | reducesuffering wrote:
       | Punchline:
       | 
       | "The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost
       | zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously
       | infected subjects who were vaccinated, and previously uninfected
       | subjects who were vaccinated, compared with a steady increase in
       | cumulative incidence among previously uninfected subjects who
       | remained unvaccinated.
       | 
       | Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who remained
       | unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the duration of the
       | study."
        
         | Taniwha wrote:
         | However there already exist real people in the world who have
         | had Covid twice, and who reportedly have had a much tougher
         | time the second time around.
         | 
         | This study helps us put some bounds on how many people this
         | might happen to (assuming there are no mutations to the virus)
         | but it doesn't rule it out completely, because of the prior
         | existence proofs
        
           | tomerico wrote:
           | If this is rare enough, it could fall into the false positive
           | rate of the COVID test they've previously done (i.e. while
           | the test said they had COVID, they didn't)
        
             | Taniwha wrote:
             | Could be - but the case I remember reading about involved
             | hospitalisation.
             | 
             | Remember that immunisation makes antibodies but only
             | provides something like 50-95% protection (depending on the
             | vaccine) - it's not surprising that actually catching it
             | does the same thing
        
           | stickfigure wrote:
           | Health policy is determined by probabilities, not
           | possibilities.
        
             | version_five wrote:
             | Health policy (not uniquely) is determined in large measure
             | by politics.
        
           | stephc_int13 wrote:
           | I got covid twice.
           | 
           | 10 months separated the first and the second infections.
           | 
           | Both were mild, the second was worse (English variant).
        
             | onionisafruit wrote:
             | Now I know two things about you: 1. you got covid twice 2.
             | you weren't part of this study
        
         | msandford wrote:
         | In that case it seems like the headline reads wrong based on a
         | colloquial and imprecise but often correct heuristic. Should
         | read more like "non-necessity of C19 vaccination for previously
         | infected..."
        
           | OJFord wrote:
           | It says (at least, it does now, as I write) ' _evaluating_
           | necessity '.
           | 
           | Necessity is the concept as well as describing one possible
           | state of it.
           | 
           | Another example: when 'my hunger is sated', I do not 'have a
           | hunger', I am 'not hungry'.
        
           | sebastianconcpt wrote:
           | But that wouldn't contribute with the propaganda of the
           | current mainstream narrative, would it?
        
         | pmoriarty wrote:
         | _" Not one of the 1359 previously infected subjects who
         | remained unvaccinated had a SARS-CoV-2 infection over the
         | duration of the study."_
         | 
         | The duration of the study being 5 months.
         | 
         | There's no indication from this study what would happen after 5
         | months.
        
           | teachingassist wrote:
           | This comment is right - and the study began shortly after
           | Ohio's peak of infections.
           | 
           | As such, most infected participants would have been recently
           | infected in a situation with low and decreasing virus
           | circulation. Nobody thinks there's any risk of reinfection at
           | that point.
        
         | StavrosK wrote:
         | That's encouraging! I got COVID a few months ago and got
         | vaccinated recently, seems like I should be unstoppable now.
        
           | rolph wrote:
           | i wouldnot call it unstoppable, but i would expect excellent
           | protection, that extends horizontally to provide an
           | unspecified degree of protection across variants.
        
       | rolph wrote:
       | this is a bit ambiguous in title.
       | 
       | This is about vaccination not providing any further benefit to
       | those who have recovered and cleared from covid.
       | 
       | this is ^not^ saying you need to be vaccinated even if you have
       | gone through covid
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Ok, I've consed an 'evaluating' onto the title above in the
         | hope of communicating this.
        
           | rolph wrote:
           | thanks dang
        
         | takeda wrote:
         | On the other hand this says the opposite:
         | https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.440089v4?...
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-09 23:00 UTC)