Thanks for the analysis. I read the whole thing, and there’s one thing i was hoping for answers on that i didn’t see:
What’s the current data suggest for the interplay between natural immunity and vaccination? Should someone wait until their antibody numbers are down to a certain level before being vaccinated, similar to spacing out vaccine doses by 6 months?
Also, another element of the “war” seems to be the lack of any recognition of natural immunity: mainstream discussions never ever mention it when talking about “the unvaccinated,” large swathes of with are likely people who didn’t bother because they’ve had the disease.
Would love to see some analysis at the awesomely detailed level you’ve provided concerning natural immunity and antibody testing.
My heuristic for this at this point (without going into the evidence I’m using): Natural infection counts as something like +2 vaccine doses. So if you’re infected but not vaccinated it’s as good or somewhat better than 2-dose mRNA, and if you’re vaccinated plus infected you’re effectively immune.
The issue, as I’ve mentioned, is that a lot of people are wrong about whether they’ve been infected, in both directions, or would claim it if it was helpful, so it’s hard to use it as a criteria officially. On a personal level, yeah, big game.
My employer is being flexible and has agreed to accept proof of past exposure and anti body response. I’m writing up a page or so to explain the protective nature of nature immunity, and I’m asking around places like here to try to get my facts straight.
Requiring anti body testing as an alternative to vaccine passport at least helps restore a little liberty without sacrificing safety.
Antibody testing is not the only method. There is a much more expensive T-cell testing, that can also confirm prior infection. None of the tests are approved by FDA for the purpose of determining natural immunity.
They are emergency authorized for verifying prior infection, though. As far as I can tell, they constitute medical proof of natural immunity in some capacity, but the test itself can’t tell you to what extent that natural immunity is protective.
However, the studies I looked at on natural immunity show it seems to be about 80% effective at preventing infection, median 7 months after infection (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/), so that + an anti-body test to confirm I really had it seems sufficient.
I too am baffled by the “cancelation” of natural immunity. The main issue (besides Zvi’s points) with whether to allow for natural immunity as an alternative (documented infection and recovery) is that we don’t want to create perverse incentives to have “covid parties” (yeah, that’s a thing). But that ought to be surmountable by having a cutoff—you need to have recovered prior to a certain date (in the US, maybe middle of August?), and in order to get a vax passport out of it, you need to get an antibody test at your own expense. In other words, it should be more a matter of figuring out the game theory than biology, which seems to point towards natural immunity pretty much working. I do think that allowing for immunity through natural infection would help to keep the peace.
Thanks for the analysis. I read the whole thing, and there’s one thing i was hoping for answers on that i didn’t see:
What’s the current data suggest for the interplay between natural immunity and vaccination? Should someone wait until their antibody numbers are down to a certain level before being vaccinated, similar to spacing out vaccine doses by 6 months?
Also, another element of the “war” seems to be the lack of any recognition of natural immunity: mainstream discussions never ever mention it when talking about “the unvaccinated,” large swathes of with are likely people who didn’t bother because they’ve had the disease.
Would love to see some analysis at the awesomely detailed level you’ve provided concerning natural immunity and antibody testing.
My heuristic for this at this point (without going into the evidence I’m using): Natural infection counts as something like +2 vaccine doses. So if you’re infected but not vaccinated it’s as good or somewhat better than 2-dose mRNA, and if you’re vaccinated plus infected you’re effectively immune.
The issue, as I’ve mentioned, is that a lot of people are wrong about whether they’ve been infected, in both directions, or would claim it if it was helpful, so it’s hard to use it as a criteria officially. On a personal level, yeah, big game.
My employer is being flexible and has agreed to accept proof of past exposure and anti body response. I’m writing up a page or so to explain the protective nature of nature immunity, and I’m asking around places like here to try to get my facts straight.
Requiring anti body testing as an alternative to vaccine passport at least helps restore a little liberty without sacrificing safety.
Antibody testing is not the only method. There is a much more expensive T-cell testing, that can also confirm prior infection. None of the tests are approved by FDA for the purpose of determining natural immunity.
They are emergency authorized for verifying prior infection, though. As far as I can tell, they constitute medical proof of natural immunity in some capacity, but the test itself can’t tell you to what extent that natural immunity is protective.
However, the studies I looked at on natural immunity show it seems to be about 80% effective at preventing infection, median 7 months after infection (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/), so that + an anti-body test to confirm I really had it seems sufficient.
Can you write something up about AstraZeneca’s prophylactic monoclonal antibody shots that they’re working on?
I too am baffled by the “cancelation” of natural immunity. The main issue (besides Zvi’s points) with whether to allow for natural immunity as an alternative (documented infection and recovery) is that we don’t want to create perverse incentives to have “covid parties” (yeah, that’s a thing). But that ought to be surmountable by having a cutoff—you need to have recovered prior to a certain date (in the US, maybe middle of August?), and in order to get a vax passport out of it, you need to get an antibody test at your own expense. In other words, it should be more a matter of figuring out the game theory than biology, which seems to point towards natural immunity pretty much working. I do think that allowing for immunity through natural infection would help to keep the peace.