The media’s, pharmaceutical companies’ and certain politicians official reasons for supporting Covid vaccine mandates are falling apart.
Through misleading use of statistics, erroneous use of scientific evidence, inappropriate attempts to appeal to emotions involving children, and assault of basic liberties and livelihoods, Government response to Covid has been grossly out of proportion to the seriousness of Covid.
In this thread, I will occasionally post articles and break them down statement by statement, using mainly my reasoning abilities.
First up is an article by an author I have been following for years, who I respect for her knowledge, and my perception of her meaning well. She has a Ph.D. in microbiology, has substantial interest in related fields, and generally writes quite well. It is ironic on several levels that me, a truck driver who only has a few general community college courses under his belt is challenging this author’s article. In fact, there is another article of hers that is very challengeable, in my opinion. I may discuss this article in a future post.
I welcome thoughtful, well reasoned challenges to this post. Including gwb-trading’s! If you dare! <Grin>
My Comments are inline in italicized blue:
No, your antibodies are not better than vaccination: An explainer
Infection does offer some immune protection—but it's unreliable compared with vaccines.
I will be going to war versus the above statements, using information from this article as well as basic reasoning.
BETH MOLE - 10/8/2021, 5:15 AM
As long as there have been vaccines against COVID-19, there have been arguments for why people shouldn't get those vaccines. One of the more persistent—and hairier—arguments is that people who have already been infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, don't need a vaccine. An infection will generate immune responses similar to those generated by vaccines, the thinking goes. So, why waste coveted vaccine doses on people who already have immune responses against the virus—which may also needlessly put those people at risk of vaccine side effects, however rare?
It's a reasonable question, and there is legitimate scientific debate about it. There are also different approaches to the issue in terms of public health policy. In Israel, for example, people who have recovered from COVID-19 after testing positive on a PCR test can get a vaccination "Green Pass" that's valid for up to six months. The pass allows them entry into various places just as it does for people who are fully vaccinated. In the European Union, some member states offer a similar "Digital COVID Certificate" to people who have recovered from COVID-19 and received just one dose of a two-dose mRNA vaccine regimen.
In the US, however, public health officials are unequivocal in their approach: people are categorized as either vaccinated or unvaccinated, regardless of prior infection. It's an approach with many strengths, including robust scientific data supporting vaccination for people who have recovered. That data—which we'll get into below—has consistently shown that immune responses from natural infections are extremely variable, thus unreliable. Vaccines, on the other hand, have repeatedly been proven to generate highly protective immune responses.
The vaccines are also remarkably safe, with few serious side effects that occur extremely rarely. One of the most concerning side effects is myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). But even there, the rate of myocarditis in the most at-risk group (males ages 12 to 29) is only estimated to be 41 in a million, and the cases are generally mild.
Remember, the statistics of vaccine myocarditis and other adverse reactions are based on what is reported. People have different pain tolerances and many, perhaps the majority, do not report their potentially medically significant adverse vaccine reactions.
Speaking of what is reported and what is not, potentially resulting in misleading interpretations of reality through deficient statistical methodologies, how about considering the fact that many Covid infections go unreported?(1) If there are a large number of Covid infections that go unreported, would not the seriousness of Covid be overstated? In fact, the overstatement of Covid seriousness has led to a serious error regarding mandatory vaccinations.
(1) Anecdotally, in late December of 2019, before Covid officially arrived in the US, my girlfriend and I had covid-like symptoms that were too minor to warrant seeking the advice of a healthcare professional.
Comparing that with actual COVID-19 infections—which can cause severe disease even in young, healthy people and may cause persistent, months-long symptoms in up to half of people infected—there's no contest.
I will post the above statement again and break it down almost word or word as an example of manipulation of statistics into an attempt to instill a sense of need for action for the intended audience, the use of weasel words, and the invalid conclusion:
Comparing that with actual COVID-19 infections—which can cause severe disease even in young, healthy people
Yes, Covid can cause severe disease in young people who appear healthy. These children may have a genetic vulnerability to Coronavirus or a specific strain of Covid-19. There are probably always going to be such people versus any infectious disease. Further, the author does not mention specific numbers, including infection rates among the author’s still general age group. In actuality, the number of serious Covid outcomes in the young are too low to base policy decision on, especially policies that mandate our children take vaccines.
and may cause persistent, months-long symptoms in up to half of people infected—
Key weasel words in above statement, “In up to half”. Instead of using misleading statistics, the author has gone one step further and is misusing even those statistics by taking them out of context. Hopefully readers of this post are smart enough to be aware that “In up to half” is also inclusive of the statement that “Almost nobody…”. The fact is almost no healthy children, when measured in rates per 100,000, have almost no long term health effects to a Covid-19 infection.
… of “People” infected.
Here the author is deceptively moving the goalpost in mid-sentence from “Children” to “People”. This deception is still a lie as it meets the definition of a lie, e.g., “The intent to deceive”. I will leave it to the reader if they can reasonably ascertain the author’s “Intent”. Does any of the preceding author’s statements sound like they are based upon the oft quoted “Scientific method” to you?
there's no contest.
Silly conclusion based on fallacious, actually worse than fallacious, arguments.
Vaccines are safer. And they're just as safe for people who have previously recovered. People with past COVID-19 cases are no more likely to have serious side effects from vaccines than people who haven't been previously infected, though they may have more side effects.
The US approach also has logistical benefits. Simple categories of "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated" skip over the messy and difficult step of figuring out who has been infected and when. From the early stages of the pandemic, the US has struggled—and is still struggling—to roll out accurate, widely available tests for SARS-CoV-2. Many people who have been infected never officially tested positive. Others assumed they were infected when they may have actually had one of many other respiratory infections. And antibody tests that look for evidence of past infections are notoriously inaccurate.
Though opponents argue that mass vaccination is driven by "evil corporations" out for prodigious profits at all costs, the fact is that vaccines are extremely safe and offer recovered people strong, lasting protection against a virus that has already killed more than 700,000 Americans.
Efficacy and variability
That's not to say that there aren't weaknesses to the US's approach. For one thing, the approach can make vaccines look bad. In many instances, vaccine effectiveness is gauged by comparing COVID-19 case rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But in the US, the unvaccinated include people who have no immunity and recovered people, who have some immunity and are, thus, expected to have fewer infections. This waters down case rates in the unvaccinated group and ends up lowering the vaccine efficacy estimates.
Still, the vaccines' efficacy estimates are extraordinarily good. A recent study found that the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine was holding steady with 90 percent efficacy against COVID-19 hospitalization for at least six months. A separate study found that the Moderna mRNA vaccine was 93 percent effectiveagainst hospitalizations among people without immunocompromising conditions. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine was 71 percent effective.
And again, many vaccine efficacy numbers don't account for past infection and may be artificially lower because of that. How much lower? It's unclear. Since the beginning of the pandemic, researchers have noted time and again that immune responses generated by SARS-CoV-2 infections vary wildly, with some of the weaker responses seen in people with mild disease and stronger responses in people with severe disease.
In one study Ars reported on back in June of last year, researchers looking at SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in people who had recovered found that the difference between the highest and lowest levels varied by a factor of over 1,000. The researchers saw even more variability when they looked at neutralizing antibodies—those known to bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells. Neutralizing antibody levels in recovered people varied over a range of 40,000-fold, and up to 20 percent of people didn't have any detectable level of neutralizing antibody.
Antibodies levels do not tell the whole story of one’s protection against a particular virus strain as a previously infected individual’s body will “Remember” that strain and quickly produce antibodies once that virus is detected again. It is not so much our body “Forgets” how to fight a previous virus strain, rather it is a new strain of a viruses that causes a new infection. The term “Reinfection” is mostly a dangerous misnomer, in my opinion.
Antibodies
Of course, antibodies are not the entirety of the immune responses that determine if a person will get infected or not and, if they do, how severe their infection will become. However, antibodies can provide a reasonable gauge of how well someone is protected. A study late last year that tracked 12,500 health care workers found that the higher the antibody levels, the lower the risk of infection. And in May of this year, researchers found "a remarkably strong" relationship between neutralizing antibody levels and vaccine protection.
A fundamental difference between the immune responses generated by vaccines and natural infection is their specificity. In a natural infection, whole SARS-CoV-2 viruses infect cells in the respiratory tract. Responding immune cells can target any number of facets of those whole viruses. This creates a relatively large diversity of antibodies that bind to different bits of SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines, meanwhile, only offer to the immune system key snippets of SARS-CoV-2—namely the virus's spike protein. This is the protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter human cells, and it's a key target of neutralizing antibodies. All antibodies in vaccinated people will target the spike protein. Though vaccinated people have less antibody diversity than previously infected people, they have high levels of highly targeted antibodies. Think of it as the difference between hunting a tiny virus with a shotgun and a sniper rifle.
With variable immune responses after infection comes variable real-world data on how well past infection protects against reinfection, which has led to the different public policy approaches. In a study conducted at Cleveland Clinic and posted online in June, researchers found that among 52,238 employees, there were no differences in COVID-19 case rates between employees who were unvaccinated but previously infected, vaccinated and previously infected, and vaccinated people with no previous infection. "Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination," the authors concluded.
Yet, in another study published in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers looked at the vaccination status of more than 200 Kentucky residents who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 and then tested positive again during May and June 2021. The CDC researchers found that people previously infected but unvaccinated were 2.34 times more likely to get reinfected than people who were previously infected and fully vaccinated.
The author has neglected to mention why natural immunity antibody diversity has potentially significantly greater benefits in providing protection against future mainstream Covid variants of concern. Upon the millions of virions in a typical infection, there are likely other strains of that virus represented, some of which could eventually become the next “Variant” of concern. As such, natural immunity has inherently greater long term protection than vaccines with their high Covid Alpha Variant(Or whatever earlier variant the current crop of vaccines are based on) “Specificity”. Further, when one realizes vaccine specificity fundamentally should not provide enhanced protection, or even any protection, against new strains that have a different protein coat to gain entrance to cells, which happens to be a natural evolutionary pressure, hence giving rise to the different stain in the first place. Yes, there is the argument that Covid unvaccinated are “Variant factories”, but all of us were unvaccinated for at least a year after Covid-19 came on the scene, allowing unfettered Covid evolution. In addition, Covid variants of concern are being generated at least every six months, rendering vaccines, or even early natural immunity, wanting. Bad news for sure, but it is what it is. The preceding is reality based on solid understanding and reasoning of the more substantial parts of current Covid knowledge. Or… Change my mind!
Delta difference
The timeframe for the CDC study coincides with the rise of the delta coronavirus variant in the US, which may also play a role in protection levels from past infection. In a French study published in July in Nature, researchers examined antibodies in 56 unvaccinated people who had recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection prior to the rise of delta. Six months after their infection and amid the rise of delta, the researchers found that their neutralizing antibody levels were 4 to 6 times lower against delta than they were against earlier variants.
The researchers next looked at a different group of 47 people who had gone a year since a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of those 47, 26 were still unvaccinated and 21 had received one dose of a vaccine. At that point, the unvaccinated 26 had extremely low levels of neutralizing antibodies against any SARS-CoV-2 variants, particularly delta. Many people had no detectable levels of neutralizing antibody against delta. The vaccinated group, meanwhile, had high levels of neutralizing antibody similar to or above the levels seen in people who were fully vaccinated.
That finding has played out in several studies. A March study from researchers in Washington state, for instance, found that one dose of an mRNA vaccine in people who had recovered boosted levels of neutralizing antibody against all SARS-CoV-2 variants up to a thousandfold. And several other studies have found that vaccine doses after infection cause sky-high spikes in antibody levels. Some data has also suggested that antibody levels in the vaccinated recovered are even higher than people who have only been vaccinated.
Overall, the variable immune responses to infection, lower neutralization against delta, and the clear boost in protection from a very safe, highly effective vaccine make a strong argument for vaccinating the recovered.
Small study sizes listed above are statistically insignificant and our Government cannot reasonably justify making policy decisions on them. As it is, it is not unusual for multiple large studies to conflict with one another, especially if each study receives similar reviews and media coverage. This issue behind multiple, large scale studies differing in conclusions often involves the utilization of different methodologies or subtle differences in controls. The cynical may think some studies are “Curve fits” of earlier studies as an attempt by a pharmaceutical company to gain regulatory approval to sell a product.
The bottom line is Covid is not serious enough to mandate vaccines on a wide scale. As such, government mandates are a massive overreach of political power that may have permanent adverse long term heath and civil rights implications.
BETH MOLEBeth is Ars Technica’s health reporter. She’s interested in biomedical research, infectious disease, health policy and law, and has a Ph.D. in microbiology.
EMAIL beth.mole@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @BethMarieMole
I have made minor formatting changes to this article, including removing advertisements.
Through misleading use of statistics, erroneous use of scientific evidence, inappropriate attempts to appeal to emotions involving children, and assault of basic liberties and livelihoods, Government response to Covid has been grossly out of proportion to the seriousness of Covid.
In this thread, I will occasionally post articles and break them down statement by statement, using mainly my reasoning abilities.
First up is an article by an author I have been following for years, who I respect for her knowledge, and my perception of her meaning well. She has a Ph.D. in microbiology, has substantial interest in related fields, and generally writes quite well. It is ironic on several levels that me, a truck driver who only has a few general community college courses under his belt is challenging this author’s article. In fact, there is another article of hers that is very challengeable, in my opinion. I may discuss this article in a future post.
I welcome thoughtful, well reasoned challenges to this post. Including gwb-trading’s! If you dare! <Grin>
My Comments are inline in italicized blue:
No, your antibodies are not better than vaccination: An explainer
Infection does offer some immune protection—but it's unreliable compared with vaccines.
I will be going to war versus the above statements, using information from this article as well as basic reasoning.
BETH MOLE - 10/8/2021, 5:15 AM
As long as there have been vaccines against COVID-19, there have been arguments for why people shouldn't get those vaccines. One of the more persistent—and hairier—arguments is that people who have already been infected with the pandemic coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, don't need a vaccine. An infection will generate immune responses similar to those generated by vaccines, the thinking goes. So, why waste coveted vaccine doses on people who already have immune responses against the virus—which may also needlessly put those people at risk of vaccine side effects, however rare?
It's a reasonable question, and there is legitimate scientific debate about it. There are also different approaches to the issue in terms of public health policy. In Israel, for example, people who have recovered from COVID-19 after testing positive on a PCR test can get a vaccination "Green Pass" that's valid for up to six months. The pass allows them entry into various places just as it does for people who are fully vaccinated. In the European Union, some member states offer a similar "Digital COVID Certificate" to people who have recovered from COVID-19 and received just one dose of a two-dose mRNA vaccine regimen.
In the US, however, public health officials are unequivocal in their approach: people are categorized as either vaccinated or unvaccinated, regardless of prior infection. It's an approach with many strengths, including robust scientific data supporting vaccination for people who have recovered. That data—which we'll get into below—has consistently shown that immune responses from natural infections are extremely variable, thus unreliable. Vaccines, on the other hand, have repeatedly been proven to generate highly protective immune responses.
The vaccines are also remarkably safe, with few serious side effects that occur extremely rarely. One of the most concerning side effects is myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle). But even there, the rate of myocarditis in the most at-risk group (males ages 12 to 29) is only estimated to be 41 in a million, and the cases are generally mild.
Remember, the statistics of vaccine myocarditis and other adverse reactions are based on what is reported. People have different pain tolerances and many, perhaps the majority, do not report their potentially medically significant adverse vaccine reactions.
Speaking of what is reported and what is not, potentially resulting in misleading interpretations of reality through deficient statistical methodologies, how about considering the fact that many Covid infections go unreported?(1) If there are a large number of Covid infections that go unreported, would not the seriousness of Covid be overstated? In fact, the overstatement of Covid seriousness has led to a serious error regarding mandatory vaccinations.
(1) Anecdotally, in late December of 2019, before Covid officially arrived in the US, my girlfriend and I had covid-like symptoms that were too minor to warrant seeking the advice of a healthcare professional.
Comparing that with actual COVID-19 infections—which can cause severe disease even in young, healthy people and may cause persistent, months-long symptoms in up to half of people infected—there's no contest.
I will post the above statement again and break it down almost word or word as an example of manipulation of statistics into an attempt to instill a sense of need for action for the intended audience, the use of weasel words, and the invalid conclusion:
Comparing that with actual COVID-19 infections—which can cause severe disease even in young, healthy people
Yes, Covid can cause severe disease in young people who appear healthy. These children may have a genetic vulnerability to Coronavirus or a specific strain of Covid-19. There are probably always going to be such people versus any infectious disease. Further, the author does not mention specific numbers, including infection rates among the author’s still general age group. In actuality, the number of serious Covid outcomes in the young are too low to base policy decision on, especially policies that mandate our children take vaccines.
and may cause persistent, months-long symptoms in up to half of people infected—
Key weasel words in above statement, “In up to half”. Instead of using misleading statistics, the author has gone one step further and is misusing even those statistics by taking them out of context. Hopefully readers of this post are smart enough to be aware that “In up to half” is also inclusive of the statement that “Almost nobody…”. The fact is almost no healthy children, when measured in rates per 100,000, have almost no long term health effects to a Covid-19 infection.
… of “People” infected.
Here the author is deceptively moving the goalpost in mid-sentence from “Children” to “People”. This deception is still a lie as it meets the definition of a lie, e.g., “The intent to deceive”. I will leave it to the reader if they can reasonably ascertain the author’s “Intent”. Does any of the preceding author’s statements sound like they are based upon the oft quoted “Scientific method” to you?
there's no contest.
Silly conclusion based on fallacious, actually worse than fallacious, arguments.
Vaccines are safer. And they're just as safe for people who have previously recovered. People with past COVID-19 cases are no more likely to have serious side effects from vaccines than people who haven't been previously infected, though they may have more side effects.
The US approach also has logistical benefits. Simple categories of "vaccinated" and "unvaccinated" skip over the messy and difficult step of figuring out who has been infected and when. From the early stages of the pandemic, the US has struggled—and is still struggling—to roll out accurate, widely available tests for SARS-CoV-2. Many people who have been infected never officially tested positive. Others assumed they were infected when they may have actually had one of many other respiratory infections. And antibody tests that look for evidence of past infections are notoriously inaccurate.
Though opponents argue that mass vaccination is driven by "evil corporations" out for prodigious profits at all costs, the fact is that vaccines are extremely safe and offer recovered people strong, lasting protection against a virus that has already killed more than 700,000 Americans.
Efficacy and variability
That's not to say that there aren't weaknesses to the US's approach. For one thing, the approach can make vaccines look bad. In many instances, vaccine effectiveness is gauged by comparing COVID-19 case rates between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. But in the US, the unvaccinated include people who have no immunity and recovered people, who have some immunity and are, thus, expected to have fewer infections. This waters down case rates in the unvaccinated group and ends up lowering the vaccine efficacy estimates.
Still, the vaccines' efficacy estimates are extraordinarily good. A recent study found that the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine was holding steady with 90 percent efficacy against COVID-19 hospitalization for at least six months. A separate study found that the Moderna mRNA vaccine was 93 percent effectiveagainst hospitalizations among people without immunocompromising conditions. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine was 71 percent effective.
And again, many vaccine efficacy numbers don't account for past infection and may be artificially lower because of that. How much lower? It's unclear. Since the beginning of the pandemic, researchers have noted time and again that immune responses generated by SARS-CoV-2 infections vary wildly, with some of the weaker responses seen in people with mild disease and stronger responses in people with severe disease.
In one study Ars reported on back in June of last year, researchers looking at SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in people who had recovered found that the difference between the highest and lowest levels varied by a factor of over 1,000. The researchers saw even more variability when they looked at neutralizing antibodies—those known to bind to the virus and prevent it from infecting cells. Neutralizing antibody levels in recovered people varied over a range of 40,000-fold, and up to 20 percent of people didn't have any detectable level of neutralizing antibody.
Antibodies levels do not tell the whole story of one’s protection against a particular virus strain as a previously infected individual’s body will “Remember” that strain and quickly produce antibodies once that virus is detected again. It is not so much our body “Forgets” how to fight a previous virus strain, rather it is a new strain of a viruses that causes a new infection. The term “Reinfection” is mostly a dangerous misnomer, in my opinion.
Antibodies
Of course, antibodies are not the entirety of the immune responses that determine if a person will get infected or not and, if they do, how severe their infection will become. However, antibodies can provide a reasonable gauge of how well someone is protected. A study late last year that tracked 12,500 health care workers found that the higher the antibody levels, the lower the risk of infection. And in May of this year, researchers found "a remarkably strong" relationship between neutralizing antibody levels and vaccine protection.
A fundamental difference between the immune responses generated by vaccines and natural infection is their specificity. In a natural infection, whole SARS-CoV-2 viruses infect cells in the respiratory tract. Responding immune cells can target any number of facets of those whole viruses. This creates a relatively large diversity of antibodies that bind to different bits of SARS-CoV-2. The vaccines, meanwhile, only offer to the immune system key snippets of SARS-CoV-2—namely the virus's spike protein. This is the protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter human cells, and it's a key target of neutralizing antibodies. All antibodies in vaccinated people will target the spike protein. Though vaccinated people have less antibody diversity than previously infected people, they have high levels of highly targeted antibodies. Think of it as the difference between hunting a tiny virus with a shotgun and a sniper rifle.
With variable immune responses after infection comes variable real-world data on how well past infection protects against reinfection, which has led to the different public policy approaches. In a study conducted at Cleveland Clinic and posted online in June, researchers found that among 52,238 employees, there were no differences in COVID-19 case rates between employees who were unvaccinated but previously infected, vaccinated and previously infected, and vaccinated people with no previous infection. "Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination," the authors concluded.
Yet, in another study published in August by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers looked at the vaccination status of more than 200 Kentucky residents who had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 in 2020 and then tested positive again during May and June 2021. The CDC researchers found that people previously infected but unvaccinated were 2.34 times more likely to get reinfected than people who were previously infected and fully vaccinated.
The author has neglected to mention why natural immunity antibody diversity has potentially significantly greater benefits in providing protection against future mainstream Covid variants of concern. Upon the millions of virions in a typical infection, there are likely other strains of that virus represented, some of which could eventually become the next “Variant” of concern. As such, natural immunity has inherently greater long term protection than vaccines with their high Covid Alpha Variant(Or whatever earlier variant the current crop of vaccines are based on) “Specificity”. Further, when one realizes vaccine specificity fundamentally should not provide enhanced protection, or even any protection, against new strains that have a different protein coat to gain entrance to cells, which happens to be a natural evolutionary pressure, hence giving rise to the different stain in the first place. Yes, there is the argument that Covid unvaccinated are “Variant factories”, but all of us were unvaccinated for at least a year after Covid-19 came on the scene, allowing unfettered Covid evolution. In addition, Covid variants of concern are being generated at least every six months, rendering vaccines, or even early natural immunity, wanting. Bad news for sure, but it is what it is. The preceding is reality based on solid understanding and reasoning of the more substantial parts of current Covid knowledge. Or… Change my mind!
Delta difference
The timeframe for the CDC study coincides with the rise of the delta coronavirus variant in the US, which may also play a role in protection levels from past infection. In a French study published in July in Nature, researchers examined antibodies in 56 unvaccinated people who had recovered from a SARS-CoV-2 infection prior to the rise of delta. Six months after their infection and amid the rise of delta, the researchers found that their neutralizing antibody levels were 4 to 6 times lower against delta than they were against earlier variants.
The researchers next looked at a different group of 47 people who had gone a year since a SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of those 47, 26 were still unvaccinated and 21 had received one dose of a vaccine. At that point, the unvaccinated 26 had extremely low levels of neutralizing antibodies against any SARS-CoV-2 variants, particularly delta. Many people had no detectable levels of neutralizing antibody against delta. The vaccinated group, meanwhile, had high levels of neutralizing antibody similar to or above the levels seen in people who were fully vaccinated.
That finding has played out in several studies. A March study from researchers in Washington state, for instance, found that one dose of an mRNA vaccine in people who had recovered boosted levels of neutralizing antibody against all SARS-CoV-2 variants up to a thousandfold. And several other studies have found that vaccine doses after infection cause sky-high spikes in antibody levels. Some data has also suggested that antibody levels in the vaccinated recovered are even higher than people who have only been vaccinated.
Overall, the variable immune responses to infection, lower neutralization against delta, and the clear boost in protection from a very safe, highly effective vaccine make a strong argument for vaccinating the recovered.
Small study sizes listed above are statistically insignificant and our Government cannot reasonably justify making policy decisions on them. As it is, it is not unusual for multiple large studies to conflict with one another, especially if each study receives similar reviews and media coverage. This issue behind multiple, large scale studies differing in conclusions often involves the utilization of different methodologies or subtle differences in controls. The cynical may think some studies are “Curve fits” of earlier studies as an attempt by a pharmaceutical company to gain regulatory approval to sell a product.
The bottom line is Covid is not serious enough to mandate vaccines on a wide scale. As such, government mandates are a massive overreach of political power that may have permanent adverse long term heath and civil rights implications.
BETH MOLEBeth is Ars Technica’s health reporter. She’s interested in biomedical research, infectious disease, health policy and law, and has a Ph.D. in microbiology.
EMAIL beth.mole@arstechnica.com // TWITTER @BethMarieMole
I have made minor formatting changes to this article, including removing advertisements.
