Posted on 07/11/2022 9:03:27 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The protection against severe illness from so-called natural immunity remains superior to the protection bestowed by COVID-19 vaccines, according to a new study.
People who survived COVID-19 infection and were not vaccinated had sky-high protection against severe or fatal COVID-19, researchers in Qatar found.
“Effectiveness of primary infection against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection was 97.3 percent … irrespective of the variant of primary infection or reinfection, and with no evidence for waning. Similar results were found in sub-group analyses for those ≥50 years of age,” Dr. Laith Abu-Raddad, with Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar, and colleagues said after studying long-term natural immunity in unvaccinated people.
That percentage is higher than the protection from COVID-19 vaccines, according to other studies and real-world data.
Swedish researchers, for instance, found in May that two doses of a vaccine were just 54 percent effective against the Omicron variant of COVID-19.
South African scientists, meanwhile, found the effectiveness of the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines peaked at 88 percent, and quickly dropped to 70 percent or lower.
The Qatar group found natural immunity for over 14 months after a person’s first infection “remains very strong, with no evidence for waning, irrespective of variant.”
The study was published ahead of peer review on the website medRxiv.
Few researchers have studied natural immunity long-term among unvaccinated persons, in part because many of the people have eventually received a COVID-19 vaccine.
The vaccines, meanwhile, have waned against both infection and severe illness over time, triggering recommendations for booster doses, with some Americans even getting five doses within 10 months.
The vaccines were once said to provide close to 100 percent protection against symptomatic infection. They now provide under 50 percent protection against infection after a short period of time, even after booster doses, following the emergence of Omicron.
That strain and its subvariants are dominant in countries around the world, including the United States and Qatar.
Natural immunity was thought to provide strong protection against reinfection. But the Qatari researchers found it provides poor protection against reinfection from Omicron.
Pre-Omicron primary infection against pre-Omicron reinfection was as high as 90.5 percent, and remained around 70 percent by the 16th month, according to the study. But pre-Omicron primary infection against Omicron reinfection was just 38 percent effective, although it was higher among people infected with the original Wuhan strain or with the Delta variant, and lower among those who got sick from the Alpha or Beta strains.
Modeling signaled a drop to zero percent protection by 18 months, but the shielding still appears to last longer than that of vaccines, researchers said.
“Vaccine immunity against Omicron subvariants lasts for <6 months, but pre-Omicron natural immunity, … may last for just over a year,” they wrote.
Limitations of the study included differences in testing frequency among the cohorts studied, and depletion of the groups who had a COVID-19 infection, due to their deaths.
I am glad to hear that you no longer fight pneumonia after battling it for so long. Pneumonia has many causes, and if taking the pneumonia vax is the only difference for your situation, terrific. May I ask what year did you first have the pneumonia vax? I am curious because of my experience in the summer of 2009 with the Swine Flu pandemic. The Infectious Med. doctor at our hospital was encouraging everyone whether you took care of patients or not to have the flu shot. I asked about the pneumonia shot as I knew it wasn’t the flu that was killing people. He admitted the flu shot was kind of a “crapshoot” each year, but he didn’t recommend the pneumonia shot at all. Weird, because the failure rate was probably similar. Then I learned, years later, that after Obamacare became law, Medicare reimbursement was tied to employee compliance for getting the flu vax. GSK and Merck, et.al., got big bucks for all those people working for hospitals, nursing homes, doctors offices. What did We the Peasants get but threats of job loss if we didn’t cooperate.
Sorry I dont have the exact year but I believe it was 2007 or 2008.
thanks - was wondering if it was before 2009, so close enough, give or take ;-)
I remembered that my doctors office has a new feature to track immunizations. Covid upgrade I guess. I confirmed that it was 2006
👍
The Omicron variant is the vaccine, the natural vaccine. Just like chickenpox when we were kids. The original Covid was nasty but not near as nasty as we were led to believe. Data coming out on the MRNA shots, it is not a vaccine is nasty.
I took the first two Pfizer shots. In retrospect if I knew what I know now, I would not have taken them though I was in a high risk group due to age, 73 at the time. I have declined any boosters. My wife took the booster. We both came down with Omicron a few months later. It was mild, like a not severe case of the flu. Due to the Omicron infection we both now have very robust immunity to Covid.
charlie (Clinical Pharmacist)
“There is no such thing as “herd immunity” “
Actually you are correct and incorrect. Dependent on how infectious the disease is. If not highly infectious you need a certain amount of infected to keep spreading the infection or it dies out. If enough of the population has been infected and now have immunity that level falls and the disease ceases to spread. In the case of Omicron which is mild but extremely infectious you are correct. Due to the fact that Omicron is extremely infectious we will soon have herd immunity to this also. Fortunately it is mild. A successful virus does not kill its host. Its natural evolution is to become more infectious but less fatal thus it spreads.
Ebola is the exception. It kills almost always, quickly and thus limits its own spread. It is an unsuccessful virus. Quarantine works very well to stop the spread of Ebola.
Oddly HIV is a uniquely successful virus. You get it and do not know you have it and spread it for years. Eventually without modern medical intervention, it kills you.
charlie (clinical pharmacist)
The economy turned upside down, millions losing their savings and cars and homes. How many died because of the denial of cheap effective drugs known to stop the chinese virus?
This was a deliberate act by those like the WEF and those who think we can all be controlled they way they want. The Dutch farmers and the people Sri Lanka and the Canadian truckers and many others are stopping them.
Thanks!
About the only residual effects we are feeling is lack of appetite, being tired and this time my taste buds have been affected, but not smell.
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