Wife and I got both Pfizer shots by the end of February. Both got the Chinese virus last month. But, happily neither of us were hospitalized. Of course I’m old enough to remember when vaccines (if made correctly—see early Salk polio vaccine) were supposed to prevent you from getting the disease at all.
“Wife and I got both Pfizer shots by the end of February. Both got the Chinese virus last month….”
**********************************************************************
Glad you both recovered well from COVID-19. Since you got it in August, the odds are you were “blessed” with the highly infectious Delta variant. You now have, with relative safety provided by your vaccinations, attained the gold standard of immunities … NATURAL immunity.
My wife and I have been vaccinated using the Moderna shots. Since then, much to my wife’s amusement, I have tried and apparently failed to get exposed to the virus to add in natural immunity. Maybe I had an asymptomatic infection but I’ll never know because I refuse to pay for an antibody test.
Again, congrats on your natural immunity.
The definition of “disease” is that the pathogen or condition does you harm.
Vaccines do not necessarily prevent infection, in fact, you have to have SOME level of infection for your vaccine-primed active immune system to react. A vaccine triggers an active immune response to an infection such that the infecting pathogen does not advance to disease (harm).
Cont’d: Many vaccines effectiveness wears off - heck, I’m due for a tetanus booster shot. (Recommended every 10 years.) Some wear off faster than others, and, some become weak or ineffective due to pathogen variants — flu being a noticeable example. Heck, has there ever been a year when the flu vaccine was judged over 75% effective? And that doesn’t even count mild flu cases that the victims thought were just a bit of a cold. If those were considered, I’m not sure the flu vaccine ever gets over 50% efficacy. (And don’t ask me what the criteria for the flu vaccine is anyway: Sick enough to see a dr. or go to a clinic?)