Is natural immunity stronger than vaccinated immunity?
According to the data[1], which is of course limited like all the data on covid, there has only been 72 cases of confirmed reinfection out of more than 150,000,000 infections across the world.
Meanwhile, in the US, there has been thousands of break through cases of fully vaccinated people in a much shorter time scale.
Why are so many scientists and doctors asserting, or implying that vaccine immunity is stronger and longer lasting than natural immunity when the data indicates otherwise?
Note: this is a genuine question and I'd be more than happy for someone to point out what I seem to be missing. Please do not shame me or attack me, thank you.
[1]https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/08/covid-19-reinfection-tracker/
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A "confirmed reinfection" for someone who previously had Covid requires them to have gotten sick, tested positive, have the virus sequenced, then later get sick, test positive, get the virus sequenced again, and have the sequences demonstrate that the infections were caused by distinct virus variants. This is because it is often impossible to tell if someone who appears to be reinfected is suffering from a relapse but never cleared the virus, is suffering from "long Covid", or otherwise falsely tested negative without fully recovering. The number of suspected reinfections is orders of magnitude higher than 72, simply because we don't sequence most positive cases, and even if we did, the chance of being infected by different variants is relatively low. Even in your tracker, it has a "suspected cases" for reinfections at nearly 40,000, which is likely a large estimate simply based on reporting gaps.
On the other hand, to be confirmed as a case after vaccination, you simply have to have been vaccinated, and then test positive. The bar here is far lower, so of course there will be more observed cases.
Lastly, immunity isn't some black box. We understand many of the biological components involved in how the immune system fights infection, in the form of IgA antibodies, IgG antibodies, T-cells, B-cells, etc. There have been numerous studies done over the last 6 months demonstrating that the presence of these immunity components is far higher for vaccinated individuals than those who simply have natural immunity.
>A "confirmed reinfection" for someone who previously had Covid requires them to have gotten sick, tested positive, have the virus sequenced, then later get sick, test positive, get the virus sequenced again, and have the sequences demonstrate that the infections were caused by distinct virus variants.
This is indeed quite a high bar for classification compared to classifying breakthrough cases.
>This is because it is often impossible to tell if someone who appears to be reinfected is suffering from a relapse but never cleared the virus, is suffering from "long Covid", or otherwise falsely tested negative without fully recovering.
It would be interesting to see what the reinfection case numbers look like with a more loose classification method that assumed a margin of error for such false positives.
>Lastly, immunity isn't some black box.
To what degree is it a gray box though? Or is it white box?
Its fairly gray. Immunology is something we've been studying for over a century at this point, and the amount we understand it truly amazing. But at the same time, our bodies are such complex systems, that there is still so much we don't understand. It's certainly not a black box, but I definitely wouldn't call it a white box either.
For myself, I do not expect the flu shot to keep me from getting the flu, I only expect it to make it less sever. Without a shot I am usually down for a solid 2 weeks, because of side effect. With a shot it is usually no more than 3 days. Typically these days I get 2 flu shots, and have rarely had the flu.
Once I have the flu in a session I do not ever recall getting it again. I would say about half the time I get a flu shot I catch the flu.
What will be interesting in the end is weather a particular vaccine protects against the variants of COVID better than having had the actual bug. And if having a particular variant, protects you against more variants.
Do they? I don't think I have ever heard this claim.