"Like, between a 100-200$ blood test to prove natural immunity* vs. a free vaccine, it should make sense to get the vaccine."

The antibody test is about $45 from places like Labcorp. The vaccine is $40 per dose (so $80 total for most), with the government picking up the tab.

Yes, vaccination plus infection provides more antibodies. I'm not sure that it is correct to quantify that as "10x more resistance" as we would need to know where the threshold for resistance lies and all the factors involved (they don't know the min effective level of antibodies, and they are seeing protection in individuals before the antibodies are being produced).

"You don't lose anything by getting the vaccine..."

There are some people with valid concerns about the possiblity of autoimmune antibodies, which in theory, could be substantially higher if having already been infected. Sadly, I haven't been able to find any real research into this one way or the other.

"... they should be able to prove they have that immunity in the first place, ..."

Yes, other governments such as Isreal are issuing green passes for those confirmed to have recovered. I don't believe they are doing antibody testing, but we aren't testing vaccine recipients for antibodies either.

Why would you risk side effects (which are really low, but do exist) if you already have antibodies? Is argue you do "lose something" if you get a vaccine after having recovered from covid.

That's incorrect, natural immunity will last many years. Your antibody levels do go down but your body remembers how to make more. Vaccine immunity does seem to need booster shots.

We do not have data to support the claim "natural immunity will last many years", as the disease hasn't existed for many years. There are studies that go in both directions as to whether recovery from infection provides better protection against future infection or not, and there seems to be a lot of cherry-picking by people trying to support their own arguments.

If we can't eliminate Covid, there will be mutations that reduce effectiveness of immunity whether obtained by vaccines or by previous infection, and everyone will need boosters, like we do for influenza shots.

That's funny considering I've had COVID at least twice now, once in December 2020 and again in July 2021.

P.1 (aka Gamma) and B.1.617.2 (aka Delta) have already been proven to reinfect those previously infected by COVID19 at alarming rates 180-days after they've recovered.

Look: this shouldn't be a surprise. Your body only has 6 months of natural immunity to the flu. Some viruses (Flu, COVID19, etc. etc.) just don't have long-lasting immunity from. We all were hoping for the best, but the numbers are in and they're not very good for natural immunity.

The Flu isn't one strain. It's many highly mutative strains, kinda different from the handful of stable strains of covid.

That is all FUD. Natural immunity does fine, just like the vaccine you may be reinfected but the effects will be severely diminished.

Look, this shouldn't be a surprise. Evolution is a bit better at this stuff than man, it's been doing it longer.

I'm all for people taking boosters if they want to for some reason, but don't push false information.

> That is all FUD. Natural immunity does fine, just like the vaccine you may be reinfected but the effects will be severely diminished.

Why did Manaus, Brazil run out of hospital space in a 2nd surge? Despite initial infection rates of ~75%ish ?

Why was this effect then replicated in a 2nd Brazilian city of Araraquara city by a different research team? (Aka: a "2nd wave" of COVID19, despite a highly infected population?)

Either mismanagement or false reporting / fear mongering which runs rampant in covid times.

I don't know how you think that translates to poor natural immunity.

You would need to know the % of patients with covid of the ICUs that are overrun, whether they were previously infected, etc.

We see the blood has fewer protections through blood-donor information (fewer and fewer antibodies present in blood-donors). We then see variants evolve that are explicitly avoiding immune responses (aka: Gamma and Delta). And finally, we see these variants reinfect huge swaths of the population in practice.

Its not really that unbelievable of a story. It lines up with the science going on all around the world. Immune response wanes through some indirect measurement, variants rise, reinfections happen.

It also is within-a-magnitude of vaccine-induced immunity. So even if you get your immunity from vaccines, its seemingly waning after 8 months (Pfizer). 6 months / 8 months... that's close enough that its practically the same when it comes to these early / less rigorous studies. It seems that's how long our bodies immune response works vs this virus.

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Why do you think the virus is resurging in USA? There already was a huge surge (the 2020 summer surge and 2020 winter surge). For there to be yet another 2021 July/August surge??

Well: July 2021 was over 6 months since the last surge (December 2020/January 2021). Our collective immunities wore off. People _are_ getting reinfected.

That Manuas study was not representative of the population, so it's unlikely that 75% got infected in the first wave.

Natural immunity doesn’t only last 6 months. Where did you get that?

I’m coming out of my second COVID infection now. Long story short, I was in the local hospital and the fact that this was my second infection caused a really big hubbub in the COVID ward and a nurse told me I was the first reinfection she has seen.

> Natural immunity doesn’t only last 6 months. Where did you get that?

https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/delta-raises-covid...

You got 180 days before natural immunity wanes and Delta poses a risk of reinfection.

That's looking at relative risk not overall. It's not saying you lose immunity after 180 days.

Natural immunity wanes enough to cause a "2nd surge" in cities that were 75%ish infected, such as Araraquara city, Brazil, and Manaus, Brazil.

I can agree with you that the 180-days thing is just an estimate from one study. Further studies are needed to narrow down the exact time when natural immunity wanes. But its a good "first guess" at the phenomenon, and should be within a magnitude of the truth.

From what we've seen around the world, COVID19 (or at least its variants, like Gamma/P.1 or Delta/B.1.617) is more than willing to reinfect populations in less than a year.

The Manaus study used a convenience sample, meaning that you cannot infer population rates from it.

Who would have thought that reading the abstract of a paper could be a super power?

> Natural immunity doesn’t only last 6 months. Where did you get that?

> I’m coming out of my second COVID infection now.

I know I'm using anecdote here. Coincidently it is the same one.

It's my understanding we only measure antibodies, which hang around after an infection for a while. We still have "the pattern" to create more once our immune system learns how to beat something.

No. There are substantial studies on the reinfection rates of P.1 (aka Gamma)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909850/

https://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(21)00183-5/full...

B.1.617.2 (aka Delta) also has shown properties showing that it evades natural immunity after 180-days, similar to P.1 / Gamma.

The "antibody measurement" studies are trying to narrow down the exact time that our immunity wanes. But it is a well-proven fact that natural immunity lasts less than a year, given what we've seen in Araraquara, Brazil and Manaus, Brazil.

It seems to be ~180 days, subject to more tests. So that's the number I'm going to assume until I see a better study.

Your numbers are incorrect. Vaccination appears to boost immunity after infection by a factor of 2×, not 10×. The duration of additional resistance is unclear.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...