Forget how leaky they are - COVID can also be carried/transmitted by animals. For anyone who thinks all we have to do to vaccinate everyone - "everyone" includes all the animals humans do or could come in contact with. You going to do that too?

Biontech has proven to have 93% efficacy against hospitalization after 6 months [1].

- 1: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Which has nothing to do with making the virus extinct.

Making the virus extinct has nothing to do with reality; it's an utterly unrealistic expectation.

If you sincerely think we can make COVID extinct you might want to do some more research into real science and less propaganda.

The optimal outcome preserving both health and bodily autonomy is an asymptomatic highly contagious variant. That is essentially a communicable vaccine.

But everything with avoiding ERs from getting overloaded, which is what‘s motivating the discussion in Germany.

First of all, there are many millions in Germany, who are neither vaccinated nor recovered (if you have medical proof of recovery, like a positive PCR test in the past, you are treated like a vaccinated person for 6 months). So there are millions which can still be hit by full force. As a consequence, get sick, require ICU care. In some parts of Germany, all ICU beds are currently occupied, patients moved to other parts of the country as we speak. That is the critical situation at the moment. Also, all data available shows, that unvaccinated people are spreading the virus faster than vaccinated people. Those two parts in combination create a situation, where the unvaccinated part of the population do mainly contribute to the severity of things. That is, why the majority of the population cares about high vaccination counts.

>Most of them have probably had COVID already, or soon will, giving them an immunity just as good as vaccination.

Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]

1. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

Your reference undermines your claim. From your reference:

>In this review, observational studies appeared to show protection to be higher following infection.

In the executive summary, which lays out how we should interpret the total body of data collected so far:

"The body of evidence for infection-induced immunity is more limited than that for vaccine-induced immunity in terms of the quality of evidence... There are insufficient data to extend the findings related to infection-induced immunity at this time to persons with very mild or asymptomatic infection or children."

We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."

The data only suggests that people that are severely affected by COVID may have higher peak antibody titers. It's a huge gamble to play with yourself and the people around you.

You are shifting the goal posts.

First you said:

>Immunity from prior-infection was worse than vaccination at protecting people from Delta.[1]

Now you are saying :

>We literally don't have the evidence needed to say with certainty that infection (of all levels of severity) provides "an immunity just as good as vaccination."

Meanwhile, all the data coming out of countries with centralized covid tracking suggests natural immunity is as good or better.

Here is another link if you are interested: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

Reviewing health data for 2.5 million Israelis, It found:

>SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021

>Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity.

Source? The papers I have seen show the exact opposite!

"There is laboratory evidence that persons previously infected with the original lineage of SARS-CoV-2 have reduced neutralizing antibody titers against certain variants (i.e., Beta, Gamma, and Delta variants)"

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...

That's an outdated source.

Would you mind sharing which papers you are talking about?

This study has a rather strange design that might be miscategorizing people who’d both been infected & vaxed (counting them only as vaxed), & among other things, misses the risk that more unvaxed people might seek medical care, or receive more aggressive treatment, for the same level of symptoms.

It’s also an outlier result, as larger analyses from Israel suggest longer & stronger protection from infection.

What we can say confidently is that both the vax & prior infection provide some future protection, ut both fade against re-infection fairly fast, while remaining helpful against severity.

Also more generally: the CDC has not, in this pandemic, proven very reliable in its reporting, recommendations, or weighing/updating of evidence, & its choice of what to report & emphasize has been highly compromised by shifting political pressures. I think their highlighting of this result, over evidence suggesting otherwise, is suspect - more a reflection of them wanting to boost the vax campaign than an honest assessment of all relevant scientific evidence.

By how much? It's really disingenuous to say "more" or "less" or "better" or "worse" without qualification.