As large as it could be. Recent vaccination gives you basically no protection at all. The graph at the end summarizes it: https://imgur.com/a/XfQstP6

This is completely incorrect. As the sibling comment notes, antibody titer against a pseudovirus (synthetic virus containing spike protein; what this figure shows) is a proxy for immunity, and nobody has ever shown that it bears any practical significance at all. Antibody levels go down over time. If they didn't, your blood would be peanut butter.

Antibody levels for absolute neutralization of a synthetic virus in a dish? I have no idea what that means. It's something people look at because it's easy to look at in a dish.

In contrast, a recent paper from JHU and the NIH shows that people who were previously infected have T-Cell responses to spike protein that are almost completely unaffected by mutations in Omicron:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.06.471446v1

In short, there's excellent data showing that long-term immunity to Omicron is robust after exposure to prior strains.

And yet, first American confirmed death from reinfection in a unvaccinated person was yesterday:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/12/21/us-omicron-...

Rare things happen, rarely. It's a big world. Also that "may" in the headline is a logical hole that you can drive a truck through -- being PCR positive prior to death is by no means dispositive evidence that the virus is what killed the person. Pretty much everyone setting foot in a hospital today is tested for Covid, whether they went there for cancer, a heart attack, or the infection itself.

WaPo and "if it bleeds, it leads" coverage like this will give you a completely distorted view of reality. Stop feeding the beast.

Let’s hope so. Checkout this comment in 2-3 weeks to see how well it fares.

This is not reddit. I have no doubt that in 2-3 weeks there will be numerous people who have died of Omicron. Given sufficient time, I'm sure there will be examples of people who die from the virus after reinfection.

As I said: it's a big world, and people die of incredibly innocuous things, every day.

This is not Reddit, as you said. You’re claiming it will be innocuous with nothing to support it.

The little data we do have shows it’s much more transmissible, with partial vaccine scape and probably just as deadly.

We have every reason to be worried.

The very first comment I posted -- the one to which you're replying now -- is a link to a paper showing that cellular immunity to Omicron is likely quite robust after exposure to a prior strain. There is now ample evidence that vaccines provide robust protection as well:

https://twitter.com/miamalan/status/1470712673629261837

You will be fine. Please stop panicking. And turn off the news.

hey timr, i really appreciate your level-headed critiques (in the positive sense) of covid research despite the continued negativity you're receiving. few folks have been able to ignore the fearmongering and dig more deeply into the turbulent and harried research to tease out where we're really at in terms of understanding and uncertainty. just wanted to go beyond the anonymous upvote to show some appreciation and support.

Thanks for the kind words. I've been trying really hard to stay balanced on this issue here.

That's crossing into personal attack and not a legit way to argue with someone on HN. Your comment would be fine without the last paragraph.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't see how that's a personal attack. It might be an unsubstantiated inference at best. The substance is easy to gather using your search tool, however:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=7&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=1&prefix=true&que...

Lots of misinformation on masks, aerosol transmission, vaccine for kids, etc. The usual stuff.

If you are willing to allow this kind of content on HN, the downward spiral is unavoidable.

> will I find similar baseless dismissive content?

I don't think you'll be very surprised by what you find. There are a number of accounts on HN that have been systematically downplaying the pandemic since the beginning, ranging from wishful thinking to simply not knowing a whole lot about viruses and RNA viruses in particular. The 'usual suspects' promote their preferred solutions, ranging from untested medication to just pretending the problem doesn't exist. It's a bit frustrating that this forum, which prides itself on being so smart harbors some of the worst elements of the conspiracy fueled story lines that are being pushed for way more than they are worth.

With 830,000 Americans verified dead from this virus (and probably a lot more than that once you look at excess deaths for that same period) and on average 1250 new ones added every day, besides the long term effects for the ones that survive a heavy case you'd think that by now even the most hardy of these people would have realized that their mantras are getting a bit long in the tooth.

We have a serious problem, it could easily get much worse and we've squandered our options for cheap and fast solutions. The problem is a global one and as humanity we have a piss poor record of dealing with global problems (except for the Ozone layer issue, but I wonder if we would have been able to deal with that in the political climate that we have today). This isn't over yet and the only way we are going to solve it is by collectively admitting that yes, we do have a problem and that no amount of wishful thinking or quackery is going to get us out of it.

There has to be room for debate and that means room for people who are saying wrong things (or that you or someone else considers wrong). In any complex situation, there will inevitably be a wide spectrum of views. I don't think it's a good idea to lump that spectrum into a binary (which is what phrases like "usual suspects" seem to me to be doing).

Fair enough, but there is an asymmetric component at work here that I think bears identifying: you can have a community of tens of thousands of individuals that are moving in a mutually beneficial way and you can destroy that same community by having a few hundred dedicated people that will shout down every attempt at a reasonable discussion with misinformation and downright junk.

Destruction is simply much easier than construction. The dutch have a proverb about this (they have proverbs on just about anything, so that shouldn't come as a surprise): "Een gek kan meer vragen dan tien wijzen kunnen beantwoorden" -> "One crazy person can ask more questions than ten wise people can answer".

And that gives HN at times a weird imbalance where it might seem to a casual observer that we are on average a bunch of racists, in denial about COVID, that we aim to spread quackery and that letting this junk unanswered is tantamount to agreeing with it. I know that isn't the case, but you could not fault an outside observer for having that view because we put that on display almost every day.

This asymmetry is also present in real life, for instance in the form of vandalism, where destroying something takes a lot less effort than it does to repair it. And PG addressed some of this in his 'no broken windows' article (which I still think is one of his best pieces and exhibits a lot of deep insight).

So there is a difference between 'room for debate and the ability for people to say wrong things' and 'people saying wrong things because it either amuses them or because they aren't trying to debate anything at all, they are just trying to spread their payload to as many eyeballs as possible'.

Maybe not a huge surprise. The initial reports in South Africa, which referred to Omicron being mild, referred to double vaccinated people.

Ballpark, (surviving) infection confers immunity similar to one vaccine dose—with all the downsides of having been infected.

Don't trust this source but that might be fake: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/12/busted-cnn-reports-...

Low antibodies != low immune response

I recall hearing that as well but I can't quite remember what the rest of the picture is - something about the other parts of the immune system being able to do the needed work? Or that it was shown that someone with zero antibodies could still be immune?

Other parts of the immune system, specifically T-cell response. The simplified bottom line is that antibodies provide a quick response that also prevents many cases of mild disease. T-cell immunity lasts longer, appears more universal against variants and should still work relatively well against severe cases.

Basically, memory B-cells remember the code for anti-bodies and they are produced "on demand". Please see the graph in the figure below.

https://askabiologist.asu.edu/memory-b-cell

The way I read this paper is that they're talking specifically about neutralization, not just antibody response.

There is no difference between what is injected.

It's more like a retraining program. It's almost like the difference between short and long term memory. One shot will turn on short term memory after a week or two. Repeating shots will turn on long term memory.

But what I personally think is interesting is that a natural infection works longer and broader after just one 'dose'.

It is amazing how complitacted the immuunsysteem is. And I also think this is the reason we should be careful with giving healthy young people the vaccins.

It will likely be too difficult to do a study to answer this precisely. But if you recently got your initial vaccination completed, you shouldn't be in a rush to get a booster. The booster is there to reinforce the immunity after it has had to wear off.