Comment by dgritsko | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dgritsko | Hacker News Reader

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> the immunity you get from having the disease is always better than what you'd get from a vaccine.

My understanding is that the opposite is true, at least based on what we know right now. Here is an article summarizing just that[1], which links to a few peer-reviewed studies (and a couple that are pending review) suggesting that the vaccines are better than natural immunity.

I don't have any background in this or agenda or anything, so don't shoot the messenger - just sharing what I understand to be the opinion of at least some of the medical community.

> "Vaccines are highly efficacious," Fauci concluded. "They are better than the traditional response you get from natural infection."

[1]: https://www.businessinsider.com/fauci-why-covid-vaccines-wor...

The linked article doesn't support either view.

The link reports that vaccines have been observed to generate higher antibody-levels than natural infections. It was also observed that vaccines seem to protect against a set of variants. This is the good news that is worth reporting.

But there are observed occurences of the opposite; that vaccinated people test negative for antibodies. Similarly, people test negative for antibodies some time after recovering. Sometimes, recovered people never test positive for antibodies.

Diagnostic tools widely available are simply not good enough to test the immune response.

I would want something a bit more than studies by the vaccine maker about how good their vaccine is -- for example having those studies reproduced by a third party and comparing natural immunity to the vaccine -- before concluding that a vaccine can be better than natural immunity. It is almost always the case that natural immunity is superior to vaccines.

> It is almost always the case that natural immunity is superior to vaccines.

Do you have a source for that claim? GP offered peer-reviewed evidence to the contrary, which you don't believe, but so far you've offered no evidence at all.

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