General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMedCram. Great discussion here on COVID natural immunity versus vaccine immunity.
Listening to trained medical professionals and immunology researchers like this, who have dedicated their lives to studying this stuff, just makes me want to punch the next anti mask covidiot I see.
justhanginon
(3,290 posts)if you had any doubt. Stupid and dangerous!
SheltieLover
(57,073 posts)W_HAMILTON
(7,867 posts)I wasn't going to watch the entire video since it's quite long, but I ended up listening to more than I expected since I had it on in the background while I did something else. The main points, for anyone that just wants those:
- Yes, having once been infected with COVID will give you some sort of immunity going forward; how long that immunity lasts for is still being studied.
- It is possible to get reinfected with COVID even after you have been infected once; however, it is extremely rare for someone that once had COVID to get reinfected and end up in the hospital, meaning that reinfections are usually less severe.
- The reason for all of this is due to the varying immunity that each person has after being infected; it can vary quite a bit from person to person, up to a one hundred-fold difference between people.
- The reason why they recommend that everyone gets the vaccine -- even those that have already been infected -- is because the vaccine produces a similar and (high) baseline of immunity for everyone, whereas immunity through infection alone could result in you potentially being on the low end of that one hundred-fold difference.
LisaL
(44,973 posts)However, the variants (at least some of them) are a different story. Natural immunity, or vaccine induced immunity, doesn't work well against some of the variants.