[claudiusd]

Thank you for saying this. Despite taking all precautions, I was infected in Jan 2021 before becoming eligible for the vaccine. Once I recovered, I was comfortable venturing outside again and doing some traveling but there was practically zero information about natural immunity following infection. As states easing travel restrictions, these only applied to people who had been vaccinated. There was no exception for folks who were previously infected (at least for the states I researched). At a time when vaccine appointments were scarce and there were long waiting lists (my how times have changed), I still got the first appointment I could so I could get my vaccine card.

The lack of guidance for those who were previously infected was strange. When I'd read about immunization rates and progress towards "herd immunity", previous infections also weren't included in these stats, which again was strange.

I'm in Europe now, and here it seems like natural immunity is essentially as valid as vaccination, at least for travel.

I can't explain why previous infections seem so widely discounted in the US. It feels like an intentional omission, which makes it hard for me to trust at face value what I hear and read about the pandemic.