[hammock]

What about the 100+ million in the US with natural immunity to the mRNA virus?

Edit: 40+ million

Edit 2: perhaps it is 100+ million when counting estimated unreported cases- I do recall getting this 100+ number from the CDC itself

[whatshisface]

Well, there are two groups roughly speaking of people with natural immunity. One group, those who have already had the virus, seem to be fairly well protected according to that one Israeli study. Obviously, going out and getting the virus to protect yourself from the virus is an idea straight out of Catch-22, so I assume you're talking about the other group. ;)

As for people with natural immunity but who haven't had it, that's everyone. Every person has what are called "naive B-cells," covered in random antibodies. One of them probably binds to coronavirus in some way, and that would be how your body would get started fighting the infection if you got it. However, the fact that people have some natural ability to fight it off explains why not everyone dies from it (every virus would kill you if you had no immune response, that's why HIV is deadly), but it's of little consolation to the people who found out too late that their natural immunity wasn't enough.

If there was a test to see in advance who would fight off the coronavirus without realizing they had it, I guess that would be a way to save some money and inconvenience giving them shots, but since we don't know for sure in advance who will or won't have an easy case, that's why we have to get vaccinated.

[mjevans]

It would probably cost less to just administer a proven safe and effective vaccine anyway than it would to test that person even once.

3 shots of Pfizer ~ 60 USD < -- VS -- > 100+ USD ~ Single test to see if someone's infected, surely a test to see if someone is naturally immune at best costs this or more.

#

Pfizer seems to cost about 20 USD per dose, so even with the three dose regime (2 initial shots plus a later booster) is expected to cost under 100 USD; most of the other shots cost less.

https://www.biospace.com/article/comparing-covid-19-vaccines...

As there is no currently known technology to reliably test if someone is immune I'll grab data for the next closest similarity: a test to see if someone is presently infected. Nearly all of those tests cost in the range of 100 to 200 USD, with some rare outliers above and beneath.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/from-our-experts/q-and-a-how-muc...

https://www.talktomira.com/post/how-much-does-coronavirus-co...

[jcranmer]

The actual case counts for the US appear to be about 40 million right now, not 100 million.

I also wonder how many people who claim to have natural immunity actually have that natural immunity. The tale of Manaus is cautionary here.

[nradov]

Case counts are meaningless because most infections were never tested. The CDC estimates that 120M Americans have been infected as of July 2021.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

[s1artibartfast]

The official CDC estimate is 100 million plus, based one estimated unreported cases and serology testing.

[mthoms]

“Natural” immunity? You’ve been politely asked before to stop using this misleading phrase.

Your insistence on using it is telling.

What you really mean is disease-induced immunity.

[whatshisface]

You have some natural immunity to viruses before you get them, that's why you can survive viruses. That's little consolation to anyone in the ER, of course.

[mthoms]

Of course, but the context was 100 million people (or however many) are "immune".

He's referring to people who've had the virus.

[lamontcg]

They already beat the mRNA from the actual real "live" replicating virus. They have very little to fear from the mRNA in the vaccine.

Infection followed by an mRNA vaccine also acts as a boost which provides broad neutralization against mutated spikes and possibly some pan-sarbecovirus immunity.

[grayhatter]

what about them? Just that they exist?

[rejectedandsad]

The vaccine generalizes better without the annoyance to deathly consequences of actually contracting the virus.

[mikeyouse]

A recent study had a great chart:

https://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/jour...

(Figure 4 here: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2110475)

For essentially all 'side effects' of the vaccine - you're substantially more likely to experience them if you get Covid. Not only is the notion of avoiding the vaccine to avoid the side effects misguided, it's actively increasing your chances of getting those very same side effects.