[hcknwscommenter]

Okay. I admit that my characterization was sloppy/incorrect. Thank you for pointing that out. The paper is still not strong evidence though. To whit:

"the higher hospitalization rate in the 32,000-person analysis was based on just eight hospitalizations in a vaccinated group and one in a previously infected group. And the 13-fold increased risk of infection in the same analysis was based on just 238 infections in the vaccinated population, less than 1.5% of the more than 16,000 people, versus 19 reinfections among a similar number of people who once had SARS-CoV-2."

These numbers are very small for distinguishing between the effectiveness of two different and effective immunization methods (natural and vaccine). By now, we should have more data to support if the effect size is that strong. Do we?

[microtherion]

Even if the numbers scale up, they'd mean that you'd avoid roughly 1 hospitalization for every 2285 people who got immunity from being infected instead of from being vaccinated. Unfortunately, to obtain that immunity, about 1 in 30 had to be hospitalized, 1 in 250 died, and a significant number suffered serious complications.

Nobody in their right mind would choose such a tradeoff.

[timr]

Nobody here is making this argument. You're setting up a straw man.

The point is: people who have recovered from the illness are immune, and should be treated as such.

[logifail]

> people who have recovered from the illness

I'm not sure the guy on the street is actually interested in properly understanding the risks associated with Covid.

My neighbour is in his 70s, he had Covid in November 2020 and (in his words) he wasn't particularly poorly with it. He subsequently had his vaccinations.

He and a couple of friends have been having blood tests to check on antibody titres. His antibodies are still really high, his friends (who haven't had Covid) have antibodies which have dropped significantly since they were vaccinated. He told me he wasn't sure why.

We were talking out on the street, my kids were out and around on their bikes, he told me he thought it was really important that children (like mine) should get vaccinated in order to keep people like him "safe".

What do you say at that point? I'm honestly not sure where we go from here.

[timr]

> These numbers are very small for distinguishing between the effectiveness of two different and effective immunization methods (natural and vaccine). By now, we should have more data to support if the effect size is that strong. Do we?

You should check the number of deaths in the original trials used to approve the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. You might be surprised. Even in big trials in immunologically naive populations, only a small number of people became seriously ill -- a total of 10 people became seriously ill across the entire Pfizer trial. No deaths occurred. [1]

Once you've vaccinated your population (or otherwise allowed them to become immune), you're talking about incredibly small effect sizes.

[1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2034577