[civilized]

I don't understand your point. People who say "I don't need the vaccine because I already had COVID" never qualify that with how recent their natural infection was. Many of them assume that having it once is forever enough, like with chickenpox. The study shows that this common belief is wrong.

[tdfx]

Neither the vaccine or infection will protect against reinfection indefinitely. That much I believe everyone is in agreement with. If you had natural infection or the vaccine a year ago or more, you will likely be reinfected with the most recent strain, typically with mild or no symptoms. My point about the study was that it specifically selecting people who were recently vaccinated vs. people whose natural exposure was the prior year. Of course the vaccinated people whose immune systems were recently exposed to the spike protein had lower reinfection rates.

[civilized]

That's why taking the vaccine is valuable! It provides protection, even to those who have had COVID before! Even if you had it last year, you can protect yourself by taking the vaccine! That's what the study shows! Just because you think it's obvious doesn't mean the study isn't valuable!

[xenonite]

On the other hand, the job did not require that a recent vaccination is required, just some. So it’s still comparing apples to oranges.

On top of that: A recently recovered infection provides probably even more protection than a recent vaccination.

It’s difficult to reason about all cases, in my opinion.

[civilized]

The post that started this chain said there were significant benefits to vaccine after infection. That post was correct. Since then, tdfx and others have been launching a barrage of red herrings to somehow undermine and misdirect away from this correct point, rather than simply acknowledging it and moving on to whatever they actually want to say.

If you don't want to be required to take the vaccine, we can have that conversation, but enough spouting nonsense to cast doubt on a correct point.

[tdfx]

> Since then, tdfx and others have been launching a barrage of red herrings to somehow undermine and misdirect away from this correct point

The original point is an interesting example of being correct, but also misleading in that it paints getting the vaccine after natural infection as the best course of action. It has benefits, but probably not as many immune benefits as having a second asymptomatic infection after the original one.

I'm not anti-vaccine at all, but the CDC presents the vaccine to everyone in every circumstance as the optimal course of action and it's very clear the science on that is not settled. Blanket statements and their inability to acknowledge edge cases are the reason their credibility has been so badly eroded in the past few years. In their quest not to give anti-vax people a thread to pull on, they've treated the public as too stupid to understand nuance and created an even larger distrust than they would've had to begin with.

[civilized]

> The original point is an interesting example of being correct, but also misleading in that it paints getting the vaccine after natural infection as the best course of action. It has benefits, but probably not as many immune benefits as having a second asymptomatic infection after the original one.

It makes no sense to compare getting the vaccine to getting a second asymptomatic infection. It is impossible to control the level of symptoms you get from a natural infection.