[davorak]

> On [2] he said that natural immunity from getting covid-19 is better than getting the vaccine alone,

He was more on the anti vax side than this statement implies, at least that was my take away from the [2] article:

> For unvaccinated people who got COVID-19 and recovered, he said, "Now you’ve got natural immunity and you’ve got no vaccination in you. Can we all agree that that was the winning path?"

[a]

> better than getting the vaccine alone, which is factually correct

You are not giving a metric here so I can not tell why you think it is better. Everything I have read indicates there are more risks, death or long term complications, with covid-19 exposure before vaccination than the other way around. The conclusion of [2] is similar to this.

The original Scott Adam's post not longer exists, is there another place where he recorded why he believed contacting covid-19 before vaccination was the winning path? Without that the quotes look damning against his view point.

Apparently politifact reached out for comment and did not get any:

> We sent emails to an address listed on Adams’ website and at Dilbert.com and an address on his Facebook page. We didn’t get a reply.

[a] https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jan/26/scott-adam...

[alexandre_m]

> You are not giving a metric here so I can not tell why you think it is better

The studies:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/191/8/1420/6556183

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8627252/

There are many more.

Several 2021–2022 studies, especially Delta-focused, suggested natural immunity provided robust or superior protection against reinfection compared to two-dose vaccination alone.

[davorak]

> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

> https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/191/8/1420/6556183

> https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8627252/

or [x], [y], [z] for ease.

I read the abstract and conclusion of all three, none of them talk about natural immunity with no vaccination being the "winning path" like Scott Adams did. None of them talk about getting covid before getting vaccinated(maybe only optionally) as a better or safer path, not in the abstract or conclusions at least.

[alexandre_m]

[1] essentially says that there is no value for people who got infected by SARS CoV-2 to get vaccinated:

"our findings suggest that once an individual has fully recovered from initial infection, prior SARS CoV-2 infection protects against subsequent SARS-CoV-2 infection and its related negative outcomes. Moreover, the level of effectiveness seemed similar in both the recovered and fully vaccinated cohorts. With a paucity of vaccine doses, this should be one of several aspects that should be considered when deciding whether or not to prioritize vaccination of previously infected adults."

[davorak]

None of that is advise to not take the vaccine and try for natural immunity before getting a vaccination.

In fact the advise here is conditional on "a paucity of vaccine doses" so they may(not clear one way or the other from your quote) recommend vaccines for people who have natural immunity if there were enough vaccines to go around.

[alexandre_m]

In [3]:

"Nine clinical studies were identified, ..."

"All of the included studies found at least statistical equivalence between the protection of full vaccination and natural immunity; and, three studies found superiority of natural immunity."

[davorak]

That is not advise to try for natural immunity instead of or before getting the vaccine.