Prior Infection and Risk of Re-infection

Pretty clear to me in the data and the research that being infected once with CV-19 is more protective than at least the usual two-dose vax series, and probably more so than even a booster.  The reason is pretty obvious too, the body creates a memory of and broader response to more segments of the virus proteins than do the vax, which focus solely on the spike protein.  Smarter vaccine designers could have and should have avoided that error.  The spike protein is where the receptor binding domain is that the virus uses to gain entry to a cell, so naturally that area is subject to mutations which create increased binding potential, but also may evade immunity by not being recognized.  Kind of so basic that makes you wonder if the designer did it on purpose so that the vaccine manufacturer would have to make and sell a new vaccine every few months.  Naah, they couldn’t be that devious. (wish I knew how to insert an emoticon here) Kind of like if Apple made a phone that didn’t recognize the change to or from daylight savings time so you had to buy a new phone every 6 months.  The government should force these vaccine manufacturers to provide the update that makes their product for free, at a minimum.

Anyway, this study, published in the leading journal for Internal Medicine, summarizes the research on infection-derived immunity and provides guidance to doctors about that.  Lo and behold, it finds that infection provides a strong and durable protection against reinfection for at least 7 months, much stronger than is provided by the vax in the same time period.  Now they hedge by saying it wasn’t clear the protection would hold up against Delta or Omicron.  I think the research is pretty clear it did hold up against Delta.  Not clear yet in regard to Omicron, but if I look at Minnesota, I would suspect Omicron is causing more reinfections but continues to be more protective than the vax.  (Annals Study)

And this study from terrorist breakaway state California, actually one county in that benighted country, has finding similar to prior research.  The authors compared the unvaxed, the vaxed and the prior infected.  The risk of testing positive was in the first 90 days following initial infection or vax somewhat higher in the previously infected than in the vaxed.  Can you say over-sensitive PCR tests picking up viral fragments?  Because after that, prior infection was much more protective against a reinfection than vax were against a breakthru infection.  In fact the prior infection group was half as likely to get a subsequent infection.  So probably half as likely to transmit as well.  And after that 90 days, the prior infected had around half the rate of death of the vaxed group, which in turn had about a fourth the risk of death in the unvaxed.  This group also had the lowest all-cause mortality. Epidemic of the unvaxed, requiesce in pace.  (Medrxiv Study)