Let's look at the other side of the coin

[perfectSmiles3]

Please explain which bit of this makes any sense!!! Unvaccinated people newly recovered from covid pumped full of antibodies (tested x2 and confirmed by the NHS) still have to self-isolate on contact with the infected, whereas someone who let's say was last jabbed in spring with clearly depleting antibody levels, doesn't.

Yet, I am going to get a booster because it is the right thing to do. I am not going to be a coward about it.

I don't believe you would be a coward to refuse it, though. Your own health must come first at some point. You've already had Covid and are fully jabbed.

You can't legislate for every conceivable combination of circumstances.

@Yingandyang

It's like most things in this pandemic that don't make sense, like how you couldn't sit down in the middle of nowhere and had to keep walking last year.

God - doesn’t this seem absolutely crazy!

@HesterShaw1

Everyone says infection then vaccine = high protection.

Same the other way round? Because so many people got double vaccinated hoping it would protect them, then they still caught it anyway.

This isn't a disingenuous question by the way, before anyone decides it is . I'd really like to know the answer.

Yes, exactly.

With the benefit that with vaccination first instead of infection, you're less likely to get severely ill or have long term adverse effects.

Receiving the jab places a measured amount of the virus into your system. The immunity generated from this has been studied in Lab and clinical trials and therefore with some degree of accuracy the effects can be quantified.
Catching covid, of unknown strain or origin will not necessarily give the same effect so therefore as it is unquantifiable cannot be regarded as the same as receiving the vaccine in terms of public health protection.

[quote 1dayatatime]@PAFMO

"Only if you have been infected AND then have the vaccine.
Otherwise a vaccinated person is less likely to (obviously) have the virus to pass on to start with, and marginally less likely to pass it on if they are unfortunate enough to catch it."

+++++

Does this then mean that those who have been double jabbed (ie the majority) but then actively avoid catching Covid (mask wearing, hand washing, avoid crowded events, supermarkets, etc) are by previous definitions on this post being "selfish" as they will have significantly lower antibodies than those that are double jabbed and have been infected?[/quote]
No of course not. I was correcting a previous poster's cherry picking of the scientific fact about vaccines and immunity.

I agree OP. You are far less likely to catch and pass on covid at the moment than I am, yet I don't have to isolate because I am vaccinated but you do.

As for getting the booster, I logged on to look for an appointment this morning but there is nothing locally at all, or near my office in London so I'll wait and try again in a day or so.

@ArblemarchTFruitbat

You can't legislate for every conceivable combination of circumstances.

Yes you can. You can't legislate for the inconceivable. But it's pretty conceivable that someone may have covid then come into close contact with someone else who has it.

@Incognito22333 You are perfectly entitled to think that it’s the ‘right thing to do’ for you. You are not entitled to tell others that they need to do it too. The vaccine is good at reducing the risk of serious illness for the individual, it is not so good at preventing infection and transmission. ‘The greater good’ argument has gone out the window.

@saleorbouy there have actually been several studies that have looked at immunity after infection snd have found that it lasts over 9 months in the majority, even after mild infection. A recent study also found that it is broader than vaccine induced immunity.

@bumbleymummy - well no, it is not the right thing for me to do at all. Because I had strong side effects. But if we all put our own needs first w will be back in lockdown again and indirectly kill a whole lot of vulnerable people. England is most liberal in this regard so far because it is relying on people to voluntarily do it. If that stops, we will have more draconian laws and severe restrictions.

Probably just comes down to administration. You have the vaccine and it's recorded making it easy to prove.
Creating something similar for those who may or may not have caught covid is just an unnecessary side show.

[quote bumbleymummy]@saleorbouy there have actually been several studies that have looked at immunity after infection snd have found that it lasts over 9 months in the majority, even after mild infection. A recent study also found that it is broader than vaccine induced immunity.[/quote]
Can you link to these studies?

It is generally considered by most, if not all, countries' medical advisors plus WHO, that the best protection for all citizens is high levels of vaccine uptake. So countries are doing what they can to try to ensure those high levels, for the benefit of everyone. These efforts include various regulations. This is an acute but hopefully a short-term situation and it is simply not practical to make special arrangements for this person and that person.

In the UK we are perfectly free to opt out of this drive. But the country is run for the majority. If you want to do your own thing, that's your prerorgative. But, much as I support anyone's freedom of choice and will fight against mandate and coercion, I can't sympathise with your whinging when your wish to do your own thing and diverge from the majority inconveniences you, no matter what facts and figures you use to try to support your case. If you don't like the way the country is run, you have an MP to lobby and a vote from time to time, just like the rest of us.

It's not about you, it's about the 50+ million of us who have decided to just get on with it, despite our different situations, our reservations and our fears.

Don't want to get vaccinated? Then accept the consequences of that.

www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101

This is a reasonable summary of the data around natural vs vaccine immunity

One of the key issues is our focus ONLY on antibodies when our immune system is much more complicated than that, and our memory B and T cells may well be perfectly capable of remembering Covid-19 should it encounter it again.

I'll take that as a no, bumbley. Surprise, surprise...

Zoe study finds that 1 in 5 (that's 20%) of people don't produce antibodies after infection and could be at greater risk of a repeat infection.

Kiey point:
In this new research we found that people still had anti-N antibodies at least 9 months after infection, suggesting that protection through natural infection might be longer lasting than vaccine-induced immunity.

However, we’ve also discovered that protection through natural immunity is less effective overall than vaccination, so we would always recommend you get vaccinated as soon as you’re eligible.

[quote Incognito22333]@bumbleymummy - well no, it is not the right thing for me to do at all. Because I had strong side effects. But if we all put our own needs first w will be back in lockdown again and indirectly kill a whole lot of vulnerable people. England is most liberal in this regard so far because it is relying on people to voluntarily do it. If that stops, we will have more draconian laws and severe restrictions.[/quote]
As I said above, the ‘greater good’ argument has gone out the window. At the start we did think that the vaccine would prevent people from contracting and transmitting the virus but we’ve since found out that it isn’t that great in that respect - it is still good at reducing the risk of serious illness for the person who has had the vaccine though. So if you feel that you need the booster for your own protection then by all means get it, but don’t just do it because you think it will benefit others.

@SLH2003

Probably just comes down to administration. You have the vaccine and it's recorded making it easy to prove. Creating something similar for those who may or may not have caught covid is just an unnecessary side show.

I take all your points in that it (seemingly) is easier to administer, until you look at the rights and restrictions applied to the person using the same Covid Pass in different scenarios. Such as, an unvaccinated person is:

1. now free to attend events needing Covid Pass for 180 days after having had Covid - this is new
2. required to self-isolate every time they're identified as close contact - no change here.

Why not just allow both for 180 days (i.e. abolish self-isolation rule) or just continue to have restrictions in both scenarios if they really wanted to save on admin time?

Natural immunity is so 2019!

So is common sense, bodily autonomy and proportionate reaction come to think of it

My opinion is that it’s not about transmission (if it was, I’d agree with you OP) but about an incentive to vaccination. And as an incentive or a carrot/ stick, it’s a bloody good one. Personally I’d be offering my arm up for vaccination every other day if it means I don’t need to worry about being forced into isolation for 10 days just for living my life.
It’s also FAR less draconian than the measures other countries are putting in place so I can’t get worked up about it. I’d be furious if there was mandatory vaccination.

@GreyhoundG1rl

I'll take that as a no, bumbley. Surprise, surprise...

Yabvu. I’m not glued to MN you know!

I’ve linked to the studies several times so if you wanted to put any effort in yourself you could search for my previous posts or you could even google them yourself!

one good summary article linking to several studies

our results indicate that mild infection with SARS-CoV-2 induces robust antigen-specific, long-lived humoral immune memory in humans

Another review

This information isn’t really that hard to find. Perhaps you should check these things yourself before asking others to do it for you?

IANA-immunologist, but it stands to reason (to me) that vaccine, then natural infection, is probably the optimal in terms of developing a strong and long lasting immune response.

The vaccines are generally relying on injecting or manufacturing inside the body, the covid spike protein, and relaying on the body recognising this as foreign and responding. This generates very high levels of antibodies, but to only this spike protein. Which is a very good target protein for covid, obviously, but any protein can be altered when the virus mutates.

Natural immunity works differently, in that cells in the body (forgive the paraphrasing, any reading experts) special cells will essentially encounter covid, rip it up into little pieces, then wander about until other cells encounter a bit of the ripped-up virus that they know they can attach to / attack.

So what you get with natural immunity is an immune response that could be called "broader", i.e. not targeted squarely at the single spike protein.

So, for my money, the best someone can do is get vaccinated, then get a mild case of covid (thanks to the vaccine).

Thus ends my naive immunological mental model of how this all works.