I’d be interested in seeing a write up on whether people who’ve had COVID need to be vaccinated. I have a friend who was sick with COVID symptoms for 3 weeks and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 shortly after the onset of symptoms. He is now being told by medical professionals that he needs to be vaccinated just the same as everyone else. I tried to look up the data on this. Sources like CDC, Cleavland Clinic, and Mayo Clinic all state that people need to be vaccinated even if they have had COVID. However, their messaging seems to be contradictory. There are many appeals to “we don’t know”. The reasoning doesn’t appear to be any more complex than “vaccine good” and “immunity from infection ‘not known’”. There is no discussion of things I would expect like, the difference between testing positive with no symptoms, had symptoms but never tested, or tested positive and never had symptoms. While I can imagine reasons why immunity induced from the vaccine and from infection would be different, my prior is that most of the effects are going to be the same. There is repeated reference to not knowing how long immunity developed from infection lasts, but by definition, we have had less time to see how long immunity from the vaccine lasts. So our evidence about the vaccine would be weaker. I could say a lot more, but I’ll leave it at that.
To avoid any confusion: My actual model is that if you’ve had COVID19 then the vaccine would act as a booster. So I’d say people who’ve had it should get vaccinated eventually but should be among the lowest priority. That should be modulated by the probability that you had COVID and the fact that asymptotic COVID may be less likely to develop immunity. On the other hand, having had asymptomatic COVID is probably evidence that you will be asymptotic if you get it again. That is not the message that is being given to the public.
I’d be interested in seeing a write up on whether people who’ve had COVID need to be vaccinated. I have a friend who was sick with COVID symptoms for 3 weeks and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 shortly after the onset of symptoms. He is now being told by medical professionals that he needs to be vaccinated just the same as everyone else. I tried to look up the data on this. Sources like CDC, Cleavland Clinic, and Mayo Clinic all state that people need to be vaccinated even if they have had COVID. However, their messaging seems to be contradictory. There are many appeals to “we don’t know”. The reasoning doesn’t appear to be any more complex than “vaccine good” and “immunity from infection ‘not known’”. There is no discussion of things I would expect like, the difference between testing positive with no symptoms, had symptoms but never tested, or tested positive and never had symptoms. While I can imagine reasons why immunity induced from the vaccine and from infection would be different, my prior is that most of the effects are going to be the same. There is repeated reference to not knowing how long immunity developed from infection lasts, but by definition, we have had less time to see how long immunity from the vaccine lasts. So our evidence about the vaccine would be weaker. I could say a lot more, but I’ll leave it at that.
To avoid any confusion: My actual model is that if you’ve had COVID19 then the vaccine would act as a booster. So I’d say people who’ve had it should get vaccinated eventually but should be among the lowest priority. That should be modulated by the probability that you had COVID and the fact that asymptotic COVID may be less likely to develop immunity. On the other hand, having had asymptomatic COVID is probably evidence that you will be asymptotic if you get it again. That is not the message that is being given to the public.