6 Comments
Nov 1, 2021Liked by Dr. Emily Smith

Thank you for summarizing these studies for us! 🙌 I hope people will choose to be vaccinated and help be part of ending the pandemic. I'm very hopeful that we can get a vaccine for our 11 year old in the next week too.

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Nov 1, 2021Liked by Dr. Emily Smith

Thank you for this article! I'm a long-time reader, new subscriber :) From the CDC research that you cited on natural immunity, I'm not understanding the section of the table that is labeled "Time since either previous SARS-CoV-2 infection or full mRNA vaccination until COVID-19–like illness index test date, days". For unvaccinated with a COVID infection it shows 367 (36) and for vaccinated with no infection it shows 3,325 (53). It obviously not possible that the vaccinated group were vaccinated 3,325 days ago so I'm confused. Can you explain what that part of the chart is saying? Thank you!

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author

Welcome! The 3,325 is the number of people - not the days. Hope that helps!

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Thank you! I was definitely misinterpreting.

In order to compare immune response between unvaccinated with a COVID infection and vaccinated with no infection, "time since infection" and "time since vaccine shot" seems like critical data points to consider. For example, comparing someone who was vaccinated 6 months ago with someone who is unvaccinated but had COVID 12 months ago does not seem like a fair comparison. In the same way that comparing the immune response to someone who had COVID 6 months ago with someone who was vaccinated 12 months ago is not a fair comparison. Would you agree?

If we're truly looking to understand the effectiveness of natural immunity vs vaccine immunity then we should be comparing people whose vaccine shots were at the same time as those who had a COVID infection. Would you agree? Did the CDC take that into account in their report - I'm not seeing those details in the report.

I am vaccinated, but am also a fan of Europe's approach to natural immunity. Hence all the questions :)

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I can't find a lot of information about if you had Covid and then also got vaccinated - that hybrid immunity you mentioned. Are scientists still recommending a booster? Is there any info on it that you can recommend? I had some weird blood pressure things that happened after the vaccine and trying to find science on getting the booster now.

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This is timely, thank you! From what I've read here, and on Your Local Ep. substack, I understand that natural infection does not indicate a consistent level of immunity so vaccination is recommended regardless (right?). There are concerns raised where I live about the severity of mRNA vaccine side effects for people who have already had covid. I know these are preprints, but what are your thoughts on this? https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.21252192v1; https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.26.21252096v1

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