exposure to the virus does not grant immunity. notice how it’s still raging
It does grant a certain degree of immunity, especially in terms of reduced symptoms and effects upon following sickness, the main thing afaik is that the virus mutates as the flu or the common cold do, so that you don’t get full immunity to the newly appearing variants (remember the stuff with Omicron and so on?). Death rates now are much lower than they were at first
It does grant a certain degree of immunity, especially in terms of reduced symptoms and effects upon following sickness
yea, instead of dying you now develop AIDS and cancer and can’t walk 10 yards and lose your sense of taste for 3 years straight
it grants a degree of immunity that is so small in comparison to the virus’ effects that it doesn’t matter in absolute terms
I’m sorry, but saying that “the degree of immunity doesn’t matter in absolute terms” when talking about infection-acquired immunity doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. A 2021 study in children and adolescents says explicitly “the effectiveness of naturally acquired immunity against a recurrent infection reached 89% at 3-6 months after the first infection, and declined slightly to 82% by 9-12 months after infection, with a slight nonsignificant waning trend seen up to 18 months after infection”. A 2022 study comparing the immunity of non-previously-infected vaccinees with that of non-previously-vaccinated but previously infected people, showed that there’s at least 5 times more odds to be infected if you were vaccinated only than if you were previously infected only. With equal sample sizes, 484 of the vaccinated individuals got infected in the study, whereas 68 got infected in the previously infected group.
I say all of this as a 3x vaccinated person who acknowledges the great effectiveness of vaccines, but the studies show that exposure to the virus is in any case even more effective at generating natural immunity. This isn’t an argument for not doing anything and becoming spreaders, it’s not an argument for stopping facemasks, or for stopping vaccines, I support wearing facemasks when symptoms appear, quarantining when exposed to the virus, ample sick leave, and vaccine availability for everyone at no cost. I just want to be realistic about the science when we talk about these things, and saying that “the degree of immunity is so small as to not matter in absolute terms” simply doesn’t match the reality.
