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Lake-Effect · 16-09-2021, 08:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeanathon

What was different about THIS coronavirus is that it was new to humans therefore we did not have natural immunity to it like we do all the other ones.

Well, we don't all have natural immunity to the other ones, either. But certainly about nobody had immunity to COVID, though I did read that in some poorer, crowded countries, there was a greater likelihood of them having encountered some similar coronaviruses, which might have helped them a bit.

Quote:

The flu no longer wipes out native populations like it did when Europeans first brought it to the Americas because of natural immunity not Pfizer.

Yes, the yearly influenzas are certainly not novel like COVID. Nonetheless, flu vaccines have further reduced harm and fatalities. More people should consider them.

Quote:

So guess what. If you have had covid and survived you are good, and so is your offspring. I suspect that the vaccinated will need to have a "breakthrough" case to be able to give their offspring immunity.

I think you're mistaken there. Viral immunity is not inheritable, as far as I know. There is some transfer of antibodies between mother and child, but what's the difference between antibodies from illness, and those from vaccination? [edit - what Gord said]

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So please stop touting the "vaccine" as an actual vaccine. How many people with the polio vaccine had breakthrough cases.....?
Edit: "actual vaccine" was lazy wording. It is a vaccine, but far different efficacy than other vaccines. It's efficacy is akin to the flu shot every year in that people who get the flu shot often still get the flu. The point there was that the covid vaccine is not like the polio vaccine, nor does the polio vaccine confer immunity to offspring like natural immunity does.

Definition of vaccine. Protection is protection, even if it's not 100% immunity.

goboatingnow · 16-09-2021, 09:04

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg K

Some more goboatingnow made up nonsense. You should stick to defending poorly made, Bavarias with flexy hulls whose windows blow out.

You have advanced a misguided theory that in itself natural immunity is better , whether it is or not isn’t the issue. To develop natural immunity you need to get covid. Getting covid without a vaccine runs the risk of developing a serious illness and or dying

Hence the debate over natural immunity is sterile because it’s not an alternative to vaccination

Unlike you I actually read Marine accident reports rather then jumping to social media inspired conclusions.

wingssail · 16-09-2021, 09:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg K

I believe this recent study out of Israel, (one of, if not the largest to date,) is the study most people are referring to when claiming that natural immunity from previous infection is far superior to being fully vaccinated ( specifically against the Delta variant). Link below.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...415v1.full.pdf

If there is evidence for your claim that this study has been shown to be flawed, I sure would be interested in seeing it.

While the Israel study seems to indicate that immunity gained from having Covid is slightly better, both means of acquiring immunity apparently are very effective. Only a very small percentage of of people with immunity are getting sick. It is debatable which means of gaining immunity is better, in terms of protection afforded. The ratio of immunized to previously ill people who got sick is high but the absolute numbers are so small that a few cases either way could change the apparent results and conclusions. A Toronto study apparently indicates the opposite of the Israeli study however neither have been validated by peers.

However, there is no doubt or about the number of deaths which are occurring within the community of un-vaccinated persons. Something like 1,000,000 cases of covid occur daily, world wide. Most of those who are hospitalized are unvaccinated. The death rate is around 2%, or 20,000/day. Even of it is 1% or 1/2 of 1% that is still 5000 deaths a day. Covid deaths, mostly preventable.

Regardless of which way one gains immunity, it is clear that being immune is better than not being immune but many more people who avoid vaccination will die than will those to get vaccinated. Those numbers are unmistakable.

wingssail · 16-09-2021, 09:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg K

Some more goboatingnow made up nonsense. You should stick to defending poorly made, Bavarias with flexy hulls whose windows blow out.

I don't think that one can draw too many generalized conclusions about what kind of boat is as risk for getting its windows blown out.

Right now, sitting on the beach about 500 yrds from me, is a very heavily constructed, full keel, steel boat which dragged ashore in a recent hurricane. (the winds were around 50kts here, the hurricane was offshore, the waves were moderate) yet those waves blew out three windows and flooded the boat. Pounding on the sandy shore also breached the hull. It can happen to any boat.

It is foolish and smug, and with quite a bit of hubris, that someone would claim that their preferred style of boat would fair better.

Greg K · 16-09-2021, 11:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

You have advanced a misguided theory that in itself natural immunity is better , whether it is or not isn’t the issue. To develop natural immunity you need to get covid. Getting covid without a vaccine runs the risk of developing a serious illness and or dying

Hence the debate over natural immunity is sterile because it’s not an alternative to vaccination

Unlike you I actually read Marine accident reports rather then jumping to social media inspired conclusions.

I have done nothing of the sort. The Israeli study speaks for itself. I brought it up solely because another poster falsely claimed that all such studies are flawed and fraudulent. This is clearly not the case.

And, no, the debate about natural immunity is most certainly not irrelevant, especially when blanket mandates in the US and Canada do not take into consideration that a large number of individuals have already acquired natural immunity from previous infection and coerce such individuals with restrictions and potential loss of livelihood to be vaccinated against their will. Ignoring natural immunity makes such mandates political, and not based on science as is claimed.

Thankfully, here in the EU, the approach to similar mandates is considerably more intelligent as the presence of antibodies from previous infection is accepted on an equal basis with being vaccinated.

Contrary to your biased impression, I actually enjoy reading marine accident reports. There is certainly a lot to be learned from them for anyone interested in ocean voyaging. My comment regarding that report was reflective of the opinion expressed by a number of posters in that thread who didn't buy your argument in defense of the quality of that Bavaria and its suitability for ocean voyaging. From experience, I tend to agree with them.

Lake-Effect · 16-09-2021, 11:46

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg K

I have done nothing of the sort. The Israeli study speaks for itself. I brought it up solely because another poster falsely claimed that all such studies are flawed and fraudulent.

... I don't recall seeing anyone state that ALL such studies are flawed/fradulent. Care to point those comments out?

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And, no, the debate about natural immunity is most certainly not irrelevant, especially when blanket mandates in the US and Canada do not take into consideration that a large number of individuals have already acquired natural immunity from previous infection and coerce such individuals with restrictions and potential loss of livelihood to be vaccinated against their will. Ignoring natural immunity makes such mandates political, and not based on science as is claimed.

Thankfully, here in the EU, the approach to similar mandates is considerably more intelligent as the presence of antibodies from previous infection is accepted on an equal basis with being vaccinated.

Well I've mentioned the economic case for vaccination vs antibody testing (antibody testing is more expensive and less reliable), and everyone knows by now that there's less risk to getting vaccinated vs getting COVID... but personally, I don't have a problem with accepting proof of prior infection as being equivalent to vaccinated. In the EU, are the governments doing free antibody testing? Can you see (by the dawns early light) the US giving free antibody tests, given the cost?

Greg K · 16-09-2021, 11:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by wingssail

I don't think that one can draw too many generalized conclusions about what kind of boat is as risk for getting its windows blown out.

Right now, sitting on the beach about 500 yrds from me, is a very heavily constructed, full keel, steel boat which dragged ashore in a recent hurricane. (the winds were around 50kts here, the hurricane was offshore, the waves were moderate) yet those waves blew out three windows and flooded the boat. Pounding on the sandy shore also breached the hull. It can happen to any boat.

It is foolish and smug, and with quite a bit of hubris, that someone would claim that their preferred style of boat would fair better.

I don't think we are in disagreement, wingssail. I appreciate your posts and have tremendous respect for your experience, but boats falling off waves and suffering damage is nothing new and neither is boats dragging ashore and being breached. I remember reading in an early version of Adlard Coles Heavy Weather Sailing a story of a fairly large wooden full keeler on route to Sardinia which was picked up by a rogue wave left over from a strong Meltemi and dropped on its side so forcefully that it broke open the cabin side, It was an interesting story because the skipper was actually a rather famous American designer and when the boat was being constructed, the builder had suggested to put some steel plates in that area to make her stronger.. advice which he later regretted not following
.
My take away from the Bavaria report, is that simply such large windows do not belong on an offshore yacht, period. Also, you get what you pay for. It used to be said that a proper yacht should be built to the hundred year storm. These days that is considered nonsense by folks like goboatingnow. I think he is wrong. Offshore boats, regardless of type, should be strong, purpose built for the repeated stresses of heavy weather and the occasional strong storm that is to be expected. Excessive flexing is a sign of insufficient strength in my view.

Joli · 16-09-2021, 12:03

I'm afraid this one's is with us forever and we'll have to learn to live with it just like we do with the other six coronaviruses. Fortunately it's not as deadly as MERS and SARS but it is more deadly then the four common coronaviruses we enjoy occasionally during flu season.

It's made visiting other countries more difficult for all of us regardless of the mode of transportation and I don't fault countries from imposing restrictions but it does come at a cost. It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. Possibly nationalism will be more prevalent and the tourism and travel industry will die out.

Lake-Effect · 16-09-2021, 12:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joli

It's made visiting other countries more difficult for all of us regardless of the mode of transportation and I don't fault countries from imposing restrictions but it does come at a cost. It'll be interesting to see how all this plays out. Possibly nationalism will be more prevalent and the tourism and travel industry will die out.

I believe that travel and tourism will come back. The hold-up right now is that the first world still hasn't wrestled COVID to the mat. There's politically-driven vaccine resistance and too-early dropping of restrictions in some of them, which means that COVID waves still threaten their healthcare systems. And of course in the less wealthy countries, vaccines are slow in coming and probably too late to prevent a long COVID battle there too.

I read something that said airlines were now thinking that they will be back to pre-pandemic levels by 2024. We're still hoping to dig our toes into some Caribbean beach sand by next spring. But this Martinique report isn't encouraging.

jeanathon · 16-09-2021, 13:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Well, we don't all have natural immunity to the other ones, either. But certainly about nobody had immunity to COVID, though I did read that in some poorer, crowded countries, there was a greater likelihood of them having encountered some similar coronaviruses, which might have helped them a bit.

Yes, the yearly influenzas are certainly not novel like COVID. Nonetheless, flu vaccines have further reduced harm and fatalities. More people should consider them.

I think you're mistaken there. Viral immunity is not inheritable, as far as I know. There is some transfer of antibodies between mother and child, but what's the difference between antibodies from illness, and those from vaccination? [edit - what Gord said]

Definition of vaccine. Protection is protection, even if it's not 100% immunity.

Actually the early influenzas were novel (new) that is why they killed so many people, and why they don't kill native populations anymore.
Does it matter if you inherit it from your mother instead of your father? Mysagonist!
Any yes you do have some immunity to the other coronaviruses or you would have already been aware of their existence.
The immune system is not an on/off switch, but rather like a finely tuned racing machine.
So kudos on you for recognizing that naturally acquired immunity might be as good as pfiser acquire.
As far as the cost of antibody testing that will not be necessary when I travel in a few weeks. I must provide a positive test result(pcr in my case) and a note from my doctor saying I am not dead therefore must be recovered. Seems even politicians can figure out the blatantly obvious on occasion. Oh no they can't or I wouldn't need that note from my doctor.
edit: I know of no vaccinated immunity that gets passed on to offspring. However if natural immunity wasn't passed on from corona, influenza, etc. viruses we would all be dead by now.

Lake-Effect · 16-09-2021, 13:48

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeanathon

I know of no vaccinated immunity that gets passed on to offspring. However if natural immunity wasn't passed on from corona, influenza, etc. viruses we would all be dead by now.

You're conflating two different types of "natural immunity". For the purpose of COVID bunfights, "natural immunity" means you got sick, recovered, and now have some antibodies.

But that's not the same as the idea that person A got really sick and person B was asymptomatic. This sort of resistance could be innate, a product of gene expression... and that sort of immunity does get passed along, and is eventually widespread, because the A's tend to die off, and the B's get to hook up and make babies. Natural selection, in other words.

(There's also evolution going on in the viruses and germs; the ones that seriously weaken and kill their hosts won't survive or spread efficiently, because they'll run out of hosts. The ones who can successfully reproduce and still have many hosts available will win out. In other words, they evolve to less lethal forms)

There's not really a mechanism where someone gets sick, recovers, then their immunity is coded into their genes and inherited by their offspring. So "natural" immunity (I got sick then got better) doesn't get passed along any more than immunity from vaccination.

wingssail · 16-09-2021, 14:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeanathon

...Does it matter if you inherit it from your mother instead of your father?...

I don't think that the claim was made that anyone "inherits" the immunity from their mother.

What they meant is that a mother's immunity may be shared with the child through mother's milk, for example.

jeanathon · 16-09-2021, 18:54

Remember when only a few years ago only good bacteria were dead bacteria? Then we figured out we would not be alive if it were not for good bacteria digesting our foods and stuff?
In other words we started to know that there was a lot we didn't know. Now we are starting to find that we have many viruses that help us. And people who choose not to get vaccinated are not causing variants to emerge anymore than the vaccinated. Antibiotic resistance is not caused by people who don't use antibiotics, but rather by those who do.
If you are at risk and you think other people should get vaccinated because you are, then it is time to turn off the t.v., go outside, get some exercise and leave other people to their personal decisions.
End of rant.

Lake-Effect · 16-09-2021, 20:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by jeanathon

... people who choose not to get vaccinated are not causing variants to emerge anymore than the vaccinated.

If people choose to not get vaccinated, but then insist that they also don't have to observe any other restrictions like masks, no travel, and not attending public events or gatherings, then they're helping prolong the pandemic. Longer pandemic, more opportunity for variants. It's that simple.

JAFO · 16-09-2021, 23:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greg K

I believe this recent study out of Israel, (one of, if not the largest to date,) is the study most people are referring to when claiming that natural immunity from previous infection is far superior to being fully vaccinated ( specifically against the Delta variant). Link below.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...415v1.full.pdf

If there is evidence for your claim that this study has been shown to be flawed, I sure would be interested in seeing it.

Yes, that's the one I had in mind. Here you go. Here's a deep dive into the study, highlighting its flaws and manipulation of statistics.

Note that the following was written by an ordinary Clinical Physician in NZ. If they can spot the flaws in the study, I don't doubt that actual epidemiologists will be able to shoot it full of holes.

And if you don't like the Sherlock Holmes references, too bad. It's just this particular person's approach to use some kind of background story to stitch her narrative together. She uses this approach quite often. I quite enjoy it.

================================================== =====

A recent Israeli study claims immunity following COVID-19 is stronger than vaccine-induced immunity. How solid is this conclusion? https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

As analyses can be a bit daunting, let’s take a Sherlock-Holmes-like approach to this study. I’m thinking of Conan Doyle’s short story, The Adventure of the Retired Colourman.[1]
You may not be familiar with the case: the arrogant, retired art-supply dealer Josiah Amberley hires Holmes to look into the disappearance of his young wife, a perhaps-too-friendly neighbour, and a large amount of cash. All is not what it seems.
Now, to our study. The conclusion seems unequivocal:[2]

This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.

How did they get there? Let’s explore. Some detective work will be needed.
⚠️⚠️⚠️WARNING⚠️⚠️⚠️
This is a long post. If you don’t like detective stories, or you’re in a rush, skip right to the end, where the above conclusion is rewritten by Dr Watson—based on the evidence of the case. Otherwise, read on…

Our Case

First, the scene
Israel. A young country with a population very close to 9 million. The course of the pandemic in Israel is shown above—but we are especially interested in January and February of 2021. Can you see the spike around that time?
As with any good investigation, we are also particularly interested in death. So here are daily deaths from the same source:[3]

As usual with these c̶r̶i̶m̶e̶-̶s̶c̶e̶n̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶i̶g̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ COVID-19 graphs, the peaks are similar but the deaths should be offset by a couple of weeks—it takes time to die from COVID-19.

A background check
But how reliable are the witnesses? There are a couple of quick, crude checks we can do. COVID-19 has a propensity to m̶u̶r̶d̶e̶r̶ kill older people, so in young populations the infection fatality rate (IFR) will be less.
Around the world, the IFR for COVID-19 is likely in the range of 0.5–1. Israel however has the pointy population pyramid shown above,[4] so we’re likely looking at an IFR of 0.5, or even less.
The total number of cases in Israel by 28 February 2021 was 775,807, according to Our World In Data. The corresponding number of deaths was 5,752 on the same date, although two weeks later this had increased to 6,011, an extra 259 deaths in just two weeks.
If the IFR was 0.5%, then 5,752 deaths would correspond to 1.15 million cases, so it seems that the Israelis missed just 374,000 infections, but this is likely an underestimate, given that pyramid. It turns out there are further cross-checks we can do. An Israeli study that compared seroprevalence to PCR[5] found that adolescents had far higher prevalence than others, and overall the prevalence-to-incidence ratio was between 4 and 16. It’s likely that far more than a million infections were missed! This will become relevant.
There’s another more important check we should do, one that’s likely quite solid. It’s excess mortality.[6]Here are three graphs that are worth keeping in mind:

Although part of our period of interest is missing, it’s clear that there was a spike in mortality in September/October 2020, corresponding to the recorded COVID-19 deaths. Also of interest was how badly Israeli Arabs were hit. We’ll get back to this. But how many excess deaths were there? The OECD gives us a downloadable spreadsheet of excess deaths[7] and if we add up the excess deaths between March 2020 and the end of February 2021, we get about 5,500 deaths. Here, our witnesses seem credible—at least when it comes to the body count.
But now let’s speak to Josiah Amberley, who claimed to be at the theatre on the night in question.
The Eyewitnesses
Josiah? Oh, while he and Dr Watson are away in Little Purlington, we can look at that study in more detail. The authors have done some interesting re-decorating. Let’s examine this. They identified three groups of people:

Fully-vaccinated, “SARS-CoV-2 naïve” : 673,676 (‘Group 1’)
Unvaccinated, previously infected : 62,883 (‘Group 2’)
Previously infected, 1 vaccine dose : 42,099 (‘Group 3’)

These add up to 778,658 people. But hang on! The authors claim to have 26% of the Israeli population in their database, and have recruited everyone over 16 who met their criteria.
Let’s do the numbers. Different sources[8][9][10] give a population of 8.8–9.2M, with about 30% under the age of 16. Putting this all together conservatively, we get about 2.3M people in their database. Subtracting 686k under the age of 16, we get 1.6M. We seem to be about 820,000 records short. What happened to them?
We need to do some detective work. It would appear that those 800k individuals were (4) partially vaccinated or (5) unvaccinated and ‘not previously infected’ or (6) received a third dose! We might call these Group 4, Group 5 and Group 6, I suppose. But wait, there’s more…
A smell of wet paint
When Dr Watson first visited Mr Amberley, he was struck by the smell of paint, but couldn’t put it all together. Let’s see whether Holmes can do better.
Our authors do three different analyses that they helpfully call “Model 1”, “Model 2” and “Model 3”. We’ll focus our attention on the first two. They did something, well, interesting. To quote them:

“ These groups were matched in a 1:1 ratio by age, sex, [neighbourhood] and time of first event. The first event (the preliminary exposure) was either the time of administration of the second dose of the vaccine or the time of documented infection with SARS-CoV-2 (a positive RT-PCR test result), both occurring between January 1, 2021 and February 28, 2021.”

What’s interesting is the numbers. You’ll recall that they had 673,676 vaccinated people (Group 1), and just 62,883 previously infected and vaccine naive (Group 2). How many of these could they match, to make up Model 1?
Just 16,215 people. That’s 25.8% of Group 2, but a mere 2.4% of Group 1! This is astonishing, so we must ask “Why?” The obvious reason why they couldn’t match more in Group 2 is because these people were infected prior to January 1, 2021. To continue our analogy, they weren’t at the theatre on the night in question.
But the smell of paint becomes stronger when we look at Model 2, where they matched people regardless of when they were infected. This is the basis of their claim:

When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease.

Does this claim hold up to scrutiny? In Model 2, they found 46,035 matches. This seems impressive, until you realise this is still just 6.8% of the vaccinees—and 73.2% of the ‘naturally infected’.
Hang on! In other words, among those who got COVID-19, for each of the remaining 26.8%—16,848 people—they couldn’t find a single match among two thirds of a million people. Not one. Were these old? Arabs? They don’t say.
This is even more damning than the tiny proportion of people they matched up. It tells us that we’re dealing with two very different groups of people. And the more we look at their data—their story—the more we find this.* Even among that tiny proportion of carefully matched people, we see that those who received vaccines were sicker people. This is from their Table 1a:

The left column is the infected, the right is the vaccinated. More hypertension, more cardiovascular disease, more diabetes, and twice as likely to have immune compromise or cancer.
But even this under-represents the problem. Because if we look more carefully, we see some tiny letters, written in indelible pencil. They read…
We we…
Holmes spotted this puzzling scrawl just above the skirting board of the room in question. We were … what?
What could this mean? After all of the author’s adjustment, in the same table we see this entry:

Under 5% of their carefully controlled sample were over the age of 60 years—above which age SARS-CoV-2 is really likely to indulge in elder abuse. How does this compare with the demography of Israel?
Despite Israel’s pointy pyramid, there are about 1.424M Israelis over the age of 60 years.[11] That’s about 15%. Whew!
In other words, in their matching process, the authors have grossly distorted their data. The vaccinated and the ‘naturally’ infected are disparate groups. They have cut off the bits that don’t fit. The data are crying “We we[re mutilated]”. But this pales into insignificance in the face of a greater statistical crime.
The final question
At the end of the case—the denouement—Holmes asks Josiah Amberley the same question[12] I’d like to ask these authors.

“This is my friend Mr. Barker,” said Holmes. “He has been interesting himself also in your business, Mr. Josiah Amberley, though we have been working independently. But we both have the same question to ask you!”
Mr. Amberley sat down heavily. He sensed impending danger. I read it in his straining eyes and his twitching features.
“What is the question, Mr. Holmes?”
“Only this: What did you do with the bodies?”

It would be a bit unfair of me to leave it there, so let me explain. In this study, nobody dies. A small number of people ended up in hospital—fewer in the less sick ‘natural’ infection group—but nobody actually dies. It’s as if there wasn’t a pandemic going on.
But, you see, there was. Go back to the beginning of my post, and look at those graphs, especially the second one. The deaths.

So what did you do with the bodies?
Can you see all the issues? First and most important, the paper’s “people with natural infection” are survivors. The whole study design is biased against those who were vaccinated. How big is this bias?
To the 62,883 people, we should add those who died. If the authors had a representative 26% of the population of Israel, then by 28 February 2021, then they should represent 26% of the 5,752 deaths—or 1495 deaths! As far as we know, not a single vaccinated person died. We’ve already worked out (We we…) that their groups aren’t comparable, but this highlights the problem.
In addition, we know that more symptomatic people who survive tend to mount more vigorous immune responses. This highlights another problem we identified early on—that the authors likely missed a lot of asymptomatic infections. Specifically, they don’t tell us how asymptomatic cases were detected, or how good this screening was. More distortion.
But there’s a further problem—this time illustrated by the first graph of daily infections. The people our authors chose to study were vaccinated in January and February; but the people in the ‘natural infection’ group were not only survivors, but select survivors of earlier variants. They may even have had several intervening infections. The authors give us no hint of the timing of the breakthrough infections that struck the vaccinated. From the curve though, it’s likely that many of these were in early March 2021. Did they even give the vaccine time to work, in calculating these ‘breakthrough infections’?
Dr Watson summarises the case
Let’s rewrite that conclusion, shall we?

This study demonstrated multiple sources of statistical bias: if you take a tiny (2.4%) unrepresentative sample of vaccinees and compare this to a different group of people who have already survived COVID-19, whittle out older people and (possibly) Arabs, ignore a concurrent outbreak, and perhaps even assume that vaccines work immediately, you can show anything you want. Here we demonstrated our pre-conceived belief that ‘natural’ immunity is somehow better than the natural response to a vaccine, provided you don’t mind a considerable number of people dying.