Is Rand Paul mixing up the vaccine message for COVID survivors? - Salon

Rand Paul (R-Ky.) posted a Twitter thread asserting that people who have survived a covid-19 infection were unlikely to be reinfected and have better immunity against variants than those who have been vaccinated against — but not infected by — SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid.

After all, though almost 65% of Americans have received at least one dose of a covid vaccine, some people who have recovered from covid may not feel a need to get shot.

Cleveland clinic study of 52,238 employees shows unvaccinated people who have had COVID 19 have no difference in re-infection rate than people who had COVID 19 and who took the vaccine.".

In subsequent tweets, the senator said: "The immune response to natural infection is highly likely to provide protective immunity even against the SARS-CoV-2 variants.

One was a study from the Cleveland Clinic following four categories of health care workers: unvaccinated but previously infected; unvaccinated but not previously infected; vaccinated and previously infected; and vaccinated but not previously infected.

The researchers found that no one who was unvaccinated but had previously been infected with covid became infected again during the five-month study period.

Infections were almost zero among those who were vaccinated, while there was a steady increase in infections among those who were unvaccinated and previously uninfected.

As for the other study Paul mentioned, researchers analyzed covid-19 immunity in those who had been infected with the covid virus and those who hadn't and found that infection activated a range of immune cells and immunity lasted at least eight months.

"We wrote that recovering covid patients are "likely" to better defend against variants than those who have just been immunized, but it's not saying they do," said Cohen.

The researchers were merely reasoning in the sentence Paul quoted that, based on the data showing the immune system's broad natural response, those who recover from covid-19 and then receive a vaccine may be better protected against covid variants than those who had only vaccine-induced immunity.

It did show that people who previously had covid-19 benefited from also getting vaccinated, because there was a significant boost in immune response, especially against variants.

"Existing literature does show natural immunity provides protection against COVID-19," said Shane Crotty, a professor at the Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine Research at the La Jolla Institute for Immunology who has published numerous peer-reviewed studies on natural immunity against covid-19.

That means if those variants eventually become dominant in the U.S., people relying on natural immunity would be less protected than those who are vaccinated.

With all that in mind, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that those who previously had covid-19 should get vaccinated and receive both doses of a vaccine, whether it's the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccine