Not really. If you are talking about pre-existing immunity from prior infection, the benefit may be less, and in fact it is recommended not to vaccinate within 6 months of infection.
If you are talking about innate immunity or cross-immunity from SARS-Cov-1 it's super rare and hasn't been shown to be relevant in most Western countries.
To see the (reduced) benefit even with prior infection just look at the numerous reports of re-infection, be it with a mutated version or otherwise, as well as the numerous reports of prior infected subjects with no or very little antibodies after a couple of months (not the full picture but still).
> People should be informed about the risks.
Show me one vaccine/medication where people were more informed than about the current Covid vaccines. We are at the point that for most folks it's riskier to drive to the vaccination appointment by car then the actual vaccination.
> it is recommended not to vaccinate within 6 months of infection.
24/7 ads and encouragement for people to get the vaccine, almost to the point that it's a moral virtue means that tons of people are getting the vaccine, even having recently caught covid-19.
In New York City, at a large pharmacy chain, administered by a pharmacist. They're done like this, or at government run centers. The cost is handled by the government.
It's also riskier for most folks to drive a car than to catch Covid. I agree that people should look at their specific case and do honest risk/benefit analysis.
Most of what I've seen, however, feels more like herd mentality behavior based on one's political leanings. Or people feeling they genuinely don't have a choice, given impending requirements and restrictions from their local governments and employers.
Edit: not sure why I'm being downvoted. It should be common knowledge at this point that people in their 20's, 30's, and 40's have a higher risk of automobile accident, suicide, drug overdose, etc, than of covid death.
As a European I do not understand what vaccination has to do with political leaning. It's even stranger that in the US pro-life (abortion) seems to correlate with pro-choice (vaccines)?
I do understand however that society as a whole says "if you are not willing to take a negligible risk for us, we are not taking risks for you".
We are in an unfortunate state of hyper-polarization where, if one side advocates something, the other side feels compelled to reject it. Unfortunately, this has even extended into medicine. Many such cases! Sad!
The shot doesn't last a lifetime. You'll need two shots a year, at minimum. Third and fourth booster shots needed in the fall are already being discussed.
No, not including after vaccination. When people speak about pre-existing immunity, it's most of the time covid deniers saying there "natural" immunity and vaccines are useless or harmful.
(Of course there is also valid discussion of pre-existing immunity, but the more nuanced messages are not as common.)
Vaccine advocates like yourself can never explain why infection doesn't imply immunity while vaccines do.
Sinovac, the Chinese vaccine, is only 50% effective. Pfizer and Moderna are much more effective. J&J is somewhere in between. This is widely accepted but no one seems to ever ask: if I was sick a month ago, where does it fall in that scale?
The point of vaccines is to give your immune system a good enough idea of the pathogen, so that your body produces antibodies. Actually contracting the disease does the same thing, unsurprisingly.
So the question is how effective is natural infection of COVID-19 at preventing future infection? Surely it's better than Sinovac, a coin flip. No? Do you have any scholarship about this I can look at?
