COVID-19 Vaccinated Compared to Natural Immunity

Natural Immunity Is Better Protection From COVID-19 Than Being Vaccinated

∞ Recently, a large study was undertaken by Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services that compared the number of breaththrough COVID-19 cases in the vaccinated in relation to those who were unvaccinated but had natural immunity.  Israel has a large group of vaccinated citizens and they were finding that of the nearly 700 daily Israelis hospitalized for COVID-19, that the vaccinated group made up the majority of individuals testing positive each day. Although the vaccine did lower the overall numbers, there were some obvious questions. Why was the vaccine neglecting to prevent either reinfection or transmission in so many cases? Why were so many vaccinated people sick enough to end up in the hospital? Perhaps the new variant was immune to the vaccine, or perhaps the vaccine was waning quickly?  How did those with natural immunity fare when they got the  virus again compared with those who were vaccinated. Did natural immunity perhaps protect differently than the vaccines? They did not answer all these questions, but they did find that the vaccines are effective at preventing serious illness, but significantly less effective than the naturally-produced antibodies that come from the actual infection.

Long-term Vaccination Protection Compared to Natural Immunity

Prior to this study we had no evidence-based data on long-term protection from SARS-CoV-2 vaccinations or those with immunity from a prior infection. This has created vastly different approaches to how vaccines are allocated and they are often given to those who have previously been infected as well as giving them to people as booster shots even though there is no good science on either of these activities. We just don’t have the scientific data to make an educated decision as to if either of these activities are useful. So, I was excited to see what this study had brought to light.

Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services had originally expected the unvaccinated individuals would be the largest number of people admitted to the hospital for COVID-19. They did not expect the number of vaccinated people admitted to the hospitals to rise to such a large number. They thought the vaccines would protect the vaccinated from serious illness.   Were the current vaccines less protective against the new variants?  Were the vaccines only protective for a short while? Did people need boosters? They started to tell people they needed boosters, but there was no evidence to prove the booster, especially of the same shot they had already received, would be helpful with the Delta variant.

Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services also realized there was a large group of naturally immune people who were being ignored by most of the world. This is the group of people who had immunity due to past natural infection. How does this group play in this whole scenario? How does their immunity compare to the immunity of the vaccinated population? This is the central theme of this study.

Israel’s Maccabi Healthcare Services decided to study how people were faring who had the virus in the past. Were they better able to resist break-through infections and better able to resist the current Delta virus everyone was now dealing with?

What The Study Found

Model 1 

Those individuals who had been fully vaccinated with the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected with the virus, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant for a symptomatic disease as well.

Model 2

When they looked at a broader range of time from March 2020 to February 2021 when there were different variants in Israel that were dominant) compared to vaccination only in January and February  of 2021, it suggested possible waning natural immunity to the new Delta variant. Still those who were vaccinated when compared to those with natural immunity showed a 5.96-fold increase in breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold increase risk for symptomatic disease. The vaccinated population was also at increased risk for COVID-19 hospitalization compared to those who were previously infected.

Model 3 

In model 3, 14,029 individuals previously infected were matched  with the same number of people who were previously infected but had also received a vaccine. In this group symptomatic disease was present in 16 single dose vaccinees and in 23 of their unvaccinated counterparts. One COVID-19-related hospitalization occurred in the unvaccinated previously infected group. No COVID-19-related mortality was recorded. The group of infected and vaccinated people were protected from reinfection at a rate of 0.53 fold more than those without the one vaccine.

They conducted a further sub-analysis, where the single-dose vaccine was administered after the positive RT-PCR test. This subset represented 81% of the previously-infected-and-vaccinated study group. When performing this analysis, they found a similar, though not significant, trend of decreased risk of reinfection.

Peer Review

There are those who are claiming this data should not be paid attention to as it has not yet been peer reviewed. However, I read a lot of non-peer reviewed articles as I like to know what is knew in certain areas of medicine. I don’t always want to wait for it to be peer reviewed. I look at who is paying for the study, who is to gain and what is to gain and then look at the details to see if it is a good study. You can often tell if the researchers are simply trying to prove a point to make money for a company or push an agenda for a group or government that is wanting power and control. This study seems to be trying to provide good health care to the citizens of Israel and is paid for by the Israel government. The Israel government has been trying to immunize all it's citizens and quickly. This study shows they may not be getting the results they want via their current actions. They may need to better  individualize their actions and examine if the current vaccine is really useful for the new variants. If not, a booster is not going to be much help. I am really grateful to see a study addressing the natural immunity to COVID-19 and to see such a massive study.

Future Vaccines

Researchers would like the vaccines to be similar to natural immunity. It has been found that the natural immunity has antibody producing cells that evolve through a process where the antibodies are able to more tightly bind their target. In COVID-19 the antibodies were found to mature into more capable immune cells recognizing additional variants of COVID-19 that they did not recognize earlier on.

Researchers are trying to identify other factors that could make existing vaccines mimick how natural immunity caused by infection, can sometimes offer broad protection. For instance, they have found that some people who recover from COVID-19 make antibodies that, over time, become more capable of blocking diverse coronavirus variants.

One of the ways they believe they can get this result is with adjuvants. These are usually molecules that the body sees as highly toxic that causes the body to mount an increased immune response. I don't like seeing them go this route as adjuvants work because of their toxicity.