antivaxx muppets and twerps have always made great play about the supposed protection offered by natural/acquired immunity to covid-19 resulting from the first infection.
of course they do this from a position of close to zero knowledge. They assume that what has happened in the past with most viruses, ie immunity after the first infection, continues with SARS-CoV-2.
the latest science shows this isn't the case with covid.
this is bad for those already vaccinated and worse for the unvaxxed.
a discussion about this concerning covid development was published by Canada's Tyee.ca on July 4.
the excellent article was prepared by Andrew Nikiforuk under a headline "Get Ready For The Forever Plague".
i commend the article to you but it's way too long to republish here. The following disturbing excerpt could pique your interest to look further. To look beyond antivaxx cliches.
TYLEE.CA:
"Although many public health officials still dismiss COVID infections as inevitable and even beneficial, a growing body of science shows this fashionable dogma is dangerously wrongheaded, if not an outright form of malpractice.
"Reinfections, and 2022 is surely the year of reinfections, just increase the damage from COVID, which can be profound: immune dysregulation, blood clots, nerve cell death, inflammation, lung damage, kidney failure and brain damage.
"New science shows that Omicron and its variants are getting better at evading immune defences induced by vaccines or by natural infection. BA5, for example, is more transmissible than any previous variant.
"As a consequence it is now possible to be reinfected with one of Omicron’s variants every two to three weeks.The data also shows that each reinfection confers so little immunity — because the immune system is unable to remember it — that we must seek every other protection available.*
" A summer infection, for example, will not protect you against a fall infection. But each and every infection will damage your immune system regardless of how mild the symptoms.
"Let’s start with a startling U.S. Veterans Affairs study involving five million people.
"It looked at the health outcomes after a first, second and third infection in both the vaccinated and unvaccinated.
" A second infection, for instance, doubled the risk for death, blood clots and lung damage. It also increased the risk of hospitalization by three times.
" Every COVID infection increased the risk for bad outcomes in a graded fashion.
"The unvaccinated fared worse than the vaccinated.
""Reducing overall burden of death and disease due to SARS-CoV-2 will require strategies for reinfection prevention,” noted the study.
"There is more bad news. Past infection by older variants dampen rather than strengthen immune protection even among those with three vaccinations.
"“That previous SARS-CoV-2 infection history can imprint such a profound, negative impact on subsequent protective immunity is an unexpected consequence of COVID-19,” noted the researchers in Science.
"The high global prevalence of Omicron subvariant infections and reinfections “likely reflects considerable subversion of immune recognition” in the population, the study concluded."
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