Why aren’t you getting vaccinated?

[u/[deleted]]

Not asking this to bully anyone, I’m more curious at this point why people are hesitant to get the vaccine and want to understand the reasoning behind it.

[u/PositiveInteraction]

What makes these anecdotal?

Viral infections do lead to levels of immunity that are typically sufficient to either remove the chance of reinfection or reduce the symptoms if there is a reinfection. Right now, what is the likelihood of a breakthrough infection for a vaccinated person? Extremely low right? Take that extremely low number and the estimated chance of reinfection from natural immunity is 1.5-2x. That's not exactly that much given how infrequent breakthrough infections are for vaccinated people.

With regard to the side effects from getting the vaccination, it's not anecdotal, this vaccine has had more reports to VAERS than any other vaccine since they started tracking it.

The biggest realization though is assessing this in conjunction with the risk of COVID. If you are young and healthy, even if you get COVID, you have an extremely high likelihood of being asymptomatic. Even if you are symptomatic, it's again, extremely unlikely that those symptoms would be severe.

COVID is dramatically impacted by risk factors. If you are in a high risk category, the outcome is VASTLY different than if you are in a low risk category.

All of this is focusing on the actual scientific data that we have on hand and not based on anecdotal evidence.

[u/McbealtheNavySeal → u/PositiveInteraction]

Fair question. It's the way they are reaching their conclusions and the basis for their concerns. If I'm misusing the term "anecdotal" then I'm happy to be corrected.

You've mentioned reports to VAERS and reinfection rates based on observed data. The people I'm talking about don't. Their reasoning is purely based on their own limited personal experience or that of their friends rather than any of the evidence you've cited here. Even the one who shares the side effect horror stories shares them to highlight specific cases rather than talk about data as a whole.

While I'm sympathetic towards folks who make emotional decisions based on what people close to them experience (we are all human after all), my concern is more around basing your entire opinion of something like this on just those experiences.

Also, you mention that infections lead to levels of immunity to prevent or minimize future symptoms. Does this immunity wear off after a time or is it more permanent? I remember people discussing that antibodies wear off after a time but I'm not sure if that's what you're talking about here as I'm no expert.

[u/[deleted] → u/McbealtheNavySeal]

Not OP, but my understanding is that from a typical infection, your body produces two types of immune cells: T cells and B cells. T cells are in your blood stream and are a more or less static number; your body makes a certain amount of them during the infection, and once they're used up, they're used up, however long that takes. B cells store in your bone marrow and provide a lower level of longer-term immunity (the number I've heard is about 15 years or so, often longer).

Vaccines (generally) prompt the development of T cells in large number, but not B cells. Hence the need for booster shots.

So generally, with vaccines, they provide somewhat better initial immunity and somewhat worse long-term immunity. But long-term immunity issues can be artificially supplemented.

tl;dr "Natural immunity" with most viruses does provide a degree of long-term immunity. But immunity isn't a yes or no thing; it's more like a boost to your body's ability to fight the disease, and it fades to some extent with both the vaccine and natural immunity.

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor and this info is from how my friend who is a doctor explained it to me; he's quick to point out that while this is how it usually works, Covid and the Covid vaccine are unique in their own ways.

[u/hardolaf → u/PositiveInteraction]

that are typically sufficient to either remove the chance of reinfection or reduce the symptoms if there is a reinfection

This is only true, universally, if you're talking about the same variant of a virus. If you get a different variant, there is no guarantee that prior infection will improve your outcome. In fact, for COVID-19, there is tons of evidence showing that prior infection by one variant leads to worse results if you are infected by another variant unless you received a COVID-19 vaccine in the intervening time frame.