Prior infection with COVID-19 gives much, much better immunity than vaccination. But the powers that be certainly don't want you to know that.
Several educated, informed people I know, who read the news regularly, have conveyed to me recently that they are certain that vaccination gives better protection than prior infection. They are wrong about that, but the reason they have that belief is that the news media and the public health authorities have relentlessly tried to create that impression, although they usually avoid outright lies to do so.
Here I calculated numbers from the data presented in Ferguson et al. (1), which they obtained from the British government, showing that prior infection gave 99.2% protection against infection by the delta strain versus 66% protection by vaccination (1). Another paper from Israel, based on data from over 700,0000 people in a Health Maintenance Organization comparing matched sets of over 16,000 vaccinated and not prior infected persons versus over 16,000 prior infected unvaccinated persons. This study concluded the vaccinated were 13-fold more likely to be infected than the previously infected and 27-fold more likely to have symptomatic infection (2).
Data from Ferguson et al. showing efficacy of vaccination compared to prior infection in preventing COVID-19 infection.
Another paper from Israel, Gazit et al. (2), based on data from over 700,0000 people in a Health Maintenance Organization, comparing matched sets of over 16,000 vaccinated and not prior infected persons versus over 16,000 prior-infected unvaccinated persons. This study concluded the vaccinated were 13-fold more likely to be infected than the previously infected and 27-fold more likely to have symptomatic infection (2). The Gazit et al. study was conducted in the spring of 2021 when Delta was the predominant strain and before Omicron came along. Its numbers of 13-fold or 27-fold superior immunity from prior infection compared to vaccination is consistent with my calculations from Ferguson et al.’s data.
Now why would the media and the health authorities want to maintain belief in the falsehood that vaccination is superior to prior infection? I don’t know. But they certainly seem to work hard to maintain that incorrect belief in the public.
References:
1. Ferguson, N. et al. 2021. Report 49: Growth, population distribution and immune escape of Omicron in England. Dec. 16, 2021. DOI: https://doi.org/10.25561/93038.
2. Gazit, S., Shlezinger, R., et al. Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections. August 25, 2021. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415.