Biological - SARS-CoV-2 - Natural Herd Immunity

"Amish community may have reached COVID ‘herd immunity,’ health official says" By Jackie Salo March 28, 2021

An Amish community in Pennsylvania may have become the first group in the US to achieve herd immunity, a local health official claims.

The administrator of a medical center in the heart of Lancaster County’s New Holland Borough, which is known for its Amish and Mennonite communities, estimates that as many as 90 percent of the religious families have had at least one family member infected with the virus.

“So, you would think if COVID was as contagious as they say, it would go through like a tsunami; and it did,” said Allen Hoover, an administrator of the Parochial Medical Center, which caters to the religious community and has 33,000 patients.

Objectives: The Holmes County Amish have low vaccination rates, an increasingly diverse population, and have an increased incidence of certain inherited diseases. The objectives were to evaluate; the rate and influences of vaccine hesitancy compared to a decade ago, vaccination patterns between Amish affiliations, vaccine practices of Amish special needs children, and the Amish's acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Study design: In April of 2020, a survey assessing vaccination patterns and beliefs were mailed to 1000 Amish families, including ultra-conservative Amish sects and special needs families.

Results: The response rate was 39%. Among 391 respondents, 59% did not vaccinate their children, compared to only 14% that refused all vaccinations reported by Wenger et al in the same community only a decade ago. The ultra-conservative Amish rejected vaccines more often

An Amish family has filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn New York’s state law banning religious exemptions to vaccinations for students.

The case involves unvaccinated children attending Cranberry Marsh School, a private Amish-run school in rural Seneca County, about 60 miles southeast of Rochester.

The lawsuit filed by Jonas Stoltzfus, who has three children at the school, is the latest to oppose the new law requiring students be fully immunized to attend school and child care.

How Amish Communities Achieved “Herd Immunity” Without Higher Death Rates, Lockdowns, Masks, Or Vaccines
by Joe Martino November 25, 2021

. . . Instead of avoiding cases at all costs, they decided to let the virus takes its course. Even as their population got COVID and some severe cases emerged, some chose to go to hospitals while others didn’t. Their approach was guided by a desire to stay close to those they care about instead of being isolated.

What is clear is, there is no evidence that there was any more death amongst the Amish than in any place that shut down their economies, wore masks, and were vaccinated. The Amish took an approach they thought of, felt good about, and that aligned with the community – an approach grounded in self reliance and self responsibility. This as opposed to taking orders from government.

26 May 2021
Had COVID? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-19.

The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting.

Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals
View ORCID ProfileNabin K. Shrestha, Patrick C. Burke, Amy S. Nowacki, Paul Terpeluk, Steven M. Gordon
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176
This article is a preprint and has not been certified by peer review [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice . . .

Results Among the 52238 included employees, 1359 (53%) of 2579 previously infected subjects remained unvaccinated, compared with 22777 (41%) of 49659 not previously infected. The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects . . .

Conclusions Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.

Life Sci Alliance. 2021 Feb 11;4(4):e202000886.
doi: 10.26508/lsa.202000886. Print 2021 Apr.

SARS-CoV-2 infection induces protective immunity and limits transmission in Syrian hamsters

Abstract

A critical question in understanding the immunity to SARS-COV-2 is whether recovered patients are protected against re-challenge and transmission upon second exposure. We developed a Syrian hamster model in which intranasal inoculation of just 100 TCID50 virus caused viral pneumonia. Aged hamsters developed more severe disease and even succumbed to SARS-CoV-2 infection, representing the first lethal model using genetically unmodified laboratory animals. After initial viral clearance, the hamsters were re-challenged with 105 TCID50 SARS-CoV-2 and displayed more than 4 log reduction in median viral loads in both nasal washes and lungs in comparison to primary infections. Most importantly, re-challenged hamsters were unable to transmit virus to naïve hamsters, and this was accompanied by the presence of neutralizing antibodies. Altogether, these results show that SARS-CoV-2 infection induces protective immunity that not only prevents re-exposure but also limits transmission in hamsters. These findings may help guide public health policies and vaccine development and aid evaluation of effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2.

Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections

Sivan Gazit, Roei Shlezinger, Galit Perez, Roni Lotan, Asaf Peretz, Amir Ben-Tov, Dani Cohen, Khitam Muhsen, Gabriel Chodick, Tal Patalon
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415

. . . Conclusions This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.

The prospects for meeting a clear herd-immunity target are “very complicated,” said Dr. Jefferson Jones, a medical officer on the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology Task Force.

“Thinking that we’ll be able to achieve some kind of threshold where there’ll be no more transmission of infections may not be possible,” Jones acknowledged last week to members of a panel that advises the CDC on vaccines.

Vaccines have been quite effective at preventing cases of COVID-19 that lead to severe illness and death, but none has proved reliable at blocking transmission of the virus, Jones noted. Recent evidence has also made clear that the immunity provided by vaccines can wane in a matter of months.

The result is that even if vaccination were universal, the coronavirus would probably continue to spread.

“We would discourage” thinking in terms of “a strict goal,” he said.

What we know at this point about natural immunity to COVID-19
Updated: Sep. 05, 2021, 9:01 a.m. | Published: Sep. 05, 2021, 9:00 a.m.
. . . Natural immunity “does provide pretty good protection, there’s no doubt about that,” said Dr. Liam Sullivan, a Grand Rapids infectious disease specialist with Spectrum Health. “The question is how long does that protection last, and I think it’s too early to say.”

Natural Immunity and Covid-19: Thirty Scientific Studies to Share with Employers, Health Officials, and Politicians
Published by Brownstone Institute October 10, 2021

. . . These studies demonstrate what was and is already known: natural immunity for a SARS-type virus is robust, long-lasting, and broadly effective even in the case of mutations, generally more so than vaccines. In fact, a major contribution of 20th-century science has been to expand upon and further elucidate this principle that has been known since the ancient world. Every expert presumably knew this long before the current debates. The effort to pretend otherwise is a scientific scandal of the highest order, especially because the continued neglect of the topic is affecting the rights and freedoms of billions of people.