It's certainly not good that so many people were forced to roll the dice initially because of lack of access to a vaccine that already exists. As new waves of variants get spread around data has been being collected so we can learn more about the immunity given by both vaccines and prior infection. Your comment mentioned a lack of research being done, but said nothing about government policy. How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?
From what I've seen a prior infection may give stronger protection than vaccines which is great for people who caught the virus and survived without long term health issues, but that's no comfort for the people who didn't. I hope that access to vaccines has improved in South Africa since whatever degree of protection we get from either an infection or a vaccine doesn't last very long. I'll be trying to get my 4th shot in a couple months.
> How do you think government policy should have changed in relation to natural immunity?
This is my own opinion based on my observations in South Africa. Yes it is unfortunate we could not get access to the vaccine at the quantities and time we would have liked to but the lesson is we need to improve our ability to manufacture vaccines. There are some promising initiatives in this regard. I digress though. South Africa keeps an eye on weekly deaths[1] and can then work out excess deaths. The excess deaths during the recent Omicron wave which peaked at the end of December were significantly lower than the deaths during previous waves. Government continues to encourage vaccination but the restrictions to reduce spread Covid are at the lowest we have had. Even during the peak of the Omicron variant over New Years restrictions were being lifted [2]. So without coming out and saying it, it looks to me that SA government acknowledges that natural immunity seems to be helping keep hospitalisations and deaths low. This is because most of the research in SA anyway tends to place less emphasis on natural immunity but focuses on the vaccine. So all communication from government continues to stress need to vaccinate yet restrictions continue to fall. It could be that I have not read enough but government's attitude has been welcomed.
From what I've seen a prior infection may give stronger protection than vaccines which is great for people who caught the virus and survived without long term health issues, but that's no comfort for the people who didn't. I hope that access to vaccines has improved in South Africa since whatever degree of protection we get from either an infection or a vaccine doesn't last very long. I'll be trying to get my 4th shot in a couple months.