A recent Bloomberg article stated: "Vaccinated people appear to be getting the coronavirus at a surprisingly high rate." It added that "there's a growing concern that vaccinated people may be more vulnerable to serious illness than previously thought."
The article also mentioned the small beach town of Provincetown, Massachusetts, where one of the best-known outbreaks among vaccinated people occurred. Thousands of vaccinated and unvaccinated people gathered there over the Fourth of July weekend to celebrate the holiday.
About three-fourths of the 469 infections recorded after the parties were among vaccinated people.
The Daily Beast, which has spent much of the pandemic shaming the vaccine-hesitant, is now admitting that the number of infections in "ultra-vaxxed" Israel is soaring. Earlier this month, Israel's Ministry of Health reported that 64 percent of the country's 400 COVID-19 patients in serious condition were fully vaccinated.
The country's preliminary vaccine data published in July also found that Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine was just 40.5 percent effective on average at preventing symptomatic infections.
The analysis, which was carried out as the delta variant became the dominant strain in Israel, appeared to show a waning effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine. It was only 16 percent effective against symptomatic infections for those who had two doses back in January. For people that had received two doses by April, the efficacy rate against symptomatic infection stood at 79 percent.
Getting infected gives more protection against variants than getting vaccinated
Some are asking whether catching COVID-19 now is better than more vaccines. A recent headline from UK government-funded BBC asked: "What's the best way to top up our immunity?"
"It is now a serious question that has implications for whether children should ever be vaccinated. And whether we use the virus or booster shots to top up immunity in adults. Both have become contentious issues," the article stated.
"We could be digging ourselves into a hole, for a very long time, where we think we can only keep COVID away by boosting every year," said Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh.
You get a broader immune response after being infected with the virus than vaccination. "That means if you had a real humdinger of an infection, you may have better immunity to any new variants that pop up as you have immunity to more than just spike [protein]," said Riley. (Related: COVID-19 natural immunity vs vaccine-induced immunity guide.)
Our innate immune system protects us from a multitude of pathogens, thereby preventing these pathogens from causing disease. Suppression of innate immunity, especially in the younger age groups, can become very problematic.
As the innate immune system cannot remember the pathogens it encountered – innate immunity has no so-called immunological memory – we can only continue to rely on it provided we keep it trained well enough.
Training is achieved by regular exposure to a myriad of environmental agents, including pathogens. Thus, lockdowns and mask mandates are possibly stunting the training of our innate immune system.
Mass vaccinations not going to stop COVID-19 transmissions
Scientists are beginning to realize that mass vaccinations are not going to wipe out SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They are now recommending that the virus be allowed to circulate throughout the population.
"We don't have anything that will stop transmission, so I think we are in a situation where herd immunity is not a possibility and I suspect the virus will throw up a new variant that is even better at infecting vaccinated individuals," Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, told a parliamentary panel earlier this month.
Pollard argued that if mass testing was not stopped, "the UK could be in a situation of continually vaccinating the population." He said that only those with symptoms should be tested while others should go about their daily lives.
Herd immunity not achievable
Infectious disease expert Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at University of East Anglia, told the same panel that vaccination would not bring about herd immunity. He said it was time to stop concentrating on supposed cases rather than actual infections. (Related: Study: 2 in 3 Indians have natural immunity against coronavirus, meaning "herd immunity" is already achieved.)
"We need to start moving away from just reporting infections or just reporting positive cases admitted to hospital, to actually start reporting the number of people who are ill because of COVID," said Hunter, who also advises the World Health Organization (WHO) on the virus. "Otherwise we are going to be frightening ourselves with very high numbers that actually don't translate into disease burden."
According to recent reports, analysis by Public Health England has shown that vaccinated and unvaccinated people have a similar viral load when they catch the virus and likely have the same odds of transmitting it to others.
Iceland's state epidemiologist has arrived at the same conclusion.
"We really cannot do anything else but allow the virus to take its course in order for the population to achieve herd immunity," said Porolfur Gudnason, chief epidemiologist of Iceland's Directorate of Health. "We need to try to vaccinate and better protect those who are vulnerable, but let us tolerate the infection. It is not a priority now to vaccinate everyone with the third dose."
Mass vaccinations fuel spread of new variants
In March, vaccine expert Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche urged governments to stop vaccination drives. He said in an open letter that vaccinations will fuel the spread of new "dangerous variants" of the virus.
Vanden Bossche said the ongoing mass vaccination drives are "likely to further enhance adaptive immune escape as none of the current vaccines will prevent replication or transmission of viral variants."
Immune escape is a term used to describe when the host – in this case humans – is no longer able to recognize and counter a pathogen such as a relevant variant or mutant of SARS-CoV-2.
"The more we use these vaccines for immunizing people in the midst of a pandemic, the more infectious the virus will become," Vanden Bossche wrote. "With increasing infectiousness comes an increased likelihood of viral resistance to the vaccines."
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