For months, scientists, public health officials, politicians and the general public have debated whether prior coronavirus infection — touted as 'natural immunity' — offers protection against COVID-19 that is comparable to vaccines.
,” arguing that the CDC data “demonstrated natural immunity was 3-4 times as effective in preventing COVID-19 compared with vaccination.”
She also said natural immunity can vary substantially from person to person, depending on many factors like age, the overall strength of the person’s immune system, how severe the COVID case was and the variant that infected them. Shane Crotty, a virologist and professor at La Jolla Institute for Immunology, told Yahoo News that the Omicron variant changed everything. “Omicron is looking so different from the other variants that just infection alone might not be giving you great antibodies against the other variants because it looks so different,” he said.