[coffeebean]

Is the following piece an opinion piece? I don't think so as it seems to follow scientific principles. This is really good news regarding the mRNA vaccines.

Which is better for developing immunity: COVID-19 vaccine or natural infection? – Daily Breeze

[GrumpyOldMan]

Well,

I didn't read the entire study, but the link you provided is from Daily Breeze (not mainstream) which links to a PDF of a study which is published on bioRXiv.

bioRXiv is an open repository for papers. The papers are not peer-reviewed. So, basically, anyone can write anything and publish it there.

That does not mean there is no merit to the study. It means there is no way for me to know if the study has merit because I am not a peer (not an expert in virology or pandemics) and so I am not qualified to review the study or its conclusions.

As a general rule, I would avoid putting too much faith in a non-peer-reviewed study.

There is so much work being done right now, and knowledge is growing so rapidly, that it is hard to not get lost in the "changes" being published by scientists around the world. If you add in the non-peer-reviewed studies it is virtually impossible to know what to believe.

I hope the article is accurate, gets reviewed, and is found to be trustworthy, but for now, I can't recommend it.

[coffeebean]

This is an excerpt from the article......

"Next steps
The study must be peer-reviewed, Felgner said, and clinicians and public health officials should use the data to inform patients and public health policy."

I read the entire article before posting it so I did see this passage. Should I have not posted the article?

[GrumpyOldMan]

I don't see any problem with posting it and letting everyone make their own decision about how much credibility to give it.

It is better to share than not to share

[Tmarkwald]

rather than repost again and again, here is the thread....

[Malsua]

Originally Posted by coffeebean

Is the following piece an opinion piece? I don't think so as it seems to follow scientific principles. This is really good news regarding the mRNA vaccines.

Which is better for developing immunity: COVID-19 vaccine or natural infection? – Daily Breeze

I would only caution that while it might be true, something jumped out at me reading this article.

The spike protein is big, Felgner said. And in natural infections, the virus manages to hide this vital receptor so the immune system doesn’t see it.

I'm not sure what Philip L. Felgner, director of UC Irvine’s Vaccine Research and Development Center and Protein Microarray Laboratory and Training Facility, is getting at here.

Both in natural and vaccination, the receptor binding domain on the spike protein is pretty much the same place the immune system targets. At least as far as most of what I've read about it is suggesting.

The immune system is very complex and it is quite possible that the immune system in a natural infection picks up different protein chains that aren't part of the spike protein or different motifs on the spike protein rather than specifically on the binding domain. I don't know, but to say that the natural virus "hides" it? How? If the RBD is sheathed or not exposed, it simply won't work and we know that it works, so what is he on about here?