Please Don’t Try to Get Natural COVID Immunity by Getting Infected

New data shows that a previous COVID infection boosted immunity against the delta variant—but vaccines are still the best way to protect yourself. 
Disposable surgical face mask
Calvin Chan Wai Meng / Getty Images

It’s nearly two years into the pandemic and some people are starting to wonder if they should try to get natural COVID immunity by deliberately getting infected. 

It’s a shocking thought—imagine telling your March 2020 self that people would be trying to get COVID—but with the omicron surge ripping through the population, people are starting to wonder if getting omicron is inevitable. The number of people with COVID is higher than it’s ever been and people are stressed about finding accurate COVID tests and desperately trying to prolong the life of their masks. We’re all exhausted. Would getting COVID, and therefore boosting your natural immunity, make this all easier?

That question has gotten more relevant in light of a new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday. From data collected from 1.1 million cases in California and New York, researchers analyzed the risk of infection and hospitalization among four groups, per CNN: those who were unvaccinated and never had COVID, those who were unvaccinated but did get COVID, those who were vaccinated and never had COVID, and those who got both the vaccine and COVID. 

They found that people who had survived a previous COVID infection and been vaccinated appeared to have higher immunity against the virus than those who had been vaccinated alone. But before you run to try to get the virus in search of a boost in natural COVID immunity, vaccination is still the safest path to protecting yourself, the CDC researchers emphasized. “Vaccination remains the safest strategy for averting future SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, long-term [symptoms], and death,” the researchers wrote. 

Here’s why: The data in this study was collected between May and mid-November—before the highly-contagious omicron variant surfaced in the U.S. and before many people had access to booster shots (which have been shown to significantly improve immunity, as SELF reported). That means health experts don’t have enough information to say how the natural COVID immunity you might gain from an infection would stand up against omicron and other, potentially more serious, variants of the virus. In fact, the data showed that before the delta variant became widespread, case rates were higher among people who had already had COVID once than those who were vaccinated and had never had COVID before. It was only in the face of the delta variant that those with a previous infection seemed to have more immune protection. 

Waning vaccine immunity might have something to do with that, as CNN notes. The rise of the delta variant coincided with what was potentially a slump in immunity for many vaccinated people—months after the initial dose of the vaccine but before the booster. The study did not analyze the timing of vaccination so we don’t know how the booster might affect the findings. 

And let’s not forget that getting COVID is a dangerous path to immunity, while the vaccine has been proven to be generally safe and effective. (Like any vaccine, there can be side effects, and in some rare cases, people have experienced more serious issues like myocarditis after getting a COVID-19 vaccine. This was especially the case with the Johnson & Johnson shot, which has been linked to an increased risk of blood clots. But the overall risk of a post-COVID-vaccine health issue pales in comparison to the risk of actually getting COVID.) Even though omicron appears to be a milder variant than delta, as SELF reported, it’s not without risks. More people are hospitalized with the omicron variant this winter than any previous variant, per The New York Times. The majority of them are unvaccinated, but not all. And, of course, even mild cases of infection can lead to residual issues like long COVID.

So, no. Please do not try to get COVID to boost your immunity. We may very well reach a point where COVID does become as common as the flu—but we are not there yet. Doing everything you can to prevent getting COVID as long as possible not only reduces the risk that you’ll pass it to someone in a vulnerable population, but that if you do eventually get it, there will be better treatments available to help keep you safe, as SELF previously reported. “Even if EVERYONE does get COVID, delaying WHEN we do so has benefits,” Queensland University of Technology Centre for Data Science professor Rachel Thomas, Ph.D, explained in a tweet. “The longer we can wait, the greater the chance of new treatments being developed, more effective vaccines, better anti-virals, scaling production of Paxlovid, etc.”

And regardless of whether or not you’ve had COVID before, get vaccinated. “If a person who’s had natural COVID then gets vaccinated, they have levels of antibody that are much, much higher than after the natural infection itself,” William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and vaccine advisor to the CDC, told CNN. “And what we know about higher levels of antibody is: One, you usually get a longer duration of protection, and number two, the variety of antibodies that your immune system produces is more diverse. The notion is that you will be better protected against a diversity of variants.”

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