Study Confirms Omicron Infection Provides Strong Natural Immunity and Imperial’s Professor Altmann is Wrong to Scare People By Claiming Otherwise
Since Imperial’s Professor Danny Altmann claimed three weeks ago, based on a recent paper from his university, that Omicron does not provide natural immunity against reinfection, this claim has been repeated around the world and become an accepted part of the Covid narrative, frightening people into believing the pandemic may never be over. Professor Altmann wrote in the Guardian:
Rather than a wall of immunity arising from vaccinations and previous infections, we are seeing wave after wave of new cases and a rapidly growing burden of long-term disease…
Importantly, Omicron infection was a poor booster of immunity to further Omicron infections. It is a kind of stealth virus that gets in under the radar without doing too much to alert immune defences. Even having had Omicron, we’re not well protected from further infections…
Contrary to the myth that we are sliding into a comfortable evolutionary relationship with a common-cold-like, friendly virus, this is more like being trapped on a rollercoaster in a horror film.
At the Daily Sceptic we pointed out that Professor Altmann’s interpretation of the paper’s findings was flawed and not in line with what it said or showed. The paper actually did show a robust immune response following Omicron infection.
Now, two new studies from Qatar provide real-world evidence of the power of natural immunity against Omicron.
The first study looked at all confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections in Qatar from February 2020 to June 2022, comparing Covid incidence and severity among those with and without a previous infection (all in the study were unvaccinated). The pre-print study (not yet peer-reviewed) found that pre-Omicron Covid provided 85.5% protection (CI: 84.8-86.2%) against pre-Omicron reinfection, though waning to around 70% after about a year and a half. This is in line with earlier studies.
Against Omicron reinfection, a pre-Omicron infection provided 38.1% protection (CI: 36.3-39.8%), though declined with time possibly to negligible levels after a year and a half.
Importantly, pre-Omicron infection provided very high protection of 97.3% (CI: 94.9- 98.6%) against severe, critical, or fatal COVID-19 reinfection by both Omicron and pre-Omicron Covid, with no evidence of waning after 14 months. While Qatar’s population is younger than most, a very similar result of 95.4% protection was found for the over-50s, again with no evidence of waning. This suggests that Covid quickly becomes like a circulating cold after the population has had it once.
But what about Omicron reinfection after an initial Omicron infection – what protection does that provide? Professor Altmann claims the immune response following an Omicron infection is negligible and Omicron is a “stealth virus” that evades immunity and doesn’t protect against reinfection. However, the second study from Qatar shows this is not true at all.
The pre-print (not yet peer-reviewed) used a test-negative, case-control design to look at infections in Qatar between May 7th and July 4th 2022, with particular attention give to the period June 8th to July 4th when Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 dominated. It found that an initial Omicron infection against BA.4 and BA.5 reinfection provided 79.7% protection (CI: 74.3-83.9%), not far off the protection of pre-Omicron infection against pre-Omicron reinfection found in the first study (85.5%). The study also found that an initial pre-Omicron infection provided 28.3% protection (CI: 11.4-41.9%) against BA.4 or BA.5 reinfection, broadly in line with the first study (given the later time and newer variants).
Professor Altmann and others who claim Omicron infection does not provide immunity against reinfection are therefore spreading misinformation by exaggerating the threat from the virus and downplaying the prospects for population immunity and moving on from the pandemic.
The authors of the second study say there were too few serious cases to draw any conclusions about protection from severe disease and death. However, considering the 80% protection against reinfection, there is no reason to think the protection an Omicron infection provides against serious disease will not, as with pre-Omicron infection in the first study, be similarly robust and long lasting.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Does Omicron cause much serious illness and death – any more than lots of respiratory viruses do? People get colds and flu quite often, vaccines against them don’t seem to work that well, and some people get multiple bouts of colds and flu, some none or very little. Is Omicron special, significantly different from all these other viruses?
Right now, I’d say “not really”. Loads of friends testing positive, nobody really very ill. In my town of 8,000 there has only been one young-ish (60s) person who was seriously ill (in over two years) and even he thankfully survived. However, the treatment he got in a ventilator really screwed him up. Sure, not every case if published on Facebook but my view is that because everyone thought it was so deadly, then if we were getting lots of cases, it would be talked about.
Sore throat for five days, fever for two days, cough for five days. Raised blood sugar for three days (I’m type 2 diabetic).
Other people have reported worst symptoms.
The problem is that the spike protein has evolved such that it appears to bind more strongly to ACE2. As antibodies are created in response to the spike protein to block infection then depending on the changes in the spike could alter the effectiveness of the antibodies. However, antibodies do not need to match antigens exactly to attach, there is some leeway, depending on where the changes are, but there will be some immune memory.
I don’t understand the down votes as this is factually correct. Also note that I didn’t make any mention of any vaccine. The same would be true if a person had had one of the earlier variants/clades.
Not too many down votes showing, so perhaps the sinners have repented.
No, it’s not special. You do need to separate influenza from the common cold, they’re not comparable.
They are comparable in that they have been with us forever, stopping them spreading is currently impossible, vaccines seem to have limited effectiveness against them,
they kill people but not enough to be societally threatening and there’s little we can do about them. Other than that, not comparable.
The main cold viruses (rhinovirus up to 80% of colds has 99 serotypes) have more variants that arise as fast as those of SARS-CoV-2, and they’ve been around longer. Hence the futility of developing vaccines. This does beg the question as to why they thought a vaccine would work.
Influenza has fewer serotypes and hence the vaccine, but the relevant vaccine is guessed at. The vaccine is delivered by intramuscular injection in adults, which, like the CoViD19 vaccination, puts antibodies in the wrong place; however the vaccine is administered by nasal spray in children, which is better.
A nasal spray Covid vaccine would theoretically be a game-changer, but so far all attempts at such have been rather disappointing. Also, spike-only “vaccines” obviously leave a lot to be desired, as it is better to have at least the nucleocapsid protein in there as well (if not the whole virus) to yield broader-based immunity. Regardless, every single Covid vaccine that has ever been tried, from the mRNA jabs to the DNA/AAV jabs to the protein-only jabs to whole inactivated virus vaccines, has in practice been no more impressive than a flu jab at best, but with an order of magnitude more side effects at worst. It seems that coronaviruses of any kind don’t really lend themselves much to high-quality vaccines, as we have seen from actual and attempted vaccines for other coronaviruses in both man and beast (and yes, there are many). Endemic Covid will either evolve in one of two possible directions: 1) a textbook childhood disease, relatively benign for kids but rather nasty for adults getting it for the first time, or 2) a largely vaccine-preventable disease. And since option 2 has proven elusive, it looks like option 1 it is. In fact the other four endemic… Read more »
Absolutely. The real issue is psychological, to get people to accept that SARS-CoV-2 is potentially fatal for some people but not for others, the same as influenza or any other pathogen. I had measles as a child and survived, Roald Dahl’s daughter caught measles and died.
“This does beg the question as to why they thought a vaccine would work.”
If your ‘they’ are the pharmas, they didn’t!
Is Omicron special, significantly different from all these other viruses?
Probably it is special, it being a newer variation of what was very likely a bio-engineered virus.
Maybe special is the wrong word. Is it exceptional in its impact, at a societal level?
Outside of the occasional “it’s very bad flu season” article in the media, obsessing over the minutiae of viruses is the province of a small group of people working in the field, not the entire planet.
“Is it exceptional in its impact, at a societal level?”
Clearly, yes. Not because it presents a unique medical threat, but because of society’s hysterical, cowardly response that played into the hands of the vultures who are making trillions out of it.
I’ve just given up trying to argue with people. Just blocked another person on Twitter who kept asking “Source” when I said vaccine effectiveness was negative according to UKHSA data and had been for months.
He asked for source so I gave him a link to the UKHSA surveillance data from March but said I hadn’t personally put the chart together and that had been done by Daily Sceptic.
At this point he said “Ahh, so you lied, it wasn’t UKHSA data, it was from a well known anti-vaccine site”.
Didn’t even bother trying to point out that it doesn’t really matter who did the analysis/plot but it would have been unlikely for a pro-narrative site to publish it.
They’d degraded to attacking the person not the argument – at which point they get blocked.
This is due to the vaccines being based on the spike of original virus strain/clade. Changes in the spike have made the vaccines less effective.
Again why the down votes? Again this is factually correct, and I did not state any absolute effectiveness of the original vaccine against the original variant only that it was less effective against later variants.
We have no real idea how effective the snake oil was against Wuhan as it had all but disappeared by the time the quacksines were rolled out to the masses. We have a real idea of the correlation between “vaccine” rollout and sharp increases in all cause mortality among the cohorts targeted by the various phases of rollout.
I totally agree we have absolutely no idea of the efficacy or otherwise of the vaccines against any of the variants, simply because the vaccine was developed with one particular variant in mind. However, that variant was superseded by other variants that may have been sufficiently similar for the antibodies produced by the vaccine to be partially effective or may be sufficiently different for them to be totally ineffective. Also, if the innate system and the adaptive system in the mucosa responded correctly to the infection with the development of IgA antibodies, irrespective of variant then the vaccine induced antibodies are irrelevant and will disappear.
At best the vaccine would only stop the earliest variant from causing too much damage in the lungs, the earliest part of the anatomy where blood borne antibodies IgG are found.
Antibodies don’t last forever, which has been observed, also any memory B and T cells from the vaccine will be useless against any later variants as well.
My suspicion is that the adverse effects in the main are immune system mediated. They are not unique to the CoViD19 vaccine, with reports as far back as 1974 with the smallpox vaccination causing myocarditis. The all cause mortality issue is more difficult to identify, to use one of the most used terms in medicine/nursing, it is multifactorial. Of course it could be related to the vaccine itself, it could be autoimmune, it could be other immune related, it could be other co infections or it could be correlation without causation. The problem is that no one really understands the inner workings of the immune system as a system with all of the interactions at the cellular or sub cellular level and the messaging in between. The theory behind the Pfizer/Moderna vaccines and the AstraZeneca vaccine makes sense, infect a cell with the part of the virus that creates the spike that the virus uses to attach to a cell. Produces an immune response by creating antibodies that bind to the spike. If the full virus is identified then these antibodies will attach to the spike, thus preventing the virus from attaching to a cell and infecting it. This is… Read more »
The down voters are just lurkers. They won’t present a counter argument. One or more will be people who have taken offense and thereafter downtick every post. I have one trolling me. Just watch this response receive at least one down vote. Ignore them, they’re just babies.
I cannot recall one person attempting to debate any of the Reset narrative, which of course includes the C1984, they immediately redort to ad hominem or “conspiracy theory” accusations. I really can’t be bothered attempting to discuss any of this with brain washed idiots.
If the first study only consisted of unvaccinated people, the finding is also only valid for the unvaccinated.
And that seems quite plausible deducting from what’s happening in the real world now: the pandemic of the vaccinated.
You do not elaborate here whether the second study consisted of only unvaxxed, vaxxed or a mix.
“If the first study only consisted of unvaccinated people, the finding is also only valid for the unvaccinated”
It doesn’t matter whether a person is vaccinated or not or whether they have been infected or not with an earlier variant of SARS-CoV-2 if there are substantial differences between the spike protein of the two variants.
A)If a person has been vaccinated then they may have IgG antibodies against the early variant of the spike protein. They do not have any IgA antibodies in their mucosa.
B)If they have not been vaccinated then they probably do not have IgG antibodies against any variant of the spike protein, neither do they have IgA antibodies in their mucosa.
C) If they have been infected by an early variant of SARS-CoV-2 then they will have IgA antibodies in their mucosa and possibly IgG antibodies in their circulation. If the spike protein has changed substantially then neither of these will provide protection.
D) If they have not been infected then they will not have either IgG or IgA antibodies.
As the symptoms shown by recent infections are compatible with the innate immune system response to a new pathogen then A,B,C and D above apply.
Altmann was lying from the start and knew it. Doubtless his palms were greased, especially given his place of employment.
Another evil bit of shyte.
Specifically, he was implicitly operating from a mystery theory of sudden virus death, namely, people become infected, develop symptoms and recover but somehow this doesn’t involve the immune system killing the viruses as these operate under its radar. This is obviously horseshit: Nothing but an immune system reaction stop a virus from replicating (and killing more and more cells in the progress of that). That’s also evident in his last paragraph where he writes about friendly common-cold viruses (supposedly opposed to hostile Sars-CoV2 viruses). These adjective are completely inappropriate. No virus is either hostile or friendly, it just replicates and damages the host body by that. What he refers to as common-cold viruses is a class of potentially lethal pathogens which kill people (usually due to pneumonia, just like COVID) every year. It’s just that our immune systems are so well-trained to get rid of them (due to constant exposure) that this usually only fatal to people who’d have died soon, anyway (just as with COVID). Lastly, even though usually non-lethal, a cold is anything but friendly. Depending on the course it takes, eg, tonsilitis or middle-ear inflammation, two fairly common complications, it can become seriously painful and debilitating (due… Read more »
And people like that are selective with the truth, by avoiding the use of the term “coronavirus” in relation to “common colds”. He must know that a large proportion of them are caused by infection by the group of HCov ones – roughly a third of them, according to various sources (with rhinoviruses being behind the rest of it). Ironic, in that the term “coronavirus” was invented by those who worked at the Common Cold Unit when it became possible to identify them microscopically.
Imperial: home of bent quacks.
I think it’s rather corruption than quackery: These people are making political statements to order, lend them an air of credibility due to their expert titles, and render them unintelligible to the unwashed masses they’re preaching to by mixing in enough sciency jargon.
By “bent” I meant corrupt, not homosexual.
By “quacks” I meant piss-poor scientists.
I wasn’t aware that bent can mean homosexual but I know what quack[*] means. And I don’t think this applies here: These people may or may not be poor scientitsts. But here, they aren’t acting like scientists, just as paid mouthpieces supposed to deceive those listening to them.
[*] the German word is Quacksalber, by the way, someone dealing in potions and lotions (Salben) which don’t help while claiming the otherwise
Indeed, as with the politicians and every other major player in this shitshow, the problem is not lack of ability or intelligence, it’s lack of integrity.
‘Quack’ and ‘Quacksalber’ basically mean the same then. In English however, ‘quack’ has been widened and now is used to denote anybody who is conducting themselves as a pseudo expert or bullshiting cod science. Frequently there is a sales element. Those fake doctors on breakfast telly are always selling some tripe – fake “vaccines” springs to mind.
Susan Michie could be called a quack because that’s the woman without any scientific qualifications[*] holding some bullshit title from UCL (professor of health psychology) who’s in the business of selling remedies for everyday ailments (face masks in her case) which don’t do anything (positive), something people can be confused about because no such remedies were needed to begin with. Altmann is a different and altogether more sinister kind. He’s a professor of immunology. That’s likely a bullshit title as well but it’s about something real, namely, how the human immune system works. What he’s basically doing is he’s describing properties of the common cold (no herd immunity, keep infecting and reinfecting people every couple of months, causes some of them to become sick enough that they can’t work for some time). This, he then ascribes as novel and dangerous to the novel coronavirus he’s specifically setting apart from the common cold in the hope that unthinking people won’t notice the sleight of hand. And considering that he does have the scientifc qualifications to know what he’s talking about, he’s doing that intentionally in full knowlege of it. Michie is just a stupid woman. But he’s an evil man. [*]… Read more »
Or the Dutch kwakzalver, or “boaster who applies a salve”.
And of course the folk etymology of what passed for doctors wearing those masks with duck-like beaks to attempt to ward off the bubonic plague in the 14th century. If it DUCKS like a quack….
Altman is as mad as a box of psychotic frogs. The fact that he is using covidian media rather than (however compromised ), peer review is indicator of his insane fixation on keeping the pandemic going. When working from home he looks unhinged its as if his family put him up there out of the way.
And the real elephant in the room is that the jabs, especially for the boosted, seem to trick the immune system into standing down faster than NORAD on 9/11. Hence more reinfections and prolonged infections. Not because of anything peculiar about Omicron. Hat tip to Igor Chudov.
Is this where the notion came from?
I was solemnly assured by a recently-infected acquaintance that Omicron evades immunity; it felt rude to correct him that it probably only applied to the jabbed. (Damn my good manners! Besides, I wasn’t completely sure)
This guy looks too much like Young Frankenstein to be taken seriously, especially if he comes out with the kind of scare-mongering carp reminiscent of the early days when The Science tried to tell us that Coronavirus (as it was then called) did not generate antibodies, and it was wont to make you drop dead in the street.
Boy, did he hit a lot of branches when he fell out the ugly tree🙈
It’s pretty clear that Altmann, Ferguson and their ilk are Stinking Rebellion sympathisers who’ve taken the government etc for the mugs they are!
If Altman had auditioned for Young Frankenstein, he wouldn’t have got the part. Sorry, we want him to look a bit less freaky-scary. Where do imperial get these oddballs?