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If I Had COVID, Why Should I Get Vaccinated?
By Dr. Amy Rogers, MD, PhD
After reading my article “Why Omicron Will Be The Last COVID Variant of (Major) Concern”, someone asked me about vaccination for people who have tested positive for the coronavirus, or who have actually had a symptomatic case of COVID19. Here is my reply.
The Questions:
Please help me know how to respond to people who don’t think they
need a vaccine because they have had Covid or tested positive without
symptoms. If someone gets one variant, does that mean they are covered
for all the variants? If they just have a positive test with no symptoms,
are they immune to all, any, or no variant?
These are hard questions because they don’t have yes/no answers.
The important underlying fact is, the immune system is not an on/off switch. You are not either “immune” or “not immune.” The immune system is more like a dimmer switch with an infinite number of settings. You can be slightly protected or very well protected or anything in between. You can have good protection against the lung disease of COVID but poor protection against infection in your nose. Or any combination you can imagine.
If someone has immunity against one variant of the coronavirus, they will have at least some coverage against all variants. How much their…
