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Is catching Covid now better than more vaccine?

There are marked differences in your immune system after a natural infection with coronavirus and after vaccination.
Which is better?

Even asking the question bordered on heresy a year ago, when catching Covid for the first time could be deadly, especially for the elderly or people already in poor health.

Now, we're no longer starting with zero immunity as the overwhelming majority of people have either been vaccinated or have already caught the virus.

It is now a serious question that has implications for whether children should ever be vaccinated. And whether we use the virus or booster shots to top up immunity in adults.

Both have become contentious issues.

"We could be digging ourselves into a hole, for a very long time, where we think we can only keep Covid away by boosting every year," Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist from the University of Edinburgh, told me.

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Breadth
How much of the virus the immune system learns to attack

You get a broader immune response after being infected with the virus than vaccination.

Whether you've had Moderna or Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, your body is learning to spot just one thing - the spike protein.

This is the critical part of the virus to make antibodies to, and the results - by keeping most out of hospital - have been spectacular.

But having the other 28 proteins to target too, would give T-cells far more to go at.

"That means if you had a real humdinger of an infection, you may have better immunity to any new variants that pop up as you have immunity to more than just spike," said Prof Riley.

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58270098