Randal Howard Paul, an American politician and physician, took to microblogging site Twitter and drew a comparison between Covid-19 vaccine and natural immunity developed against the infection.
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This comes a week after vaccine candidates Pfizer and Moderna claimed 90 per cent and 94.5 per cent efficacy for their coronavirus vaccine. However, according to Paul, natural immunity acquired against Covid-19 has efficacy of 99.9982 per cent.
Paul is one of the experts who encouraged the benefits of contracting the coronavirus. Paul also contracted the virus earlier this year and argued that antibodies developed after the Covid-19 infection confer greater protection from the disease.
However, other experts believe that this could be a dangerous endeavour that could pose a threat to lives.
More dangerous option
“The trouble with that logic is that it’s difficult to predict who will survive an infection unscathed,” said Jennifer Gommerman, an immunologist at the University of Toronto, cited in a New York Times report.
She believes that choosing Covid-19 over the vaccine is “a very bad decision.”
The primary advantage of a vaccine is that it’s predictable and safe. It’s been optimally tailored to generate an effective immune response, she added.
Other experts quoted in the New York Times report were also unanimous in their answer. They feel that Covid-19 is by far the more dangerous option.
“It’s clear that one is less problematic for the body to recover from than the other. There’s more risk with natural infection,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.