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Leslie T.'s avatar

The choice is not just between the vaccinated covid patient or the unvaccinated covid patient. Lately, the choice has been between the unvaccinated covid patient and the cancer patient, or the person living with pain who needs a hernia repair, or some urgent but perhaps not immediately life-threatening surgery. It doesn't seem fair to defer cancer treatment to provide treatment for a condition that could easily have been avoided.

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Sam's avatar

Somewhat related to Carl's question, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the implications of Delta-Omicron cross-immunity for vaccination. Increasingly, it seems clear that Omicron infection by itself doesn't really yield Delta immunity, just as Delta infection doesn't yield Omicron immunity. But it *does* looks like Omicron infection in *vaccinated* individuals enhances immunity to both Delta and Omicron (see, e.g., https://secureservercdn.net/50.62.198.70/1mx.c5c.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MEDRXIV-2021-268439v2-Sigal.pdf).

My question is: does this imply that an Omicron-specific vaccine might elicit cross-immunity in previously vaccinated people, but not in immunologically naive people? What about unvaccinated people who were infected with an earlier strain, then reinfected with Omicron?

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