Through vaccination or infection, doctors predict Florida will hit herd immunity to COVID-19

[cadoman]

28. honestly that's misrepresenting what those papers state

The vaccine induced antibody response is more effective within the RBD but natural immunity works more broadly on other parts of the spike protein.

It's not a case of one or the other being better (necessarily). If a variation of the virus happens to operate more through the RBD, then vaccine induced antibodies would likely work better.

But if the variation of the virus didn't operate as much through RBD, it's likely natural immunity would work better.

Here are the underlying papers. Note the verbiage very carefully as it's very subtle. Compare what you bolded, which specifically mentions the RBD part of the spike protein.

"Greaney et al. demonstrated that neutralizing antibodies elicited by immunization with the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine were more focused to the RBD than those elicited by natural infection. However, vaccination-elicited antibodies targeted a broader range of epitopes within the RBD than infection-elicited antibodies. "

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/13/600/eabi9915

Do you see the difference? It's confusing but a truthful argument can be made for either natural immunity or vaccine immunity being more effective--depending on how the spike protein mutates!

From the same blogger you linked to, here is another article describing how natural immunity targets two other parts of the spike protein called the N-terminal domain (NTD) and the S2 subunit.

https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2021/05/18/human-antibodies-target-many-parts-of-coronavirus-spike-protein/