This is a great question. Here’s my response https://twitter.com/dianaberrent/status/1330255535808122881?s=20

The idea of vaccines is to get you to immunity without having to go through the risk and discomfort of illness, and without you passing through a state where you are an infectious case that creates other cases.

Also:

With vaccines we can actually eliminate disease.

Natural immunity doesn’t eliminate disease at the population level, because rising immunity pushes down R, which makes the current outbreak end but means the disease will resurgences when we re-accumulate sufficient susceptibles

Whether through births or loss of immunity

And lastly, vaccines like some of those in production for covid are FAR more immunogenic than natural infection. That’s through the use of immune stimulants, or “adjuvants”. For example, getting a wart doesn’t make you immune to HPV...the immune response is weak

And indeed being non-immunogenic is a “strategy” employed by hpv to thrive.

HPV vaccines are far more immunogenic than natural infections, and the result is strong “herd” (indirect) effects when the vaccines are used widely

Whether or not this will be true in the context of covid is not yet knowable. But the very high efficacy estimates reported last week, and the fact that biontech/Pfizer was just as good in older individuals as younger individuals suggests it may well be