Is there any significantly contagious and deadly disease where natural antibodies have proven more protective than large-scale vaccination? Measles? Polio? Diptheria? Flu? Mumps? Rubella? Hepatitis? ...
Dengue. The initial vaccine did not target all subtypes of dengue, causing "severe dengue" in infections after a naive individual was vaccinated. The same could happen if someone moved from one region to another, since the subtypes inhabit different regions. Your body will respond to one subtype's antigens primarily with it's initial conditioning. If you weren't conditioned with that subtype, you get original antigenic sin / severe dengue
The worst-case scenario for a vaccine is not "no immunity", it is negative immunity. If your adaptive immune response outcompetes your innate immune response in binding to antigens, but does not neutralize them, then your immune system will struggle to fight off an infection
I worded it poorly (and it wasn't really anything worth saying in the context of COVID), but:
A population with 5% naturally-induced/80% vaccine-induced immunity might see more spread of a new variant than a population with 25%/60%, however the total outcomes would still be better in the first population; so "less protected" was definitely the wrong thing to say.
Naturally-induced immunity for COVID is stronger because it targets more than just the spike protein, and it presumably[0] grants better mucosal immunity than our current vaccines induce, but of course the risk/cost of natural infection is very high.
The great imbecility pandemic of 2020-2021. People who have experienced severe symptoms, hospitalization and deaths of relatives came out smarter than those who didn't.
Where I live is >80% double dosed, however there are far less than 5% that have been naturally infected.