[HN Gopher] Why doesn't natural immunity count in the US?
___________________________________________________________________
Why doesn't natural immunity count in the US?
Author : peteradio
Score : 237 points
Date : 2021-09-14 18:15 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bmj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bmj.com)
| criticaltinker wrote:
| Why is this post flagged? And why is the vouch button
| unavailable?
| dang wrote:
| It was flagged because users flagged it. This is in the FAQ:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
| peteradio wrote:
| Thanks dang. Will this then possibly be flagged by some other
| user? What is the visibility of a flagged post? Hidden from
| front page and search, viewable from other users comments?
| colpabar wrote:
| The mods are surprisingly responsive on this site, so I say
| this without a hint of sarcasm - try emailing them about it. I
| recently had a thread unflagged within an hour.
| peteradio wrote:
| I've mailed.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think the vouch button is only available once the post is
| dead. (Same for comments.)
| detaro wrote:
| yes
| issa wrote:
| Take this as anecdotal because I am not aware of a study being
| done, but many people with long COVID report the vaccination
| improving their symptoms. This seems to argue that there is
| additional defense in getting vaccinated.
| sam0x17 wrote:
| It's a waste of resources to figure out whether someone has
| natural immunity (its quite hard to do logistically). Much easier
| to just give them the vaccine, then your bases are covered. These
| are public health decisions -- they don't occur in a vacuum with
| unlimited resources.
| sdiupIGPWEfh wrote:
| We could make individuals pay for it. Heck, we could tax it,
| make them pay through the nose for it, and reinvest it back
| into vaccinations. Up the costs even more if they want to be
| retested. Since it's not medically necessary, their insurance
| shouldn't have to cover it, meaning the costs won't have to be
| borne by everyone else.
| peteradio wrote:
| So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too
| hard to do a proper test? How much fucking money has been spent
| due to this pandemic, amazing vaccine development, government
| backstops all over the place, but somehow a routine blood draw
| and test is seen as too absurd an idea?
| sam0x17 wrote:
| > So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too
| hard to do a proper test
|
| In short, yes, this is called good public health policy. It's
| not merely a simple blood test and it's not something just
| any lab could do. Anti-body testing is finicky, expensive,
| time-consuming, and not as reliable as has_vaccine (boolean).
| So in other words, we are going to make your medical decision
| for you because not doing so puts the health of many others
| at risk and you don't have the right to put countless others
| at risk. A simple utilitarian analysis yields this as the
| obvious solution. It is worth sacrificing your personal
| preference at no risk to yourself to save potentially many
| lives.
|
| Even the vaccinated are at risk when a large percentage of
| the population runs around unvaccinated, because each
| transmission increases the risk of a mutation that gives rise
| to a vaccine-resistant strain with a higher death rate. Then
| we'd be back at square one. In the worst case scenario it
| could kill off the majority of the population.
|
| This situation is exactly analogous to someone in the food
| industry saying they should have a religious exemption for
| hand-washing. The bad effects of allowing such an exemption
| (people dying from food poisoning and catching diseases from
| food) aren't worth the small sacrifice of simply having to
| wash your hands before preparing food. With good reason, we
| ignore people who say "there are microchips in the soap" and
| still make them wash their hands or seek employment
| elsewhere.
| jonstaab wrote:
| First balanced take I've seen from the establishment yet, good
| for them.
|
| Over a year and a half of completely bizarre policy surrounding
| covid, I've warmed up to the idea that the West is currently in
| the process of importing China's brand of social-credit
| totalitarianism to the rest of the world. I know it sounds crazy,
| but if you have a little intellectual curiosity, I encourage you
| to listen to "LaserHodl's" case for Monetary Reset:
|
| - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/265-monetary-reset-mal...
|
| - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/270-better-understandi...
|
| - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=posr1XHh8JA
| mdoms wrote:
| Yeah I'm going to go ahead and skip "LaserHodl's" opinions on
| this whole issue.
| jonstaab wrote:
| Did I not hedge enough? Two years ago I was a happy,
| contented liberal raising a family and working at my job. I
| still am, but I believe some quite different things about
| what is happening in the world, which old me would have
| dismissed out of hand.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Can you synthesize your thoughts on this? I won't dismiss
| ideas just because of where they come from, but can't wade
| through a 2 hour podcast to guess at what you might have
| meant.
|
| For my own part, I have been quite shocked by the
| leadership vacuum during the pandemic. It's increasingly
| clear to me that no one is really at the wheel in the
| larger part of the West, but many are pretending to be
| steering the ship. I don't assign anything uber-nefarious
| to it beyond basic human greed, fear, power lust,
| incompetence and bullshit. A Chinese style government
| forced on US, would be, to quote Stalin, a "saddle on a
| cow." There may be some other countries that would cotton
| on to it quite readily though if the western coalition were
| to continue to weaken.
| jonstaab wrote:
| I probably won't do a good job, as I'm still wrapping my
| head around it, but here goes:
|
| The first thing to note is that there is no "big
| conspiracy". There are conspiracies, but the driving
| force is that global economy gives rise to certain
| conditions related to modern monetary theory and currency
| manipulation that lead to an inevitable market
| correction. You can see this in the 8ish year short-term
| cycle, but there is a longer-term cycle known as the
| Kondratiev wave too. [0][1]
|
| The global elite (known affectionately as "they") is
| anyone whose incentives are aligned with the current
| monetary system, and who has the power to reinforce or
| undermine it. This includes politicians, international
| bankers, humanitarians, etc. There is no overarching
| "cabal", but there may be one or more "cartels" fitted to
| a particular area of human interest. Most of these people
| probably only implicitly operate in their role as "they".
| These networks are no more than something like the UN or
| the WEF, and are often much less formal than that.
|
| The key here for me is that this theory doesn't posit
| malevolence, but a shared vision for humanity focused on
| safety, security, stewardship, and prosperity. All good
| things right? This is just bog-standard progressivism.
|
| But "they" know about the long term debt cycle. They know
| that we face real crises that will result in mass death
| and war if not managed, because we've deferred paying
| down the cost of our economy for so long (think of
| renewable vs industrial agriculture as a metaphor,
| erosion is making it harder and harder to get the land to
| yield crops). The best global policy is to get ahead of
| this correction by building structures of control and a
| narrative of self-sacrifice for the greater good in order
| to make scarce resources stretch. A great way to do this
| is to appeal to real global problems (climate change,
| pandemics, cyber attacks, fertility crisis) to influence
| people's behavior. LaserHodl calls these "Malthusian fear
| spells", because they will not automatically come true if
| we actually tackle the problems head-on.
|
| The reasoning in the above article is a great example of
| this: don't tell people natural immunity works, because
| the most efficient solution to our public health crisis
| is universal vaccination, trade-offs against individual
| liberty, or even individual health, be damned. The
| intentions may be good; the side effects are going to
| contribute to the severity of the coming correction. But
| a submissive population will also be easier to manage in
| a crisis. Again, none of this may be explicit in the
| minds of any of "they", it's just a matter of historical
| perspective, power, and incentives.
|
| Where the rubber meets the road is that LaserHodl claims
| the short-term debt cycle is set to coincide with the
| Kondratiev wave in the next decade. Additionally, 2030 is
| the date that Bitcoin is projected to hit $1MM or so [2],
| and is the deadline for the WEF's Agenda for Sustainable
| Development [3].
|
| His (and my) hope is that Bitcoin adoption will drive a
| grassroots culture of low time preference [4], returning
| us to a healthy relationship with traditional values.
| This will in turn solve many of the the real world
| problems that face us instead of deferring them to future
| generations. Further, a culture of "opt-out at every
| level" will serve to undermine the efforts of those who
| attempt to further centralize government and consolidate
| power.
|
| It's important to point out that Bitcoin is not a
| "weapon" against the global elite any more than a lock on
| your front door is. It's a defensive tool for building
| individual wealth and agency, which are the cornerstones
| of any civilization.
|
| [0] https://investing-abc.com/debt-cycles/
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kondratiev_wave
|
| [2] https://www.bitcoinprice.com/predictions/
|
| [3] https://www.weforum.org/projects/frontier-2030
|
| [4] https://breedlove22.medium.com/money-bitcoin-and-
| time-part-1...
| clipradiowallet wrote:
| Natural immunity isn't subsidized by taxpayers, and does not
| enrich any party through sales of a vaccine... on those grounds,
| of _course_ they are encouraged to receive the vaccine.
| kcb wrote:
| He's figured it out. Dispatch the team.
| pzh wrote:
| Somebody can still make money by offering a test that proves
| natural immunity.
| nanis wrote:
| Also, forcing on person A something person B makes which is
| paid by entity C with absolutely no liability on B & C and the
| authority does make for good lead into a post public "service"
| career.
|
| Then, you submit to constant tracking. All of a sudden things
| one could never have imagined just a couple of years ago become
| subject to whether a some unaccountable authority gives you
| permission.
| RedComet wrote:
| ISaaS - Immune System as a Service
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It seems much harder to quantify the level of immunity conferred
| by natural infection. It depends entirely on an individual immune
| system detects and combats a particular infection.
|
| Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice. Refuses
| to get vaccinated now because "why bother? I have great immunity
| now." With no sense of irony, given that he's already been
| infected twice...
| toolz wrote:
| Why is it "harder"? I assume you mean harder to quantify than
| vaccination immunity and I don't believe that's the case, but
| I'm curious why you believe that is the case.
|
| edit: surprising downvotes so I probably didn't communicate my
| point well.
|
| I can't imagine a reason why natural immunity would be harder
| to quantify than vaccine induced immunity. It would seem to me
| the methodology to quantify both would be very similar.
| yokaze wrote:
| With a vaccine, you get a standardised dosis of an agent
| resembling the disease or just a part of it. The remaining
| variability is the response to that standardised input.
|
| With an infection, you have no control over the degree of
| exposure, so on top of the variability of the response comes
| the variability of the exposure.
|
| Additionally, in case of exposure of the full pathogen, there
| is some variability to what part of the pathogen the immune
| system will respond. That part can actually be a good thing
| in total.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Nobody knows what dose was delivered to the "natural
| immunity" group, how many times, or when.
| mythrwy wrote:
| Seems we should be able to test for antibodies though. Why
| aren't we?
| toolz wrote:
| we are testing for antibodies but antibodies aren't the
| only immune system response and depending on who you ask
| might not even be the "main" defense against covid.
| kemayo wrote:
| It's a blood test, and I suspect that it's even harder to
| motivate everyone to get a blood draw than to get a
| vaccine.
| toolz wrote:
| there are very similar issues with the vaccine - the same
| dosage of the vaccine will not behave the same in everyone
|
| but this is a good point I hadn't considered, thanks
| thaufeki wrote:
| >It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and
| combats a particular infection.
|
| Pardon my ignorance, but does this mean by contrast that
| vaccines are designed to induce a uniform response across
| immune systems?
|
| EDIT: A reply (deleted before I could respond) mentioned that
| immune systems will combat the infection by some "pattern" of
| it's own design, but a vaccine will encourage the immune system
| to respond in a predetermined way, (increasing likelihood of
| uniformity, answering my question).
|
| Is this accurate?
| [deleted]
| andrewnicolalde wrote:
| > Pardon my ignorance, but does this mean by contrast that
| vaccines are designed to induce a uniform response across
| immune systems?
|
| Also not an expert and curious, would that not be a (the?)
| design goal of any vaccine?
| dnautics wrote:
| there is no way for it to be perfectly uniform. Let's just
| say that the immune system employs several layers of RNG
| (random shuffling of DNA, and also it shoots mutations at
| certain segments of DNA) to evolve its responses.
|
| A more uniform response than the pathogen itself? Yes. But
| I think the actual goal of modern vaccination is not a
| uniform response, but a _directed_ response. Don 't waste
| your time looking at these parts of the virus, spend it on
| this (important) part.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects
| and combats a particular infection.
|
| How is that different from a vaccine?
| mjg59 wrote:
| The vaccine either contains or triggers the production of a
| specific protein that is (fairly) stable across variants - so
| there's only one thing for the immune system to key off. The
| concern around natural immunity is that your immune system
| may respond to some aspect of the virus that isn't as stable,
| ie it ends up recognising part of the virus that's present in
| your current infection but may not be in a later infection.
|
| In reality it seems that the immune system does tend to end
| up targeting the same protein that's in the vaccine, but may
| be targeting different portions of it
| (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ talks about this).
| My understanding is that current data suggests the naturally
| acquired immunity is about as robust as the vaccine acquired
| one, but this wasn't a given.
| unanswered wrote:
| So you're literally arguing that it's better if we have an
| immunological monoculture?
|
| Be honest: have you passed high school biology?
| mjg59 wrote:
| I've got a PhD in genetics.
| unanswered wrote:
| So you're doing the "haha I was only pretending to be
| stupid" routine for political points? Nice.
| detaro wrote:
| stop embarrassing yourself.
| mjg59 wrote:
| If you want to optimise for targeting a specific virus,
| then yes, narrowly targeting the most stable functional
| element of that virus is preferable to targeting other
| elements of that virus. If you want to optimise for
| having a broad response to related viruses, then a less
| narrowly targeted response is preferable.
| unanswered wrote:
| What if instead of optimizing for "targeting" a "specific
| virus", i.e. score political points against a virus, you
| wanted to optimize for saving lives? That doesn't even
| come into your calculations, does it?
| mjg59 wrote:
| I was explaining why there's potentially a difference
| between natural immunity and vaccine-mediated immunity,
| and why one of these may well be preferable if the goal
| is to generate maximum immunity to a widespread virus.
| But that's not the actual goal, and as a result policy
| decisions may differ. Is the risk associated with
| vaccinating people who have some degree of natural
| immunity justified by any improvement in immunity they
| gain as a result? I don't know! I have opinions on the
| matter, but I'm not qualified to make that determination.
| myrrlyn wrote:
| is this going well for you
| itaru wrote:
| Congratulations!
| _red wrote:
| >Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice
|
| How does he know he was infected twice?
|
| Saying that a PCR test returned positive values two times isn't
| a great answer - since by its nature PCR is only counting the
| existence (above the programmed threshold post amplification).
|
| Serology is the only way to know for certain you were/are
| infected.
|
| This highlights one of the bigger issues we have: PCR test are
| a very cheap and a useful way for getting estimates but their
| failure rate is high enough to make it pretty poor basis for
| doing large scale data analysis.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| PCR. About 9 months apart.
| cybernautique wrote:
| Out of curiosity, couldn't this patient have experienced a
| case of long-haul covid?
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I've had COVID twice - in December and then just a few
| weeks ago.
|
| Long haul COVID doesn't spring back to life and give you
| a fever for 12 days straight. I had essentially the same
| symptoms both times: fever, extreme fatigue, a dry cough,
| complete loss of taste of most things, etc.
|
| Long story short, even if you didn't get tested one of
| the two times (I tested positive both times) it's pretty
| freaking obvious what you have as long as you don't have
| a mild case. My wife got it this time around, and we got
| her an infusion of monoclonal antibodies early as she's
| pregnant. She only had a fever one night, and in trying
| to explain how she felt I asked her "it feels like you
| just want to stop existing, right?" She agreed. Before
| that night it just seemed like a cold for her.
| aml702 wrote:
| Follow the money. That's why.
| vernie wrote:
| Woozy face
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/2Jden
| trhway wrote:
| That would shrink vaccine market in US by at least 70-80M. No
| sane politician would do that. Like with private prisons they got
| to provide the promised body count no matter what.
| crdrost wrote:
| The question in the title is very very easy to answer.
|
| The political reason that natural immunity "doesn't count" indeed
| is not directly about medical reality.
|
| To say things are political is almost an insult these days--I
| don't mean it that way at all. But policy has medical
| implications, and so politics is part of it. This policy-decision
| is being made because there have been political movements since
| early on to do variations on "Let 'er rip," that is, to allow
| COVID-19 to run rampant until a herd immunity develops, while
| maybe implementing decontamination procedures in nursing homes
| instead or so. The most notable statement to this effect was the
| Great Barrington Declaration but of course there have been
| smaller ones that hit wider spread.
|
| Policy needs to factor in things like the huge early oppositions
| to shutdowns, the huge oppositions to masking despite it being
| absurdly effective for how cheap it is... there remain very
| strong political forces in this divided country which overlook
| the significance of younger people with COVID flooding the
| emergency rooms and overtaxing our limited health workers (NYT
| today reports that in the US South, they are at this level right
| now), and the death that can come from this, simply because the
| danger for young people is usually considerably smaller when
| those hospitals are operating normally. (See India for a
| cautionary tale, there.)
|
| Given this political reality, 'vaccinate everyone' is a political
| countermeasure meant to create a potential-energy-barrier to
| lying. It's not medical advice, it's public policy. Lying to say
| 'Yeah I was COVID-exposed but it wasn't bad enough to go to the
| hospital' is very very cheap. Forging a CDC vaccination card
| takes a couple hours of time right now and opens you up to some
| fraud risks--it's not a _huge_ cost but if it's higher than the
| cost of just going and getting vaccinated, there is a hope that
| vaccination will win out.
| dooopy wrote:
| It's not that complicated -
|
| No one has died getting their immunity from the vaccine, but lots
| die in the process of getting natural immunity from the actual
| virus.
|
| The vaccine is a much safer way to get your antibodies going.
| extheat wrote:
| Given the political discussions about "booster shots", I find
| this quote pretty interesting:
|
| > Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be
| counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections,
| the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second
| dose seemed to indicate an "exhaustion," and in some cases even a
| deletion, of T cells.34 "I'm not here to say that it's harmful,"
| says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, "but at the moment all
| the data are telling us that it doesn't make any sense to give a
| second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was
| already infected. Their immune response is already very high."
| Pxtl wrote:
| That sounds more like an argument for the Canadian model where
| we went several months between shots (on the assumption that a
| high percentage of the populace partially-protected was more
| useful than a small percentage fully protected). I'm assuming
| semiannual or quarterly shots will be where we land until Covid
| is no longer a major threat.
| vinay427 wrote:
| To be fair, that model wouldn't be as ideal with the greater
| proportion of the US population unwilling to get vaccinated,
| as well as the higher vaccine availability in the US. It
| seems like Canada would make a better case given the lower
| vaccine skepticism and vaccine supply.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i really don't understand why booster shots are a "political
| discussion"
|
| i have normal flu booster shots ever year -- and that's fine.
| why not for covid?
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Every year influenza mutates.
|
| The flu booster shot is actually a full vaccination based on
| the leading 2-3 variants they predict will be dominant in the
| coming flu season.
|
| Also, flu vaccines are based on weakened viral particles, not
| mRNA transcriptions of key viral proteins... so the two
| really aren't comparable.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| Administrative overhead.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| As far as I can tell, natural immunity relates to the variant. If
| you had Alpha, and then you encounter Delta, your natural
| immunity may help you a little, but possibly not enough to
| prevent hospitalization, since Delta is 2.5x more likely to cause
| a serious hospitalization. So natural immunity counts, but maybe
| not against powerful variants. And we should be doing whatever we
| can to prevent people from becoming infectious and spreading it
| further.
| Tycho wrote:
| Yesterday in England, they published statistics that showed
| (among other things) the rate of non-covid deaths among
| vaccinated people greatly increased from March to August. By a
| factor that dwarfs the improvement in covid-related deaths. For
| some reason they didn't feel it was necessary to comment on or
| explain this surprising pattern. I can think of a number of
| explanations, but it makes me wonder if they are really on the
| ball, and would really make sound judgements on other matters
| such as natural immunity.
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
| oplav wrote:
| Do you know how the rate compares to 2019?
| jowday wrote:
| The answer is pretty simple - the moment authorities start saying
| "well, natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination,
| we'll accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes",
| a huge segment of the population who's on the fence about getting
| the vaccine might just opt to wait until they're infected
| naturally, or, even worse, get infected purposefully (EG, chicken
| pox parties). Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks.
|
| In a perfect world, everyone would understand that getting the
| vaccine is the appropriate choice of action and we could accept
| natural immunity from people who were infected before vaccines
| were available - but unfortunately we're forced into playing
| these weird games where authorities have to try to incentivize
| people who aren't behaving rationally - which in turn leads to
| further distrust from people on the fence.
| nanis wrote:
| Crying wolf repeatedly to cajole and coerce people is not a
| good long run strategy.
| usrusr wrote:
| Deliberate infection (or deliberate infection risk-taking) can
| be a valid concern, but I believe that validity depends a lot
| on the spreading characteristics of the virus in question. For
| SARS-COV-2 ca June 2020 I'd fully support the argument (the
| virus that was so bad at spreading from human to human that we
| thought that washing hands would make a meaningful difference).
| But with "chicken pox fast" delta, I doubt that it would make
| much difference. Anti-vaxxers will go through their first
| contact infection pretty soon wether they try or not. Just like
| the vaccinated. Or rather: in a very different way, rarely but
| still too often.
| [deleted]
| rednerrus wrote:
| It seems like the best solution, if you're a healthy adult, is
| to get vaccinated then expose yourself to a variant better
| tolerated by the vaccines.
| isolli wrote:
| While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything
| that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to
| manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them
| is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.
| jowday wrote:
| I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about,
| say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would
| gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more
| rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.
|
| I've got family in a small town in the south - the
| countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to
| Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people
| there had made their choice about how they were going to
| respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities
| came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions
| are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends
| past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.
| errantmind wrote:
| Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The
| skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-
| targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the
| policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > skepticism that resulted from the lies
|
| Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the
| lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are
| just being used as post-hoc rationalization.
| Clubber wrote:
| The lies have been coming for decades, these are just new
| lies.
| rayiner wrote:
| Vaccination rates were equal between democrats and
| Republicans as late as the end of April.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this
| stuff
|
| When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed
| over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the
| FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were
| right about.
|
| But I think ascribing a malicious intent to that learning
| process is disingenuous.
|
| The only people that have made literally malicious claims
| have been people on the far-right, which unfortunately are
| some authorities so I guess you're right about Trump and
| his bootlicks who intentionally lied for personal gain. And
| continue to do so.
| tommymachine wrote:
| And that whole side of your family is dead, right?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about,
| say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things
| would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much
| more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.
|
| I agree. For someone whose threshold of 'did the
| authorities lie about masks' is one cherry-picked example,
| there was never any hope. They were absolutely going to
| find _someone_ to confirm their already-existing beliefs.
| sneak wrote:
| No, that's not lying.
| tshaddox wrote:
| But where's the lie? If it's true that public health would be
| better if nearly everyone got the vaccine, then it isn't a
| lie to say that nearly everyone should get the vaccine in
| order to improve public health.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I believe we'd see more people choose to be vaccinated if
| we'd:
|
| * Stop lying
|
| * Stop threatening
|
| * Stop mocking people when they die
| sixothree wrote:
| > Stop mocking people when they die
|
| Yeah. That's not going to happen. The sentiment has turned
| against the unvaccinated dying from a preventable disease
| in a very big way.
| nielsbot wrote:
| You think not mocking people when they die will increase
| vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm
| skeptical.
|
| Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think tho.
| We will see what happens with these new mandates.
| ryandrake wrote:
| People have already largely made up their minds, and
| nothing is going to change them. This is fully a
| political-religious divide now, and you can't reason
| people out of a decision they didn't reason themselves
| into. The ones who pretend they are on the fence and
| their minds can be changed by some goal being hit or some
| facts changing, always seem to move the goal posts
| instead of actually changing their minds.
|
| In areas where the vaccines are free and
| widely/immediately available, for someone who has not
| gotten it already, I can't think of anything that would
| convince them to get it other than tightened restrictions
| (employers requiring, etc.) and enforcement. I'd love to
| hear otherwise from someone who is legitimately on the
| fence, because I don't think those people really exist.
| Clubber wrote:
| >You think not mocking people when they die will increase
| vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm
| skeptical.
|
| Sure, say you had a parent or close family member die,
| then someone mocked that. How would you feel about that
| person? Would you listen to anything they had to say, or
| just want to punch them in the face?
|
| >Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think
| tho.
|
| I don't know the answer, but shaming people and mocking
| them hasn't worked in the last 20 years; in fact it's
| made us even more partisan, divided and hateful towards
| each other. Why do you think it would work now?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just
| want to punch them in the face?
|
| They're not listening now. We've passed the point where
| persuadable people in good faith are holding out (for
| what? The full FDA approval was two weeks ago.) It's time
| to go the other way and mandate the vaccine -or- frequent
| testing (I think 1/week is too infrequent) -or- they can
| preemptively isolate themselves from society.
| Clubber wrote:
| So you are making a common mistake, you are considering a
| huge swath of people from a wide range of demographics
| and political persuasions as a single cognitive entity.
| They are not. Let's say you don't shame, you get an
| additional 15% uptake. Let's say you do shame, you only
| get 5%. Shaming is part of the problem for reasons I
| stated above. It certainly makes the people shaming feel
| better about themselves, but it's a net negative to the
| outcome of which those people are purporting solve.
|
| Bottom line, shitting on people is never effective.
| bedhead wrote:
| Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly
| hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed,
| "What exactly is your longer-term plan here?" and watch as
| their mind breaks down. Too many people have completely
| stopped thinking about what they're trying to achieve and how
| they're going to do it. Half the country is just stuck,
| focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else
| and it's freakin disastrous.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and
| no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin
| disastrous.
|
| Which half?
| rednerrus wrote:
| Where the horseshoe touches.
| syshum wrote:
| The 1/2 at the extremes ends of the Horseshoe of
| Politics...
|
| The Covid Deniers, and the Authoritarian "new normal"
| types that believe government is our parent.
|
| People that believe when it comes to COVID I should have
| no personal choice, I have to either be forced to vaxx,
| or the vaxx should be banned, I should be forced to mask,
| or the mask should be banned...
|
| People that reject liberty in the face of emergency
| jowday wrote:
| >Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and
| no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin
| disastrous.
|
| The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for
| pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San
| Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID
| measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into
| bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when
| you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with
| kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools.
|
| No one's really locked down anymore outside of a few
| holdouts in each state.
| rayiner wrote:
| > The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally
| for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of
| San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-
| COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before
| going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and
| demasking when you enter restaurants - although I
| remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some
| strangeness at schools.
|
| That's a real understatement. Here in Maryland, my 8 year
| old is still in a mask at school both inside and outside.
| She's been a trooper with all the precautions over the
| last year and a half, but started crying when she heard
| her school was going to do masking again in the fall,
| because it means probably another year of social
| distancing in schools (not being able to play with all
| your friends, etc). The masks really interfere with her
| gymnastics class, because of O2 restrictions as well as
| difficulty hearing/understanding what instructors are
| saying.
|
| My 3 year old is masked all day in preschool, as well as
| at his extracurriculars. He does a "toddler crossfit"
| type class where all the kids and instructors are masked,
| and it's a disaster. At this age their ability to
| comprehend instructions is marginal to begin with. Add
| the muffled speech and inability to see facial
| expressions and it means the kids have a lot of trouble
| understanding what's going on. I've done A/B testing
| helping my kid with the activities. With a mask on, he
| has a much harder time understanding me, and also
| mistakes my mood--e.g. he can't see me smiling so he
| interprets my giving him directions as yelling (it's loud
| in the gym obviously).
|
| Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight
| recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my
| face. We are not going to even try to send him to daycare
| with masked caregivers. I hate to sound like a nutter--
| I'm a STEM major, I know how to "science"--but I don't
| trust that they actually have considered the
| developmental effects on infants not being able to see
| faces for 8 hours a day at daycare.
| chana_masala wrote:
| > I hate to sound like a nutter--I'm a STEM major, I know
| how to "science"--but I don't trust that they actually
| have considered the developmental effects on infants not
| being able to see faces for 8 hours a day at daycare.
|
| It's a shame that you have to defend not being crazy to
| say that a child not seeing faces won't have some kind of
| psychological impact when for all of human history (the
| biological perspective) we have seen the faces of our
| elders, peers and parents.
| karmelapple wrote:
| > Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight
| recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my
| face.
|
| I never quite understood why clear face masks haven't
| caught on more, especially in these kinds of
| environments. Some of the air may escape, since it
| certainly won't be like an N95, but if we can increase
| ventilation, keep distance a little bit, and wear see-
| through masks to convey emotions and meaning better, that
| seems like a pretty reasonable tradeoff.
| jowday wrote:
| Yeah, I don't have kids so I'm sort of out of the loop on
| what's still in place at schools, like I said. Stuff like
| "social distancing" when they already have the kids
| sitting in rooms for hours at a time seems silly, just
| like masking and unmasking only to enter and leave bars.
| prh8 wrote:
| It is not even remotely close to being over in the US.
| After visiting SF for a week this month, I don't even
| know how someone in that bubble could think that, since
| it's clearly not over there either. It's much different
| and less problematic in SF than many other parts of the
| country, but absolutely not over there or anywhere else.
| chana_masala wrote:
| Papers please hardly sounds like it's over.
| wpietri wrote:
| I think there's a big difference between lying and saying
| "most people want very simple answers, so let's boil all of
| this down to something that fits in a 30-second PSA". And
| honestly, 30-seconds is pretty long these days in terms of
| attention span.
|
| I agree they should also have more information at various
| levels so people who want to know more can dig in. But people
| don't make most choices on anything like a purely rational
| basis. Asking doctors and public health experts to pretend
| otherwise when designing their general-audience comms
| guarantees a higher death toll for no appreciable gain.
|
| As an example, take a look at how we've tackled drunk driving
| over the last 40 years. Groups like MADD definitely can make
| rational, data driven appeals. But the reason they were so
| successful is that they were extremely good at making
| emotional appeals. Take MADD itself, Mothers Against Drunk
| Driving. The founder, Cindi Lightner lost her 13-year-old
| daughter to drunk driving. The driver, who drove off and left
| her body behind, recently had been arrested for DUI.
| Lightner's personal story, which is heartbreaking, is central
| to their effectiveness. The result: drunk driving, which was
| laughed off previously, is now taken very seriously, and
| deaths are down 40% despite VMT doubling.
| sneakymichael wrote:
| What is 'VMT'?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| It's not lying to them. It's saying "regardless of if it is
| medically effective, we as a society will not accept it."
| pasquinelli wrote:
| hasn't it blown up in their face everytime the authorities
| tried to be strategic with their messaging (a nice way to say
| play silly games)?
| tshaddox wrote:
| I don't know, has it really "blown up in their face," or do
| people just use supposed examples of "strategic messaging" to
| support their preexisting commitments? In other words, are
| people actually changing their decisions based on specific
| examples where public health officials allegedly lied or used
| strategic messaging, or are they simply using those examples
| to justify their own actions?
| jowday wrote:
| Yeah, I pointed this out in my comment - I wish I could say
| that I think this would have all gone a lot more smoothly if
| authorities were just honest about things from the start, but
| I think a lot of the outrage about, say, Fauci lying about
| masks to try and conserve PPE supplies early on only provided
| ammo for people who were already going to disregard COVID.
|
| At this point I'm not even sure it matters. The states with
| the lowest vaccination rates are never going to have vaccine
| passports anyways. Mentally and culturally the pandemic is
| over for most people, vaccinated or not.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| > Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies
|
| Right. It provided proof that the authorities were willing
| to lie "for the greater good". So at that point their
| statements cannot be seen as truthful but only "possibly
| good for us to believe" (they think).
|
| And as soon as people accepted that possibility, combine
| that with their personal estimate of how often "greater
| good" might conflict with what they personally would
| consider the actual good of the country or themselves, and
| you have a situation where many people don't comply with
| the recommendations.
|
| Lying to the public is a bad long term strategy for
| achieving cooperation.
| jowday wrote:
| I think most people who disregarded COVID had made their
| choice before these lies came to light - it just provided
| justification for them later on. The small town my
| family's in in the South's COVID response consisted of
| closing Wal-Mart for a couple of days in March. Most of
| the people there had made their choice about how they
| were going to respond to COVID before the mask discourse
| happened.
|
| But a lot of these people (perhaps justifiably) already
| viewed media and public officials as perfectly willing to
| lie to them or ignore their concerns - this extends
| beyond the pandemic itself and is part of a broader trend
| of mutual distrust.
| throwawayfear wrote:
| Past covid gives antibodies that are superior to two shots of
| Pfizer.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
|
| So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be
| treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating
| them is illogical here.
|
| And don't even get me started on vaccine passports, which are
| completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely
| needs proof of vaccination, like the NICU at the hospital or a
| nursing home or a college dorm, that information can be relayed
| via existing protocols. We don't need a "papers please" society
| where paper shufflers and bureaucrats can arbitrarily gate
| access to society this way.
| jowday wrote:
| I'd agree with you that vaccine passports definitely
| represent a sacrifice of individual liberty for safety - but
| what makes you say that that they're "completely
| unnecessary"? If we accept that a vaccinated person has a
| lowered, but not eliminated, chance of contracting and
| transmitting COVID, wouldn't it make sense to avoid contact
| with people that are at a much higher risk of infection?
|
| If you feel that the tradeoff between liberty and safety here
| is too high, that makes sense - but do you really think
| vaccination passports don't reduce the transmission of the
| virus?
| throwawayfear wrote:
| They would reduce transmission of the virus in the same way
| that locking everyone in temperature-controlled air-
| corrected 24/7-monitored government housing pods would
| reduce the transmission. Maybe those pods are better,
| because they could ship us food and let us out for exercise
| at times determined by an efficiency algorithm!
|
| The question is, is the cost worth it?
|
| There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liberty for
| safety." That's Orwellian talk for going along with
| tyranny. By this point, the majority of Americans are going
| to have antibodies before long from a combination of
| vaccinations and past covid. Over 100 million already had
| past covid and I already shared links about how those
| antibodies are superior to two shots of Pfizer. So how is
| it necessary for those people to have to subject to a
| "papers please" tyranny? No thanks.
|
| Implementing these passports will cause something even
| worse than some covid spread to happen. A two-tiered
| society where one segment of society is viewed as
| unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous. History is replete with
| examples of this being a bad thing.
|
| And philosophy aside, there's also newer evidence showing
| that for some segments of the population it may be riskier
| to vaccinate.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-
| at-r...
|
| So why start enforcing passports? To accidentally find out
| later on, after creating a two-tiered society, that there
| may be unintended long-term consequences for the teenagers?
| Nope. Time for YOU, reader, to say no and realize that
| these passports are just about control. They don't care
| about your health. It's about power. Think critically about
| the system being built. It's about the control.
| jowday wrote:
| It sounds like you just disagree with the tradeoff
| between liberty and safety, then. But it does lower
| transmission, and flashing a card before you go into a
| bar the same way you flash your driver's license isn't as
| onerous as the weird government pod scenario you outlined
| above.
|
| >unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous.
|
| This is probably how I'd describe wilfully unvaccinated
| people, yeah.
|
| Also curious where you got the 100 million number from -
| AFAICT there have been 40 million covid infections in the
| US.
| throwawayfear wrote:
| Over 100 million Americans have superior antibodies from
| past covid. Why would you WILLINGLY describe those like
| that who refuse the vaccination as unhealthy, unclean,
| and even dangerous? Unless you're naive and don't know
| history? Or perhaps you simply keep ignoring the links
| being provided because you've been tricked by the
| narrative and it feels good to be tribal/partisan about
| it as if it's a matter of politics? It won't be long now
| until everyone has antibodies one way or another, yet
| people falling for the "vax vs unvax" narrative are going
| to create a problem much worse than covid if they insist
| on drawing battle lines and inching closer and closer to
| full-on dehumanization of tens of millions.
|
| Source for how many people had covid:
|
| https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-
| now/news...
|
| _Anew study published in the journal Nature estimates
| that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S.
| population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end
| of 2020_
|
| The number you mentioned is the number verified, but
| based on the modeling of infection rates and spread
| they've come up with the bigger number. It will keep
| getting bigger.
|
| In any case, "flashing a card" to go into a bar is the
| precipice of the slippery slope. And yes, it's slippery.
| It doesn't take much effort to see the writing on the
| wall and observe the tyranny emerging in other places. If
| you're not simply ignorant to history and being tricked
| by the narrative, at least be honest about what you
| actually want - which is to control others. Don't try to
| pass it off as being concerned about health though, I
| wasn't born yesterday.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| From the article's conclusion:
|
| 'For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. "I always
| think it's much better to be very clear and honest about what
| we do and don't know, what the risks and benefits are, and
| allow people to make decisions for themselves."'
| aqme28 wrote:
| Europe (or Germany at least) accepts natural immunity in lieu
| of vaccination. As far as I've heard, no one has been getting
| covid on purpose as a result.
| gtufano wrote:
| Rule in Italy is only one shot after at least 3 months (and
| no more of 6 months) after the first Covid-negative test.
| mdoms wrote:
| German culture is not as feircly selfish as American culture.
| They also have far lower vaccine hesitancy rates.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| "Selfishness" is not how I would characterize the
| motivations of people who haven't vaccinated.
|
| By the way, I have been vaccinated for months, but I can
| understand that others may not want to for reasons other
| than those I would describe as "selfish".
| sneak wrote:
| Regardless of their motivation, remaining unvaccinated is
| a selfish choice, same as driving around burning gasoline
| recreationally.
| nanis wrote:
| > German culture is not as feircly selfish
|
| Oh, let's please not delve too deeply into "German
| culture".
|
| Update/PS: Maybe the downvoters can explain how the
| unselfish German culture works when it comes to things like
| considering Turks to be equally valuable human beings.
| sbakzbsmx wrote:
| Do we really want to start extolling the virtues of German
| culture and its obsession with virtues such as orderliness,
| obedience, hygiene?
|
| German culture is all nice and tidy until someone,
| necessarily a deviant, needs to shout out: "STOP! We're
| committing a crime!"
|
| Teutons don't tolerate deviants.
| jowday wrote:
| I mean ultimately we're guessing at the rationale of the
| leadership of each of these countries - but I'd guess based
| on vaccination rates that Europe generally has less of an
| antivax problem than the US, so authorities there might be
| less concerned about vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy in
| the US is also very regionally concentrated - maybe less so
| in Germany?
|
| "COVID parties" are also a worst case scenario - I think the
| vast majority of people would just opt to not get vaccinated
| and live their lives as usual - which would lead to more
| outbreaks, deaths, mutations, etc.
| nradov wrote:
| There is a huge variance in vaccination rates of European
| countries. The US is behind most western European countries
| but ahead of most eastern European countries.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
| jowday wrote:
| I was talking about Germany specifically in the parent -
| the least vaccinated state in Germany has a ~10% higher
| vaccination rates than the least vaccinated state in the
| US. But it looks like there is a good deal of variance
| even inside Germany.
| nickff wrote:
| There are also only 16 states in Germany; Even a naive
| statistician would presume that the USA is likely to have
| larger differences between min and max than Germany.
|
| Another post on the HN frontpage is relevant to this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28526966
| glogla wrote:
| > Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks.
|
| Worse, it leads to
|
| 1. new COVID variants, some of which will be worse than what we
| have,
|
| 2. more deaths from people who had some other health emergency
| while unvaccinated idiots are slowly dying in the hospitals
| taking valuable beds, and
|
| 3. to more burned out, dead and PTSD suffering healthcare
| personal.
|
| I would recommend everyone to browse [1] and [2]. Not being
| vaccinated if you can, is truly disgusting, selfish and stupid
| choice.
|
| [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ [2]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/nursing/
| swader999 wrote:
| If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group
| its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can
| manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe
| outcome.
|
| Mass vaccinating the entire population for a respiratory
| virus that mutates so easily creates a whole host of other
| problems and a never ending pandemic of variants that may
| actually get more severe.
| jowday wrote:
| >If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable
| group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You
| can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a
| severe outcome.
|
| But there's a chance of you spreading the infection to
| someone who's vulnerable in the process of recovering from
| it. Or someone else who ends up spreading it to someone
| who's vulnerable. Could just be that you pass by someone in
| your apartment building on the way to pick up your
| antibodies. Or exhausting medical care supplies if you do
| end up needing treatment.
|
| I'm not equipped to tell whether your claim about mass
| vaccinations are true, but if that's correct are yearly flu
| shots also a bad idea?
| swader999 wrote:
| If you are naive and not vaccinated then when you get
| covid you'll likely notice it, isolate and not spread it
| (if it is particularly severe you may be bed ridden and
| unable to be social). If vaccinated and getting a less
| severe infection you may not need to isolate and likely
| be more social and prone to spread it.
|
| Yearly flu shots if they went out to the entire
| population would most likely create a similar problem.
| But with only 40% of the uptake and usually to the more
| vulnerable they haven't had this effect.
|
| Mass vaccinations to a virus like polio make perfect
| sense because this virus is not able to mutate and still
| successfully infect the host. You can confer long lasting
| immunity with vacinations on this. The spike protein on
| Sars can mutate many ways to Sunday and still break
| through the cell wall. So your constantly reformulating
| and boosting and trying to keep ahead of a changing
| target that if left to its own devices would just peter
| out due to it becoming less and less severe (too severe
| and it dies due to less transmission, less severe get
| more transmission and win and the virus becomes more
| benign over time).
|
| With a leaky vacccine you can be a happy chicken with a
| severe variant and be totally fine until your immunity
| wanes and the next designed booster is off the mark. See
| this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-
| vaccine-m...
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Just an FYI it's possible to spread the virus even with
| the vaccine, so it is best to isolate and quarantine
| regardless of vaccination status
| swader999 wrote:
| Yes but you are less likely to do this the less severe
| the infection is and you may not even notice it with the
| vaccination.
| kcb wrote:
| Just get the vaccine.
| proc0 wrote:
| Just get the 10th booster.
| hstan4 wrote:
| You're totally ignoring the data from the study (that you
| probably didn't even read) because it doesn't fit your
| narrative. How beneficial.
| kcb wrote:
| What narrative, getting the vaccine is a narrative?
| Beneficial to who? I don't know how to read.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Or don't. It's a personal choice.
| ziziyO wrote:
| This is completely incorrect. Public health isn't a personal
| choice.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Yes, it is.
| mynegation wrote:
| So it is a personal choice. Would you be OK with the
| consequences of qualifying it as such?
|
| What if an unvaccinated (by personal choice) person comes
| down with COVID and has to be hospitalized or - worse -
| put into ICU. Do you think they would be OK if doctors,
| faced with the crunch of beds, place them into a second
| tier, behind all the breakthrough cases? Hospitals do not
| do that currently, but this is not unheard of (e.g.
| bumping smokers and alcoholic patients in organ donation
| queues).
|
| I am willing to accept this is a personal choice if
| people making that choice accept responsibility for it.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| They accept responsibility by paying for medical care,
| paying insurance, or paying taxes into a socialized
| healthcare system, depending on which country you live.
| Refusing to treat sick people is not forcing them to take
| responsibility for their decisions, it is coercing them
| into making a decision they don't want to make, and I
| think k you know that.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Imagine this scenario: You have one ICU bed and two
| people with gunshot wounds. One got the wound because he
| played with a gun and shot himself. The other got the
| wound because he was shot accidentally by the first
| person. Only one person gets the bed. Which one do you
| give the bed to?
|
| Let's make it a little more topical: Both people were
| told not to play with the gun and that there were
| insufficient ICU beds. The first person still played with
| the gun and shot himself and another person. This was a
| personal choice he made. His luck was against him (and
| the person he shot).
|
| Let's make it more topical still: The two people were
| told, "Look, we know you want to play with guns. We
| really don't want you to. Receiving treatment for gunshot
| wounds is less likely to lead to long life than simply
| not getting shot, and we have other illnesses we need to
| treat. Here's an additional incentive: if we don't have
| sufficient medical resources to treat everyone, the
| people who ignore this warning will get treated after
| those who don't." Yes, this is coercion, inasmuch as it
| is influencing their decision, but under this definition
| of coercion, coercion hardly seems like something to
| worry about, certainly not as much as getting shot.
| kristjansson wrote:
| > paying insurance
|
| Should vaccine refusal then result in increased premiums,
| or increased coinsurance for covid-related care? How many
| people would make the choice if they had to bear even
| part of the expected value of their increased medical
| costs themselves?
| dekhn wrote:
| no, public health isn't a personal choice: public health
| exists to apply population wide, standardized (possibly
| tailored somewhat) principles and actions and their loss
| function is to minimize overall suffering.
|
| Personal choice goes against that, because many people's
| personal choices will be selfish or convenient to them
| while putting other people in harm's way. Within a large
| society, we must be cognizant of the likely impact of our
| decisions, but history shows that most people will not do
| so, and therefore must be compelled, legally, to take
| actions which are for the best of society.
|
| Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal, not
| personal level, with the goal of ensuring the national
| survives existential challenges (of which COVID may be
| one).
| betwixthewires wrote:
| > Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal,
| not personal level...
|
| That's one philosophy of governance. I believe it to be
| fundamentally incorrect. But that's your philosophy and
| your view on this topic stems from that. I get your
| point, I just disagree wholeheartedly.
|
| I have a right to be selfish. I owe no obligation to
| anyone else that I have not voluntarily entered into. If
| you want to redefine "putting other people in harms way"
| to include breathing the air around me without getting a
| medical procedure you can, but it is wrong IMO.
| dekhn wrote:
| This isn't just a philosophy of governance, it's how
| nearly every country in this world works. You clearly
| have limits on the freedoms you claim. For example, if
| you live in the US and you're male, you're subject to the
| draft and the government will put you in jail otherwise.
| There are no universal human rights to be selfish (or any
| others, either).
| betwixthewires wrote:
| > You clearly have limits on the freedoms you claim
|
| We aren't talking about how things are, we are talking
| about how things _should be_ , specifically, whether
| there _should be_ vaccine mandates or not. Other existing
| violations of rights are wrong also.
|
| So it is fundamentally about philosophy of governance.
| You believe society should come first, individuals can be
| compelled to benefit society even potentially at great
| cost to themselves, and that a person is morally wrong
| for not wanting to go along with that. I believe that it
| is morally wrong to expect a person to value anyone over
| themselves that they have not chosen to, or to be
| compelled to do anything on behalf of someone else.
| dekhn wrote:
| Ah, thanks for clarifying. I have nothing further to say
| to you.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| It's only a personal choice if you do _not_ come in contact
| with anyone else as best as you can.
|
| Else, you run the risk of being infected, not knowing it,
| passing it onto other people who "have made a personal
| choice", involuntary manslaughtering them (unless you're
| religious, then you've biblically murdered them); or,
| alternatively, you run the risk of ending up in the ICU, and
| now somebody who _did_ get the vaccine now needs that ICU
| bed, and they die because you 're wasting a perfectly good
| ICU slot because you "made a personal choice."
|
| Your rights end where the rights of others begin, this is the
| fundamental rule of modern western society above all others.
| Be very careful when you think that doesn't apply to you, not
| all mistakes can be corrected.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > involuntary manslaughtering them
|
| Oh please. The hyperbole is getting real old.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Is it though? If it's a personal choice, why is drunk
| driving banned, and why do we have seatbelt and helmet
| laws?
|
| If you know that you feel sick, and haven't been
| vaccinated, yet go to work at a nursing home and end up
| spreading a breakthrough infection that kills an
| immunocompromised resident, is that not manslaughter? How
| is it different from knowingly getting in a car when
| intoxicated, and then causing a deadly accident?
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Comparing something completely in your control to a virus
| that you can still get even with the vaccine is
| inappropriate a best, disingenuous at worst.
| subroutine wrote:
| Drinking and driving is banned because it increases the
| probability of causing harm yourself and others.
| DFHippie wrote:
| You can crash your car even while sober. And you can
| arrive home safely even while drunk. You don't have
| "complete control" over whether you crash. But the
| responsible thing to do is exercise what control you do
| have. Yes you could catch and spread the virus even after
| vaccinated but it is still irresponsible to disregard
| this and risk the lives and livelihoods of others. It is
| a trivial request and the consequences of spreading the
| virus are non-trivial.
| lghh wrote:
| > If you know that you feel sick
|
| Considering you can be contagious before you feel sick, I
| think the point is even more valid.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| >and why do we have seatbelt and helmet laws?
|
| I don't have the slightest idea. It would be like making
| sugar or alcohol illegal as it merely involves the person
| wearing the seatbelt or helmet.
| [deleted]
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| I went down the rabbit hole of looking at COVID cases in
| Scotland, where vaccinations are quite common. It's worth
| considering all of the numbers here.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-53511877
| jpxw wrote:
| The fact that it's a personal choice doesn't mean that both
| choices are equally correct.
|
| IMHO, unless you're a hermit, and excluding certain other
| extremely rare edge cases, the only moral choice is taking
| it.
| trhway wrote:
| >the only moral choice is taking it.
|
| And walking around after that still spreading the virus
| because you wouldn't feel the symptoms. The vaccinated
| people look to be the main source of infection these days.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Which is why in high infection areas, the vaccinated
| should still be wearing masks.
| jpxw wrote:
| Vaccinated people are way less likely to get infected.
|
| And I don't think there's any evidence that vaccinated
| people have higher viral loads with less symptoms - that
| would be extremely surprising if true. I understand that
| vaccinated people can have high viral loads in breakout
| cases, but presumably in those cases they're symptomatic
| - I don't recall seeing any analysis of this.
|
| Please feel free to prove me wrong.
| trhway wrote:
| The chances of infection for unvaccinated is 4 times of
| that for vaccinated. They have the same load - Wisconsin
| study for example, without control for symptoms. They
| have less symptoms - that is being tought by everybody
| everywhere. Putting these facts together is obvious.
| [deleted]
| jpxw wrote:
| Pros vs cons of taking natural immunity into account:
|
| Pros:
|
| - An extremely small number of people who would get side effects
| now wouldn't
|
| Cons:
|
| - Logistics: you now need to perform a blood test on every single
| person in the country, process the results, send out vaccine
| invites based on the results, and set up some system where people
| can prove their blood test results. None of the aforementioned
| components currently exist. You also need to come up with some
| arbitrary threshold for "enough" antibodies.
|
| - Cost: the blood test costs 4x as much as the vaccine, from what
| I see in other comments
|
| - Incentives: you risk incentivising vaccine skeptics to
| deliberately contract COVID
| postalrat wrote:
| We've already don't plenty of covid tests on people throughout
| the past year or so. Why not start with giving anyone who has a
| previous positive test a card saying they have the best
| possible protection.
| bitcurious wrote:
| Some notes:
|
| >Pros:
|
| >- An extremely small number of people who would get side
| effects now wouldn't
|
| What is an 'extremely small' number? The CDC[0] states that
| [Headache..., Fever, Nausea] are "common." Sadly 'common' is
| not defined, but with >100,000,000 folks with natural immunity
| it's hard to imagine a definition of 'common' that squares with
| any reasonable definition of 'extremely small'.
|
| >Cons:
|
| >- Logistics: you now need to perform a blood test on every
| single person in the country,
|
| For a large chunk of the population you have past positive test
| results. For the rest, you just need to offer the option of
| taking a blood test. Furthermore, the majority of the US is
| _already_ vaccinated. So in just a few steps you go from
| "every single person" to, if you allow me to guesstimate,
| somewhere in the single digit percentages.
|
| Also a missing pro:
|
| You have a government whose vaccine policies are grounded in
| proper science and medical ethics, reducing the number of
| vaccine hesitant individuals.
|
| [0]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/af
| ...
| jpxw wrote:
| I suspect that using past positive tests would make things
| even more complicated. It's very easy to underestimate how
| difficult things are at the "tens of millions of people"
| scale, particularly for governments.
|
| > You have a government whose vaccine policies are grounded
| in proper science and medical ethics, reducing the number of
| vaccine hesitant individuals
|
| Circular argument, no? This point is only relevant to whether
| natural immunity should be correct if you accept that your
| own position (natural immunity should be taken into account)
| is correct.
| lmilcin wrote:
| Because it is pretty simple to account for who got the vaccine
| and who did not.
|
| And running entire population through antibody test just to find,
| in most cases, that you still need to administer the vaccine is
| just wasteful.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Just zero the entire block of memory instead of checking the
| state of each bit.
|
| If only these blocks cooperated!
| nanis wrote:
| > running entire population through antibody test just to find
|
| A red herring if I have ever seen one. Assuming for a moment
| the premise that one must be forced to establish their immunity
| to a particular disease before being allowed to leave their
| homes, all that would be required would be to _allow_
| individuals who believe they 've had COVID-19 and do not wish
| to get the vaccine to be able use their test results as proof
| instead of having to show a vaccine card.
|
| Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire
| population take specific tests.
|
| But, the point of these vax passes is for all the authoritarian
| OCD afflicted Munchausen-by-proxy patients to demonstrate that
| they can force their preferences on everyone else just like it
| was the case with masks, distancing, no school, lockdown, etc.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the
| entire population take specific tests.
|
| The red herring is replying to someone saying that a lot of
| tests would have to be done with a denial that people would
| be forced to take tests.
|
| Also, this _would_ require that some authority would need to
| have those people take specific tests, monitored and tracked
| in a specific way. Allowing people to claim to have had it
| based on their own documentation and choice of tests is like
| allowing job applicants to supply their own drug test
| results: not completely dependable.
|
| I'd be all for those people getting a vax pass. I wish all of
| the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow, and the
| rest of us could stay home for a week.
| nanis wrote:
| > I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid
| tomorrow
|
| Nice.
|
| > and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
|
| Feel free to isolate yourself as long as you wish, but it
| sounds like you are feeling a little envious that other
| people were able to have fuller lives during this period.
|
| You might want to read https://amzn.to/3hxFCFa
|
| Also, note the comment I am replying to said:
|
| >> > running entire population through antibody test just
| to find
|
| So, I don't know what game you are playing.
| president wrote:
| I can guarantee there was more waste in the form of billions of
| money lost and human productivity and lives lost from locking
| down the world than if we just told scared people to stay at
| home at the beginning of the pandemic.
| lmilcin wrote:
| If you remember, nobody wanted to be first (except China) to
| tell their population to stay at home.
|
| And then they did not wait until we got rid of the virus but
| were quick to tell people to get out and enjoy as soon as the
| infection rates fell a little bit.
|
| If you look at this algorithm, it works like a thermostat. A
| dumb regulator designed _TO REGULATE TEMPERATURE AT A
| CONSTANT LEVEL_. Yes, that 's what the policy ensured -- that
| we are keeping infection rates.
|
| Not that this is important now. We are living with
| consequences of these decisions and the best we could do
| would be to vaccinate as many people as possible as fast as
| possible to prevent as many unnecessary tragedies.
| president wrote:
| Well, that is my point. I don't think there should have
| ever been regulations on what you could and couldn't do.
| Like I mentioned, scared people can stay home and others
| can go out and take precautions and manage their own risk.
| Saying the pandemic can only end when everyone gets their
| shots is basically denying science especially given
| articles like the one posted by OP. Remember, they could
| end the pandemic right now if they wanted to. The pandemic
| designation is a human-made one.
| ffggvv wrote:
| i don't see how it'd be wasteful to know how many people have
| natural immunity. seems quite useful actually even if we
| determine they should still get vaccine
| lmilcin wrote:
| You can get to know how many people have natural immunity
| without testing them all.
|
| In a country as large as US it would be enough to test
| probably one in 10 thousand people to get accurate
| statistics.
| nradov wrote:
| The UK public health officials have been doing random
| population sampling with antibody tests throughout the
| pandemic.
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healtha
| n...
|
| Unfortunately that never really happened in the US. There
| were a few small seroprevalence studies in limited areas at
| specific times but nothing consistent on a nationwide
| basis.
|
| Also note that there is more to immunity than antibodies,
| so assaying antibody levels alone will underestimate the
| level of immunity in the population. We should also be
| testing memory cell activity now that a test is approved.
|
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-
| announcements/coronavi...
| jpxw wrote:
| I think you severely underestimate how hard it would be to
| organise every single person in the country having a blood
| test, and then sending out invites etc based on the results
| of those tests.
| shmatt wrote:
| and more so, its extremely hard to track peoples blood test.
| Adobe Acrobat can easily change anyones name on a piece of
| paper with a blood test result, there wouldn't be a way to
| confirm this person has antibodies
|
| In Israel a high antibody blood test gives you a "vaccine
| passport" for 6 months.
|
| ...to get that, you sign up for the blood test using your
| government ID # (SSN for the US), the government gets your
| results before you do, and the government issues you an
| encrypted barcode that can only be decrypted by a government
| built mobile app that restaurants or stadiums have. They scan
| it and compare to your own ID
|
| Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN
| , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the
| federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody
| ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government
| database?
|
| We could only wish
|
| Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is
| why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
| jstanley wrote:
| Why is any of that easier with vaccination status than with
| antibody status?
| [deleted]
| danans wrote:
| It's not the book-keeping that's the issue, it's the
| physical determination of status.
|
| For antibody status, you have to do an antibody test, which
| is strictly more complex/expensive than a COVID vaccine (it
| took 3 days when I got it done), so it's not viable at
| population scale.
|
| It's similar to the reason that monoclonal antibody therapy
| is not a scalable treatment for COVID infection - better to
| minimize the chance of needing such treatment by just
| getting vaccinated.
| ars wrote:
| > Adobe Acrobat can easily change anyones name on a piece of
| paper with a blood test result
|
| It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID
| cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten -
| and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you
| fill in your own name at home.
|
| > Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples
| SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the
| federal government and have them issue you a federal
| "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a
| government database?
|
| > We could only wish
|
| No we don't. Americans are VERY against that kind of thing.
| Plus Social Security numbers are not supposed to be used as a
| national ID - that's not what they are for.
|
| Not to mention how would you even do that? A Social Security
| card is not ID - you can say whatever number you want when
| getting vaccinated, no one would know.
|
| > Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things.
| This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
|
| No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want
| that. Don't confuse the two.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID
| cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten -
| and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you
| fill in your own name at home.
|
| That's absolutely true, because the government response has
| been disorganized and bullshit. It's also why vax passes
| won't work; because the records are probably trash.
|
| > No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't
| want that. Don't confuse the two.
|
| No, we're really shit at it. Everybody who has been
| vaccinated would love for the government to have kept track
| of it, and would love to be able to ask for or give an easy
| proof of it. In my personal experience, the unvaccinated
| are also liars. They would, of course, not want it to be
| tracked, because they would like to continue to lie.
| proc0 wrote:
| > Because it is pretty simple to account for who got the
| vaccine and who did not.
|
| So it's about tracking people so the government can more easily
| keep the public safe. Let's give them all the power in the
| world to keep us safer!
|
| We should be demanding OPTIONS. Even from a pragmatic
| standpoint, this would convince more people. When they mandate
| only one thing, it's as if they are pushing towards a
| dictatorship just for our own safety. How convenient.
|
| I'm sorry, but people are a bit too eager to go there just
| because of fear. We were in this situation with the Patriot Act
| and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Governments
| have a track record of doing this!
| not2b wrote:
| The vaccines are cheap (government paid about $20 per dose to buy
| them in mass quantities), safe, and effective, and in plentiful
| supply (at least in developed countries). Even if natural
| immunity provides some protection, better to just get everyone
| vaccinated to maximize the protection, because it would cost more
| to determine that someone has effective antibodies than to just
| give them the shot. The only reason people are resisting this is
| because there has been an antivax propaganda campaign.
| sk2020 wrote:
| Phase 3 trials won't be complete for years. There is a
| revolving door between the leadership at the FDA and Pfizer.
| Countries with high vaccination rates have not reported the
| expected reduction in cases or deaths. The non-pharmaceutical
| interventions adopted by some states appear to have no impact
| on outcomes when compared to states without them. FDA approval
| of Comirnaty, which nobody got, is a pretty transparent
| rhetorical stratagem. The guarantees of safety are testimonials
| from people who either provided material support in the
| creation of this virus or inflicted Microsoft on the world (I'm
| not sure which is worse).
|
| You may not find these (non-exhaustive) reasons compelling, but
| I don't think hesitancy is the result of some unnamed cabal of
| villains casting aspersions on the pure intentions of the
| American politburo and pharmaceutical industry.
| neuronexmachina wrote:
| In US culture this seems like it would potentially set up some
| perverse incentives among anti-vaxxers, leading to things like
| the "measles parties" that fueled the the 2019 NYC measles
| outbreak:
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200527181329.h...
| defaulty wrote:
| We are well past that. It's not that hard to say:
|
| 1) If you have natural immunity already, great! Provide
| evidence of your positive test
|
| 2) If you don't have evidence that you've been SARS-COV-19
| positive, go get a shot so you don't have a severe
| hospitalization.
|
| 3) No, we don't suggest getting infected on purpose over the
| shot. Go read #2
|
| Instead, the US federal government is being purposefully
| ignorant of how effective natural immunity is.
| [deleted]
| babesh wrote:
| Internal politics.
|
| The pseudo left power structure wants to use covid to increase
| their power by training/compelling people to comply and by using
| the right outrage to rile their base.
|
| The right reflexively acts against whatever the left does. So
| they are reflexively against vaccines.
|
| The people in power are mostly just hypocrites who are in it for
| the power and manipulate the masses to amass power.
| rajin444 wrote:
| It's very concerning that the president is saying things like
| "your refusal has cost all of us" and "our patience is wearing
| this" when talking to people with natural immunity who have not
| received the vaccine.
|
| As president, he should be looking for every reason to not
| alienate his own citizens. It seems like he's doing the opposite.
| I'm not really sure why. My best guess is politics has become all
| about polarization lately.
| lithos wrote:
| The president would not be in the news if they acted reasonably
| and tried to work across party lines. There's always going to
| be someone more extreme, louder, and obnoxious that will sell
| more ad views along with supporting whatever pet narrative the
| publication wants.
| danaris wrote:
| "Trying to work across party lines" went out the window when
| the Republicans decided that "prevent _absolutely anything_
| the Democrats want to do, no matter how objectively
| beneficial it would be or whether it was fully supported by
| Republicans in the past " was a viable and acceptable method
| of getting re-elected.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| "If the public-health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the
| doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first
| in line to take it -- absolutely," the California senator
| said during the first and only vice-presidential debate.
|
| "But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not
| taking it." -Kamala Harris
|
| Let's not act like both parties don't do the exact same
| thing, eh?
| syshum wrote:
| Unification in the eyes of many is "Do what we say, we gave you
| a choice, you choose wrong so now we have have to use force"
|
| That is not unification or pluralism. They (including democrats
| and republicans but today right now mainly democrats) want a
| political mono-culture and are willing to use force to get it.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| At times of national ... tragedy ... we sometimes hear about
| rallying behind the flag. The government's rhetoric seems like
| a ham-fisted effort at that.
|
| Unfortunately, national US politics have devolved in some
| respects to a food fight of attacks on political opponents.
| Some viewed Trump's tax policies in this light, disfavoring
| residents of so-called 'Blue' states. It would, unfortunately,
| be very easy to recharacterize Biden's work-based vaccination
| requirement as an effort to get his staunchest political
| opponents fired, nationwide. I personally hope both sides can
| find a path to a more conciliatory approach to policy.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| The article clearly states that one of the reasons for
| shrugging natural immunity is politics, there are prominent GOP
| figures supporting natural immunity in lieu of vaccines. So
| being against natural immunity becomes not only a public health
| policy but a political attack on one's opponents and applauded
| by the base. This is what Biden is doing.
| [deleted]
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >As president, he should be looking for every reason to not
| alienate his own citizens.
|
| Through the pandemic, there have been ~40,000,000 COVID
| cases[0] in the US, and ~120,000,000 people are completely
| unvaccinated[1].
|
| As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many
| folks who have _not_ had COVID who are unvaccinated than there
| are those who have had COVID.
|
| Given that huge disparity, it's not surprising that the
| relevant public health authorities (which are mostly state and
| local, with support from the Federal government) are pushing
| vaccinations very hard.
|
| I'd also point out that there are actual studies of the
| efficacy of COVID vaccines, while the data for "natural"
| immunity is much spottier.
|
| As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect
| people than we do about how well the immune systems of those
| who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection.
|
| What's more, it's not the President's job to be everyone's
| friend. It's their job (among other things) to promote the
| general welfare of the population. Getting as many people as
| possible vaccinated is definitely within that purview.
|
| Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't give
| me a pony! He's alienating me!"
|
| [0] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu
|
| [1] https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-
| st...
| peteradio wrote:
| Those are COVID cases not population level estimates. Try 40
| million x (pick a number between 2 and 5).
|
| I won't be bullied into getting an unnecessary procedure just
| because the burden of proof has not been met (re: spotty
| studies).
|
| > Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't
| give me a pony! He's alienating me!"
|
| That seems uncalled for.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I won't be bullied into getting an unnecessary procedure
| just because the burden of proof has not been met (re:
| spotty studies).
|
| Bullied? Where I live (NYC), they will _pay_ you $100[0] to
| get vaccinated. I wish more folks would "bully" me that
| way.
|
| I'd add, that at least in the US, no one is _forcing_
| anyone to have an unwanted procedure. Every single
| "vaccine mandate" has come with the caveat that you can
| avoid being vaccinated by getting tested regularly.
|
| As to whether or not a COVID vaccination is necessary or
| not is, for some strange reason, a controversial question.
|
| Have you been vaccinated against Polio? If so, why is that
| different than COVID? Not being snarky here, just genuinely
| curious as to how you see those as different.
|
| [0] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/coronavirus/vaccines/vaccine-
| incen...
| peteradio wrote:
| Given a 100 bucks if you do, denied admission everywhere
| and job threatened if you don't.
|
| I did not make the decision to vaccinate against polio,
| that was made for me. I trust my parents made an educated
| decision and its beside the point now, I am vaccinated.
| Does polio vaccine manufacturer have readily available
| risk/benefit data for people who've already had polio?
| Covid vaccines don't provide this data so burden of proof
| is not met. I'd judge polio vaccine the same way under
| the same circumstances.
| syshum wrote:
| Pretty sure you numbers are not factoring in children under
| the age they legally allowed to get the vaccine, because
| those numbers are way high if you exclude the ineligible
|
| "All Persons" is not a valid statistic
|
| >As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations
| protect people than we do about how well the immune systems
| of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from
| reinfection
|
| We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine
| seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how
| much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is
| why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster
| and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a
| big unknown right now
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Pretty sure you numbers are not factoring in children
| under the age they legally allowed to get the vaccine,
| because those numbers are way high if you exclude the
| ineligible
|
| A fair point. There were approximately 45,000,000 children
| under the age of 12 in the US in 2019[0].
|
| I'd guess that's probably still relatively accurate.
|
| Removing those children from my calculation, there are
| still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are
| estimated to have contracted the virus.
|
| >We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine
| seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how
| much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This
| is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a
| booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo
| etc is a big unknown right now
|
| Another good point. I'd point out that while ongoing
| immunity is a big (and unanswered) question, bringing R0[1]
| down in high infection areas _right now_ can significantly
| reduce the impact on our health care systems and economy.
|
| What the situation will look like in 12-18 months is
| important, but given the high transmissibility and case
| rates in some areas of the US, increasing the ability of
| folks to avoid serious health consequences _right now_ is,
| arguably, even more so.
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/457786/number-of-
| childre...
|
| [1] https://www.mastersindatascience.org/resources/r0-infec
| tious...
| betwixthewires wrote:
| > Removing those children from my calculation, there are
| still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are
| estimated to have contracted the virus.
|
| Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are
| unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from
| past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible,
| that leaves 35 million, _less than_ the number of people
| who are immune from having contracted the virus.
|
| That of course also doesn't take into account other
| people who cannot take it, and the number of unconfirmed
| cases of immunity from having contracted the virus. I
| don't have any estimates for those numbers so I won't
| speculate on what they are besides saying that the number
| of unvaccinated Americans that can and need to be
| vaccinated is probably a lot less than 35 million.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are
| unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from
| past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible,
| that leaves 35 million, less than the number of people
| who are immune from having contracted the virus.
|
| Note that I did not mention _immunity_. I mentioned
| vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.
|
| Contracted/recovered from the virus != vaccinated.
|
| As to levels of immunity from previous infection, I made
| no statement whatsoever.
|
| Edit: clarified my initial statement vis a vis
| vaccination vs. immunity.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| Well you're talking about 45 million ineligible children
| and then not taking that number into account, I see no
| reason why you've talked about them then.
|
| > Removing those children from my calculation, there are
| still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are
| estimated to have contracted the virus.
|
| This is what I'm responding to. It is incorrect.
| 120-40-45=35. 35 is far and away from almost twice as
| much as 40.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >This is what I'm responding to. It is incorrect.
| 120-40-45=35. 35 is far and away from almost twice as
| much as 40.
|
| Actually, the calculation is 120 (total unvaccinated)-45
| (children under 12)=75.
|
| Whether or not someone has contracted the virus or not is
| irrelevant to whether or not they have (or can) receive a
| vaccination.
|
| Whether or not those 40 million cases have some level of
| _immunity_ is also irrelevant to whether or not they are
| _vaccinated_.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| From your parent comment above:
|
| > As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice
| as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated
| than there are those who have had COVID.
|
| So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is
| irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40
| million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other?
| Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're
| just going to disregard them?
|
| > Removing those children from my calculation...
|
| You're not removing them from a calculation, you're
| removing them from the 120 number _and then ignoring the
| fact that you 've also already removed 40 from that
| number, which was the calculation you're referring to._
|
| Why even have this conversation if you're just going to
| arbitrarily decide to not consider a factor you've
| already considered prior? What are you trying to
| accomplish with this discussion?
| Panther34543 wrote:
| Your numbers are incorrect. The ~40,000,000 number represents
| cases _confirmed_ through administered tests. The true number
| is probably somewhere closer to ~150,000,000[0]. Your comment
| is based on an incorrect assumption.
|
| [0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-
| updates/burd... (the estimates here do not account for
| infections before February 2020 or after May 2021, which
| means all early infections as well as the "delta surge" are
| unaccounted for).
| Pxtl wrote:
| ... yeah, this is not going to be a productive comment thread.
| Sadly, COVID has been so politicized that I tend to say "sit
| down, shut up, and let the public health people drive". Even if
| they're wrong, they're close-enough to right to satisfy me and
| that's better than opening public health up to debate.
| dougmwne wrote:
| Productive or not, the debate must go on. It is the foundation
| of our republics.
| kuraudo wrote:
| I think everyone should get the vaccine, but this is the kind
| of comment that births brand new skeptics.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I agree that these discussions aren't very productive, but I
| take a different approach: let people decide for themselves.
| volkk wrote:
| > Even if they're wrong
|
| well that's very loaded, as in, if they're wrong to the point
| of having long term damage to your body, then probably..don't
| just get it...right? albeit, we've seen no proof that this is
| the case at all thus far.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Here's the thing, the dilemma isn't "should I get the shot or
| shouldn't I get the shot".
|
| The dilemma is "should I support the public experts even if
| their approach might have some minor flaws, or should I
| dissent and risk feeding credibility into their opponents
| that are prolonging this pandemic and getting innocent people
| killed as they clog up the hospital system".
|
| This is a definite case where "perfect is the enemy of the
| good".
| mactitan wrote:
| From this article: "When the vaccine was rolled out the goal
| should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should
| still be the focus," says Memoli. Such risk stratification may
| have complicated logistics, but it would also require more
| nuanced messaging. "A lot of public health people have this
| notion that if the public is told that there's even the slightest
| bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won't get it," he
| says. For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. "I always
| think it's much better to be very clear and honest about what we
| do and don't know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow
| people to make decisions for themselves."
|
| The authors here agree (I'd really like professionals to discuss
| this for it's highly disturbing; but obvious why it wasn't
| communicated to subjects)
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/
|
| THE RISK OF ADE IN COVID-19 VACCINES IS NON-THEORETICAL AND
| COMPELLING
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-antibody-depen...
| mactitan wrote:
| Thx, that's promising. I find it interesting that the fda has
| to play games: technically the vaccine is still under
| emergency use authorization & not approved (last paragraph)
|
| https://www.fda.gov/media/150386/download
| [deleted]
| wrl wrote:
| That article was published on 4th December, 2020. Have the
| concerns expressed therein borne out in the 10 month interim?
| mactitan wrote:
| Yes it's interesting that they are using previous corona
| profiles. You would think a yr is long enough but I'm patient
| and will hedge my bet by losing my job.
| zamadatix wrote:
| But it was rolled out to those at highest risk first no? It
| wasn't until many months later my wife (who wasn't employed in
| healthcare at the time and is relatively young) was able to get
| scheduled. By that point it had become clear the at risk
| population hadn't had an opposite effect than intended.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| > US CDC estimates that SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 100
| million Americans
|
| That's probably why it doesn't count?
|
| Would clearly cut into the profit lines of big pharma.
|
| If you're extra skeptical, you could also argue Western
| governments are finding opportunities to accustom their citizens
| to more top down government intrusions into their lives, e.g.
| shifting towards a citizen management model that's used today by
| many non Western nations.
| collegeburner wrote:
| Yes, places like NYC are creating a system of getting entry to
| many places only if you present government authorization. Then
| they can start adding more conditions to that authorization.
| Maybe a red state later adds not being a felon or a blue state
| adds not being on some red flag list. After all, you can still
| eat, so it's okay. They represent systems for excluding certain
| classes of people from society.
| colpabar wrote:
| I'm extremely interested to see whether voting locations will
| start requiring proof of vaccination.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Someone might have already tried to implement this un-
| ironically -- only a matter of when probably.
|
| That SCOTUS case would be quite interesting to watch.
| nanis wrote:
| I would be interested in seeing if NYC will require the
| same proof of identity for voting that they do for their
| vax pass.
| wolfgang42 wrote:
| I'm serving as a poll worker in SF today. There's a section
| in our manual (page 65, there's a PDF online somewhere)
| about what to do if a voter is not wearing a facial
| covering, the TLDR of which is to politely offer them a
| mask or curbside voting, and then let them vote regardless.
| We are a _long_ way off from requiring vaccination.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| Yeah, it's really horrible when I have to show my age
| passport to get served a beer, too.
|
| Edit: moreover, the party that wants fewer restrictions on
| voting is the same as the party that wants people to get
| vaccinated. And the party that is desperately trying to stop
| as many people from voting as possible is also very pro-
| disease. So this seems like a pretty unlikely scenario.
| betwixthewires wrote:
| You kid, but that's a violation of your privacy as well and
| shouldn't exist.
|
| That change in the US at least was also very contentious
| when it occurred, and subsequently every time the legal age
| was changed.
|
| But say we decide that that is OK, which it appears most
| people have, they're still not really comparable because
| one is based on the assumption that you're too young to get
| inebriated responsibly, whereas this is proof you've had a
| medical procedure performed on your body. I'm sure you can
| see the glaring difference, one is significantly more
| extreme and invasive than the other.
| mioasndo wrote:
| I think you're 100% right on both counts.
| amalcon wrote:
| Do we actually believe that "big pharma" (in the form of 3
| companies that make US approved vaccines) have greater
| influence than all of the collective industries that would
| benefit from a looser mandate (so long as the public trusted
| it)? Pharma is more influential than the _entire service
| sector_ , plus most manufacturing, and anything else that
| functionally requires people to be in the same room?
|
| If you believe they are, then I accept that we have different
| starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your
| starting point. If you believe they're not, then I think it
| makes sense to look for another explanation.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _Do we actually believe that "big pharma" (in the form of 3
| companies that make US approved vaccines) have greater
| influence than all of the collective industries_
|
| They only need more influence in key places like FDA and CDC,
| not more influence overall, to push health policies.
| amalcon wrote:
| The FDA and CDC are not involved in vaccine mandates. Even
| the coming federal mandate is through OSHA. They issue
| recommendations, but so do a lot of other influential
| people and organizations.
|
| That said, this is a real phenomenon and worth bearing in
| mind when doing this type of reasoning.
| [deleted]
| glogla wrote:
| I work for "big pharma" - we were one of the companies that
| tried to make COVID vaccine. We failed - it worked but was
| not as good as Pfizer and others (though if those didn't work
| out, ours would still be worth it).
|
| Nobody is disappointed that we didn't succeed. It would be
| great PR - "company X is saving the world" but it would not
| make us all that much money, considering how much world
| governments are paying for COVID vaccines.
|
| I find the claims of big pharma manipulating to selling more
| vaccines dubious.
| mioasndo wrote:
| So you're just going to pretend that the entire media and
| political establishment (at least in US) as well as many
| industries (ex. big tech) are not strongly supportive of big
| pharma when it comes to the vaccines?
|
| Are you going to pretend people are not being actively
| censored, banned, cancelled, fired for being vaccine-
| sceptical?
|
| Do you not believe that the extensively-documented mass
| manipulation of public opinion is a thing?
|
| If this is the fantasy land you want to base your reasoning
| in, then I accept that we have different starting points but
| your reasoning is compelling under your starting point.
| amalcon wrote:
| The media, political establishment (or at least half of
| it), and other industries are supportive of vaccine
| mandates. These loose groups of people can indeed influence
| the public, and are using this ability to promote vaccines.
| These premises are uncontroversial.
|
| The problem is that some folks are jumping to the
| conclusion that they are doing this because they want to
| sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big
| pharma. Either this is for an altruistic reason (hah!) or
| big pharma is actually more powerful than those people (or,
| maybe, that isn't actually happening).
|
| I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest
| economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I
| see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
| adamrezich wrote:
| have you ever sat through the commercials of American TV
| news stations? pharma has a directly controlling interest
| in the media. this should be uncontroversial.
| amalcon wrote:
| I watched broadcast news in America two days ago, in
| fact, though it's somewhat unusual (I prefer to read
| news). I do remember some pharma ads. I also remember ads
| for retail stores, chain restaurants, and tourism (an
| amusement park, a cruise line, and a more general "come
| visit place X").
|
| Even if we presume that advertisers are the only
| stakeholders (forgetting, let's say, investors), I'd
| disagree that pharma has a controlling interest in the
| media.
| poorjohnmacafee wrote:
| Regulatory capture is understood and happens in other
| industries (e.g. the MIC). Feel is pretty naive if you don't
| think politicians are willing to incur massive opportunity
| costs to society at large in order to enrich themselves and
| the establishment that they essentially work for.
| gorwell wrote:
| DR. GUPTA: "I get calls all the time, people say, 'I've already
| had COVID, I'm protected.' And now the study says maybe even more
| protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the
| vaccine?"
|
| DR. FAUCI: "I don't have a really firm answer for you on that."
|
| https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1436417459314171904
| SigmundA wrote:
| I think the full response better convey's his position:
|
| "You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a
| really firm answer for you on that. That's something that we're
| going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the
| response.
|
| The one thing that paper from Israel didn't tell you is whether
| or not as high as the protection is with natural infection,
| what's the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine?
| So it is conceivable that you got infected, you're protected,
| but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time.
|
| So, I think that is something that we need to sit down and
| discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out,
| it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what
| you said."
| gorwell wrote:
| The point is that they STILL haven't considered prior
| immunity. Why not? That is a bizarre oversight, especially at
| this point.
| [deleted]
| hammock wrote:
| What Fauci doesn't mention is that there isn't just one paper
| from Israel.
|
| There are 15 large-scale studies.
|
| Every single one demonstrates that natural immunity is at
| least as protective as the jab.
|
| And depending on when the study was done protection is shown
| for over 10 months (basically however long as whatever data
| was available). Many of the papers logically extend the
| protection to lifetime in their conclusions.
|
| https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-15-studies-that-
| indi...
| mmazing wrote:
| Yeah but it's more fun to ruffle people's feathers with a
| soundbite, apparently.
| jtdev wrote:
| I think we can safely say that counting natural immunity would
| harm too many $$$ dollars and prevent politicians from maximizing
| the tragedy of C19 for political, power, and financial gain.
| eltondegeneres wrote:
| OP keeps posting articles pushing the idea that COVID-19
| infection alone is sufficient to protect individuals.
| [deleted]
| spoonjim wrote:
| OP also keeps posting articles pushing the idea that hydrogen
| and oxygen alone are sufficient to create water.
| hstan4 wrote:
| "Articles" or a scientific study referencing countless other
| scientific, data-backed studies?
| RIMR wrote:
| Despite having an account since 2018, they have only posted 5
| submissions. 4 of them were posted in the past 3 weeks, and all
| have to do questioning the viability of the vaccines.
|
| I know we want to have a space here to freely discuss things
| without being dismissed, but I also think enough of us have
| managed enough websites to understand that this account
| shouldn't be taken seriously.
|
| I'm not saying that they are a bot either. Their comments
| suggest otherwise. But this person has, after nearly three
| years on this site, decided that now is the time to start
| submitting articles to the front page, and all of them have
| been about the same politically controversial thing, so this
| person clearly has an agenda they are trying to push.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| If they are pushing/submitting based on actual facts and
| studies, then I don't see the problem. It seems like the
| overall argument is following a pattern of
|
| - A vaccination is currently a requirement for participating
| in society.
|
| - There are studies showing that having the virues is just as
| effective (or more) than a vaccination.
|
| - There are places where "having the vaccination" meets the
| requirement for participating in society.
|
| And, from there, discussing why the US doesn't also follow
| this logic.
|
| Now, I can't speak to the studies validity. And an argument
| can be made that it's harder to verify that someone has had
| the virus already or some such. Or one of any of a dozen
| other reasons "why not". But having a discussion of the "why
| not" seems perfectly reasonable.
| peteradio wrote:
| I admit that this has me fired up. But that is really the
| long and short of the explanation. You see "pushing agenda" I
| see "championing underrepresented not just opinion but facts
| in the face of government overreach and media blackout".
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > not just opinion but facts
|
| You can even argue that they're not facts, that they're
| wrong... but the OP is coming from the viewpoint that they
| appear to be facts. And, as such, it seems the OP is
| posting in good faith.
| gojomo wrote:
| Maybe it is?
|
| Many other countries are fine considering documented prior
| infection as equivalent to vaccination for compliance purposes.
| There are some results hinting infection-recovery alone is
| better than vaccination alone, especially versus later
| variants.
|
| The US CDC etc seems slow-moving on key scientific results, in
| ways that are unnecessarily increasing social conflict. But
| they're not even paid by the click!
| timr wrote:
| The current data suggests that's true, which is why it counts
| in other countries, and the US stance is seen as anomalous.
| rscho wrote:
| It doesn't count in at least Switzerland, and I believe all
| through western Europe as well...
| vinay427 wrote:
| It does count in Switzerland.
|
| Source: I live here. Also, the government: https://www.bag.
| admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-...
|
| > People who have recovered - what to do
|
| > You can get a COVID certificate if the COVID infection
| was confirmed with a positive PCR test and occurred no more
| than 180 days ago.
|
| > You can request the COVID certificate from your cantonal
| authority using an online form. It will then be sent to you
| by post.
|
| > Please note:
|
| > As the COVID certificate is compatible with the EU
| Digital COVID Certificate, the standards applying to the EU
| certificate must also serve as a basis for the Swiss
| certificate. This means that a certificate is only issued
| to people who have recovered following a positive PCR test.
| rscho wrote:
| I also live here and additionally I'm an MD. But I didn't
| check sources before posting ('cause I'm feeling lazy, a
| mortal sin in covid threads).
| sprafa wrote:
| You're wrong.
|
| The EU digital certificate is for - you had the vaccine -
| you had a negative result - you recovered from the virus.
|
| Recovering from the virus gives you 180 days of
| certification. https://www.sns24.gov.pt/guia/certificado-
| digital-covid-da-u...
| Pxtl wrote:
| It's still alarming to see a user-account whose contributions
| are banging consistently on this singular issue.
| kzrdude wrote:
| Can you be more specific, who does it protect? That doesn't
| seem to apply to this article.
| boldlybold wrote:
| Natural immunity is durable and long-lasting, perhaps moreso
| than the mRNA vaccines. What's the issue?
| graeme wrote:
| Edit: goddamnit, I see this is being downvoted despite being
| 100% correct. Yes, infections generate strong immunity. Here is
| a study:
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
|
| ------------------
|
| It is pretty useful though. Studies have found it compares well
| with vaccines or better.
|
| However like vaccines it also fades. And prior immunity +
| infection is way better than prior immunity, so being infected
| no reason not to get vaccinated.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >It is pretty useful though. Studies have found it compares
| well with vaccines or better.
|
| My understanding was that there were many more studies of
| vaccine protection than immunity after infection.
|
| Some links to those studies of immunity after infection would
| be greatly appreciated.
| gojomo wrote:
| There are more RCTs about vaccination - because of the
| taboo against human challenge trials, even among the
| vaccinated.
|
| But there's more _evidence_ for natural immunity, from the
| 1B+ people worldwide who 've had COVID & recovered.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| A Systematic Review of the Protective Effect of Prior SARS-
| CoV-2 Infection on Repeat Infection https://www.medrxiv.org
| /content/10.1101/2021.08.27.21262741v...
|
| Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced
| immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections https
| ://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
|
| Prior COVID-19 protects against reinfection, even in the
| absence of detectable antibodies https://www.journalofinfec
| tion.com/article/S0163-4453(21)002...
|
| SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared
| with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a
| large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN)
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
|
| Risk of Reinfection After Seroconversion to Severe Acute
| Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): A
| Population-based Propensity-score Matched Cohort Study
| https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-
| article/doi/10.1093/cid...
|
| Assessment of the Risk of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
| Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Reinfection in an Intense
| Reexposure Setting https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-
| article/doi/10.1093/cid...
|
| Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection 1 Year After Primary
| Infection in a Population in Lombardy, Italy https://jamane
| twork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
|
| SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positivity protects against reinfection
| for at least seven months with 95% efficacy https://www.sci
| encedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953702...
|
| Association of SARS-CoV-2 Seropositive Antibody Test With
| Risk of Future Infection https://jamanetwork.com/journals/j
| amainternalmedicine/fullar...
|
| Quantifying the risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection over time
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34043841/
|
| Longitudinal observation of antibody responses for 14
| months after SARS-CoV-2 infection
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325385/
|
| Persistence of neutralizing antibodies a year after SARS-
| CoV-2 infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/202
| 1.07.13.21260426v...
|
| Antibody Responses 8 Months after Asymptomatic or Mild
| SARS-CoV-2 Infection
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/
|
| Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected
| individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06
| .01.21258176v...
| nobody9999 wrote:
| Thank you!
| babesh wrote:
| Sometimes on Hacker News, you won't get a right answer because it
| isn't in the Overton window.
| babesh wrote:
| dang
| leifg wrote:
| The argument seems fine to me. Let people with natural immunity
| have the same privileges as vaccinated people assuming they have
| a piece of paper from a federal entity to prove it.
|
| The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine
| skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on
| purpose.
| gojomo wrote:
| Seeking infection may cure their skepticism faster than any
| amount of scolding!
| leifg wrote:
| If catching COVID is only a risk to the people catching it
| I'd agree.
|
| However by catching COVID you are also a burden to the health
| care system and possibly take away a hospital bed for someone
| who actually needs it (already happening). I do have a
| problem with that.
| gojomo wrote:
| Theoretically, and in places of transient surges, sure. But
| most of US isn't currently at that level of health-care
| rationing.
|
| You know who else puts others at risk? Vaccinated people,
| overconfident, potentially walking around with their
| asymptomatic breakthrough infections (whereas an unvaxed
| person with a rougher case would self-isolate). But we live
| with that, because people can still protect themselves with
| vaccination, & by choosing to only come within infection-
| range of other vaxed people.
|
| It's looking increasingly likelt that natural immunity is
| stronger against future variants, or stronger against
| transmission (mucosal immunity in nose/airways instead of
| in bloodstream), than vaccination alone. So when a young
| healthy person who's unlikely to land in an ICU gets &
| recovers from a natural infection, they might be _net-
| lowering_ their community 's risks, over the long run,
| versus mere vax-immunity. These population-level effects
| are often weird & non-linear that way.
|
| I'd say, to the maximum extent possible: let their immune
| systems, and their peers, & their communities, learn in the
| way they choose. Some lessons are necessarily painful.
| Those with greater concern should keep their distance in
| the meantime - but realize the fastest & surest way to
| broad safety, via deeper herd immunity, is to let the
| laggards work through their hard lessons ASAP.
| [deleted]
| howlong wrote:
| A great deal of burden on the health care system -- perhaps
| even more than completely eliminating COVID -- could be
| alleviated by people dedicating themselves to better diet
| and exercise. Why not mandate that?
| tzs wrote:
| Poor diet and exercise produce a fairly steady burden on
| the health care system. We need to provide more health
| care than we would if people ate better and exercised
| more, but as diet and exercise deteriorated over the
| decades there was plenty of time to slowly expand the
| health care system to meet the increased need.
|
| COVID places a much more dynamic burden on the health
| care system.
|
| It's similar to the way there are many people could
| manage to afford a $10/month expense for the next 10
| years ($1200 total) but would have a very hard time
| dealing with am extra one-time $200 expense.
| leifg wrote:
| OK that argument has been debunked a million times but
| here we go:
|
| 1. No one is talking about mandates 2. Yes living
| unhealthy is a burden on the health care system. But I am
| fine with that as long as your actions only have
| consequences in your own life. With an infectious disease
| that's different because you suddenly have a multiplier.
| I didn't hear about any ICU capacity issues because of
| obese people. 3. We (at least most countries) already
| have measures to increase the overall health of our
| society (smoking bans in certain places, age limits on
| alcohol consumptions, programs in schools to provide
| healthier food in cafeterias, you name it).
| gojomo wrote:
| Once all who want it are vaccinated, and further
| 80-95%-plus of the population is either vax- or post-
| infection- immune, the alleged 'multiplier' of danger-to-
| others is negligible. The protected are protected; those
| who want to take thir chances will hurt themselves, & get
| the painful immunity upgrade, soon enough.
|
| Even with today's HIV treatments, its fatality rate is in
| the range of COVID. (And: living with it is no cakewalk.)
| But we haven't outlawed risky sex. People self-sort into
| compatible risk groupings.
|
| Also, people are most certainly "talking about mandates"
| when they're discussing whether natural immunity should
| grant people the same rights to engage in normal
| activities as vaccination.
| howlong wrote:
| Nothing I said has been debunked.
|
| 1. Lots of people are talking about mandates.
|
| 2. I didn't say anything about ICUs, or about obesity
| spreading to other people. Across _the entire healthcare
| system_ , there could be much alleviation of burden if
| people took dietary and activity-based steps toward being
| healthier.
|
| 3. Banning smoking in public places doesn't stop smoking
| altogether. If the government wanted to end smoking, they
| could "mandate" the complete shutdown of tobacco
| companies. Or the tobacco companies themselves could shut
| down of their own accord. But folks involved care more
| about their business than about the health of their
| "customers". Healthier food in school cafeterias is
| great, but clearly not enough. People are being hammered
| with anti-COVID material left and right; nothing even
| close to that is being done toward pressuring people into
| taking better care of themselves through diet and
| exercise.
| leifg wrote:
| Poor phrasing on my side, I apologize. Your argument has
| not been debunked, it's still a bad one.
|
| 1. You are responding to a comment that didn't talk about
| mandates under an article that says nothing about
| mandates. You are the one who brought it up.
|
| 2 and 3: In isolation you are right, we should probably
| take more measurements towards healthy living. But if you
| only bring that up as a counter point to COVID measures,
| you are at very best making a flawed analogy.
|
| My point is: if there is anything feasible measures we
| can take for healthier living, great we should do that.
| But we should ALSO do something about COVID.
| howlong wrote:
| Perhaps I also had poor phrasing. Let me try again:
|
| We should strive to reduce the COVID burden on the
| emergency / ICU segment of the healthcare system. But I
| believe we could alleviate burden across the entire
| healthcare system if more people ate healthier diets and
| exercised better. Perhaps we could even alleviate _more_
| burden than what could be alleviated by way of completely
| eliminating COVID.
|
| A lot of people are talking about mandating vaccines, and
| there is constant awareness of anti-COVID precautions
| everywhere you look. I think that if the same sort of
| intense campaign was rallied regarding better eating and
| exercise -- basically pressuring people, even borderline
| forcing them -- then we would see better progress in this
| area.
|
| It is unfortunate, I think, that so many resources are
| being put into pressuring people to take the vaccine
| while comparatively little is being put into pressuring
| people to just be healthier overall. Which might in fact
| also help in the face of any virus!
| kuraudo wrote:
| Funnily enough, I am for vaccines just as I am for
| mandatory weight loss across the entire population.
| Banning all unhealthy activities is a given.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain
| vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus
| on purpose.
|
| I think that's a pretty important argument against allowing
| natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. A lot of people will
| go and deliberately infect themselves. Some of them will die.
| They will spread it to others. Many will tie up ICU beds,
| doctors, nurses and other hospital resources, causing tons of
| first- and second-order harm.
| kuraudo wrote:
| I know of several people who purposefully went to get the
| virus in the early stages of 2020: I don't think your worry
| is very far off the mark at all.
| deelowe wrote:
| To what extent has the efficacy of natural immunity been
| characterized? There should be some minimum bar of
| understanding that must be met before something becomes a
| policy even in extreme cases such as these.
| gojomo wrote:
| There's growing evidence one natural infection is better than
| any vax for future immunity. One recent report, based on
| Israeli data:
|
| "Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a
| vaccine"
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-
| cov-2-on...
|
| I love vaccines; especially the Pfizer until further research
| helps lower the Moderna (& Pfizer) doses.
|
| If I'd had COVID, I'd want 1 extra dose, perhaps a half a
| year later, as an extra boost.
|
| But it's unfair - & unscientific - to insist on such doses
| for the proven-recovered (who are also more likely to have
| bad vax reactions).
|
| Other countries are doing this better - just like other
| countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant
| immunity, by delaying 2nds doses to get more people 1st-dose
| vaccinated in early 2021.
|
| Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating
| unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific
| inflexibility.
| deelowe wrote:
| > just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger
| delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses
|
| > Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us &
| generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their
| unscientific inflexibility.
|
| Other countries delayed second doses either due to health
| and safety concerns or supply constraints while the US
| pushed forward with EUA before second dose efficacy was
| fully characterized. To me, this is the opposite of
| bureaucracy.
| gojomo wrote:
| Supply constraints (not anything 'safety' related) were
| the original driving factor for slower 2nd doses
| elsewhere - but it was already confidently conjectured by
| domain experts that a longer spacing would likely be more
| effective. It's even taught in vaccination textbooks,
| pre-COVID, that a delay of at least 2 months is usually
| necessary to train the strongest/longest immune response.
|
| (Much like 'spaced repetition' to consciously memorize
| facts, an immune-response is more-reinforced if a
| separate presentation happens at a distinctly-different
| time, when forgetting has begun but is reversible.)
|
| Thus, those countries that trusted the pre-COVID science
| - like the UK or Canada - delayed 2nd shots for 8 weeks
| or more - giving more of their population the all-
| important 1st-dose sooner, & closely monitoring the
| effects on community cases.
|
| In the meantime, Fauci did interviews insisting the 3/4
| week rapid boosting was "optimal". (That was
| overconfident bluster unsupported by the rushed & limited
| trial data, which other more honest scientists pointed
| out.)
|
| Surprise! With data, the textbooks were right. 8 week or
| longer delays generate immune responses that are stronger
| & last longer. In the UK, now without such tight supply
| constraints, it's considered dangerously negligent to
| _not_ warn patients they should wait at least 8 weeks for
| the 2nd shot:
|
| https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/covid-vaccine-second-jab-
| early-e...
|
| In the US, disease experts like Eric Topol & Monica
| Gandhi now suggest some of the 'fading' immunity showing
| up in Israeli & US studies, especially with Pfizer, is
| due to the rushed 3-week booster.
|
| Our flailing CDC still insists, today in their
| vaccination FAQ, contra the science & the interests of
| Americans, that "you should get your second shot as close
| to the [21d or 28d] interval as possible". They're also
| still urging people _not_ to use N95-quality masks, even
| though they are now cheap & plentiful and likely 2x-4x
| more effective than cloth or surgical masks.
|
| The failure to recognize that prior infections are as
| protective as vaccinations is another error that's
| wasting vaccine & creating arguments that we could
| just... skip & do better for everyone.
|
| Thus: "Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us &
| generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their
| unscientific inflexibility."
| moolcool wrote:
| Even if you've already had covid, the vaccine is still a safe
| and effective way to even further reduce your odds of
| transmitting it in the future
| kemayo wrote:
| I'd assume that a lot of it is the existing polarization over the
| issue. It's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and
| there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so. (Plus a lot of
| people who don't even know they've already had COVID, because of
| asymptomatic cases.)
|
| The state of medical records in the USA is... not great, so it's
| easier to show evidence of the vaccination that can at least
| theoretically be verified.
|
| EDIT: man, the rapid-downvoting is even worse here than in the
| Apple CSAM threads. :D
| defaulty wrote:
| > because it's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and
| there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so.
|
| It's not actually. They're equivalent. The vaccine proof is
| PAPER which can be forged. And while evidence of a COVID19 test
| can be paper too, mine was digital.
| kemayo wrote:
| It's why I said "at least theoretically" -- the vaccine cards
| have a date and vaccine lot number on them. I'm making the
| assumption that this has been recorded somewhere, such that
| you could at least check that a certain batch was
| administered on a certain day to a certain person.
|
| Of course, this could all fail under the "medical records in
| the USA are garbage" issue.
|
| Still, if nothing else, it's better for proving it than "I
| took a COVID test at home, trust me".
| zwieback wrote:
| I'm in favor of vaccine mandates but if there was a better way of
| quantifying immunity I'd be all in favor of letting people with
| natural immunity get a waiver.
|
| As everything with COVID, the lack of hard data and the poor
| communication of federal and state agencies has enabled
| politicians, con men and sectarians to exploit the confusion to
| their benefit.
| orwin wrote:
| There is, actually, antibody test. They are quite costly
| however.
|
| Im my country, getting infected count as the 1rst dose (yes, i
| know, natural immunity is better with "real" infections, but
| rememeber that Covid sometime start an auto-immune disease,
| it's hard to test for this, so its less costly to just
| vaccinate people (the jab cost 12E)).
|
| No scientific response. This is mostly pragmatic, and probably
| politic too. Its easier to just jab everyone you can while you
| can.
|
| I know it's a bit hearthless, and i can't ask doctors to start
| triaging, but i'd really like that once everyone have had the
| possibility to get the double dose, we just stop everything
| covid related (maybe not the reduced maximum capacity and mask
| in public transport for the adults during peak hours: those
| restrictions should have been implemented way before covid).
| mcguire wrote:
| $42.13?
|
| https://www.labcorp.com/coronavirus-disease-
| covid-19/individ...
| orwin wrote:
| Well, yes, $42 * 10M is expensive. Not that $15 _2_ 10M is
| not. And i'm pretty sure half the people who said "i got
| covid" last year did not have it (and i'm kind). So let's
| say we had tested half the population, and that half of
| this half have to get vaccinated anyway, since the test was
| negative. For France, that's one billion euros used for
| nothing.
|
| I'm to tired to make sense, but you understand my point (if
| not, i'll have to explain the reasoning better).
|
| Anyway, it's pragmatism and not wasting money.
| thedrbrian wrote:
| You can get them for free in the uk
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-
| covid...
| orwin wrote:
| Yeah, me too, not my point.
|
| Imagine half the uk population wanted to get tested before
| getting the vaccine, the cost for the NIH would be way
| higher than just vaccinating everybody. You can't tell
| people `if the antibody test is positive, you don't have to
| get vaccinated`, at least not until the vast majority is
| already vaccinated. And even then, it's mostly lost money.
|
| You could have told people "pay for your own test", but in
| this case, the fabrication and distribution of those test
| would slow down the vaccination. And you have to make sure
| that the test are not faked, so a doctor should verify that
| the test was yours. I know some doctors who faked smallpox
| vaccine, so you can imagine how much of a good idea this
| is.
|
| Also, even if the individual cost is not that high, telling
| people to `pay not to get vaccinated` (because it would've
| been spin like this, I've read UK newspapers) is not the
| best idea want the biggest issues for most western
| government is lack of trust.
|
| So: it is more pragmatic to jab everybody. Easier to
| orchestrate, you don't expose your leadership too much.
| Overall, best solution for the governments. Is it the best
| solution for the population? Debatable. I'd say its the
| most cost-effective, the one with the less headaches, so
| yes?
| amalcon wrote:
| The one thing missing from the article is the thing the vaccines
| needed to have prior to approval: rigorous controlled double-
| blinded studies on infection rates. My guess would be that, to
| people interested in data-driven epidemiological decisions, this
| is considered pretty important. What the article provides instead
| is direct measurement of biological indicators of immune
| response, which while useful is not remotely the same thing.
|
| This is, however, slightly unfair. You can't ethically have a
| rigorous controlled double-blinded study on infection rates of
| people who have already had SARS-CoV-2. This would require
| infecting some people with SARS-CoV-2, making others incorrectly
| _think_ they had been infected, and then letting all of them go
| about their lives post- "recovery". The ethical problems are
| obvious.
|
| That said, I'd frankly be fine with letting people with
| (state-)government-verified past COVID cases act as though they
| have been vaccinated for a period after recovery (not sure what
| the period should be). It would be one way to get the next best
| kind of data (an observational study of vaccinated and recovered
| patients). It would also incentivize people to get tested (so
| they get that government-verified past case). I'm not sure it's
| worth building that bureaucracy, but if that compromise were
| proposed I'd happily accept.
| [deleted]
| Andys wrote:
| Because its too expensive to measure it (B-cell test)
| peteradio wrote:
| This article also has long form responses. I'd love to see a
| reasoned contrary response.
| toolz wrote:
| There already is one response from 2 MDs and one MPH with
| citations. Glad you pointed out the long-form response section
| as it was a good read.
| blacksqr wrote:
| The contrary argument is reasonably well-stated within the
| article, it seems to be mostly a matter of what you assess to
| be the greatest risks going forward as to which argument you
| think is more valid.
|
| After glancing at the endnotes, it seems that the bulk of the
| scientific references examining natural immunity date from
| before the delta variant established itself.
| mcguire wrote:
| And many of them were concerned about prioritization during
| the rollout, when vaccine doses were scarce.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| The answers aren't medical, they're pragmatic.
|
| - COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40
| Vs. $16/dose).
|
| - We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
|
| - We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to
| accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
|
| The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural
| immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe. Since if the
| vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day,
| the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the
| assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
|
| Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity
| Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the
| vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals. Since the data on
| vaccine safety is a settled issue, you're really just discussing
| if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so
| that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
| postalrat wrote:
| How about start with anyone who had a positive test in the past
| gets a vaccinated card.
| robocat wrote:
| At least let people pay to get the Antibody Test, and if
| positive then they get a one year vaccine holiday.
|
| There is little point getting knickers twisted over small
| percentage wins when a large population (children) are
| unvaccinated.
| nradov wrote:
| Safety is not a binary condition. The vaccines have a good
| safety profile as confirmed through large-scale clinical
| trials, and have met stringent FDA criteria. However the risk
| isn't zero. The CDC has acknowledged a small risk of
| myocarditis for the mRNA vaccines.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...
|
| This isn't generally a reason to avoid vaccination for most of
| the population, however the risk / benefit ratio may be
| different for some sub-populations. In particular there has
| been a higher than expected rate of adverse cardiac events for
| adolescent males.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
|
| So particularly for those adolescents who have already
| recovered from infection and have no other risk factors we
| should have a scientific discussion about whether vaccination
| makes sense from an evidence-based medicine perspective.
| Unfortunately the issue has been so politicized that any
| suggestion of caution often gets misinterpreted as being anti-
| vaccination.
| peteradio wrote:
| I don't believe the science is settled no matter how much the
| already vaccinated wish to turn the page. What do you have to
| say that studies of vaccine efficacy and risk conducted by drug
| companies exclude those with prior immunity. How could the
| science be settled for a cohort purposefully excluded?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| You're asking me about something that I didn't say. Here is
| what I did say:
|
| > Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
|
| My post was about the logistical and cost problems associated
| with certifying people with natural immunity, and why that
| doesn't make sense unless you believe the vaccine is unsafe.
| peteradio wrote:
| > Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
|
| I'm arguing against this particular point not the others.
|
| I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who have
| already been infected the drug companies excluded those
| people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying here? When
| have we ever taken the position of prove its dangerous
| before you try to stop me from putting this in your body.
| Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who
| have already been infected the drug companies excluded
| those people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying
| here?
|
| Except we now have data from the population itself,
| including people previously infected with COVID-19. We
| therefore do know it is safe. I think what you're saying
| is that you want to ignore inconvenient data and use
| outdated arguments.
|
| > Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
|
| You could have made that argument at one point, but you
| cannot _now_. We have enough population level data to
| call it safe beyond the studies that also showed that it
| was safe. It is baseless.
| peteradio wrote:
| Bold claims share the studies. I hope you review them
| well to make sure they match your claims.
| hvac wrote:
| This is precisely correct, especially wrt the cost/benefit. The
| antibody tests won't tell you when you were infected, with
| which variant, or how much viral dose, on top of their
| imperfect accuracy. And if you're going to bother going to a
| hospital to get your blood drawn, why not just... get the shot
| and remove all doubt?
|
| Does the calculus change in the countries where vaccines are
| basically nonexistant? Yes, of course. But vaccines in the US
| are as nearly easy to get as Gatorade now, and have been for
| several months. We spent many billions making it that way - we
| don't need to turn around and start spending even more money on
| pox party incentives.
| mioasndo wrote:
| > COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly
| $40 Vs. $16/dose).
|
| That's not a valid reason at all.
|
| > We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
|
| We also lacked vaccine quantity, and many people still do.
|
| > We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to
| accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
|
| Meh, that's a very weak reason considering it's a small
| incremental cost to vaccine passports and covid testing.
|
| > The implicit assumption that often go along with these
| natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe.
|
| That's just your 'implicit assumption'.
|
| > Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost
| arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument
| otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is
| unsafe and work backwards.
|
| Except vaccine efficacy is much lower than natural immunity and
| vaccine efficacy wears off over time. We literally have ZERO
| data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of
| drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being
| approved.
|
| > Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural
| immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who
| believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals.
|
| Your comment here is a distraction. You literally haven't
| brought up a single fact or data point on vaccine vs natural
| immunity efficacy.
|
| > Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
|
| How is it a settled issue when there is literally zero data on
| long-term effects?
|
| > you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on
| multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people
| can feel better.
|
| Cool story bud.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Your argument has holes.
|
| - If the vaccine is safe.
|
| - If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logistically).
|
| - If tracking the vaccine is easier.
|
| Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense.
| You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff.
| Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question
| being answered "no" or "maybe not."
|
| You yourself admit that that is your _actual_ reason:
|
| > Furthermore we literally have ZERO data on the long-term
| effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found
| to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
|
| The "but efficacy" response is confusing at best. If the
| vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people, it
| can still be the logical course of action at population
| scales for the other stated benefits (logistical, tracking,
| and cost).
| mioasndo wrote:
| > If the vaccine is safe.
|
| Something you don't know. If you want a sincere discussion
| you might want to at least admit the obvious.
|
| > If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logically).
|
| First of all you don't know if it's cheaper. Second, people
| are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how
| cheap it is. I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-
| sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
|
| > If tracking the vaccine is easier.
|
| Why do you keep with the 'if, if , if'? I did not make any
| assertions or assumptions that intersect with your ifs
| whatsoever. All of your 'ifs' are completely irrelevant,
| and I'm guessing by the fact that you start explaining
| every supposed hole with an 'if', that you understand that
| you can't even verify the validity of these supposed holes
| you found.
|
| > Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make
| sense.
|
| Because natural immunity is more effective and some people
| do not want to get the vaccine?
|
| > You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated
| payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first
| question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
|
| I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
|
| - We do not know the long-term side effects of mrna
| vaccines.
|
| - MRNA vaccine efficacy is lower than natural immunity, and
| all data points to MRNA vaccines wearing off significantly
| after 6 months.
|
| - Some people may not want to get the vaccine for other
| reasons, the actual reasons are completely irrelevant - in
| a free society people get to choose what biologically
| active substances they inject into their own bodies.
|
| > You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
|
| So looks like you did notice one of the reasons I gave you?
| Interesting that you quoted it, yet completely ignored the
| substance and failed to challenge or respond to the actual
| point.
|
| > If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune
| people,
|
| Stop with the 'ifs'. If you don't know the validity of your
| own point, don't make the point.
|
| > for the other stated benefits (logical, tracking, and
| cost).
|
| These other stated benefits coming directly from your
| imagination right? Or are these the 'if' kind of benefits?
|
| 'IF the vaccines are a perfect solution, we should forcibly
| vaccinate everyone.' - cool story bud
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > First of all you don't know if it's cheaper.
|
| Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine
| costs $16/dose in the US today.
|
| > Second, people are free to pay for anything they want
| regardless of how cheap it is.
|
| Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one
| of these. The US Government should pay for it using taxes
| so that even the poorest citizen has access.
|
| > I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people
| would readily pay for their own tests.
|
| Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy
| has been problematic in the past and would be problematic
| here too.
|
| > I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
|
| But they don't add up. Your "list" boils down to:
|
| - It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
|
| - The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I
| said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative
| testing makes it still worthwhile).
|
| - It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is
| factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
|
| You've made zero arguments for why a cheaper and simpler
| safe vaccine is inferior to a more expensive and complex
| antibody test regime. That's because your entire argument
| hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
| mioasndo wrote:
| > Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine
| costs $16/dose in the US today.
|
| You're ignoring economies of scale, ignoring basic
| economics (increase supply - price goes down), ignoring
| the fact that vaccines require 2 dozes - and potentially
| more, as well as ignoring the additional costs of
| administering vaccines multiple times. Also, I would like
| to see where you're getting those numbers from, since a
| quick google search directly contradicts your numbers:
|
| > The U.S. government will pay Pfizer Inc nearly $2
| billion for 100 million additional doses of its COVID-19
| vaccine to bolster its supply as the country grapples
| with a nationwide spike in infections.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-
| usa-pf...
|
| > Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either
| one of these.
|
| I literally just proposed it to your face 2 times in a
| row.
|
| > The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that
| even the poorest citizen has access.
|
| Oh, look at you, so concerned about the poorest citizen
| that you want to explicitly deny them the possibility to
| pay for their own tests and force them to get vaccinated
| against their will. What a champion of the poor.
|
| > Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy
| has been problematic in the past and would be problematic
| here too.
|
| Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ? Do you want to
| respond to my actual statement or just continue with
| these weak strawmen?
|
| > It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
|
| For the fourth time - show me the data on long term
| effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you
| understand?
|
| > The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I
| said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative
| testing makes it still worthwhile).
|
| Another strawman completely unrelated to anything I've
| said.
|
| > - It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is
| factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
|
| Do you see the words 'safe' or 'unsafe' anywhere in my
| 3rd point? No? Are you going to continue making these
| fallacious, insincere strawmen, or are you secure enough
| with your beliefs to actually defend them honestly?
|
| > That's because your entire argument hinges on "the
| vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
|
| I've never made a single assertion about the safety of
| the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term
| side effects.
|
| It's pretty cringy how dishonest you are tbh.
| dekhn wrote:
| you're not arguing in good faith and much of your
| argument is just illogical. There's no reason to do this,
| it won't convince anybody , in fact it will make most
| people just ignore you.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > You're ignoring economies of scale
|
| No, my entire argument is built on economies of scale.
| Which favor a vaccine for every person, rather than an
| antibody test for a subset of a subset.
|
| > Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ?
|
| You argued that people should be able to pay for and
| provide their own tests. That's self-certification. If
| you're arguing for the state to do it instead, then we're
| back to square one (i.e. that the logistics don't favor
| it).
|
| > For the fourth time - show me the data on long term
| effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you
| understand?
|
| You cannot argue these two thing together in good faith:
|
| - Natural immunity provides long term immunity, without
| long term data.
|
| - We cannot know on the vaccine because we lack long term
| data.
|
| Pick one or the other. Not both.
|
| > I've never made a single assertion about the safety of
| the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term
| side effects.
|
| So you didn't make any except that same one in every
| single one of your comments?
| 34679 wrote:
| >Why add the natural immunity workflow?
|
| The natural immunity workflow:
|
| Do I feel sick?
|
| No -> Go about your day
|
| Yes -> Stay at home
| pavon wrote:
| On top of that, early on when the vaccine supply was
| constrained we didn't have enough data to know whether natural
| immunity was as effective as vaccination, and now vaccine
| supply in the US is in surplus[1], so there is no reason to be
| selective in who receives it.
|
| So natural immunity didn't make sense to consider in the
| vaccination plan. It might make sense to consider in the
| booster plan though - if you've had a positive Covid test
| before or after being vaccinated, consider the later of those
| two actions to be a booster, and don't get another one. That
| would free up more doses for the rest of the world.
|
| [1]We have a large amount of vaccine that has/is expiring
| shortly but there isn't enough time before the expiration date
| to redirect them overseas.
| dekhn wrote:
| I generally agree with this analysis, but people who are
| looking for some sort of 'smoking gun' that our government is
| colluding with pharma to help them make money by forcing
| unnecessary vaccinations, are more interested in hearing sexy,
| exciting narratives about how Fauci is working for the devil.
| bitcurious wrote:
| > COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly
| $40 Vs. $16/dose).
|
| So a marginal cost of $24. Folks with natural immunity will
| have a stronger reaction to the vaccine, but let's be
| conservative. Let's say 12 hours of symptoms - headache,
| fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the
| minimum wage of $8/hour that's a cost of $96. How much do you
| value your time?
|
| Full disclosure: happily vaccinated. The vaccine is safe, but
| it's dammed inconvenient.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Eh, I had it on Saturday, and had a nice sleepy Sunday.
| Definitely fatigue, but nothing to remember on Monday.
| darthvoldemort wrote:
| A recent study from Israel said that natural immunity is an order
| of magnitude better than vaccine-induced immunity against delta
| variant. I don't know who to believe, but if that's the case,
| then the narrative of "well they should get vaccinated anyway" is
| really freaking suspicious. We need deeper research on this, and
| the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary.
| spoonjim wrote:
| The entire administration has set vaccination percentage as
| their OKR; they're not going to risk that number just because
| of the facts.
| petre wrote:
| Do take an antibody test and decide for yourself. How can one
| make decisions without any metric?
| pbaka wrote:
| I think the point of the policies is you shouldn't. It's like
| in the army : don't think, we've done the thinking for you.
| RIMR wrote:
| >the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary
|
| Can you clarify who you mean by "they"? I don't suspect you
| mean Israel in that context.
| morsch wrote:
| Same study came to the result that getting a shot after
| surviving an infection (unvaccinated) gives even better
| protection. The real interesting comparison would be immunity
| after getting a breakthrough infection compared to other kinds
| of acquired immunity. I'm sure we'll get that study eventually.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
| isolli wrote:
| This second result is a lot weaker than the first, however:
|
| "Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2
| seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-
| dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to
| previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in
| our cohort."
|
| At the moment, this does not justify mandating the vaccine
| for those previously infected.
| frockington1 wrote:
| Follow the money. Lots of money to be made with each round of
| shots the population is encouraged to get
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Follow the money, lots of money to be made by dissuading
| people from becoming vaccinated, so they are more likely to
| need expensive medical services.
| tonmoy wrote:
| Please provide a credible source (preferably a peer reviewed
| publication) for such a bold claim.
| draw_down wrote:
| Come on
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v.
| ..
|
| It's pre-print FWIW
| throwaway287391 wrote:
| I got vaxxed as soon as I reasonably could and I never want to
| get COVID, but if that's true it really does seem insulting to
| require vaccination for people who can prove they already had
| COVID. It's like they did get vaccinated but picked a much more
| difficult/risky _and_ much more effective way to do so -- if
| that were their intention (and they avoided spreading it once
| they got it), one could say it was a heroic choice...
|
| At the same time though, I can imagine it would be really
| difficult/expensive to verify the proof of previous infection
| vs. verifying vaccination, and there could be the appearance of
| incentivizing anti-vaxxers to go infect themselves with COVID.
| advisedwang wrote:
| I mean for someone with natural immunity to get the vaccine is
| not going to reduce their immunity, and might boost it (or
| might not). So with fairly little downside, it makes sense to
| vaccinate them surely?
| bitcurious wrote:
| The downside is that if you already have a strong immune
| response you will have a much harsher reaction to the
| vaccine, basically four days out of commission. A reaction
| that's rather comparable to breakthrough COVID.
| bsder wrote:
| I had Covid Original Flavor(tm). My case was considered
| "mild"--I "only" had a 103 fever for 2 1/2 weeks and my
| stamina was shot.
|
| I also got vaccinated later. I had about a 24 hour reaction
| each time.
|
| I wanted to make _sure_ my body latched onto the spike
| protein. Immune systems latch onto all manner of things--
| sometimes relevant, sometimes not relevant, sometimes
| actively harmful.
|
| This is an important point. Your body's reaction to natural
| Covid is _far more unpredictable_ than to the vaccine. That
| _may_ give you a more robust immune response--or that _may_
| give you something related to an autoimmune disorder.
|
| As a comparison, I had a _much_ worse reaction to Shingrix
| (the shingles vaccine) which hit me hard for about 4 days
| and I could barely move the arm that got the shot.
|
| Your mileage may vary.
| SigmundA wrote:
| Definitely need some citation on that please.
| bitcurious wrote:
| https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect
| /af...
|
| >Side effects can affect your ability to do daily
| activities, but they should go away in a few days.
|
| > Common side effects: [Tiredness, Headache, Muscle pain,
| Chills, Fever, Nausea]
|
| >Side effects after your second shot may be more intense
| than the ones you experienced after your first shot.
| These side effects are normal signs that your body is
| building protection and should go away within a few days.
|
| I don't have a specific study for prior immunity vs.
| second shot, but neither COVID nor the vaccine are magic
| - both behave in a more or less standard manner. I've
| seen references to studies though:
|
| >Dr. Erin Morcomb, a family medicine physician at the
| Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and head of
| its COVID-19 vaccination team, confirms that the
| reactions can vary based on your health history. "What
| we've seen in studies is that the second dose does tend
| to have a little bit more potential to cause side effects
| than the first dose, but for people who have had COVID-19
| infection previously and then recovered, they are at
| higher risk of having those same side effects after their
| first dose," she says.
|
| from https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/strong-
| reaction-to-...
| toxik wrote:
| I still think everybody should be vaccinated as far as it is
| possible, BUT it seems that what you said might not be true.
| The second vaccine dose can make your natural type immunity
| weaker.
| EamonnMR wrote:
| That would be very surprising if true.
| borkyborkbork wrote:
| That is a statement that really needs some backup.
| ridiculous_fish wrote:
| The same Israeli study found that among previously infected
| people, those who received a single dose of the vaccine were
| half as likely to be reinfected, compared to those who
| received zero doses.
| mattparcens wrote:
| One might argue that there is also fairly little downside to
| _not_ getting the vaccination.
|
| And without some hard numbers comparing the two fairly little
| downsides we shouldn't attempt to compel people's behavior
| either way.
| toxik wrote:
| I suspect the marginal utility is better in having a larger %
| vaccinated. If those on the fence about it hear that there are
| circumstances where it's better to only take one dose, or none,
| many won't vaccinate at all because it seems less important.
| contravariant wrote:
| It's deeply unfortunate but not really surprising, these kinds
| of large scale experiments on humans are rather difficult to
| organize (for good reason) and outside of a naturally occurring
| disaster may not have happened at all.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| It is not a conspiracy to vaccinate more people. The lens you
| are missing is that the vaccine card is at least somewhat
| difficult to forge. You can trace the lot number and say, did
| this person get this dose.
|
| But with previous infection, there is a huge camp of people who
| are just going to lie about it and continue spreading the virus
| freely. People have shown that they cannot be trusted to act
| responsibly.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I assume the proposal is that the vaccine card would be a de-
| facto _immunity_ card, where a test showing a high antibody
| count would still be logged on your card as an alternative to
| the vaccine.
|
| But the devil's in the details anyways. How long would that
| be considered good for, since we'll probably be looking at
| regular annual boosters? Would extremist anti-vaxxers have a
| perverse incentive to get infected so as to rejoin society
| while avoiding the vaccine?
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| I'd support an immunity card with the same audit trail for
| antibody test. I think most people would - general common
| sense suggests that natural infection should be effective.
| How long it lasts, I guess we'll need to study that.
|
| Honestly the problem here is not the science. It's the big
| clump of people who have turned being against the science
| into a part of their identity. Every time I think we have
| hit the bottom as a country in terms of the power of
| ignorance (and evil, on the part of the GOP establishment),
| we keep going.
|
| What I find especially perverse is that these people are
| here! On Hacker News! I just don't understand how someone
| can be in the technology field and yet so virulently pro-
| disease. Any comment that points out that IT IS THE
| REPUBLICANS WHO HAVE MURDERED 650,000 AMERICANS AND ARE
| ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL AS MANY MORE AS THEY CAN gets
| downvoted below zero.
| pigeonhole123 wrote:
| Maybe you should question that conclusion when as you
| said people you respect are questioning what's going on?
| I don't know how to better put it but if the science
| requires unquestioning obedience to an already decided
| conclusion then maybe it isn't science. I'm European and
| I'm outside that republican thing for the record, just in
| case that matters to you.
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| No one I respect is questioning this - on the contrary, I
| see a vast collection of people whom I despise in a dark
| alliance to kill as many people as possible to score
| points from their deluded base.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > Every time I think we have hit the bottom as a country
| in terms of the power of ignorance (and evil, on the part
| of the GOP establishment), we keep going.
|
| > Any comment that points out that IT IS THE REPUBLICANS
| WHO HAVE MURDERED 650,000 AMERICANS AND ARE ACTIVELY
| TRYING TO KILL AS MANY MORE AS THEY CAN gets downvoted
| below zero.
|
| That's because the comments like these are political
| hysteria designed to get others to vote for your team...
| bigcorp-slave wrote:
| They're not. They're statements of fact. I mean them very
| sincerely - the modern Republican Party is Evil. True,
| pure evil, in a way that I would never have believed was
| possible in this country until a few years back. Anyone
| voting for them is at best ignorant and at worst
| complicit.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > They're statements of fact. I mean them very sincerely
| - the modern Republican Party is Evil.
|
| Then I submit you are embarrassingly ignorant of history
| and the rest of the world.
| esoterae wrote:
| ITYM political projection. Fomenting hysteria is a well-
| documented tool of science deniers. Not so much the
| scientists, as their spoken words typically mirror
| reality.
| handmodel wrote:
| There's no evidence that having the vaccine stops you from
| developing natural immunity if you have a breakthrough.
|
| If the vaccine fails you then you will get covid (like you
| would have in the same situation without vaccine) and will
| develop natural immunity then.
| prox wrote:
| Even if you do get a breakthrough, chance of not going to a
| hospital is significantly lower.
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde.
| ..
| vmception wrote:
| There is _finally_ a relevant flu analogy for _those people_ to
| use, but they completely miss it in favor of some other non
| sequitur:
|
| Exposure to this years seasonal flu will give better immunity
| to this year's seasonal flu, than the vaccine for last year's
| seasonal flu will give to this year's seasonal fly. One day
| we'll be able to say "Duh" in response to annual COVID flavors.
|
| There will be vaccines specifically made for the delta variant
| and others.
| jjeaff wrote:
| I think the biggest issue is that a lot of people think they
| had covid previously but didn't get tested so they don't really
| know.
|
| I thought I had covid early in the pandemic. Took a serology
| test and found out that I had not had it. I suspect a lot of
| people that think they had it are the same.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Any serious policy which brings natural immunity into the
| fold would include the need for an actual medical diagnosis.
| I don't see the issue to raise to be a valid one because
| there are easy solutions.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Serum tests are currently being used in the UK and other
| places. They can be taken up to 180 days after one has been
| infected.
| isolli wrote:
| Except that antibodies don't tell the whole story. They may
| wane after a while, but the immune system is primed to fight
| off the virus at the next infection thanks to memory B cells
| and T cells.
|
| Unfortunately, T-cell tests are not available in Europe, and
| apparently not reliable in the US. Which confirms the
| original point: there seems to be little interest in
| detecting previous infections.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Which means that testing is _really_ undependable. Probably
| better to vaccinate everyone, because our prediction of the
| immunity of people who have been vaccinated is a lot more
| reliable.
| walterbell wrote:
| _> apparently not reliable in the US_
|
| Which T-cell test(s) are you referencing? What are the
| rates of false negatives or false positives?
| anonAndOn wrote:
| >Took a serology test and found out that I had not had it.
|
| How soon after you were ill? Aren't the antibodies nigh
| undetectable XX weeks after you recover?
| alecst wrote:
| IgG antibodies linger for a while, like months or longer.
| It's a quick way of telling whether your vaccine worked, by
| just getting an antibody test.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I had a friend think he had it 3 times (and the third time
| was probably legitimate). The symptoms the first two times?
| Typical cold symptoms. No fever. No major cough. No real loss
| of taste. I had another friend do the same thing.
|
| This was back before tests were widely available. I have
| genuinely had it twice myself, but people largely have though
| for the past two years that if they were sick it was COVID.
| sschueller wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| Does the US now have a digital verifiable certificate system
| for tested or previously infected as well as vaccinated or is
| it still a piece of paper?
|
| Without this you have to just vaccinate everyone because
| there is no other way to manage it.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| 13 times actually
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
|
| I think this will be more relevant to vaccinating kids: If this
| result holds for kids as well, and considering that Covid is
| not dangerous for kids, maybe kids are better off getting covid
| ttul wrote:
| Absolutely not the case. Children should be vaccinated. The
| Israeli study was useful in establishing that infection
| results in immunity. That's it. It does not establish that
| infection is lower risk than vaccination.
|
| Children are at low risk from COVIS
| ttul wrote:
| Pushed reply too soon. Children are at low risk, but not no
| risk. To the extent that kids are running around with
| infections, they're transmitting virus to others and
| providing a reservoir for mutation. That is not productive.
|
| Let's get the kids vaccinated. It's the cheapest way out of
| this thing.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Some children are at greater risk from the vaccine than
| covid so it seems reckless to just push vaccines. You
| will quite possibility kill more kids by pushing the
| vaccine on them.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-
| at-r...
| swader999 wrote:
| Its clearly been established that transmission is
| happening in vaccinated people. If the R Naught is more
| than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a
| population that isn't vulnerable. Only the vulnerable
| should be vaccinated for a virus that shifts rapidly like
| most respiratory virus do.
|
| Here's the thing - if you are vaccinated and benefiting
| from less severe infection, you'll be out and about
| socially and transmitting this. It may be so mild that it
| would be hard to contact trace and know when to isolate.
| You may even have a more severe (deadly) variant that
| your just boosted system doesn't have a problem with.
| Whereas a naive population would be more prone to be bed-
| ridden, isolated and not transmitting this more harmful
| variant.
|
| Then when your immunity wanes from the recent shot (5
| months it seems per Israel's experience) this more
| harmful variant may in fact hurt the vaccinated
| population if they don't get the next booster in time and
| the booster isn't formulated for this variant.
| apendleton wrote:
| > If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any
| benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't
| vulnerable.
|
| That's not how R values work at all. Firstly, an R value
| of 1.5 and an R value of 5 have _wildly_ different
| outcomes in terms of controlling spread, and vaccines
| that can reduce R values can reduce spread even if the R
| value remains above 1. More to the point, though,
| "transmission is happening in vaccinated people" doesn't
| imply that the R value is above 1, and it doesn't look
| like you've provided any evidence that that's the case,
| nor does the fact that infections sometimes occur, in and
| of itself, suggest it.
| swader999 wrote:
| Look at Gibraltar's daily spike well after they acheived
| 99% full vaccination status on June 1. https://www.worldo
| meters.info/coronavirus/country/gibraltar/...
|
| Only lockdowns brought it back down which creates other
| problems around immune health in the population. (see NZ
| for example, RSV is clogging up the hospitals now with
| young kids who had degraded their immune systems the last
| year or so with all the hardcore lockdowns there)
| apendleton wrote:
| That suggests that lockdowns and vaccination together
| work better than vaccination alone, which is not
| particularly surprising. It seems, though, like you're
| suggesting that that means the vaccinations did nothing,
| which doesn't follow. It might well be that the case
| counts would have been twice as high if nobody had been
| vaccinated (or, who knows, ten times), and maybe some
| percentage of those additionally infected people would
| have died, or suffered long-term health outcomes. There's
| no way to know what the appropriate counterfactual is
| from this data alone.
| swader999 wrote:
| Obviously lockdowns decrease transmission. But they make
| fragile immune systems. There's 200 other respiratory
| virus out there that we need constant exposure to or our
| immunity to them wanes. Then you get NZ which right now
| is overrunning their hospitals with children inflicted
| with severe RSV which never really happened in the pre-
| lockdown world.
|
| And I agree vaccination even with this leaky vaccine is
| appropriate for vulnerable groups bit it creates a shit
| storm of hurt down the road when you apply it to an
| entire population and in the context of an easily
| mutating virus. See the chicken story:
| https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-
| vaccine-m...
|
| Applying it to a hard to mutate virus and the entire
| population makes total sense - see polio!
| angelzen wrote:
| > providing a reservoir for mutation.
|
| That is FUD and you should be ashamed of yourself. I have
| listened to scared people trying to blame people that are
| not vaccinated for the fact that vaccines are not that
| effective at preventing infection and that mild
| breakthrough infections are common. Most of it done with
| rather troubling political undertones. Such is life in US
| 2021. I don't like it, but I'll not engage directly.
| Hopefully the FUD will pass.
|
| But obviously the largest percentage of unvaccinated
| people are children, which do not NEED the vaccine, at
| least according to the data we have so far. I will not
| tolerate scapegoating of kids. Please get a grip.
| xxpor wrote:
| >I have listened to scared people trying to blame people
| that are not vaccinated for the fact that vaccines are
| not that effective at preventing infection and that mild
| breakthrough infections are common.
|
| Completely ridiculous.
|
| https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccina
| tio...
|
| They're not perfect, but arguing they're not that
| effective is just stupid.
| angelzen wrote:
| A. I reject on principle the reasoning that X must
| undergo unnecessary medical procedure to lower
| hypothetical odds of Y being afflicted by some negative
| outcome. STOP SCAPEGOATING.
|
| B. Consider that the 'cases ratio' is tainted because of
| faulty CDC guidance. If you test more aggressively
| conditioned on vaccination status, you are going to get
| biased ratios. At this point anything but sampling
| studies is pretty much worthless in assessing how
| prevalent breakthrough infections are. We've got to thank
| CDC for that.
|
| > Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in
| Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there, all of us
| fully vaccinated. The next day, our host started to feel
| sick. The day after that, she tested positive for
| COVID-19. [...] At this point, 11 of the 15 have tested
| positive for COVID."
|
| If the vaccines reduce breakthrough infections at 1 : 7
| rate, an outbreak incident where 11 : 15 get infected has
| a probability of about 1 : 1,000,000,000. Rather
| unlikely, perhaps something else is at play:
|
| > The official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
| guideline stated that, since I was fully vaccinated, I
| didn't need to do anything different unless I started
| developing symptoms. I'm an epidemiologist at a major
| medical research university, which has a dedicated COVID
| exposure hotline for staff. I called it, and workers said
| I didn't need to do anything.
|
| > The CDC announced in May that it was only going to
| collect data on breakthrough infections that led to
| hospitalization or death, which are fortunately rare. But
| that means that outbreaks like ours will fly under the
| radar.
|
| https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-
| op-0804-bre...
|
| Edit: Especially if the ratios do not match ratios
| calculated in other countries where delta case reduction
| is around 1 : 2.
|
| https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploa
| ds/...
| rdtsc wrote:
| > To the extent that kids are running around with
| infections, they're transmitting virus to others and
| providing a reservoir for mutation
|
| Can make the same argument for the vaccinated people.
| Vaccines don't prevent infection, they reduce symptoms.
| So by same logic they run around with the infection
| spreading it to everyone.
| apendleton wrote:
| Vaccines don't 100% prevent infections, but there's
| strong evidence that they both significantly reduce the
| rate at which people become infected and, should they
| become infected, the rate at which they can retransmit
| the virus to others, and we have no reason to believe
| they wouldn't do the same in children. It's not an all-
| or-nothing affair.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I don't buy the "unvaccinated as a reservoir for
| mutation" line of thinking. For one, there are many, many
| countries with a low vaccination rate and it's going to
| be like that for a long time.
|
| Also, I haven't see data on what the R0 is from
| vaccinated person to vaccinated person with Delta. If
| it's above 1 then all we're doing is creating immense
| selective pressure for vaccine escape.
| christophilus wrote:
| The latter seems likely to me. I don't understand how
| anyone thinks the blame for mutations lies solely or even
| mostly with the unvaccinated. Vaccines, distributed in a
| pandemic, are likely to cause immense selective pressure,
| and that is one of the reasons that the WHO originally
| planned on non-vaccine herd immunity when they wrote
| their respiratory pandemic game-plan prior to 2020.
|
| I'm fully vaccinated, not anti-vax, and not an expert.
| This is just my understanding based on what I've read.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Has there ever been a vaccination program that was so
| successful, so fast, that we reached nearly 100%
| vaccination in less than what, a year or so? Why wouldn't
| every other virus simply mutate in these "reservoirs" and
| make vaccines a failed idea?
| apendleton wrote:
| Not all viruses are created equal; some are much more
| prone to mutation than others. And indeed, vaccines for
| highly mutation-prone ones _do_ "fail" in some sense --
| that's why we need flu shots every year but one or two
| doses of the chickenpox vaccine are preventative for a
| lifetime: the flu is an RNA virus and also has a
| mechanism for swapping genes between different strains
| infecting an individual organism (including animals), so
| it changes a lot, and vaccines only last until the in-
| the-wild flu changes out from under them, whereas
| chickenpox/varicella is a DNA virus that's much more
| genetically stable.
| angelzen wrote:
| * Flu, which has a particularly high mutation rate, does
| exactly that: in some years the flu vaccine is only 10%
| effective.
|
| * Most viruses are less infectious than covid, especially
| delta covid.
|
| * The covid vaccines are novel, targeting a specific
| protein. Natural immunity targets more than one protein,
| I've heard up to 28 in case of covid. This should make
| vaccine escape much harder, as it is significantly more
| difficult to mutate around 28 proteins at the same time.
| By 'natural immunity' I mean immunity gained by exposure
| to the natural pathogen, either through live infection or
| an inactivated pathogen vaccine.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > It's the cheapest way out of this thing.
|
| I think we should be wary of those "easy way outs",
| because nothing seems to indicate that vaccines are a
| panacea. They are of course the best that us adults can
| do right now to protect ourselves, but if restrictions
| get too relaxed simultaneously, then we ve just created
| pressure on the virus to create a variant that will
| escape completely. This is a marathon and we are not yet
| done. a combination of vaccines with distancing will be
| required for a long time. Humans are adaptible, the
| earlier we start the better.
|
| (Also, we shouldn't argue in absolutes, it s not going to
| fix anything)
| stefan_ wrote:
| No, of course they are not, hence why we are vaccinating
| them. This is fud.
|
| (Is this the dumbest argument yet? "If you just get COVID,
| you will have the best protection against COVID!"? I take it
| the dead people have the best protection to offer yet?)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The UK vaccine advisory board is not recommending
| vaccinating teens 12-15, on account that they dont benefit
| much
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Incorrect.
|
| They recommend it, they don't mandate it.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| They don't recommend it. The UK will vaccinate kids
| however.
|
| https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-
| advic...
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Nowhere does it say they don't recommend it. Just that
| they aren't going to universally mandate it.
|
| "For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their
| risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore
| the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is
| also small. The JCVI's view is that overall, the health
| benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children
| aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the
| potential harms.
|
| Taking a precautionary approach, this margin of benefit
| is considered too small to support universal COVID-19
| vaccination for this age group at this time. The
| committee will continue to review safety data as they
| emerge."
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58547659
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Look, i don't care about back-and forth arguments, it 's
| better that i had listed the relevant evidence, and
| people can make up their minds on case-by-case, because
| it is possible that blind recommendations for
| vaccinations may end up being harmful. The phrase
| "universal vaccination" doesnt mean mandatory, it means
| that the benefit is so small that they don't recommend it
| to everyone, but only to kids in higher risk. The
| evidence seems to agree with them, despite governments'
| push for more vaccinations for their own reasons, which
| might be ineffective in the end. (There are countries
| that are pushing hard to vaccinate schoolchildren)
| angelzen wrote:
| The silver lining of the covid pandemic is that kids have
| at a minuscule risk of covid complications. Smaller than
| flu, both hospitalizations and fatalities.
| gitonup wrote:
| I've seen this cited several times in this thread, but I've
| seen no one mention that (according their own FAQ):
|
| > medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive
| and distribution server for complete but unpublished
| manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related
| health sciences. Preprints are preliminary reports of work
| that have not been certified by peer review. They should not
| be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related
| behavior and should not be reported in news media as
| established information.
|
| The context is important, even if it turns out to be true.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Indeed the final version has not been published yet, but
| there are no major reasons to doubt its validity. Here's an
| evaluation of the preprint from Johns Hopkins:
| https://ncrc.jhsph.edu/research/comparing-sars-
| cov-2-natural...
| angelzen wrote:
| For teens, UK [edit:] Chief Medical Officer recommends but
| not mandates first dose, and does not recommend second dose
| at least until spring. The benefits are marginal.
|
| 2 ICU prevented admissions / million first doses
|
| 87 hospital prevented admissions / million first doses
|
| 0.16 ICU prevented admissions / million second doses
|
| 6 hospital prevented admissions / million second doses
|
| > Having the vaccine is not compulsory.
|
| > Prof Whitty said an "offer" of vaccination will be made to
| all children aged 12-15.
|
| > But he said young people and their parents needed to be
| supported and there should be no stigma attached to their
| choice.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57888429
| makomk wrote:
| On the other hand, the UK vaccination advisory board does
| not recommend vaccinating under-16s because they consider
| there to be inadequate evidence the risks outweigh the
| benefits. (Despite considerable and very public political
| pressure to come to a different conclusion, and if I
| remember correctly even some of the members who were most
| sceptical about it resigning and being replaced.)
| angelzen wrote:
| Quoting from the recent BBC article: "The UK's chief
| medical officers recommended a single Pfizer dose for all
| children aged 12 to 15." Perhaps there is a difference of
| position between 'advisory board' and 'chief medical
| officer', I am not _that_ familiar with the UK scene.
| makomk wrote:
| From the article: "They made their recommendation after
| the JCVI - the scientific body advising the government on
| vaccines - said it did not recommend vaccinating healthy
| children on health grounds alone." The JCVI are the body
| that normally makes these decisions and has for the
| pandemic so far, but they kept on repeatedly refusing to
| recommend vaccination for under-16s unless they had a
| pre-existing condition no matter how many times the
| government asked or how unsubtle their hints - so there
| was a kind of weird political fudge where the government
| found another body that'd approve of them, largely based
| on the potential to reduce disruption to kids' education.
| (However, that disruption was itself mostly a result of
| government policy decisions, and the main reason the UK
| actually seems to be vaccinating under-16s is because
| other countries have been doing it which makde it
| politically untenable not to do the same.)
| angelzen wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying!
| suifbwish wrote:
| It probably is, however that enhanced immunity can come at the
| cost of damaged organs.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a
| bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having
| natural immunity.
|
| Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US.
| Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use
| in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are
| downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
|
| On the other hand places with good vaccination rates are
| reimposing lockdowns and mask mandates. Quite a few public events
| are getting canceled or rescheduled.
|
| By any metric the COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best
| breakeven in terms of cost effectiveness. Since the risk of COVID
| is lower now both due to the vaccine and also just our knowledge
| of treatment, any lockdown/mandate response will have a lower
| cost effectiveness.
|
| IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines
| available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6
| months (just in case) and end all other restrictions. Sure there
| is a small population that _would_ get vaccinated but genuinely
| can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different
| than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
|
| It _would_ be better to just do a vaccine /verified immunity
| passport like program but that is practically impossible in the
| US. Too many people won't like/use the governments app including
| both the normal conspiracy nuts but also the privacy-minded HN
| crowd. It also does not help that there are half a dozen passport
| like apps from insurance companies and various government
| agencies.
| stepanhruda wrote:
| > COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best breakeven in
| terms of cost effectiveness
|
| Can you share some of those any metrics? Legitimately asking.
| jakemoshenko wrote:
| Slight correction: vaccines are still not available to children
| under 12.
| klebe wrote:
| yeah small note to add here: the last pediatric vaccine
| (garadasil / HPV) went through a decade of clinical trials
| before approval
| xxpor wrote:
| The infection rate and how HPV spreads is completely
| different from an airborne virus. The time comparison to do
| trials isn't really meaningful.
| issa wrote:
| Think about this for a second. If you give 100,000 pre-
| teens an HPV vaccine, how long do you have to wait to
| discover if they are more or less likely to contract
| genital warts? Now compare that to how long you would have
| to wait to see if they contract COVID. This is not a valid
| comparison.
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed
| a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having
| natural immunity.
|
| Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results.
| Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell
| phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got
| a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
|
| > Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the
| use in children under 12.
|
| We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics
| is a profession precisely because "children are not just small
| adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically
| safe for children.
| wpietri wrote:
| > Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test
| results.
|
| Serology is a thing, sure. But two points:
|
| Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not
| going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not
| constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of
| allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious.
|
| Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and
| confusion. The bar bouncer checking vaccination status at the
| door is not likely to know anything about serology. The same
| goes for people eager not to get Covid and the people eager
| not to accidentally kill grandma. Every bit of complexity is
| met with complaints and confusion; every change in regulation
| makes it harder for people to know what to do and therefore
| less likely to do it.
|
| In some future pandemic might we want to create a two-pathway
| system? E.g., such that there's a government-issued "safe to
| mingle" digital passport? Sure. That seems like a great thing
| to start preparing now so it's ready the next time a disease
| hops the species barrier. For now, though, I think we should
| stick with the current plan: vaccination for (almost)
| everybody.
| thebean11 wrote:
| > Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is
| not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied.
|
| The difference is that the serum test is risk free. If I
| knew I was already immune, I would not have gotten the
| vaccine to be completely honest, no matter how small the
| risk is. For the same reason I don't get other safe and
| effective treatments for diseases I do not have.
| wpietri wrote:
| The effects of the test, sure, because that's just a
| blood draw. The downstream impact to disease and
| transmission risk, definitely not.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Not sure what you mean, if the test determines I have
| immunity similar to what a vaccine provides and knowing
| that I choose not to get it, what are the downstream
| impacts?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I think the parent is saying "we don't know that natural
| immunity affords the same protection as vaccination", but
| I believe he's mistaken.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I see, I guess I don't know either way, seems like
| something that isn't particularly difficult to study
| though so I'd be surprised if it wasn't known at this
| point.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I'm sure it's quite difficult to study, but no less so
| than studying the vaccine. I'd be surprised if we didn't
| already know at least as much about natural immunity, but
| whether the media are effectively communicating that
| information is another question.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Isn't the science showing that we _do_ know the
| downstream impact to disease and transmission risk is
| preferable in the case of natural immunity?
| djrogers wrote:
| > The downstream impact to disease and transmission risk,
| definitely not.
|
| In what way?
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| If the bar bouncer can see a card that says you have been
| vaccinated then they can see a card that says you have
| covid antibodies or that you have had a positive covid test
| at some point in the past. I don't think this is too
| burdensome for our hypothetical bouncer.
| temp8964 wrote:
| You are making all those strange excuses to force people to
| get vaccinated. Some people don't want to for whatever
| reasons, if they want to get positive test results, that's
| their choice. Stop using twisted logic and marginal cases
| to make up arguments to satisfy your authoritarian desire.
| freeopinion wrote:
| The people who would be confused by two pathways are
| already confused. It would not increase confusion. You have
| a vaccination card or you have a positive test card.
|
| Right now there are already at least two pathways. You have
| a vaccination card or a negative test card within an
| allowable date range.
|
| The bigger issues are privacy, etc. Not, "Oh no, there are
| two options! I'm so confused."
| mattparcens wrote:
| Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially
| involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not
| onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little
| marginal value.
|
| The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card"
| anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra
| checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am
| authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only
| be concerned that the card itself exists.
| simonh wrote:
| Nobody has a full system of vaccination status cards and
| databases. There are just too many people who will avoid
| vaccination at the slightest excuse. We're in a war and
| every day of delay costs thousands, or tens of thousands
| of lives.
|
| We need simple rules that we can apply on a massive scale
| quickly. The US is a country where more than half of
| people can't work out if a 1/3 pound burger is bigger or
| smaller than a 1/4 pound burger.
| mattparcens wrote:
| No one said anything about multiple cards, nor about any
| databases whatsoever.
|
| Single-mindedness is not a rationale for imposing medical
| treatment on people.
|
| I'll circle back to my driver's license analogy - the
| bouncer does not need to know that I was docked 3 points
| from my driving test for failing to signal - he only
| needs to know that some granting authority, with
| expertise in the realm being licensed, granted me the
| license. (or that I'm old enough to enter the bar, etc.)
| bbulkow wrote:
| 'Mandatory medical treatment' sounds like a big deal, but
| the tragedy of the commons happens with every vaccine. No
| one benefits much from their own vaccination, we all
| benefit must from others'. Which is why vaccinations
| almost always have a requirement, or they don't work (cf
| flu, cf hpv).
|
| When 1500 Americans are dying every day of a preventable
| disease, it is absolutely reasonable to take feasibility
| of enforcement into account. And enforcement has to be
| done where the greatest risk of spreading occurs. People
| might not like getting carded at a restaurant, but there
| is a point where lots of people are dying and it makes
| sense, right? We card for alcohol, we card for driving,
| and those we do every day.
|
| I would think someone who tested positive should be able
| to get a ca state qr code. It seems the science supports
| that. Having each validator check that the test is the
| right test, and the doctor and hospital exist, seems not
| feasible, but getting a state qr code - then using that
| at the point of enforcement - seems practical.
| wpietri wrote:
| Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on
| its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from
| saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here
| and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting
| recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong
| incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the
| benefit of changing things again becomes very large.
|
| And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should
| build it into the card. And better, that card should be
| digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more
| as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine,
| slips of paper, and a lot of questions.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| > Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially
| involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly
| not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very
| little marginal value.
|
| No, this is just not correct. Compulsory vaccination has
| been a thing for hundreds of years.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially
| involuntary medical treatments on people,
|
| FYI: The current legislation requires weekly testing or
| proof of vaccination, but it doesn't actually impose the
| vaccine on anyone who doesn't want it.
| flybrand wrote:
| Which employers are taking as a green flag to terminate
| those who don't get it. Maybe legally wrong, maybe they
| get compensated in a few years.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yep my employer has said they will terminate the
| unvaccinated (limited medical and religious exceptions
| excluded).
| BEEdwards wrote:
| Which is a move the mostly vaccinated are fine with,
| because we're really done with the idiocy.
|
| Fuck off and die somewhere else, seems to be the general
| sentiment of people I know.
| decremental wrote:
| That doesn't sound insane at all. Where can I sign up for
| Team Psychopath? I need to hurry as I'm told patience is
| wearing thin.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Yep, crazy that this is the top comment when clearly we
| already know that none of the studies for kids are completed.
| Is it likely to be safe? Yes. But we still need to go through
| the proper process to ensure confidence in the vaccine.
| EGreg wrote:
| Do some people simply photoshop their names onto the cards
| and show them on their phones ? Is it really such a dumb
| system?
| tshaddox wrote:
| That doesn't strike me as particularly dumb. It's pretty
| easy to print out a fake driver's license (or use someone
| else's) that's going to work fine getting into most bars,
| and the risks of getting into legal trouble for attempting
| to use a fake ID to buy alcohol are probably pretty similar
| to the risks of using a fake vaccine card, and yet most
| people don't argue that that system is a dumb way to
| enforce the drinking age (ignoring whether the drinking age
| itself is a reasonable policy).
| steelframe wrote:
| You probably don't even need to photoshop your name on the
| card. In most scenarios you could take a small and slightly
| blurry photo of anyone's card, bring it up on your phone to
| show someone, and they'll shrug and accept it as evidence
| that you're vaccinated.
| EGreg wrote:
| They usually ask for your ID to match the info on the
| card
|
| I asked and they may have a city agent scanning cards --
| then you simply stand in line behind someone and see
| whether or not they are scanning it versus just visually
| inspecting. If the latter -- you are good to go
| unanswered wrote:
| The vaccine is 100% safe and if you believe otherwise you're
| probably listening to too many racists.
| shockeychap wrote:
| For decades, we gave young children aspirin, before
| eventually connecting it to Reye syndrome. Indeed, children
| are not just small adults.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| > We don't know they are safe for children under 12.
| Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are
| not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults
| isn't automatically safe for children.
|
| True, and the obvious example is that kids don't die of
| covid, or so little that it is hard to make statistics. For
| just that reason, vaccines have to be incredibly safe
| (basically zero risk) for the risk/benefit to be acceptable.
|
| If it wasn't for the risk of transmission to adults there
| would be no reason for vaccinating kids.
| summerlight wrote:
| > Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell
| phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you
| got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
|
| One critical difference is that there will be legal
| consequences if you're using a fake proof of vaccination.
| djrogers wrote:
| That makes absolutely no sense, why would the same
| penalties not apply for lying about natural immunity?
| weaksauce wrote:
| there was a fitness instructor in colorado that didn't get
| the vaccine because he had tested and had antibodies in his
| blood. then he got covid again(or maybe the first time?) and
| it just absolutely decimated his body. he lost 70 lbs and is
| walking around with an oxygen bottle. the only real way to
| make sure you have proper antibodies and B and T cell
| responses is to have either gotten a symptomatic case of
| covid that lasted a while or getting the vaccine.(yes that's
| also not foolproof wrt antibodies/t/b response but it's a
| generally good method)
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| You can't learn much from a sample size of 1. In
| particular, there are people who have been vaccinated who
| have also died of COVID. The question is whether or not
| natural immunity affords comparable (or better) protection
| to the virus than the vaccine, and it seems that the data
| are indicating that it does. This should be a _good thing_
| --instead of being angry that it takes away our
| justification to force others to do something, we should be
| happy at the prospect of combatting covid without having to
| force people to do anything.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| If we're using anecdotes... how about the fully vaccinated
| guy that didn't have antibodies? Seems like issues can
| exist on both sides.
|
| Not the specific guy, but...
| https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/half-people-did-had-
| no-11063...
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Bill Phillips, author of Body For Life and founder of EAS
| supplements before selling it to Abbott.
|
| https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253708748.ht
| m... (Unvaccinated fitness guru gets COVID and spends 47
| days intubated. 'I made a mistake')
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Phillips_(author)
| rajin444 wrote:
| He has likely done major damage to his body through the
| use of steroids. He was a professional bodybuilder who
| admitted to using. This is definitely not a good
| anecdote.
| weaksauce wrote:
| yeah that guy is the one I was talking about. The virus
| is like playing russian roulette without a vaccine in
| you.
| q-big wrote:
| > The virus is like playing russian roulette without a
| vaccine in you.
|
| Some people love to gamble.
|
| There exist people who are risk averse, risk neutral, or
| risk loving (in an economic or psychologic sense):
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion
| munk-a wrote:
| That's cool - you can also love playing Russian Roulette
| itself - that doesn't mean we have to make it legal for
| you to actually do that.
|
| If the worst thing a vaccine mandate is doing is
| preventing you from getting your jollies from being an
| idiot I see no problem with enforcing a mandate.
| djrogers wrote:
| Russian Roulette has 1-6 odds, COVID is much closer to
| 1-6000 than it is to 1-6.
| munk-a wrote:
| You may be surprised to hear this - but it's actually the
| case that fewer people died this year to Russian Roulette
| than to COVID - and a lot of those people didn't
| volunteer to spin the wheel. I don't think the specifics
| about proportional chance of loss are particularly
| relevant.
| Izkata wrote:
| I'd lean towards "probably not safe"; we only just found that
| teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the
| vaccine than any risk from covid itself:
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-
| ris...
|
| https://archive.is/ixG5G
| n8henrie wrote:
| > Researchers found that the risk of heart complications
| for boys aged 12-15 following the vaccine was 162.2 per
| million, which was the highest out of all the groups they
| looked at.
|
| > Meanwhile, the risk of a healthy boy needing hospital
| treatment owing to Covid-19 in the next 120 days is 26.7
| per million. This means the risk they face from heart
| complications is 6.1 times higher than that of
| hospitalisation.
|
| It would seem more "apples to apples" to compare rates of
| _hospitalization_ due to myo /pericarditis to
| hospitalization due to COVID, or rates of diagnosis of each
| condition.
|
| The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that
| I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment.
| Unfortunate regardless.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk
| from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from
| covid itself:
|
| That's not what the study says. They compared all reports
| of possible cardiac events in the days following
| vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to
| only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they
| didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine
| myocarditis.
|
| This is the conclusion from the study:
|
| > Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged
| 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical
| comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two
| CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence
| exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization
| rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high
| COVID-19 hospitalization incidence.
|
| Full text: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.
| 30.21262866v... )
|
| They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made
| more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs,
| but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID
| hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in
| teenagers.
| incrudible wrote:
| It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID
| infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. If
| anything, this would make the vaccines look even worse.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID
| infection would be a subset of hospitalizations.
|
| No, the CAEs in the vaccine study included a lot of
| transient issues that didn't require hospitalization.
| Most cases of myocarditis resolve on their own relatively
| quickly.
|
| Myocarditis is common after COVID infections, too.
| They're just less likely to be explicitly noted because
| everything gets chalked up to COVID and the patient is
| already resting anyway, which is the primary treatment
| for myocarditis. It's not clear why the authors didn't
| try to compare against that.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Woah, that's super intense. Wow. I think i will still
| vaccinate my 12 year old boy because he wants to get the
| shot and these numbers are still low, but yeah, now i want
| more info. Thank you.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Regardless of where we end up with respect to vaccination
| of children for COVID-19, I hope we can all agree that
| the child's opinion is irrelevant, given that they are
| not equipped to make an informed decision.
| [deleted]
| tylermenezes wrote:
| In addition to being somewhat misleading as other
| commenters hawe pointed out, the first author of this non-
| peer-reviewed study appears to have a degree in the
| questionably relevant field of sports medicine.
| VintageCool wrote:
| That one study found a 1 in 5000 risk.
|
| The background here is that hospitalization from covid
| increases dramatically with age. Teenagers are at low risk
| of hospitalization from covid themselves, but I expect that
| vaccination would still reduce the risk of teenagers
| transmitting the virus to others.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from
| heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised[sic]
| from Covid-19
|
| there is a large range of poor outcomes that are not
| "hospitalized" if they get covid. they are susceptible to
| getting long covid and also to bring it home and
| potentially infect their parents unknowingly. just because
| one risk is higher doesn't mean the sum of the other risks
| suddenly don't matter.
| incrudible wrote:
| The vaccines only reduce risk of long COVID symptoms by
| about 50% on average:
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS147
| 3-3...
| ufo wrote:
| That is a misleading headline. Most of these reported cases
| of myocarditis are mild and did not require
| hospitalization, so it's kind of an apples to oranges
| comparison.
| djrogers wrote:
| > Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild
| and did not require hospitalization
|
| As are the vast majority of COVID cases in young boys and
| girls.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| If you want to say COVID and myocarditis are equally bad,
| you should compare the rates of both of them. You are
| saying myocarditis (often mild) should be compared to
| COVID (but only the cases that require hospitalization.)
|
| By that logic, my investment strategy of invest in index
| funds (goes up over time) is inferior to yours of invest
| in lottery tickets (but we only consider tickets that
| won.)
| shkkmo wrote:
| So wouldn't the correct comparison be comparing
| hospitalizations due to CAE to hospitalizations due to
| covid?
| Jenk wrote:
| Non-paywalled article:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-
| at-r...
|
| Link to (as yet not peer-reviewed) study: https://www.medrx
| iv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
| IanCal wrote:
| > Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the
| US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved
| the use in children under 12
|
| The main issue here is that covid is less of a problem for
| people who are younger.
|
| That means rarer issues can start to outweigh benefits. It's
| easily possible for vaccines to be beneficial over a certain
| age and detrimental under.
|
| Also - while the vaccines lower transmission they do not stop
| it entirely so again it comes to weighing benefits.
|
| The other issue is about testing how well the vaccines work in
| different groups. Just because it works well in a 65y
| grandfather doesn't mean it'll work well in a 2mo baby, or help
| with dosing decisions.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the
| US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved
| the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many
| doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for
| people under 18.
|
| > IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines
| available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6
| months (just in case)
|
| That's a terrible idea. Children are not small adults, and you
| can't use the same medicine for children as for adults. There
| are Pediatricians who work specifically with children. Giving
| drugs to children is unlike the scenario where a heavy car
| takes twice the gasoline a ligher care takes.
|
| "Therefore, the risk of cardiac adverse events following the
| second dose of the mRNA vaccine could be around 3.7 times more
| likely than hospitalization due to COVID-19 in healthy
| 12-15-year-old boys during periods when the pandemic is better
| under control 2.1 times in 16-17-year-olds. The group found
| that this trend remains even when SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates
| are high, with vaccination being riskier than hospitalization
| from COVID-19. The long-term health effect of the mRNA vaccines
| on teenage boys is unknown. Few clinical trials have been
| conducted due to the early observation of adverse events." [1]
|
| [1] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210913/The-rate-of-
| vacci...
| soperj wrote:
| >Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but
| genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is
| no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
|
| There is a difference. Covid is 10 times more lethal than the
| average flu. It's not always that they can't either, it's also
| that their body won't develop enough antibodies.
|
| Main reason for lockdown is so that your hospitals can keep
| functioning, or in the case of New Zealand, so that you can go
| back to complete normal life except for travel outside the
| country.
| SquishyPanda23 wrote:
| > Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a
| bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having
| natural immunity.
|
| I think this is the main point.
|
| We are dealing with a large anti-vax disinformation campaign
| that America's enemies are fanning [0] because they want to
| destabilize the country.
|
| Many of the anti-vax people people are now pushing natural
| immunity.
|
| Yes there is something to be said about natural immunity in
| conditions in which, say, vaccine supply was critically low and
| needed to be triaged.
|
| But when there is approximately zero marginal cost to getting
| vaccinated, and very high likelihood of fraud among the nature
| immunity promotors, it doesn't make sense as policy.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-removes-
| russian-...
| beaner wrote:
| >I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the
| importance of the vaccine for people under 18
|
| The vaccine is not important for people under 18.
|
| Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from
| covid. [0]
|
| Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart
| problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19.
| [1]
|
| [0] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-
| Sex...
|
| [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-
| ris...
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| Kids can also be carriers, and more spread among a partially
| resistant population means more mutation and more variants.
| Vaccines are in the process of being approved for all ages.
| suifbwish wrote:
| Vaccinated individuals can also carry it. It does not stop
| spread or contraction. These Vaccines are just supposed to
| reduce the extreme Symptoms
| staplers wrote:
| "A growing body of evidence indicates that people fully
| vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or
| Moderna) are less likely than unvaccinated persons to
| acquire SARS-CoV-2 or to transmit it to others."
|
| Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science
| /science-br...
| Romanulus wrote:
| Vaccines are only helping the rise of variants.
| mtinkerhess wrote:
| Vaccination greatly reduces transmission.
| not2b wrote:
| That's incorrect. Vaccinated people are contracting Covid
| at a bit less than 1/5 the rate of the unvaccinated. See
| for example
|
| https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-case-rates-
| vaccination-...
| outworlder wrote:
| No they are not. They are supposed to allow the immune
| system to react more quickly after infection (essentially
| immediately if you have antibodies).
|
| Kill pathogens more quickly, you'll be infectious for
| less time, and whoever do you infect will have a lower
| viral load.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Vaccinations reduce your chance of getting infected and
| reduce the average duration of the infection. The
| combination of these two factors thus reduce the R value
| of covid in vaccinated populations when compared to
| unvaccinated populations with identical network
| topologies and behaviors.
| clavalle wrote:
| Stop? No. Reduce? Yes.
| [deleted]
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart
| problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19.
|
| What use is it to compare two different things? Those heart
| problems aren't all hospitalizations. Teenage boys who get
| COVID-19 are more likely to have heart problems than teenage
| boys who get vaccinated. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are
| more likely to be hospitalized than teenage boys who get
| vaccinated. Many young men have died of COVID-19, and none
| have died of the vaccine.
|
| > Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from
| covid. [0]
|
| More than twice as many died in August as in July or as in
| August of last year. With Delta and school in session, expect
| this number to go up for September.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Good thing people under 18 are never in contact with people
| over 18.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| This is comparing myocarditis to hospitalizations.
|
| Where is the comparison between myocarditis induced by
| vaccination vs natural infection?
|
| [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.212609
| 98v...
|
| "Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from
| primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450
| per million in young males. Young males infected with the
| virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as
| those who have received the vaccine."
| fidesomnes wrote:
| Reading comprehension is not your strong suit.
| timr wrote:
| This is out of date and incorrect. The latest data shows
| that the risk of myocarditis in children after two doses
| vastly exceeds the risk of myocarditis posed by the virus:
|
| https://twitter.com/ID_ethics/status/1437876328640876544
|
| Better breakdowns by age and gender show a risk of
| myocarditis after two doses as high as 1 in 3000:
|
| https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1437067899089219589
|
| This number has been steadily increasing, as time passes.
| Current consensus seems to be that one dose is the optimal
| tradeoff between risk and reward for young children.
| jameshart wrote:
| That report doesn't appear to talk about case rates of
| myocarditis due to COVID at all. It compares COVID
| hospitalization rates to vaccine-related myocarditis case
| rates. Is it your assumption that all myocarditis cases
| are as serious as a COVID hospitalization?
| outworlder wrote:
| > Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from
| covid.
|
| How many avoided death because they had good health care?
|
| One of my pet peeves about this pandemic is how death metrics
| keep being pushed around, as if it was not a big deal.
|
| If this pandemic had hit before we had modern health care
| facilities, it would have been comparable to the great
| pandemics in history.
|
| Besides, what happened to the children that didn't die? What
| sort of issues this could cause that may affect their
| development? We don't know, so we should play it safe.
|
| > from the vaccine
|
| There isn't just one vaccine. There are several. If one is
| potentially causing issues, use another.
|
| Also, what about heart problems from Covid-19, even among
| those not hospitalized?
|
| I can't read your paywalled article, but I've found another
| link. The 'heart problems' are myocarditis, which in most
| cases is mild and _resolves_ by itself.
|
| https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-
| diseas...
| nanis wrote:
| > How many avoided death because they had good health care?
|
| If you are going play that game, you also need to ask how
| many died between March - June 2020 because of panicked
| doctors intubating everyone left and right with no one
| around to advocate for the patients.
| [deleted]
| tdeck wrote:
| > you also need to ask how many died between March - June
| 2020 because of panicked doctors intubating everyone left
| and right with no one around to advocate for the
| patients.
|
| Not sure what this is implying, or what kind of advocacy
| would have made a better call. Doctors intubated people
| (despite a shortage of ventilators and the difficulty of
| triage) because the patients were struggling to breathe,
| and given available data the medical profession though it
| would help those patients recover. They've since learned
| more about the outcomes from this particular disease and
| when a ventilator is appropriate. Your comment makes it
| sound as though any idiot off the street could tell who
| should be on a ventilator and who should not.
| mattmanser wrote:
| It's nothing to do with them catching it, it's about them
| spreading it.
|
| The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the
| pandemic.
|
| Without the teenagers vaccinated, that's never going to get
| hit.
|
| Wait until winter hits and the cases spike, then it's
| suddenly going to become "necessary", but if they'd made that
| hard decision 3 months ago this would already be over.
| rajin444 wrote:
| How can they know that figure (80%) without knowing % of
| people with natural immunity? We can guess but there hasn't
| been much of an effort made to track this.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the
| pandemic.
|
| That was pre-Delta. The higher the R0, the more mitigation
| we need to do. The question is what gets RE below zero.
|
| At this point, with Delta's R0 and the vaccine's
| effectiveness, it looks like mere vaccination without masks
| is going to be insufficient in large groups (e.g. at a
| giant concert, a big play). But, since all the precautions
| have a multiplier, that's fine. It means we can keep doing
| those things as long as we take precautions while we do it
| and not assume vaccine = ignore COVID.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Good thing the only thing that matters is death, not any
| other issue.
|
| Good thing children never transmit viruses to adults.
|
| Good thing reservoirs of disease never allow for novel
| mutations.
|
| Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally
| dishonest like compare projections in one case to actual
| results in the other.
|
| Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally
| dishonest like compare one rate in the general population to
| a rate in an already selected group.
|
| Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally
| dishonest like compare self-reported issues to actually
| verified cases.
|
| Good thing your source[1] didn't make a big deal about the
| huge multiplier difference between two exceedingly small
| numbers (0.01622% vs 0.00261%)
|
| Good thing your source[1] didn't falsely imply
| "hospitalization" and "myocarditis " as equivalently severe,
| ignoring that the myocarditis responded well and quickly to
| treatment[2] whereas COVID does not, leading to long hospital
| stays and/or ventilation and/or death.
|
| [2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety
| /my...
| dang wrote:
| Please don't argue in the flamewar style on HN, regardless
| of how right you are or feel you are. It is exactly what
| we're trying to avoid here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| [deleted]
| tomohawk wrote:
| Minor correction.
|
| That 412 number is "covid involved", not "covid caused".
|
| This could be that the death was not at all due to covid, but
| the cadaver tested positive. They were in a car accident, for
| example.
|
| This could be actually caused by covid primarily.
|
| This could be covid tipped someone over the edge who was
| already very ill.
|
| EDIT: also hospitalizations for children are rare
|
| https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html
| detaro wrote:
| > _This could be that the death was not at all due to
| covid, but the cadaver tested positive. They were in a car
| accident, for example._
|
| That's not how "covid involved" is defined, no.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Source?
|
| EDIT: please post a url or something.
| detaro wrote:
| The CDC documentation for the data they publish.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| If you are skeptical and think "COVID involved" according
| to CDC might mean they could have died of other things but
| _also_ happened to have COVID, then here is an exercise you
| should do: First, go to CDC and download all the death data
| for 2015-2020. Second, import this into your spreadsheet of
| choice and plot all of these deaths as 6 individual time-
| series plots with Jan-Dec as the X axis. Third, observe
| that the curves are nearly identical for 2015-2019, with
| the exception of a very slightly elevated curve for one of
| the flu seasons (I think it was the tail end of 2017 /
| start of 2018). Now observe that the curve for 2020 has
| several giant bumps in it that precisely correlate with the
| COVID surges in both size and shape. Calculate the area
| between that curve and any of the previous years. Now
| observe that it very, very closely matches the number the
| CDC is reporting as "covid involved" deaths for 2020.
|
| I did this. This is quite convincing to me that the "COVID
| involved" deaths are not mis-categorized and they actually
| _are_ related to COVID unless CDC is straight up
| fabricating death numbers on a massive scale. The stories
| about the COVID death categorizations being overstated are
| pure FUD.
| lghh wrote:
| I'm not sure why death is the only thing we're trying to
| avoid. Currently, children's ICUs in Oklahoma are full in
| part due to the number of Covid patients. I'd rather my child
| not end up in the hospital, much less be turned away from one
| in a time of need.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Then you should be concerned about the considerable risk
| they will end up there due to heart inflammation (in the
| case of male children).
|
| Edit: I'm not going to respond to every comment below that
| points out that it's extremely rare, other than to ask that
| you compare that chance to the chance of hospitalization
| due to covid, which according to the link above is less
| likely.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| Source for "considerable risk" needed.
|
| It's still considered extremely rare post vaccination.
| unanswered wrote:
| The sources are literally three comments up! And the
| point is that the risk is _higher_ than the risk from
| COVID!
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| " Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from
| heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from
| Covid-19."
|
| This is comparing rates of myocarditis vs rates of
| hospitalization, which is two different things.
|
| We would need to see rates of myocarditis due to
| vaccination vs rates of myocarditis due to natural
| infection.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Plus that's comparing one risk of the vaccine to one risk
| of the virus. You need a holistic comparison. COVID
| messes you up in lots of other ways too, ways in which
| the vaccine does not.
| chitowneats wrote:
| I'm curious how, in your mind, myocarditis is being
| diagnosed and reported in children if not at the
| hospital?
|
| Heart inflammation is not typical in children or
| adolescents. This is not based on self-reporting.
|
| Are you aware that UK regulators have not approved the
| vaccine for 12-15 year-olds (or any children younger),
| based on this risk, specifically?
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669
| n8henrie wrote:
| The term hospitalization implies an inpatient (or at
| least observation) stay, as opposed to an outpatient
| encounter like the emergency department or a clinic. Most
| diagnoses made in the outpatient setting do not require
| hospitalization, which could include both COVID and
| myo/pericarditis.
|
| EDIT: speling
| smorgusofborg wrote:
| > myocarditis is being diagnosed and reported in children
| if not at the hospital?
|
| The vast majority of people who visit a doctor are
| diagnosed with no hospitalization and the recommended
| course for most myocarditis cases is not hospitalization.
| If the recommendation were hospitalization then many more
| infected young males would be hospitalized based on
| myocarditis diagnosis.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| "Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from
| primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as
| 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with
| the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop
| myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine." [0]
|
| So there's a preprint stating that COVID-19 causes
| myocarditis at a higher rate than via vaccination. So
| it's not quite clear to me whether or not, if looking at
| it from a risk of myocarditis, that not getting
| vaccinated is the better choice.
|
| And according to the JCVI, it still is marginally
| beneficial to get vaccinated over not getting vaccinated.
| So it's not like they are advising that natural infection
| is safer than vaccination.
|
| "For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their
| risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore
| the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is
| also small. The JCVI's view is that overall, the health
| benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children
| aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the
| potential harms." [1]
|
| [0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21
| 260998v...
|
| [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-
| updated-advic...
| chitowneats wrote:
| The part of the JCVI decision you omitted is:
|
| "The medium- to long-term effects are unknown and long-
| term follow-up is being conducted.
|
| Given the very low risk of serious COVID-19 disease in
| otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year olds, considerations on
| the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very
| finely balanced and a precautionary approach was agreed."
| [1]
|
| As a concerned parent, this is how I will be approaching
| vaccination for my sons.
|
| [1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-
| updated-advic...
| vibrato2 wrote:
| Did you miss the data point that boys are 6x more likely to
| be affected from the therapy than the illness?
| fortuna86 wrote:
| Did you miss the point where any death is likely
| preventable and 400+ in the US is still too many ?
| tshaddox wrote:
| That "data point" is that that group is 6x more likely to
| be affected by myocarditis after receiving a vaccine than
| _to be hospitalized_ due to COVID. I would like to see an
| actually useful comparison, like, say, the likelihood of
| being affected by myocarditis after receiving a vaccine
| versus the likelihood of being affected by myocarditis
| after a COVID infection.
| n8henrie wrote:
| This is a blatant misrepresentation.
| dekhn wrote:
| Many of us view that claim with skepticism and prefer
| that the analysis of this data be left to experts who
| understand how misleading data can be.
| deft wrote:
| you're deferring thinking to an unnamed mystery expert
| and then arguing on behalf of that unnamed mystery expert
| as if you know what they'd say. lol, just lol.
| dekhn wrote:
| as part of the international scientist cabal, of course I
| know who the expert is
| markdown wrote:
| Watch it! We're not supposed to talk about our group.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| The cdc link provided raw numbers. The telegraph link is
| a journalist deducing a conclusion. I don't think any
| experts provided any conclusive evidence in this thread
| (which I gather was the point of the comment you replied
| to)
| bluGill wrote:
| Anyone can claim to be an expert. Once one comes forward
| we can evaluate to see if their claims hold up.
|
| In this case experts have pointed out that the analysis
| is wrong because it doesn't compare mycardius in the
| control group even through we know covid also causes
| that. Nor do they consider harm, despite vaccine caused
| mycardious being mild.
| sk2020 wrote:
| What is the baseline utilization of ICU space? I'm also
| curious what happened to those heroic efforts of
| retrofitting parking garages into field-expedient
| hospitals. Oh, and the notorious "gunshot victims are being
| left to die because of all the covid, bros!" misinformation
| that respectable journalists printed without any effort to
| check the facts.
| Clubber wrote:
| >that respectable journalists printed without any effort
| to check the facts.
|
| Journalists from the same publication (Rolling Stone)
| were responsible for the whole fabricated "A Rape On
| Campus" article as well. I would not give them the
| respectable journalist moniker anymore except in jest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _" Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved
| the use in children under 12"_
|
| From what I understand, different ages of people tend to have
| different sorts of immune responses. While vaccines are safe
| and effective, it takes some time to get the dosages right for
| children because of the way their immune system responds to
| things - at least, with a new vaccine. I'm not an expert,
| though, and I got this information while looking up variances
| in side effects (older folks get less than younger folks, and
| folks with two x chromosomes - mostly females - tend to get
| more as well).
| efficax wrote:
| clinical trials are ongoing for <12 year olds. The biggest
| change is that the dosages will have to be lower. If you give a
| young child the current adult dose they will have a higher
| chance of side effects.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a
| bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having
| natural immunity.
|
| This ignores the existence of antibody tests, and there's no
| reason that lying about a positive antibody test would be
| easier to get away with than lying about being vaccinated.
| oppositelock wrote:
| I've got a child under 12, and while everyone in my household
| over 12 is vaccinated, I'm not sure if the vaccine has any
| point for him. If you look at CDC stats, today there are only
| 412 reported covid19 deaths in the 0-17 age group, 138 in the
| 0-4 group, meaning 274 in the 4-17 group out of 670,000.
| Furthermore, kids rarely need treatment, so most infections go
| undiagnosed.
|
| While I have no objection to a vaccine, and I don't question
| the efficacy of these, the trivial chance of my son's covid19
| complications versus forcing him to a doctor's office over his
| fear of needles, which will cause him a lot of angst, makes me
| question whether to do it. These decisions aren't always
| entirely about death percentages.
| Mikealcl wrote:
| Not sure how accurate that is based on the children's
| hospitals in the southern United States being at capacity
| from COVID. Long symptoms have also become an issue in
| children.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| I'd like to see a better definition of what "long COVID"
| is. The minimum definition I see most often is symptoms
| lasting longer than 3 weeks. I've never had a cold where
| all symptoms were gone at the 3 week mark.
|
| We have been made to associate the term "long COVID" with
| debilitating illness lasting many months, talk of people
| joining online support groups, etc. I'd like a better
| breakdown of what is common.
|
| Edit: Downvotes why? It isn't reasonable to want to know
| how many people are having "any symptom at all past 3
| weeks" and how many are suffering from debilitating
| syndromes?
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Never ending fatigue, random muscle and joint pains,
| blood pressure fluctuations, constant low-grade headache,
| numbness of extremities, tinnitus, shortness of breath,
| chest pain, tachycardia, back pain, anxiety and
| depression.. and usually its combination of the above
| that come and go continuously in what seems like waves.
|
| There are probably more symptoms I'm missing, but that is
| what I experienced for 9 months
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Long symptoms have also become an issue in children.
|
| Source?
| wpietri wrote:
| If you'd like to appear serious, I'd recommend doing a
| little basic googling before asking anybody for a source.
| Maybe this isn't true for you, but there are plenty of
| querulous people who ask for information that are not
| sincerely interested, but just work to wear out their
| opponents.
| loeg wrote:
| Being skeptical of "Long COVID" claims around (typically)
| asymptomic or mild COVID cases in children is reasonable.
| Nevertheless, we should vaccinate children -- ordinary
| acute COVID is bad enough, and of course they are still a
| transmission vector.
|
| Long COVID isn't well-defined in general; some large
| subset of it is psychosomatic. The main non-psychosomatic
| problem seems to be fallout from ARDS (Acute Respitory
| Distress Syndrome), which is directly related to severe
| bouts of COVID (and generally younger people have less
| severe COVID, with or without vaccines).
|
| https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/22/we-need-to-start-
| thinkin...
| hpoe wrote:
| I'd recommend when you decide to make claims you go ahead
| and provide a source rather than becoming passive-
| aggressive and telling someone it isn't your job to
| educate them.
| wpietri wrote:
| I did not make any claims here, bub. Source: scroll up.
| alex_smart wrote:
| If we can try to not turn this place into Reddit, that
| would be great.
|
| Asking a source for an imprecise, sensational-sounding
| claim doesn't deserve this level of hostility.
| outworlder wrote:
| Also known as sealioning
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would agree with you if I was questioning water
| fluoridation or if vaccines gave people autism.
|
| A request to support a claim about the "long term"
| effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years
| ago, in a rapidly changing environment, for which it
| seems pretty improbable for there to have already been
| robust, repeated, falsifiable studies done, is different.
| wpietri wrote:
| Long Covid in children is an established phenomenon.
| Which you would know if you had typed "long Covid in
| children" into Google and looked quickly through the top
| results.
|
| I would also suggest that if you want "robust, repeated,
| falsifiable studies" for "effects of a virus/disease
| discovered less than 2 years ago" you have set your
| standard implausibly high. That's not how medicine
| progresses for urgent things, because it's fantastically
| negligent. Contrast the rapid global Covid response,
| which saved millions of lives, with the incredible foot-
| dragging surrounding AIDS in the 80s. If we had waited
| for perfect knowledge before taking action, hospitals
| would have been stacking bodies in the streets.
|
| At this stage you get papers saying things like, "A
| quarter of children experienced persistent symptoms
| months after hospitalization with acute covid-19
| infection, with almost one in ten experiencing multi-
| system involvement. [...] Our findings highlight the need
| for replication and further investigation [...]". [1]
|
| [1] https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2021/06/10/
| 1399300...
| baseh wrote:
| >https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7#ref-
| CR2
| >https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Thanks! Based on the nature.com link, it looks like there
| needs to be more time and work done to make concrete
| claims (as I suspected with something as complicated as
| "long covid").
|
| I would also be interested in seeing comparisons to "long
| <other infectious diseases>".
| sk2020 wrote:
| "Long Covid" symptoms are unfalsifiable.
| [deleted]
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| My partner is a nurse, and something I think that gets lots a
| lot in discussing these stats is that many times 'surviving'
| doesn't mean 'back to normal like nothing happened".
|
| Her stories of it radically complicating totally unrelated
| illnesses and the potential severe long term effects are more
| than enough reason to take precautions seriously despite what
| group or demographic you might be in.
| rurp wrote:
| I think about this a lot but almost never hear it brought
| up, so I agree that the point gets overlooked often. For
| every death there are probably many people experiencing
| serious effects. Anyone who has experienced significant
| long term health problems knows that they can have a
| massive impact on your life.
|
| This reminds me of a bad take that comes up from time to
| time around war casualties. Some will see that only a
| thousand soldiers out of a million died in some conflict
| and think that it wasn't that dangerous, but for every
| death in war there can be dozens of people who suffer
| severe mental and physical harm that negatively affects the
| rest of their life.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| A large number of the breakthrough cases I'm (personally)
| aware of are coming from unvaccinated kids to their parents.
| I would definitely vaccinate your child once it's approved
| for under 12 - for your whole family's sake. Then tell them
| they're doing it to protect their family and let them feel
| like a brave hero.
| [deleted]
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Why wouldn't you just have the vulnerable adults get
| vaccinated? At what point will done of these people just
| start vaccinating in the womb or just treat it like
| circumcision? Circumcision is not needed but might as well
| just poke babies with needles immediately after their born
| to make sure we traumatize them as much as possible.
| fspeech wrote:
| From family experience: Covid can definitely hit kids much
| harder than the common cold and they can transmit to
| vaccinated parents.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| IMO the issue is children & schools are the perfect
| combination for the spread of illnesses. While no one wants
| to make definitive statements on how much the vaccine reduces
| the duration & level of contagiousness -> it is almost
| certainly not 0%.
|
| I think as long as the vaccine is an option for all/most ages
| then it isn't much of an issue. Although it would be
| interesting if we allowed kids to get the vaccine at school -
| possibly without parental permission. (Sort of a tricky
| area... I think some places provide the HPV vaccine like this
| since some parents won't let their kids get it.)
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| > I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the
| importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
|
| Maybe because there's concerns.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
|
| > "for boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of
| CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day
| Covid-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at
| times of high weekly Covid-19 hospitalization,"
| billycorben2 wrote:
| I am 28. A programmer with a sedentary lifestyle.
|
| I was covid positive last October and kicked it fine (verified
| with a test).
|
| I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies, my results were a "76"
| (I assume percentage?).
|
| Why should I get vaccinated?
| not2b wrote:
| To provide additional protection (especially since given that
| timing it almost certainly wasn't the delta variant that you
| got). Maybe you are protected by your previous infection and
| maybe you aren't.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| What's the connection to Delta here? They haven't updated
| the vaccines.
| gizmondo wrote:
| Which is infuriating by the way. The best explanation why
| (which I've seen) is "doh, that would be a bit
| inconvenient".
|
| Is there, like, a rational reason?
| nsxwolf wrote:
| It was my understanding that you basically just punch
| these mRNA sequences into a computer and you could have a
| new formulation ready for manufacture over the weekend.
| If it's a regulatory issue, maybe the regulations should
| be adjusted. Why have a booster of the original stuff
| that's not working as well?
| fwip wrote:
| mRNA can produce basically any protein.
|
| Not all proteins are safe to have in the body.
|
| Most proteins are safe, of course, and the odds that any
| particular new mRNA target is safe is pretty good. But
| it's not trivial to predict with computational models,
| and so it requires testing.
| oppositelock wrote:
| It's really not that simple. I'm not current, but I
| studied immunology as part of medical school a long time
| ago.
|
| The Delta variant replicates really quickly, that is its
| evolutionary advantage over other strains, it's not that
| your immune system is weaker to it. What happens is that
| at first it ramps up a lot faster than your immune
| response, and during this period, it produce a lot more
| virions, and your immune system has a bigger fight on its
| hands.
|
| There are many immunologists working on identifying the
| nature of the immune response to sars-cov-2, and so far,
| something on the order of 80 unique antibodies have been
| identified which are induced by vaccination, and about
| 200 unique antibodies which are induced by actual
| infection. The convalescent antibodies target the
| nucleocapsid (the ball) more than the spike protein.
|
| It appears that the delta variant escapes approximately
| 1/8 of the antibodies in both cases, so you still have a
| very strong immune response, just one which doesn't ramp
| up as fast as the virus.
|
| Now, as for the mRNA sequences, we can create them in a
| DNA printer (then transcribe to RNA), however, this
| triggers new safety and efficacy trials at the FDA.
| gizmondo wrote:
| Safety - yes, do we really need efficacy trials for such
| a change? Is it remotely likely to be worse?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The vaccines focus on the spike protein, which is present
| and consistent between variants.
| oppositelock wrote:
| While I posted above about being on the fence about
| vaccinating my kid, I was in a similar case as you. I'm in my
| late 40's, and I came down with covid early in the pandemic,
| before general availability of PCR tests, but I did manage to
| get an antibody test, and I was positive.
|
| I did get vaccinated because the vaccine reinforces
| antibodies which are correlated with fewer complications upon
| subsequent infection. There are some epitopes on sars-cov-2
| which closely resemble parts our own clotting factors and
| interferons, and the randomized nature of our immune response
| can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present. So,
| it seems a vaccine only helps.
|
| One thing about getting vaccinated after recovery from covid,
| though, is that both the first and second doses knock you on
| your butt, not just the second.
| outworlder wrote:
| > the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to
| some less desirable antibodies being present
|
| Exactly! The point of many COVID vaccines is to teach the
| immune system to destroy a very specific and very important
| protein, which is the spike protein. Without that the virus
| can't enter cells. It's not present in our own body.
|
| We have no idea what kind of immune response any given
| person might get with an actual infection. Reinfections are
| a thing.
| gizmondo wrote:
| Your last paragraph makes little sense. We have no idea
| what kind of immune response any given person might get
| with a vaccine (any vaccine) either. What kind of test
| this is? And infections after covid vaccines are sadly
| also a thing.
| pengaru wrote:
| Last October, so likely not Delta variant.
|
| It's been widely reported by authorities on the subject that
| vaccination after infection with Alpha confers immunity to
| all currently known variants.
|
| The same is not true for natural immunity from just an Alpha
| infection AIUI.
| Thrymr wrote:
| > I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies, my results were a
| "76" (I assume percentage?).
|
| It does not mean percentage. The fact that we cannot directly
| relate antibody levels to immunological protection is one of
| the reasons we can't [yet?] use antibody tests to "count" as
| immunity.
| n8henrie wrote:
| I've seen several patients that were sicker the second time
| they got COVID, including people dying in their 20s and 30s.
| I can't speculate on what their antibody tests might have
| showed beforehand.
|
| Why would you _not_ get vaccinated?
| rajin444 wrote:
| Lack of evidence.
|
| Your post is using scary anecdotes to try and persuade.
| That does not come off as trustworthy.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| People get sick with COVID multiple times, and natural
| immunity is more hit-or-miss with regards to protection
| against variants. Reinfections are also frequently nastier
| than the first infection. It also costs absolutely nothing
| and at worst will act as an additional safety that makes you
| feel uncomfortable for a few days.
|
| So why _not_ get vaccinated?
| ALittleLight wrote:
| The research I've seen is that people with a previous
| infection are much more protected than the vaccinated.
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415
| v...
| genewitch wrote:
| Why would a reinfection be worse? How would the spike
| proteins in the pfizer, moderna, and J&J shots work at all
| if that was the case?
| steelframe wrote:
| I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies after receiving the
| vaccine. My results were "0." And yet I experienced all the
| typical side effects from the vaccine, indicating that I
| probably had an immune response to it.
|
| Nobody knows what any particular antibody count means with
| respect to risk to your health from a future COVID infection.
| Instead, we need to be looking at the hard statistics about
| who's getting admitted into hospitals and who's dying.
| billycorben2 wrote:
| Genuine question: Do we have data on hospitalization and
| mortality rates of unvaccinated but previously exposed?
| tfehring wrote:
| The data I've seen is not great, in part because
| reinfection is pretty rare. This study [0] indicating
| rates of 31.0% and 3.4% respectively is the best I've
| seen, but I'd hazard a guess that there's some sampling
| bias - i.e., healthier people are less likely to get
| symptomatic reinfection and therefore to get tested, so
| unhealthy people are overrepresented in the data - so
| those rates are probably overestimates.
|
| [0] https://ehrn.org/articles/covid-19-testing-and-
| possible-rein...
| dbetteridge wrote:
| To turn your question on its head.
|
| It is a free vaccine that could save your life, has been
| safely administered to billions of people and greatly reduces
| the odds of you getting infected, transmitting to others or
| ending up in hospital.
|
| What is the downside? or are you just apathetic to getting
| it.
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