Disappointing, given the evidence that "natural" immunity has been shown to be less effective at producing neutralizing antibodies than many of the vaccines that are available[1]
Could you point at the part of this paper that summarizes this result? I'm not seeing any comparison in this paper between the neutralizing response of a vaccination vs natural infection.
"You get a broader immune response after being infected with the virus than vaccination.
Whether you've had Moderna or Pfizer or Oxford-AstraZeneca, your body is learning to spot just one thing - the spike protein.
This is the critical part of the virus to make antibodies to, and the results - by keeping most out of hospital - have been spectacular.
But having the other 28 proteins to target too, would give T-cells far more to go at."
> given the evidence that "natural" immunity has been shown to be less effective at producing neutralizing antibodies than many of the vaccines that are available
Down-voted because this is misinformation.
First of all the citation you provided does not support your claim at all.
Second, a large body of literature suggests that vaccination and natural infection induce a robust and durable immune response that is mostly similar [1][2], but slightly different. One of the primary differences is that natural infection induces an immune response that includes nucleocapsid protein antibodies, whereas vaccination with the current spike protein focused mRNA vaccines does not [3]. Another significant difference is that vaccination induces an immune response that is more highly targeted toward the spike protein RBD compared to natural infection [4].
There is absolutely no scientific consensus that vaccination offers better protection than natural infection, or vice-versa. None of the papers cited in either of our comments make that claim.
[4] Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from SARS-CoV-2 infection
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/
> It seems to indicate that mRNA-1273 vaccination antibodies work better against spike mutation.
Yes [4] does kind of say that - but it does not claim that this provides better protection or benefits individual health outcomes.
Here are a few key nuances and limitations:
> We found that the specificity of the mRNA-1273 vaccine-induced RBD-binding antibody response often narrows over time. In contrast, the infection-elicited RBD-binding antibody response often broadens over time.
> Additionally, the overall antibody response is more homogeneous for vaccinated than convalescent individuals.
> another recent study suggests that mRNA vaccination elicits a different distribution of isotypes and fewer antibodies that cross-react to common-cold coronaviruses as compared to infection
> we did not examine effects of mutations or deletions to the N-terminal domain of the spike protein, which can also affect neutralization by vaccine sera.
> Our experiments assayed binding of antibodies to isolated RBD expressed by yeast, and so cannot capture mutational effects on trimer conformation or antibodies with quaternary epitopes
These nuances have implications for viral evolution, and are particularly important in the context of discussions around compulsory mass vaccination and vaccine resistance.
I would hope you might agree that term is better reserved for bullshit conspiracy theories and not peer reviewed research published in one of the most cited journals in the world.
> the citation you provided does not support your claim
Upon re-reading the paper I still find that my claim is supported.
"Although antiviral T and B cell memory certainly contribute some degree of protection, strong evidence of a protective role for neutralizing serum antibodies exists. For example, passive transfer of neutralizing antibodies can prevent severe SARS-CoV-2 infection in multiple animal models,12,13 and Regeneron has recently reported similar data in humans14. We therefore focus our studies on in vitro virus neutralization titers reported in studies of vaccinated and convalescent cohorts"
"To compare neutralization titers across studies, we determined the mean and standard deviation (on a log scale) of the neutralization titer in published data from seven vaccine studies (mRNA-1273, NVX-CoV2373, BNT162b2, rAd26-S+rAd5-S, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, Ad26.COV2.S and CoronaVac) and one convalescent study3,16,17,18,19,20,21,22"
" This model assumes that there is a protective neutralization level, T, above which individuals will be protected from infection and below which individuals will be susceptible. The protective efficacies observed in phase 3 clinical trials of vaccinated individuals (and another large cohort study of convalescent individuals1; "
[data shows higher level of neutralizing antibodies from four of the vaccines compared with convalescent studies]
It is possible -- even likely -- that I have misunderstood the paper. And both you and the paper I cited agree that more research is needed to establish the correlation between levels of neutralizing antibodies and protection from infection and disease. But my claim was _about_ the levels of neutralizing antibodies and as I understand it that claim is supported by the paper.
18 months into the pandemic we have a rapidly evolving virus, waning vaccine efficacy, and breakthrough infections common enough to warrant a third booster dose.
It would be silly to risk altering one’s broad-based, naturally acquired immunity by taking an unnecessary vaccine dose. Just like no one got a chickenpox vaccine after contracting the disease there is no need to get a COVID vaccine after contracting the disease.
Allow me to clarify. I said chickenpox vaccine. As in the childhood vaccine.
Why give a child a vaccine after they contracted the disease and developed natural immunity? Unnecessary medical procedures carry risks without benefit and veer too close to the field of human experimentation for many people.
I vouched for OP - it is a factual description of a relevant current event that is pertinent to civil liberties.
IMO the presented argument is valid and well supported scientifically and legally. It will be very interesting to see if this sets any precedent for other institutions.
> GMU and other universities must stop ignoring science and cease forcing mandatory vaccines on even those with naturally acquired immunity
> Strangely, despite solid scientific evidence, GMU continues to refuse to recognize that Covid-19 vaccination is medically unnecessary for ALL students, faculty, and staff with naturally acquired immunity demonstrated with antibody testing.
> NCLA filed Professor Zywicki’s complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia on August 3, 2021, challenging GMU’s “reopening policy.”
> The policy, announced June 28, requires all faculty and staff members, including those who can demonstrate natural immunity through recovery from a prior Covid-19 infection, to disclose their vaccination status as “a prerequisite for eligibility for any merit pay increases,” unless they obtain a religious or medical exemption.
> On July 22, GMU emailed the policy to students and employees and threatened disciplinary action—including termination of employment—against any who do not comply with the vaccine mandate.
> Prof. Zywicki’s immunologist, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, has advised him that, based on his personal health and immunity status, it is medically unnecessary to get a Covid-19 vaccine—and that it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
> As a result of the exemption it granted, GMU is permitting Prof. Zywicki to remain unvaccinated for medical reasons.
> "Nevertheless, NCLA remains dismayed by GMU’s refusal — along with many other public and private universities and other employers — to recognize that the science establishes beyond any doubt that natural immunity is as robust or more so than vaccine immunity.”
I'm not precisely sure this where the article's text contains a well-supported legal argument about why the mandate is unconstitutional -- in fact I don't believe there's any discussion at all of the relevant statutes & case law? A link to the decision itself would probably provide more of that information.
Here is the official document that was filed for the civil lawsuit [1], it cites a tremendous amount of case law and statutes.
> the Policy is unmistakably coercive and cannot reasonably be considered anything other than an unlawful mandate. And even if the Policy is not deemed coercive, it still represents an unconstitutional condition being applied to Professor Zywicki’s constitutional rights to bodily integrity and informed medical choice, respectively.
> GMU’s Policy infringes upon Professor Zywicki’s rights under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
> In sum, the Policy violates both Professor Zywicki’s constitutional and federal statutory rights
Not sure what the downvotes are for folks, I'm just the messenger - leave a comment if you don't like what you're seeing here so we can at least discuss it.
How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body? For the record: I am vaccinated and I always encourage others to do so. But what is the difference between someone choosing to not vaccinate “because of their religion” and just choosing not to vaccinate? Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?
We aren't out warring on "no shirts, no shoes, no service" mandates in private businesses, but somehow mandating a vaccine for a pandemic disease that kills is a gross infringement on our bodily autonomy? Religious exemptions for vaccinations shouldn't be allowed either.
You can take your shirt and shoes back off once you leave a business. A better comparison would be businesses that banned certain hairstyles or tattoos.
In fact, you are, in the US, allowed to refuse service to someone based on their tattoos or hairstyle [0]. The only prohibition in general on refusing service is to protected classes such as race or sex.
So now we can refuse service to someone with a tattoo we dislike, but not because they're unvaccinated? We don't deserve to survive as a species if we're that fucking dumb.
If you are so concerned, by all means you can get as vaccines as you want. To now, it remains unanswered why others have to be forced to receive the vaccine.
Because most of the effect of vaccines is their effect en masse. It's a solution lying almost entirely within the realm of collective action, so it's a test of whether we're collectively smart enough to implement a rational collective solution, which includes using some degree of coercive measures to achieve it.
Basically, if we let a pandemic kill millions because a fetish for personal choice prevents us from doing what's necessary to prevent it, we're too fucking stupid to survive as a species. That doesn't have to mean going to door-to-door with guns and needles; getting to the critical mass we need just means refusing to let the stupidly unvaccinated into a variety of public venues like airplanes and universities long enough to make them get the vaccine.
How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk death and the death of many others than receive a free vaccine? They’re putting themself and all peoples that interact with them at serious risk.
The last stat I saw was from Israel, and it was that vaccinated people who had never had COVID were ~6-7x more likely to be infected than unvaccinated people who had previously been confirmed to have had it in the past.
“In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus. These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.” 6 August 2021 - https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
Before repeating false stats, either look up your references, or provide them. There is a HUGE amount of ongoing misinformation about Covid figures which you cannot help but be aware of. For some reason the recent information from Israel seems to be especially misinterpreted (maliciously or not) - and anything recent referencing Israel is a red flag that it is likely disinformation. https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...
It is especially egregious to ask for a citation when you don’t provide one yourself.
> shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus
The parent was comparing against vaccinated individuals who never had COVID which is different than the scenario you linked. I'm as pro-vaccine as they come but claiming that they are spreading "false stats" is a bit uncharitable, no?
My apologies, you are entirely correct: I am not comparing same with same.
I have spent some time looking for relevant data, and it is difficult to find, so the parent comment’s number could easily be correct. The parents response is still (Roger) irrelevant to the grand-parent valid point that “They’re putting themself and all peoples that interact with them at serious risk” - the most forgiving reason would be if the GP edited their comment to remove a fact?
Reinfection remains rare: “We know that reinfection is not a common occurrence, at least in the short term with the original variant of the virus as well as some of the other [variants]” - https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-you-get-delta-var...
Even with the vaccine, you have a high risk of catching the Delta variant because the vaccines are only 40% effective against Delta… However you are far far less likely to get seriously ill, and apparently 2x less likely to spread it on to your family, if you are fully vaccinated and then catch Delta. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-v...
I also found “The relative risk for PCR positivity was 0.22 (95% CI, 0.17-0.28) for vaccinated individuals and 0.26 (95% CI, 0.21-0.34) for individuals with prior infection compared with no record of vaccination or prior infection” from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781112 but that doesn’t really help o_O
To the point where they not only refuse the vaccines, but take Ivermectin, an anti-parasatic proven for farm livestock because the buzz in the conservative monkeysphere says it's a cure-all.
there is some evidence that ivermectin has antiviral activity in-vitro, tested on primate cells. Many drugs have effects that are outside of on-label indications, as those are really just for marketing purposes.
Physicians are absolutely free to prescribe things off-label, do so routinely, and in fact in many situations the majority of prescriptions happen to be off-label.
The only concern here is 1) that concentration needed to achieve that effect may potentially be toxic to humans. 2) in-vitro studies mighte be insufficient/weak evidence and may fail in-vivo (happens all the time)
Which is to say that the more immediate concern is that it has never been tested or approved for human consumption and there are no guidelines around dosage or expected efficacy and if you're taking it because you heard about it as you seem to have, you're wildly guessing about a treatment in preference to availing yourself of a proven treatment that's been administered almost a billion times in the last 18 months under great scrutiny.
If you take Ivermectin in preference to getting vaccinated, you deserve to die. The preferred moral outcome here is for you to die by your own hand rather than let your willful ignorance increase the risk to your community.
Indeed, ivermectin is orders of magnitude safer than many OTC drugs. Nearly 4 billion doses administered worldwide and about 13 deaths in half a century.
Arguments against ivermectin are becoming quite tiresome because it causes virtually zero harm. In fact, Pfizer is impressed with its anti-viral properties and release of a similar (read:patentable) drug is imminent. Merck is another (early) source of ivermectin misinformation.
Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been using HN primarily for flamewar. We ban that sort of account as well, so would you please not do that anymore? We're trying for curious, thoughtful conversation here.
But the argument was that "the vaccines are too unproven so we should not trust them" and the solution is to take a medication that has seen orders of magnitude less testing and is known to be toxic (there are reports of large increases to calls to poison control because of this)?!
Ivermectin has been on the market for decades, it's side effects are well understood. It's used all the time around the world.
Toxic controls was very unfortunate events of people consuming veterinarian formulations designed for animals that weigh 1000+ lbs and overdosing. That means only that there is enough desperate people, and very few physicians willing to supervise the treatment.
I would be far more concerned about it's efficacy and people getting treatment that they think will help, when in fact it does not.
Imo it's okay because there is no expectation of people doing everything they can for other people. You could argue that people that don't go to medical school risk lives of the others.
No one will force you to vaccinate if you move do mountains and live in isolation there. But if you want to live among others - you either
- follow the rules of majority willingly
- will be forced to follow them
- move away and leave alone
But if you want to live with others and do whatever you want and endanger them - no one will tolerate this and then will be right to.
Let's see again when you actually enforce this by law and we can really talk about "rule". You could still argue that you endanger others by not doing 1000 other precautions, like going to medical school so you can use ballpoint pen to open the airway of that guy that chokes on airplane.
The problem with this statement is that it says exactly the opposite of what you intended.
The actual rule of the majority - coded into law in the united states, at least - is that vaccination is not required. So the truth is, if you want to live with others, you have to accept that folks around you are spreading covid.
Let me be clear: I'm extremely pro-vaccination and think the anti-vaxers are morons. But I'm also vaccinated, and content that pretty much everyone in this country who wants vaccination (and bears any significant risk) has had the opportunity. For the rest, there's infection. Roughly 0.7% of them will die. I wish people would make better life choices, but it's the rule of the land that people get to make stupid choices. Why fight it?
Not true. People who are not vaccinated become opportunities for mutation, causing variants to emerge and spread, most of which are innocuous (this happens all the time) but some can still re-infect and do harm to vaccinated people.
But the virus spreads among the vaccinated any way.
Moreover, the global population of unvaccinated will not be meaningfully affected by any one country's decision to mandate vaccination. And the mutation rate is dependent on the size of the global population of virus carriers, not one country's.
So all-in-all, I see very weak justification for such a heavy handed mandate, no matter how useful I think vaccination is.
>>At an incredibly reduced rate, and mutations generally do not spread to others.
It's a fast enough where Iceland is now experiencing its largest wave yet, despite having a nearly fully vaccinated population. And why would vaccination stop mutated strains from spreading?
>>I don't see how that's relevant to my original response.
It's relevant to whether any one country has cause to mandate vaccination.
>>Mutations occur irrespective of any human constructs such as nations, countries, borders, etc.
My point is that - even if vaccination affected the size of the infected population and thus the opportunity for the virus to mutate - one country's decision to vaccinate will not meaningfully affect the global vaccination rate and therefore the global mutation rate.
> Take the opposite case. Nobody vaccinates, we stop caring. What is the outcome?
We’ll never know. We have no proper controls. Just because B comes after A does not mean A implies B.
I’m exaggerating (some of our measures seem performative, but it looks like vaccines do a good job preventing severe illness), but places like Sweden would be decent to look at. They’ve had much better outcomes with nowhere near the restrictions.
How did we get to the point where so many people would rather risk unknown side effects of a free vaccine that hasn't been fully tested? They're putting themselves at unknown levels of risk. /s (sort of)
I find the constant "It's science" and other platitudes to be completely off-putting and it stinks of consensus building.
Further, the total shutdown of anyone that opposes the vaccinations raises so many red flags.
Perhaps the vaccines will turn out to be completely safe, or perhaps they won't. Without any sort of long-term studies, we have no idea which direction things will go.
Edit:
- The 1955 Cutter Incident:
"In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
- 2017 dengue fever:
"The analysis showed that the subset of trial participants who were inferred to be seronegative at time of first vaccination had a higher risk of more severe dengue and hospitalizations from dengue compared to unvaccinated participants."
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-...
Thanks for pointing out the Cutter Incident ... an example of how, at the start, some stumbles - including deaths - are inevitable. (Wyeth too had 'excess deaths'.)
'All five companies that produced the Salk vaccine in 1955—Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Wyeth, Pitman-Moore, and Cutter—had difficulty completely inactivating the polio virus."
In the long run, the polio vaccines were unquestionably effective. In the US: 58,000 cases in 1952; 5600 cases in 1957. Salk led to Sabin - who did his trial tests in the USSR and Mexico (ethical?) - and by 1964 there were 124 US cases.
If this was a sterilizing vaccine, such that you couldn't spread the virus or be infected after taking it I'd say neither are okay, religious or otherwise, because your personal choice has the potential to affect a wide range of people by getting them sick, making your personal choice not so personal. Your rights end where mine begin and all of that.
You shouldn't be able to spread a virus to others without consequences if there is a low risk way to completely eliminate that chance. Bodily autonomy is not an excuse to prolong a deadly pandemic especially because in this instance, this type of bodily autonomy doesn't come without large measurable consequences to society at large.
Even non sterilizing could be argued, it effects other people if you cannot find an ICU after your car accident because they are full with unvaccinated (and some vaccinated) covid patients.
The problem with this argument is that you can use it to also ban tobacco, and alcohol, and sugar, and red meat, and then you can move to things like sports, and start banning bungee jumping and rock climbing,…
There’s no obvious way to draw a line, but you definitely need one.
> There’s no obvious way to draw a line, but you definitely need one.
That's why you look at the magnitude of the effect, not just the direction of the effect. Not all slopes are slippery. Our legal system does not collapse as soon as it is tasked with determining which harm is more important to prevent.
> is that you can use it to also ban tobacco, and alcohol, and sugar, and red meat, and then you can move to things like sports
To be honest, IMHO both smoking tobacco and sports that cause a lot of concussions (eg. Rugby, American Football) are not going to last in the long term, or become marginal not mainstream activities.
This might involve legislative pressures on them, as well as a decline in social acceptance. In the case of Tobacco, we see this drop well advanced already. This is no bad thing, considering the outcomes from these activities.
If eating red meat was causing the ICUs to fill up, then I think the public health concerns should take precedence. And then we should be talking about a nationwide ban of the practice.
Likewise with smoking.
But neither of those activities has that level of impact on public health. So, the measures to be taken to curtail that kind of activity likewise should not be as strong.
But COVID is that bad. So, yes — vaccinations should be mandatory. Masking in public should be mandatory. At least, until the pandemic is over and we have sterilizing vaccines as well as medications that are proven to help cure the disease. And yes, this period could last years.
And if you don’t want to be vaccinated and you don’t want to wear a mask in public, then you don’t have to go out into public. You can stay home. And if you want to violate that rule too, then we should be able to lock you up in a COVID hotspot jail.
Smoking _does_ cause hospital wards to fill up. But it happens on average a few decades later. So, the measures taken to curtail it have also come in over decades. But in the end, they will be strong.
I'm in agreement with you on COVID and the necessary public health measures during an active pandemic.
It can, but it's a lousy argument. If my body doesn't affect your body, it should be my choice. Freedom is an American value. It's not a world value, and I wouldn't impose it on other countries, but it is an American one.
I'm 100% for vaccine mandates iff vaccines significantly reduce R0.
I'm 100% against them if they do not. Once my vaccination stops affecting the public health, it's my choice.
Banning unsafe things IS a mistake. Yes, I ought to be able to sword fight on a tightrope with sharp swords and no protection over a pit of alligators, if I decide that's what I want to do.
If that's the concern, then triage the unvaccinated COVID19 patients last. But in the long term, capacity expands to meet demand, and it's perfectly okay to change insurance premiums for anti-vaxers, smokers, or otherwise (or sword fighting over a pit of crocodiles, for that matter).
> If that's the concern, then triage the unvaccinated COVID19 patients last.
This is an ethics violation.
I don't really get your argument on risk. Non-vaccinated people with natural acquired immunity each got their special card rights by having caused a definite risk to everyone because they computed potential mutations perpetuating the pandemic and most likely perpetuated them. We have too high a population compared to 1918 to even have a that rough equivalent of what happens with a new virus in a pool of any more than 2 billion who aren't vaccinated.
All I hear when I hear anti-vax arguments is a freeloader who refers to natural things that are completely unrelated to the life science is letting them live. If you don't like artificial vaccination, you need to propose how you want to lower the population to pre-science era levels.
Well today if you were to punch me you'd likely be on trial for assault, and if you killed me, murder. Antisocial behaviors generally aren't legally punishable until they're taken out on someone else.
In this case, if you choose not to get the vaccine and then through contact tracing or some other mechanism an outbreak is traced to you when you could have gotten a vaccine? Assault sounds correct to me and if you killed someone through inaction, then something equivalent to negligent homicide sounds correct to me. You're not necessarily malicious but I'd say fairly negligent.
Not that that's what is currently the case, but it seems fair to me and in that world, rolling the dice on criminal charges instead of just getting a vaccine that 169million people in US alone currently have taken with no issue seems like a dumb dice roll to me, but most people have steadily proven to me over the last few years that they're not great at risk calculation over and under.
I am vaccinated and pro-vaccine, but it is not “zero issues”. There are side effects with the vaccines, and some of them are significant (partial paralysis).
The numbers still work that we should get vaccinated, but it’s unclear if people who have the worst side effects from the vaccine would be the same ones who would have suffered the worst effects of COVID (death).
So I get it - if you’re young, healthy, and unlikely to die from COVID, it is a non-zero (very, very small) risk from talking the vaccine. But I still think people should get the shot.
I'm not aware of any actual data on this, but it seems to me that those who choose not to be vaccinated are probably also very unlikely to be tested on any regular basis (if at all), and also (at least in the UK, where I am) not engage in any kind of voluntary contact tracing.
There seems to me to be a gap between what people think is happening, and what is actually happening. How exactly are people who haven't tested positive for Covid (either through a negative result, or simply avoiding testing altogether) going to be identified as the source of an outbreak if they're also not engaging in contact tracing in the first place?
As it stands, it seems to me like the most likely people to be contact traced are those who are also testing regularly, and are also the most likely to be vaccinated. I would be surprised if non-vaccinated people are anything but rarely identified as the source of an outbreak, precisely because they're also much less likely to ever get tested (unless seriously ill) or engage in contact tracing.
If you look at "reducing environmental levels of the metal lead" instead of a "medical treatment" then yes it does exactly that (and other harms). This is the reason for banning of lead in Gasoline, paint, pipes etc etc.
For the sake of discussion, here are some counter-arguments:
> If this was a sterilizing vaccine
There's no question that if we had a vaccine that provided sterilizing immunity, the calculus for public health policy would be affected. However, we have to account for the inevitability of viral mutation and evolution. This idea goes hand in hand with the fact that immunity is a spectrum, and just because a vaccine provides sterilizing immunity now, doesn't guarantee it will continue to do so indefinitely and for everyone.
> bodily autonomy doesn't come without large measurable consequences to society at large
Similarly, compulsory mass vaccination does not come without significant risks to public health. There is a very real and non-trivial risk that compulsory mass vaccination would create selective pressure that further enhances the fitness of the virus, leading to immune escape which manifests as decreased protection for individuals who have acquired immunity through vaccination or natural infection [1][2][3][4][5]. Analogous to antibiotic resistance, the threat of vaccine resistance is a strong argument for diversifying viral elimination strategies across multiple molecular targets and therapeutic modalities.
Finally, the argument for compulsory mass vaccination does not account for the fact that individuals who acquire immunity through natural infection are at least equally well protected as vaccinated individuals [6][7][8]. And this point leads us back to the crux of OP - it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
> Compulsory mass vaccination does not come without significant risks to public health.
It's bold of you to keep raising this "anti-vaccination" point verbatim, after it keeps getting flagged, and the responses do not agree with you at all. What is your agenda here?
One response:
> a shameful misinformation tactic and you should stop doing it immediately
> It's bold of you to keep raising this "anti-vaccination" point
By reducing my statements to simply "anti-vaccination" you're missing the entire nuance of the argument.
I've cited substantial scientific literature which supports the fact that leaky vaccines combined with COMPULSORY mass vaccination can have unexpected and dangerous consequences in terms of viral evolution.
Vaccines are a powerful tool and help save lives, and we should definitely use them. But if used indiscriminately, they can backfire in complex ways. This is extremely pertinent to OP and the discussion on this thread.
It's not charitable or informed of you to reduce my comment to "anti-vaccination" rhetoric. To suggest that I have an "agenda" or that I'm spreading "misinformation" - especially without any supporting references - means your comment is purely ad hominem.
Like you, many others here immediately react negatively to comments that promote anti-vax misinformation. I understand, empathize with, and support that. But after lengthy debate, the person who made the comment you quoted eventually admitted that they over-reacted, and that my argument was more nuanced than they initially realized.
I have not stopped sharing the literature supporting these ideas because many people are completely unaware of the possibility and consequences of vaccine induced immune escape. My comments are in the spirit of fostering sincere and informed debate - nothing more, and nothing less.
Virtually everything I see suggests that the effect is bimodal:
1. Everyone gets vaccinated at the same time, and the disease goes away. Not a lot of disease means not a lot of mutations.
2. No one gets vaccinated, and there is no such effect.
If immune escape is an issue, it seems like the solution would be 100% MANDATORY vaccinations, and to perform vaccinations all at once, region by region, so there are no populations which mix vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
I can't see how making vaccinations non-compulsory will do anything good. Where I live, 2/3 are vaccinated, and 1/3 are not. Virus is spiking, and there are a lot of opportunities for escape from the unvaccinated to the vaccinated. After a few months of similar effect, vaccine effectiveness fell from 95% to around 50%.
I think you gave a very strong argument FOR compulsory vaccination.
> Everyone gets vaccinated at the same time [...] region by region, so there are no populations which mix vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals
This is logistically impossible and completely unrealistic. If you can find any literature or any experts suggesting that this is feasible, please share.
> and the disease goes away
Even if we did manage do achieve what you suggested, the current vaccines do not guarantee sterilizing immunity. This means that even vaccinated individuals can be infected and transmit the virus, which still gives plenty of opportunity for the virus to mutate and eventually evolve to escape the immune response in the theoretical 100% vaccinated population.
> I can't see how making vaccinations non-compulsory will do anything good
There are many viral elimination strategies that complement vaccination - for example multi-drug treatment using widely available and existing medicines [1][2][3][4][5]. The key is that using a diverse set of strategies helps reduce the possibility and risk of vaccine resistance.
> I think you gave a very strong argument FOR compulsory vaccination.
I appreciate the spirited discussion but your comment does not seem particularly well informed - it completely disregards the concerns and arguments put forth by experts in the field, which I've outlined in my previous comments.
As a recommendation to individuals, the suggestion to seek early treatment -- indeed, to apply certain treatments immediately to oneself -- is, I believe, sound, and I second it.
But the situation as regards public health policy and messaging is more complicated. Denial is among the most human of emotional patterns; many people do not want to face the possibility that they've contracted a dread disease, and will procrastinate seeking treatment until they are quite ill. Altering that behavior on a large scale strikes me as a very heavy lift; but that is what we would have to do to pursue a public health strategy that leans heavily on early treatment. If you think it's doable anyway, why has no other country done it?
That said, the risk of vaccine escape seems to be real. Perhaps that's why the CDC is telling us to expect boosters.
Well put, and I agree that people have a tendency to procrastinate which can be detrimental to early treatment strategies.
> why has no other country done it?
Since early in the pandemic many front-line doctors have been successfully reducing hospitalization and death through early treatment with a multi-drug approach. Those are the doctors and researchers that authored the publications I cited in my previous comment, especially [1]. Those doctors had to treat patients early in the pandemic with a very little scientific literature and clinical trials to guide them, hence the world wide collaboration in putting together reasonable guidance based on existing medicine with established efficacy and safety profiles.
They continue to use these techniques - which are being further investigated for efficacy and safety in ongoing clinical trials - but with scarce media coverage compared to the vaccines.
So in many ways countries around the world have been doing it to some degree, but it hasn't been the primary strategy, as you point out. Why hasn't it been the primary strategy? Well that's a good question and tough to answer with any certainty. To speculate, I'd say that vaccines had a tremendous amount of funding and media attention poured into them, more so than any multi-drug therapy regime.
Sure, these early treatments have happened on a small scale; I've seen some of the papers. And don't get me wrong here; clearly we have to start with informal experiments and progress to small studies, to find promising treatments, before we expand their use. But there's still a world of difference between one doctor in one hospital cherry-picking the patients who happen to come in early and treating them successfully, versus basing one's entire public health strategy on early treatments. For one thing, if you do somehow convince people to come in early, you're going to have a lot more patients to treat. Not only do you have to make sure you have enough of the drugs and other supplies, but you have to have enough trained staff to administer them.
All that said, I would actually like to see someone try it. There are plenty of countries that have little expectation of receiving much vaccine supply this year anyway; they have little to lose. But it's no slam dunk; they face a daunting public education problem first, and then if they somehow solve that puzzle, they'll have to deal with the logistical difficulties.
Against all that, I think vaccines have more than just a marketing advantage. As long as they're reasonably safe and effective, they're a much more practical solution. Of course, what counts as "reasonably safe and effective" is debatable.
> This is logistically impossible and completely unrealistic. If you can find any literature or any experts suggesting that this is feasible, please share.
This doesn't need to be 100%. Large swaths of the world rely on help for vaccines. Instead of distributing aid evenly by country, it could go country-by-country. "At the same time" also doesn't mean everyone gets a shot on the same day, just not spread out over years as we're doing now.
> Even if we did manage do achieve what you suggested, the current vaccines do not guarantee sterilizing immunity.
They're about 50% effective for delta 6 months after vaccination, and about 95% effective for the original at vaccination. That's a big difference. We don't need sterilizing immunity; just for R0<1. Yes, the odd person will catch COVID19 from a deer, but if 7 billion people catch it, versus 1 million, that's a 7 million times difference in number of mutations.
> The key is that using a diverse set of strategies helps reduce the possibility and risk of vaccine resistance.
I agree 100%. This is the key. What amazing to me is the effectiveness of proper PPE. I don't understand why anyone uses cloth masks anymore. Proper masks are cheap, available, and help far more than vaccines or drug regiments. My opinion is that we should have vaccines, modest social distancing, N95-equivalent masks, universal HEPA filters, move what we can outside, etc. I think if we do all the cheap things consistently, we'll eliminate the need to do big, expensive things.
> I appreciate the spirited discussion but your comment does not seem particularly well informed - it completely disregards the concerns and arguments put forth by experts in the field, which I've outlined in my previous comments.
It's funny you say this, because I think everyone would actually agree that I have a strong First Amendment free speech right to tell you what to do with your body. Similarly, businesses and institutions have a First Amendment right (the right of association) to choose who they do business with.
> Similarly, businesses and institutions have a First Amendment right (the right of association) to choose who they do business with.
Private institutions. George Mason University is a public school and the situation for this professor is actually the exact opposite of what you seem to be claiming here.
And yet they can require many things of people that are infringements of rights of expression and autonomy, such as dress codes.
If en employee there notified them that they had been infected with a highly infectious disease (think smallpox) and still wanted to go to work, would they have a right to deny that person? If so, what specifically constrains them in a situation like this that wouldn't in a situation like that?
Those are exactly the types of things I'm trying to get the GGP comment to elucidate on. Mine was not a comment making a judgement, but seeking clarification on reasoning, by providing a case many could and would agree on to contrast against, in a similar vein to what you attempt to be doing.
I think it’s okay for a public venue to deny people access due to something being present, but not due to something not being present.
For example, I generally support laws that let people go topless or nude in public. But I’m okay with places banning people due to clothing choices… like all white conical hoods.
> How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body?
That’s absolutely not new in any way? Public health has always been a force majeure trigger.
> Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?
They’re not, but it can be quite difficult to impossible to push back against religious communities as they’ve managed to carve out lots of assumptions that you’re supposed to respect whatever they choose out of nowhere.
What historical public health measures exist that are as invasive as a needle in my body on a regular basis?
Non-COVID vaccinations are not the same thing here. The typical American booster shots are administered far, _far_ less frequently. They don't require yearly (or every 6mo) shots to be effective.
These non-COVID vaccinations also don't require me to, say, not participate in society (per the recent vaccine mandates in swaths of Western Europe). As for schools, I knew many kids whose parents chose not to get them vaccinated when I was growing up. It was tougher to get those exemptions at the University level, but still not impossible. The way these vaccination rules are playing out, thus far anyway, are trying to make it impossible to not be vaccinated no matter what the reason. Nobody cares what your reason is, even if its medically related. [0]
Also of note is that those non-COVID vaccinations work really really well. The COVID vaccinations are far less effective, as the increasing rates in places like Israel or Gibralter show. It should be noted that, at least thus far, its better to be vaccinated than non-vaccinated as the former are less likely to have severe symptoms battling the disease. But these are hardly the polio vaccine, _at least not yet_ as a better vaccine may come along.
When your not doing something with your body results in the harm of death of people other than yourself? The right to swing your fist has always ended at others nose. What we are litigating is not that concept well established but a still somewhat fluid understanding of the situation as it stands and how to apply our understanding of fact and law to the necessary choice between your autonomy and others safety.
Vaccinating someone who has already had covid is thornier and less clear. Medically it is certainly advisable a rerun isn't always mild and studies have shown individuals who are previously infected have twice the chance of reinfection compared to those who are also vaccinated.
The chance of misadventure from being vaccinated is fantastically low and the risk of reinfection while a lot smaller than in a naive individual is a long way from zero. I have substantial doubts regarding any immunologist would say
>and that it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
Unless he had been in a coma and had just woken up yesterday.
What he is fighting for then is the right to undertake a course of action that is both meritless and brainless but I don't think we have a right to protect him from himself so the problem becomes is he risking others to an unacceptable degree. I'd say no. If he becomes infected he could infect others including the ample unvaccinated so he IS risking others by his actions but the risk is probably at this juncture small although this could change and he would be stupid to delay.
Importantly the test needs to be one with an acceptably low false positive rate performed by a legitimate lab. Not a self test for practical purposes lest people find a way to foul the test (see the soda issue where kids found out that an acidic liquid led to a positive test) or sell each other spit over the internet or something equally stupid.
I'm not disagreeing with you regarding vaccination. However, there is a long history of the state telling people what they should do with their body.
The two most obvious examples are drug usage and abortion.
Why do we accept that but are suddenly outraged by vaccination? Vaccination mandates aren't new either: many countries will not even let you enter unless you are vaccinated against yellow fever.
I think there are valid arguments opposing vaccine mandates but the "this is an unprecedented infringement on freedom" isn't one of them.
> there is a long history of the state telling people what they should do with their body. The two most obvious examples are drug usage and abortion.
You're only applying this argument in one direction, but it works in both directions. Most people who want the vaccine to be mandatory disagree with the state restricting drug usage and abortion. If you disagree with some policy and want to get it overturned, it seems wrong to try to use it as precedent to set new policies in the meantime.
I agree, and I'm not arguing that X is OK just because it's similar to Y and Z.
What I don't like is the pretence that this is suddenly a brand new unprecedented invasion on privacy. It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.
> It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.
Fair, although there is one other angle from which I think this is unprecedented: aren't those other restrictions all things that you can't do, with this being the first one that's something that you have to do? For example, consider freedom of speech. Exceptions that compel speech are much rarer than exceptions that prohibit speech.
Yeah that's super interesting. Is an action morally any different to a lack of action?
This is like the train trolley: where you can either phrase it as doing nothing, or pushing a lever. People apply much more stringent moral codes when there is action involved, or even when the fat man is actually pushed by hand.
I think this exactly the distinction. A lot of people frame their worldview which places value and judgement on the action, while freeing someone from responsibility for their inaction (deontological ethics). This is also common but not exclusive in many legal system (e.g. it is not murder for a bystander to not save a life/pull the lever).
I think this is coming into conflict with rising a utilitarism and consequentialist ethical worldview in the united states. Neither system is perfet, but one challenge of the consequentialist worldview is that it holds people accountable for sub-optimal behavior. (e.g. it is murder to not pull the lever, or not donate to save that starving child in Africa).
Without getting too off track, I think the conflict between these two ethical views is a big driver of the tone of discusource and current ideological conflicts in the US, be it public health, racical justice, and the role of the government.
First it's easy to turn it around, it seems wrong to shout now about "infringing my freedom" if you have been pushing to infringe other people's freedom for a long time (I'd say most antivaxers are conservatives at the moment).
And second is that people oppose restricting drug use and abortion for other reasons than simply it is telling someone what to do or not do with their body.
BTW there are many other examples so it's just plain stupid to argue telling me what to do with my body is wrong on principle.
> Why do we accept [the state telling people what to do with their bodies in some cases] but are suddenly outraged by vaccination?
We're certainly not "suddenly outraged by vaccination". In fact, vaccines and anti-vaccine sentiment have historically gone hand in hand[1]. The historical reaction to vaccines _is_ worsened when mandated. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was formed in 1866 in reaction to the British compulsory vaccination order for smallpox.[2] Would smalpox have been eliminated if people could have chosen for themselves?
Abortion is different as it's someone else life.
If you kill a baby in your belly, you're still ending another life and violating the non aggression principle. If the pregnancy is threatening your life, then you could justify it.
In regards to drugs - I think any sort of government interference is horribly wrong.
Likewise, if I want to kill myself, that's on me.
Firstly, the US has always granted special exceptions to religion for many public policy requirements. You can complain about how it's unfair, but it's likely that the public needle of opinion won't budge past a threshold within this lifetime.
Secondly, there have already been widespread medical requirements for all sorts of aspects of public life, and this hasn't been controversial. Immigrants are required to be immunized. Churches may require missionaries to be immunized. Schools may require children to be immunized.
My paraphrasing is horrible, but the gist was something like: "religion has a sort of 'most favored' status, so if there's ever a secular exception to a rule, there must also be a religious exception".
Personally, I think that's absurd, but I'm less upset about it after hearing the explanation. I highly recommend listening to the 18 minute episoide.
What's your definition of "immigrant into the USA" here?
You aren't required to get immunized for H1B and a number of other visas, but for green card (aka permanent resident card), you are absolutely required to get a general medical exam + screen for TB + get up to date on all your vaccinations. You need to do it shortly before the green card interview, because you are expected to bring those papers with you for the interview.
Every day, we all make tradeoffs as part of the price to pay for living in society. This is not a new thing. (and I assert it's counterproductive and anti-social behavior (harmful to society, the opposite of pro-social, not meaning "introverted") to assert that it is.)
I can't build a DIY rocket powered car and drive it around town. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
I can't even drive a store bought car without a drivers license. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
I can't open a restaurant and sell food without some sort of license/permit from the city. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
(I recently learned the hard way that) I can't even build a new wall in my home without having the design approved and permitted. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
I can't attend school (public or private) without DTaP, Polio, and MMR vaccines, making it a de facto requirement of life.
These are all restrictions on personal liberty that we accept up as part of the social contract.
And yet, somehow, there is this (literally!) sickening idea going around that it's a "new thing" to require _this specific_ vaccine. Considering the fact that we know that being un-vaccinated will eventually hurt people (by increasing transmission, and hastening the onset of a disastrous mutation), I'm terrified and enraged that it's not being treated similarly to driving drunk.
> I can't attend school (public or private) without DTaP, Polio, and MMR vaccines, making it a de facto requirement of life.
> These are all restrictions on personal liberty that we accept up as part of the social contract
Historically it had been trivially easy to fill out a form and go to public school without vaccines everywhere I've lived.
The purpose of the form is to know who to send home from school if there is a break out of a disease that is relevant to those who choose not to vaccinate. A very accommodating position.
This policy is now potentially being changed to hard requirements with no escape valve for good or ill. It is factually incorrect to say it had always been this way. This is a material change to policy, fights in legislatures about vaccine mandates have been brewing for at least two decades that I have seen. You can expect a lot of lawsuits and legislative battles along these lines as well.
In the case of the parent article, the equivalent framing to add to the list is:
I can't rely on my naturally acquired immunity with 80+> efficacy instead of a vaccine with 90% efficacy to go to work. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
What study shows 80% or greater efficacy for primary immunity versus secondary immunity via vaccination? Do they go into detail regarding how long the immunity lasts, and whether it covers varients? Viruses that cause the flu or common cold change from season to season, so immunity (either primary or secondary) doesn't really protect against a subsequent varient.
>What study shows 80% or greater efficacy for primary immunity versus secondary immunity via vaccination
The CDC claims being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated. Most vaccines are 90+ effective. Say for example moderna is 95.3% effective, natural immunity would be 89% (100% - 4.7% x 2.34)
>Do they go into detail regarding how long the immunity lasts, and whether it covers varients?
There is a lot of information missing on duration, but we know people who were infected with SARS-CoV-1 still have antibodies 20 years later. Natural infection triggers an immune response on many more parts of the virus than the vaccine, so protection against variants should also be good or better than the original vaccine, but not better than a booster vaccine tailored specifically to a given variant.
> being un-vaccinated will eventually hurt people (by increasing transmission, and hastening the onset of a disastrous mutation)
Your statement is missing the sorely needed nuance that individuals with immunity acquired through natural infection are at least equally well protected as vaccinated individuals. That is the consensus in the scientific consensus literature right now.
This fact is the central argument of the lawsuit presented in the OP.
It's imperative to move beyond the dualistic framing of these discussions as "vaccinated versus unvaccinated". At this point it's borderline misinformation to continue with such rhetoic.
People acquire natural immunity by being a danger to themselves and others. This professor is effectively and advertisement campaign for covid Parties to get back to work without needing the acceptable risk by being an insanely negligent factor in public health. I don't see any point in creating a public health process to find people who have safe levels naturally acquired by no negligence of their own to not cause more problems by performing this testing.
'I can't even drive a store bought car without a drivers license.'
If you are a corporation or business, that is generally true. If you are using a conveyance in your personal capacity, then you are not regulated unless you voluntarily sign up to be licensed. Your choice.
"For while a citizen has the right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, that right does not extend to the use of the highways...as a place for private gain. For the latter purpose, no person has a vested right to use the highways of this state, but it is a privilege...which the (state) may grant or withhold at its discretion..."
State v. Johnson, 75 Mont. 240, 243 P. 1073 (1926)"
Thanks for this! (really) And thanks for a great citation.
I don't have a drivers license. I always assumed driving a car without a license, registration, and proof of insurance was illegal and would get me in trouble. I admit, I didn't research this aspect before writing my above comment (tho I did research the vaccine requirements, my source is a government website).
Now I don't quite know what to think! Can I legally drive a car on public roads in California?
Neither is OK. It's not OK to offer yourself up as an incubator for new and more-deadly variants of a global disease.
And that's leaving out the monumental hypocrisy of any anti-vaccine and anti-abortion people. So... it's outrageous to tell people to do with their bodies... unless they're women.
> How did we get to a point where we think it’s OK to tell someone what they should do with their body?
What do you think employment, literally, is? A gives B money and direct’s what B does (of necessity, with B’s body), both positively and negatively, within some agreed (mixed between explicit agreement and implicit agreement via governing law) parameters.
It goes back as far as 1906: Mary Mallon (aka Typhoid Mary) was an asymptomatic carrier of typhoid. The government barred her from working as a cook. She took a fake name and resumed cooking for others. After several people died, the government discovered her crime and imprisoned her.
The article does not explicitly note that GMU is a public university, an important detail. If it were private, such a determination would be unfounded on the principal that two entities have the right to enter into a transaction strictly upon mutually and exclusively amenable terms.
"New Civil Liberties Alliance" That's hysterical. We're going to be trying to present ourselves like we're similar to the ACLU, but you know, the bigoted and science ignorant version.
In this case, I would argue (like the NCLA) that it is George Mason University that was being "science ignorant". Presumably the underlying thing they are trying to optimize for by requiring their employees to be vaccinated is immunity against COVID amongst their faculty, which is perhaps reasonable, and vaccination is an effective way to achieve this. But it is also possible to acquire immunity by having had COVID and recovered from it; and in this case the litigant had even definitively demonstrated that they had antibodies.
I support vaccine mandates (best way to move society past the pandemic), but an exemption for those with healthy immune systems who can prove via an antibody test or previous positive Covid-19 PCR test that they have naturally developed COVID antibodies after surviving an infection makes sense to me.
In the 19th century, yellow fever survivors were considered to be “acclimated citizens” who were more eligible for jobs, because the employer didn’t have to worry about them catching and dying of yellow fever. The position has historic precedence and seems to stand up, according to current scientists’ analysis of immunity after covid-19 infection being 80% or greater, similar to the J&J vaccine.
That’s true, but it’s because at the time the only way to become acclimated was to catch yellow fever, which meant running a substantial risk of dying or severe disease.
In the 21st century we have safe vaccines so if someone is not “acclimated” or immune to a virus, they can gain the status easily via a free and safe vaccine. This removes the problems.
In any case, the discussion here is not about immunity passports themselves. It’s about whether only a vaccine should count, or if proof of natural infection should also count as equivalent to a vaccine record.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 205 ms ] threadhttps://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01377-8
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01377-8/figures/1
Down-voted because this is misinformation.
First of all the citation you provided does not support your claim at all.
Second, a large body of literature suggests that vaccination and natural infection induce a robust and durable immune response that is mostly similar [1][2], but slightly different. One of the primary differences is that natural infection induces an immune response that includes nucleocapsid protein antibodies, whereas vaccination with the current spike protein focused mRNA vaccines does not [3]. Another significant difference is that vaccination induces an immune response that is more highly targeted toward the spike protein RBD compared to natural infection [4].
There is absolutely no scientific consensus that vaccination offers better protection than natural infection, or vice-versa. None of the papers cited in either of our comments make that claim.
[1] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...
[2] Rapid induction of antigen-specific CD4+ T cells is associated with coordinated humoral and cellular immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination https://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(21)00308-3
[3] Distinct SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Responses Elicited by Natural Infection and mRNA Vaccination https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.15.440089v4
[4] Antibodies elicited by mRNA-1273 vaccination bind more broadly to the receptor binding domain than do those from SARS-CoV-2 infection https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/
Yes [4] does kind of say that - but it does not claim that this provides better protection or benefits individual health outcomes.
Here are a few key nuances and limitations:
> We found that the specificity of the mRNA-1273 vaccine-induced RBD-binding antibody response often narrows over time. In contrast, the infection-elicited RBD-binding antibody response often broadens over time.
> Additionally, the overall antibody response is more homogeneous for vaccinated than convalescent individuals.
> another recent study suggests that mRNA vaccination elicits a different distribution of isotypes and fewer antibodies that cross-react to common-cold coronaviruses as compared to infection
> we did not examine effects of mutations or deletions to the N-terminal domain of the spike protein, which can also affect neutralization by vaccine sera.
> Our experiments assayed binding of antibodies to isolated RBD expressed by yeast, and so cannot capture mutational effects on trimer conformation or antibodies with quaternary epitopes
These nuances have implications for viral evolution, and are particularly important in the context of discussions around compulsory mass vaccination and vaccine resistance.
> Down voted because this is misinformation
I would hope you might agree that term is better reserved for bullshit conspiracy theories and not peer reviewed research published in one of the most cited journals in the world.
> the citation you provided does not support your claim
Upon re-reading the paper I still find that my claim is supported.
"Although antiviral T and B cell memory certainly contribute some degree of protection, strong evidence of a protective role for neutralizing serum antibodies exists. For example, passive transfer of neutralizing antibodies can prevent severe SARS-CoV-2 infection in multiple animal models,12,13 and Regeneron has recently reported similar data in humans14. We therefore focus our studies on in vitro virus neutralization titers reported in studies of vaccinated and convalescent cohorts"
"To compare neutralization titers across studies, we determined the mean and standard deviation (on a log scale) of the neutralization titer in published data from seven vaccine studies (mRNA-1273, NVX-CoV2373, BNT162b2, rAd26-S+rAd5-S, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, Ad26.COV2.S and CoronaVac) and one convalescent study3,16,17,18,19,20,21,22"
" This model assumes that there is a protective neutralization level, T, above which individuals will be protected from infection and below which individuals will be susceptible. The protective efficacies observed in phase 3 clinical trials of vaccinated individuals (and another large cohort study of convalescent individuals1; "
[data shows higher level of neutralizing antibodies from four of the vaccines compared with convalescent studies]
It is possible -- even likely -- that I have misunderstood the paper. And both you and the paper I cited agree that more research is needed to establish the correlation between levels of neutralizing antibodies and protection from infection and disease. But my claim was _about_ the levels of neutralizing antibodies and as I understand it that claim is supported by the paper.
It would be silly to risk altering one’s broad-based, naturally acquired immunity by taking an unnecessary vaccine dose. Just like no one got a chickenpox vaccine after contracting the disease there is no need to get a COVID vaccine after contracting the disease.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/shingles/public/shingrix/in...
Looks like the UK NHS recommends the shingles vaccine for all 70-79 year olds for instance. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/shingles-vaccinat...
France recommends for ages 65 to 74 https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/french-national-h...
Why give a child a vaccine after they contracted the disease and developed natural immunity? Unnecessary medical procedures carry risks without benefit and veer too close to the field of human experimentation for many people.
IMO the presented argument is valid and well supported scientifically and legally. It will be very interesting to see if this sets any precedent for other institutions.
> GMU and other universities must stop ignoring science and cease forcing mandatory vaccines on even those with naturally acquired immunity
> Strangely, despite solid scientific evidence, GMU continues to refuse to recognize that Covid-19 vaccination is medically unnecessary for ALL students, faculty, and staff with naturally acquired immunity demonstrated with antibody testing.
> NCLA filed Professor Zywicki’s complaint in the Eastern District of Virginia on August 3, 2021, challenging GMU’s “reopening policy.”
> The policy, announced June 28, requires all faculty and staff members, including those who can demonstrate natural immunity through recovery from a prior Covid-19 infection, to disclose their vaccination status as “a prerequisite for eligibility for any merit pay increases,” unless they obtain a religious or medical exemption.
> On July 22, GMU emailed the policy to students and employees and threatened disciplinary action—including termination of employment—against any who do not comply with the vaccine mandate.
> Prof. Zywicki’s immunologist, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, has advised him that, based on his personal health and immunity status, it is medically unnecessary to get a Covid-19 vaccine—and that it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
> As a result of the exemption it granted, GMU is permitting Prof. Zywicki to remain unvaccinated for medical reasons.
> "Nevertheless, NCLA remains dismayed by GMU’s refusal — along with many other public and private universities and other employers — to recognize that the science establishes beyond any doubt that natural immunity is as robust or more so than vaccine immunity.”
GMU maintained their policy that everyone must be vaccinated regardless of their antibody status.
Seems really strange.
> the Policy is unmistakably coercive and cannot reasonably be considered anything other than an unlawful mandate. And even if the Policy is not deemed coercive, it still represents an unconstitutional condition being applied to Professor Zywicki’s constitutional rights to bodily integrity and informed medical choice, respectively.
> GMU’s Policy infringes upon Professor Zywicki’s rights under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution
> In sum, the Policy violates both Professor Zywicki’s constitutional and federal statutory rights
Not sure what the downvotes are for folks, I'm just the messenger - leave a comment if you don't like what you're seeing here so we can at least discuss it.
[1] https://nclalegal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Zywicki-Com...
So now we can refuse service to someone with a tattoo we dislike, but not because they're unvaccinated? We don't deserve to survive as a species if we're that fucking dumb.
[0] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:AHnJsx...
Basically, if we let a pandemic kill millions because a fetish for personal choice prevents us from doing what's necessary to prevent it, we're too fucking stupid to survive as a species. That doesn't have to mean going to door-to-door with guns and needles; getting to the critical mass we need just means refusing to let the stupidly unvaccinated into a variety of public venues like airplanes and universities long enough to make them get the vaccine.
The last stat I saw was from Israel, and it was that vaccinated people who had never had COVID were ~6-7x more likely to be infected than unvaccinated people who had previously been confirmed to have had it in the past.
“In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus. These data further indicate that COVID-19 vaccines offer better protection than natural immunity alone and that vaccines, even after prior infection, help prevent reinfections.” 6 August 2021 - https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
Before repeating false stats, either look up your references, or provide them. There is a HUGE amount of ongoing misinformation about Covid figures which you cannot help but be aware of. For some reason the recent information from Israel seems to be especially misinterpreted (maliciously or not) - and anything recent referencing Israel is a red flag that it is likely disinformation. https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...
It is especially egregious to ask for a citation when you don’t provide one yourself.
The parent was comparing against vaccinated individuals who never had COVID which is different than the scenario you linked. I'm as pro-vaccine as they come but claiming that they are spreading "false stats" is a bit uncharitable, no?
I have spent some time looking for relevant data, and it is difficult to find, so the parent comment’s number could easily be correct. The parents response is still (Roger) irrelevant to the grand-parent valid point that “They’re putting themself and all peoples that interact with them at serious risk” - the most forgiving reason would be if the GP edited their comment to remove a fact?
Reinfection remains rare: “We know that reinfection is not a common occurrence, at least in the short term with the original variant of the virus as well as some of the other [variants]” - https://www.healthline.com/health-news/can-you-get-delta-var...
Even with the vaccine, you have a high risk of catching the Delta variant because the vaccines are only 40% effective against Delta… However you are far far less likely to get seriously ill, and apparently 2x less likely to spread it on to your family, if you are fully vaccinated and then catch Delta. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/23/delta-variant-pfizer-covid-v...
I also found “The relative risk for PCR positivity was 0.22 (95% CI, 0.17-0.28) for vaccinated individuals and 0.26 (95% CI, 0.21-0.34) for individuals with prior infection compared with no record of vaccination or prior infection” from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781112 but that doesn’t really help o_O
Physicians are absolutely free to prescribe things off-label, do so routinely, and in fact in many situations the majority of prescriptions happen to be off-label.
The only concern here is 1) that concentration needed to achieve that effect may potentially be toxic to humans. 2) in-vitro studies mighte be insufficient/weak evidence and may fail in-vivo (happens all the time)
If you take Ivermectin in preference to getting vaccinated, you deserve to die. The preferred moral outcome here is for you to die by your own hand rather than let your willful ignorance increase the risk to your community.
https://www.pdr.net/drug-summary/Stromectol-ivermectin-391.1...
https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Ivermectin#section...
Arguments against ivermectin are becoming quite tiresome because it causes virtually zero harm. In fact, Pfizer is impressed with its anti-viral properties and release of a similar (read:patentable) drug is imminent. Merck is another (early) source of ivermectin misinformation.
We ban accounts that do that, so please don't do anything like that on HN again—regardless of how wrong other people are, or you feel they are.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: it unfortunately looks like you've been using HN primarily for flamewar. We ban that sort of account as well, so would you please not do that anymore? We're trying for curious, thoughtful conversation here.
Toxic controls was very unfortunate events of people consuming veterinarian formulations designed for animals that weigh 1000+ lbs and overdosing. That means only that there is enough desperate people, and very few physicians willing to supervise the treatment.
I would be far more concerned about it's efficacy and people getting treatment that they think will help, when in fact it does not.
But if you want to live with others and do whatever you want and endanger them - no one will tolerate this and then will be right to.
The actual rule of the majority - coded into law in the united states, at least - is that vaccination is not required. So the truth is, if you want to live with others, you have to accept that folks around you are spreading covid.
Let me be clear: I'm extremely pro-vaccination and think the anti-vaxers are morons. But I'm also vaccinated, and content that pretty much everyone in this country who wants vaccination (and bears any significant risk) has had the opportunity. For the rest, there's infection. Roughly 0.7% of them will die. I wish people would make better life choices, but it's the rule of the land that people get to make stupid choices. Why fight it?
The "majority" rule is a made up one, just like most rules.
Moreover, the covid vaccines will not eliminate covid from the population, as the data from Iceland clearly shows:
https://twitter.com/eliaseythorsson/status/14240115421950238...
The virus will continue to circulate and impact every one regardless of what percentage of the population gets vaccinated.
tl;dr people who don't get vaccinated are only harming themselves.
Moreover, the global population of unvaccinated will not be meaningfully affected by any one country's decision to mandate vaccination. And the mutation rate is dependent on the size of the global population of virus carriers, not one country's.
So all-in-all, I see very weak justification for such a heavy handed mandate, no matter how useful I think vaccination is.
At an incredibly reduced rate, and mutations generally do not spread to others.
> Moreover, the global population of unvaccinated will not be meaningfully affected by any one country's decision to mandate vaccination.
I don't see how that's relevant to my original response.
> And the mutation rate is dependent on the size of the global population of virus carriers, not one country's.
I don't follow. Mutations occur irrespective of any human constructs such as nations, countries, borders, etc.
> So all-in-all, I see very weak justification for such a heavy handed mandate, no matter how useful I think vaccination is.
Take the opposite case. Nobody vaccinates, we stop caring. What is the outcome?
Half-assed approaches will only slow, not stop, the pandemic. It's not very hard to think critically about this...
It's a fast enough where Iceland is now experiencing its largest wave yet, despite having a nearly fully vaccinated population. And why would vaccination stop mutated strains from spreading?
>>I don't see how that's relevant to my original response.
It's relevant to whether any one country has cause to mandate vaccination.
>>Mutations occur irrespective of any human constructs such as nations, countries, borders, etc.
My point is that - even if vaccination affected the size of the infected population and thus the opportunity for the virus to mutate - one country's decision to vaccinate will not meaningfully affect the global vaccination rate and therefore the global mutation rate.
We’ll never know. We have no proper controls. Just because B comes after A does not mean A implies B.
I’m exaggerating (some of our measures seem performative, but it looks like vaccines do a good job preventing severe illness), but places like Sweden would be decent to look at. They’ve had much better outcomes with nowhere near the restrictions.
I find the constant "It's science" and other platitudes to be completely off-putting and it stinks of consensus building.
Further, the total shutdown of anyone that opposes the vaccinations raises so many red flags.
Perhaps the vaccines will turn out to be completely safe, or perhaps they won't. Without any sort of long-term studies, we have no idea which direction things will go.
Edit:
- The 1955 Cutter Incident: "In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1383764/
- 2017 dengue fever: "The analysis showed that the subset of trial participants who were inferred to be seronegative at time of first vaccination had a higher risk of more severe dengue and hospitalizations from dengue compared to unvaccinated participants." https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dengue-and-...
'All five companies that produced the Salk vaccine in 1955—Eli Lilly, Parke-Davis, Wyeth, Pitman-Moore, and Cutter—had difficulty completely inactivating the polio virus."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutter_Laboratories#Cutter_inc...] [https://archive.org/details/cutterincidentho00offi/page/100]
In the long run, the polio vaccines were unquestionably effective. In the US: 58,000 cases in 1952; 5600 cases in 1957. Salk led to Sabin - who did his trial tests in the USSR and Mexico (ethical?) - and by 1964 there were 124 US cases.
[http://www.eds-resources.com/poliotimeline.htm]
What stinks much more to me is consensus-building by people seeking a political advantage. The result has been many more deaths than 70 years ago.
You shouldn't be able to spread a virus to others without consequences if there is a low risk way to completely eliminate that chance. Bodily autonomy is not an excuse to prolong a deadly pandemic especially because in this instance, this type of bodily autonomy doesn't come without large measurable consequences to society at large.
There’s no obvious way to draw a line, but you definitely need one.
That's why you look at the magnitude of the effect, not just the direction of the effect. Not all slopes are slippery. Our legal system does not collapse as soon as it is tasked with determining which harm is more important to prevent.
No, it just sucks at drawing lines and harms thousands if not millions of innocent bystanders.
To be honest, IMHO both smoking tobacco and sports that cause a lot of concussions (eg. Rugby, American Football) are not going to last in the long term, or become marginal not mainstream activities.
This might involve legislative pressures on them, as well as a decline in social acceptance. In the case of Tobacco, we see this drop well advanced already. This is no bad thing, considering the outcomes from these activities.
Likewise with smoking.
But neither of those activities has that level of impact on public health. So, the measures to be taken to curtail that kind of activity likewise should not be as strong.
But COVID is that bad. So, yes — vaccinations should be mandatory. Masking in public should be mandatory. At least, until the pandemic is over and we have sterilizing vaccines as well as medications that are proven to help cure the disease. And yes, this period could last years.
And if you don’t want to be vaccinated and you don’t want to wear a mask in public, then you don’t have to go out into public. You can stay home. And if you want to violate that rule too, then we should be able to lock you up in a COVID hotspot jail.
I'm in agreement with you on COVID and the necessary public health measures during an active pandemic.
I'm 100% for vaccine mandates iff vaccines significantly reduce R0.
I'm 100% against them if they do not. Once my vaccination stops affecting the public health, it's my choice.
Banning unsafe things IS a mistake. Yes, I ought to be able to sword fight on a tightrope with sharp swords and no protection over a pit of alligators, if I decide that's what I want to do.
If that's the concern, then triage the unvaccinated COVID19 patients last. But in the long term, capacity expands to meet demand, and it's perfectly okay to change insurance premiums for anti-vaxers, smokers, or otherwise (or sword fighting over a pit of crocodiles, for that matter).
This is an ethics violation.
I don't really get your argument on risk. Non-vaccinated people with natural acquired immunity each got their special card rights by having caused a definite risk to everyone because they computed potential mutations perpetuating the pandemic and most likely perpetuated them. We have too high a population compared to 1918 to even have a that rough equivalent of what happens with a new virus in a pool of any more than 2 billion who aren't vaccinated.
All I hear when I hear anti-vax arguments is a freeloader who refers to natural things that are completely unrelated to the life science is letting them live. If you don't like artificial vaccination, you need to propose how you want to lower the population to pre-science era levels.
In this case, if you choose not to get the vaccine and then through contact tracing or some other mechanism an outbreak is traced to you when you could have gotten a vaccine? Assault sounds correct to me and if you killed someone through inaction, then something equivalent to negligent homicide sounds correct to me. You're not necessarily malicious but I'd say fairly negligent.
Not that that's what is currently the case, but it seems fair to me and in that world, rolling the dice on criminal charges instead of just getting a vaccine that 169million people in US alone currently have taken with no issue seems like a dumb dice roll to me, but most people have steadily proven to me over the last few years that they're not great at risk calculation over and under.
The numbers still work that we should get vaccinated, but it’s unclear if people who have the worst side effects from the vaccine would be the same ones who would have suffered the worst effects of COVID (death).
So I get it - if you’re young, healthy, and unlikely to die from COVID, it is a non-zero (very, very small) risk from talking the vaccine. But I still think people should get the shot.
There seems to me to be a gap between what people think is happening, and what is actually happening. How exactly are people who haven't tested positive for Covid (either through a negative result, or simply avoiding testing altogether) going to be identified as the source of an outbreak if they're also not engaging in contact tracing in the first place?
As it stands, it seems to me like the most likely people to be contact traced are those who are also testing regularly, and are also the most likely to be vaccinated. I would be surprised if non-vaccinated people are anything but rarely identified as the source of an outbreak, precisely because they're also much less likely to ever get tested (unless seriously ill) or engage in contact tracing.
People want bodily autonomy.
People want to be free of the 2nd order harms of the medical decisions others make.
> If this was a sterilizing vaccine
There's no question that if we had a vaccine that provided sterilizing immunity, the calculus for public health policy would be affected. However, we have to account for the inevitability of viral mutation and evolution. This idea goes hand in hand with the fact that immunity is a spectrum, and just because a vaccine provides sterilizing immunity now, doesn't guarantee it will continue to do so indefinitely and for everyone.
> bodily autonomy doesn't come without large measurable consequences to society at large
Similarly, compulsory mass vaccination does not come without significant risks to public health. There is a very real and non-trivial risk that compulsory mass vaccination would create selective pressure that further enhances the fitness of the virus, leading to immune escape which manifests as decreased protection for individuals who have acquired immunity through vaccination or natural infection [1][2][3][4][5]. Analogous to antibiotic resistance, the threat of vaccine resistance is a strong argument for diversifying viral elimination strategies across multiple molecular targets and therapeutic modalities.
Finally, the argument for compulsory mass vaccination does not account for the fact that individuals who acquire immunity through natural infection are at least equally well protected as vaccinated individuals [6][7][8]. And this point leads us back to the crux of OP - it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
[1] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/
[2] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...
[3] Why does drug resistance readily evolve but vaccine resistance does not? https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2016...
[4] The adaptive evolution of virulence: a review of theoretical predictions and empirical tests https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26302775/
[5] Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fj...
[6] SARS-CoV-2 infection induces long-lived bone marrow plasma cells in humans https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03647-4.pdf
[7] Longitudinal analysis shows durable and broad immune memory after SARS-CoV-2 infection with persisting antibody responses and memory B and T cells https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...
[8] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...
It's bold of you to keep raising this "anti-vaccination" point verbatim, after it keeps getting flagged, and the responses do not agree with you at all. What is your agenda here?
One response:
> a shameful misinformation tactic and you should stop doing it immediately
So, why did you not stop?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28251661
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252125
By reducing my statements to simply "anti-vaccination" you're missing the entire nuance of the argument.
I've cited substantial scientific literature which supports the fact that leaky vaccines combined with COMPULSORY mass vaccination can have unexpected and dangerous consequences in terms of viral evolution.
Vaccines are a powerful tool and help save lives, and we should definitely use them. But if used indiscriminately, they can backfire in complex ways. This is extremely pertinent to OP and the discussion on this thread.
It's not charitable or informed of you to reduce my comment to "anti-vaccination" rhetoric. To suggest that I have an "agenda" or that I'm spreading "misinformation" - especially without any supporting references - means your comment is purely ad hominem.
Like you, many others here immediately react negatively to comments that promote anti-vax misinformation. I understand, empathize with, and support that. But after lengthy debate, the person who made the comment you quoted eventually admitted that they over-reacted, and that my argument was more nuanced than they initially realized.
I have not stopped sharing the literature supporting these ideas because many people are completely unaware of the possibility and consequences of vaccine induced immune escape. My comments are in the spirit of fostering sincere and informed debate - nothing more, and nothing less.
Virtually everything I see suggests that the effect is bimodal:
1. Everyone gets vaccinated at the same time, and the disease goes away. Not a lot of disease means not a lot of mutations.
2. No one gets vaccinated, and there is no such effect.
If immune escape is an issue, it seems like the solution would be 100% MANDATORY vaccinations, and to perform vaccinations all at once, region by region, so there are no populations which mix vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals.
I can't see how making vaccinations non-compulsory will do anything good. Where I live, 2/3 are vaccinated, and 1/3 are not. Virus is spiking, and there are a lot of opportunities for escape from the unvaccinated to the vaccinated. After a few months of similar effect, vaccine effectiveness fell from 95% to around 50%.
I think you gave a very strong argument FOR compulsory vaccination.
This is logistically impossible and completely unrealistic. If you can find any literature or any experts suggesting that this is feasible, please share.
> and the disease goes away
Even if we did manage do achieve what you suggested, the current vaccines do not guarantee sterilizing immunity. This means that even vaccinated individuals can be infected and transmit the virus, which still gives plenty of opportunity for the virus to mutate and eventually evolve to escape the immune response in the theoretical 100% vaccinated population.
> I can't see how making vaccinations non-compulsory will do anything good
There are many viral elimination strategies that complement vaccination - for example multi-drug treatment using widely available and existing medicines [1][2][3][4][5]. The key is that using a diverse set of strategies helps reduce the possibility and risk of vaccine resistance.
> I think you gave a very strong argument FOR compulsory vaccination.
I appreciate the spirited discussion but your comment does not seem particularly well informed - it completely disregards the concerns and arguments put forth by experts in the field, which I've outlined in my previous comments.
[1] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...
[2] Clinical outcomes after early ambulatory multidrug therapy for high-risk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection https://rcm.imrpress.com/EN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?a...
[3] Early multidrug treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) and reduced mortality among nursing home (or outpatient/ambulatory) residents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03069...
[4] Multidrug treatment for COVID-19 https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ddt/advpub/0/advpub_202...
[5] Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline for treating COVID-19 symptoms: a randomized trial https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33983065/
But the situation as regards public health policy and messaging is more complicated. Denial is among the most human of emotional patterns; many people do not want to face the possibility that they've contracted a dread disease, and will procrastinate seeking treatment until they are quite ill. Altering that behavior on a large scale strikes me as a very heavy lift; but that is what we would have to do to pursue a public health strategy that leans heavily on early treatment. If you think it's doable anyway, why has no other country done it?
That said, the risk of vaccine escape seems to be real. Perhaps that's why the CDC is telling us to expect boosters.
> why has no other country done it?
Since early in the pandemic many front-line doctors have been successfully reducing hospitalization and death through early treatment with a multi-drug approach. Those are the doctors and researchers that authored the publications I cited in my previous comment, especially [1]. Those doctors had to treat patients early in the pandemic with a very little scientific literature and clinical trials to guide them, hence the world wide collaboration in putting together reasonable guidance based on existing medicine with established efficacy and safety profiles.
They continue to use these techniques - which are being further investigated for efficacy and safety in ongoing clinical trials - but with scarce media coverage compared to the vaccines.
So in many ways countries around the world have been doing it to some degree, but it hasn't been the primary strategy, as you point out. Why hasn't it been the primary strategy? Well that's a good question and tough to answer with any certainty. To speculate, I'd say that vaccines had a tremendous amount of funding and media attention poured into them, more so than any multi-drug therapy regime.
All that said, I would actually like to see someone try it. There are plenty of countries that have little expectation of receiving much vaccine supply this year anyway; they have little to lose. But it's no slam dunk; they face a daunting public education problem first, and then if they somehow solve that puzzle, they'll have to deal with the logistical difficulties.
Against all that, I think vaccines have more than just a marketing advantage. As long as they're reasonably safe and effective, they're a much more practical solution. Of course, what counts as "reasonably safe and effective" is debatable.
This doesn't need to be 100%. Large swaths of the world rely on help for vaccines. Instead of distributing aid evenly by country, it could go country-by-country. "At the same time" also doesn't mean everyone gets a shot on the same day, just not spread out over years as we're doing now.
> Even if we did manage do achieve what you suggested, the current vaccines do not guarantee sterilizing immunity.
They're about 50% effective for delta 6 months after vaccination, and about 95% effective for the original at vaccination. That's a big difference. We don't need sterilizing immunity; just for R0<1. Yes, the odd person will catch COVID19 from a deer, but if 7 billion people catch it, versus 1 million, that's a 7 million times difference in number of mutations.
> The key is that using a diverse set of strategies helps reduce the possibility and risk of vaccine resistance.
I agree 100%. This is the key. What amazing to me is the effectiveness of proper PPE. I don't understand why anyone uses cloth masks anymore. Proper masks are cheap, available, and help far more than vaccines or drug regiments. My opinion is that we should have vaccines, modest social distancing, N95-equivalent masks, universal HEPA filters, move what we can outside, etc. I think if we do all the cheap things consistently, we'll eliminate the need to do big, expensive things.
> I appreciate the spirited discussion but your comment does not seem particularly well informed - it completely disregards the concerns and arguments put forth by experts in the field, which I've outlined in my previous comments.
I'm not sure what you're referring to.
Private institutions. George Mason University is a public school and the situation for this professor is actually the exact opposite of what you seem to be claiming here.
If en employee there notified them that they had been infected with a highly infectious disease (think smallpox) and still wanted to go to work, would they have a right to deny that person? If so, what specifically constrains them in a situation like this that wouldn't in a situation like that?
Would you deny a person entrance to your building because they weren't vaccinated against Ebola or rabies?
Why the different answers?
For example, I generally support laws that let people go topless or nude in public. But I’m okay with places banning people due to clothing choices… like all white conical hoods.
That’s absolutely not new in any way? Public health has always been a force majeure trigger.
> Why is one of those OK and the other isn’t?
They’re not, but it can be quite difficult to impossible to push back against religious communities as they’ve managed to carve out lots of assumptions that you’re supposed to respect whatever they choose out of nowhere.
Non-COVID vaccinations are not the same thing here. The typical American booster shots are administered far, _far_ less frequently. They don't require yearly (or every 6mo) shots to be effective.
These non-COVID vaccinations also don't require me to, say, not participate in society (per the recent vaccine mandates in swaths of Western Europe). As for schools, I knew many kids whose parents chose not to get them vaccinated when I was growing up. It was tougher to get those exemptions at the University level, but still not impossible. The way these vaccination rules are playing out, thus far anyway, are trying to make it impossible to not be vaccinated no matter what the reason. Nobody cares what your reason is, even if its medically related. [0]
Also of note is that those non-COVID vaccinations work really really well. The COVID vaccinations are far less effective, as the increasing rates in places like Israel or Gibralter show. It should be noted that, at least thus far, its better to be vaccinated than non-vaccinated as the former are less likely to have severe symptoms battling the disease. But these are hardly the polio vaccine, _at least not yet_ as a better vaccine may come along.
[0]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9806345/Incoming-fr...
Vaccinating someone who has already had covid is thornier and less clear. Medically it is certainly advisable a rerun isn't always mild and studies have shown individuals who are previously infected have twice the chance of reinfection compared to those who are also vaccinated.
The chance of misadventure from being vaccinated is fantastically low and the risk of reinfection while a lot smaller than in a naive individual is a long way from zero. I have substantial doubts regarding any immunologist would say
>and that it violates medical ethics to order unnecessary procedures.
Unless he had been in a coma and had just woken up yesterday.
What he is fighting for then is the right to undertake a course of action that is both meritless and brainless but I don't think we have a right to protect him from himself so the problem becomes is he risking others to an unacceptable degree. I'd say no. If he becomes infected he could infect others including the ample unvaccinated so he IS risking others by his actions but the risk is probably at this juncture small although this could change and he would be stupid to delay.
Importantly the test needs to be one with an acceptably low false positive rate performed by a legitimate lab. Not a self test for practical purposes lest people find a way to foul the test (see the soda issue where kids found out that an acidic liquid led to a positive test) or sell each other spit over the internet or something equally stupid.
The two most obvious examples are drug usage and abortion.
Why do we accept that but are suddenly outraged by vaccination? Vaccination mandates aren't new either: many countries will not even let you enter unless you are vaccinated against yellow fever.
I think there are valid arguments opposing vaccine mandates but the "this is an unprecedented infringement on freedom" isn't one of them.
You're only applying this argument in one direction, but it works in both directions. Most people who want the vaccine to be mandatory disagree with the state restricting drug usage and abortion. If you disagree with some policy and want to get it overturned, it seems wrong to try to use it as precedent to set new policies in the meantime.
What I don't like is the pretence that this is suddenly a brand new unprecedented invasion on privacy. It builds outrage and fear off the idea what the state is doing is completely unprecedented. However, that's not entirely true. That's what I find intellectually dishonest.
Fair, although there is one other angle from which I think this is unprecedented: aren't those other restrictions all things that you can't do, with this being the first one that's something that you have to do? For example, consider freedom of speech. Exceptions that compel speech are much rarer than exceptions that prohibit speech.
This is like the train trolley: where you can either phrase it as doing nothing, or pushing a lever. People apply much more stringent moral codes when there is action involved, or even when the fat man is actually pushed by hand.
I think this is coming into conflict with rising a utilitarism and consequentialist ethical worldview in the united states. Neither system is perfet, but one challenge of the consequentialist worldview is that it holds people accountable for sub-optimal behavior. (e.g. it is murder to not pull the lever, or not donate to save that starving child in Africa).
Without getting too off track, I think the conflict between these two ethical views is a big driver of the tone of discusource and current ideological conflicts in the US, be it public health, racical justice, and the role of the government.
First it's easy to turn it around, it seems wrong to shout now about "infringing my freedom" if you have been pushing to infringe other people's freedom for a long time (I'd say most antivaxers are conservatives at the moment).
And second is that people oppose restricting drug use and abortion for other reasons than simply it is telling someone what to do or not do with their body.
BTW there are many other examples so it's just plain stupid to argue telling me what to do with my body is wrong on principle.
We're certainly not "suddenly outraged by vaccination". In fact, vaccines and anti-vaccine sentiment have historically gone hand in hand[1]. The historical reaction to vaccines _is_ worsened when mandated. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination League was formed in 1866 in reaction to the British compulsory vaccination order for smallpox.[2] Would smalpox have been eliminated if people could have chosen for themselves?
[1] https://www.historyofvaccines.org/index.php/content/articles... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Anti-Vaccination_Leag...
In regards to drugs - I think any sort of government interference is horribly wrong. Likewise, if I want to kill myself, that's on me.
Firstly, the US has always granted special exceptions to religion for many public policy requirements. You can complain about how it's unfair, but it's likely that the public needle of opinion won't budge past a threshold within this lifetime.
Secondly, there have already been widespread medical requirements for all sorts of aspects of public life, and this hasn't been controversial. Immigrants are required to be immunized. Churches may require missionaries to be immunized. Schools may require children to be immunized.
At least since Jacobson v. Massachusetts (1905).
> granted special exceptions
This podcast: https://www.npr.org/2021/08/12/1027132680/can-the-government... explained the "religious exception" quite well.
My paraphrasing is horrible, but the gist was something like: "religion has a sort of 'most favored' status, so if there's ever a secular exception to a rule, there must also be a religious exception".
Personally, I think that's absurd, but I'm less upset about it after hearing the explanation. I highly recommend listening to the 18 minute episoide.
https://www.uscis.gov/tools/designated-civil-surgeons/vaccin...
You aren't required to get immunized for H1B and a number of other visas, but for green card (aka permanent resident card), you are absolutely required to get a general medical exam + screen for TB + get up to date on all your vaccinations. You need to do it shortly before the green card interview, because you are expected to bring those papers with you for the interview.
Every day, we all make tradeoffs as part of the price to pay for living in society. This is not a new thing. (and I assert it's counterproductive and anti-social behavior (harmful to society, the opposite of pro-social, not meaning "introverted") to assert that it is.)
I can't build a DIY rocket powered car and drive it around town. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
I can't even drive a store bought car without a drivers license. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
I can't open a restaurant and sell food without some sort of license/permit from the city. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
(I recently learned the hard way that) I can't even build a new wall in my home without having the design approved and permitted. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
I can't attend school (public or private) without DTaP, Polio, and MMR vaccines, making it a de facto requirement of life.
These are all restrictions on personal liberty that we accept up as part of the social contract.
And yet, somehow, there is this (literally!) sickening idea going around that it's a "new thing" to require _this specific_ vaccine. Considering the fact that we know that being un-vaccinated will eventually hurt people (by increasing transmission, and hastening the onset of a disastrous mutation), I'm terrified and enraged that it's not being treated similarly to driving drunk.
> These are all restrictions on personal liberty that we accept up as part of the social contract
Historically it had been trivially easy to fill out a form and go to public school without vaccines everywhere I've lived.
The purpose of the form is to know who to send home from school if there is a break out of a disease that is relevant to those who choose not to vaccinate. A very accommodating position.
This policy is now potentially being changed to hard requirements with no escape valve for good or ill. It is factually incorrect to say it had always been this way. This is a material change to policy, fights in legislatures about vaccine mandates have been brewing for at least two decades that I have seen. You can expect a lot of lawsuits and legislative battles along these lines as well.
I can't rely on my naturally acquired immunity with 80+> efficacy instead of a vaccine with 90% efficacy to go to work. It might hurt people, regardless of my intentions or competence.
The CDC claims being unvaccinated was associated with 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with being fully vaccinated. Most vaccines are 90+ effective. Say for example moderna is 95.3% effective, natural immunity would be 89% (100% - 4.7% x 2.34)
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
>Do they go into detail regarding how long the immunity lasts, and whether it covers varients?
There is a lot of information missing on duration, but we know people who were infected with SARS-CoV-1 still have antibodies 20 years later. Natural infection triggers an immune response on many more parts of the virus than the vaccine, so protection against variants should also be good or better than the original vaccine, but not better than a booster vaccine tailored specifically to a given variant.
Your statement is missing the sorely needed nuance that individuals with immunity acquired through natural infection are at least equally well protected as vaccinated individuals. That is the consensus in the scientific consensus literature right now.
This fact is the central argument of the lawsuit presented in the OP.
It's imperative to move beyond the dualistic framing of these discussions as "vaccinated versus unvaccinated". At this point it's borderline misinformation to continue with such rhetoic.
If you are a corporation or business, that is generally true. If you are using a conveyance in your personal capacity, then you are not regulated unless you voluntarily sign up to be licensed. Your choice.
"For while a citizen has the right to travel upon the public highways and to transport his property thereon, that right does not extend to the use of the highways...as a place for private gain. For the latter purpose, no person has a vested right to use the highways of this state, but it is a privilege...which the (state) may grant or withhold at its discretion..." State v. Johnson, 75 Mont. 240, 243 P. 1073 (1926)"
I don't have a drivers license. I always assumed driving a car without a license, registration, and proof of insurance was illegal and would get me in trouble. I admit, I didn't research this aspect before writing my above comment (tho I did research the vaccine requirements, my source is a government website).
Now I don't quite know what to think! Can I legally drive a car on public roads in California?
And that's leaving out the monumental hypocrisy of any anti-vaccine and anti-abortion people. So... it's outrageous to tell people to do with their bodies... unless they're women.
Religion exemptions exist only because of the political power of religious groups. They should be abolished.
Imagine of they required the guy to wear clothes or something ridiculous like that.
What do you think employment, literally, is? A gives B money and direct’s what B does (of necessity, with B’s body), both positively and negatively, within some agreed (mixed between explicit agreement and implicit agreement via governing law) parameters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Mallon
We regulate your ability to punch, to bite, and to infect. Simple as that.
And this last was formally established by the SCOTUS 116 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobson_v._Massachusetts
MURICA
I wonder how Conservapedia is doing these days.
In the 19th century, yellow fever survivors were considered to be “acclimated citizens” who were more eligible for jobs, because the employer didn’t have to worry about them catching and dying of yellow fever. The position has historic precedence and seems to stand up, according to current scientists’ analysis of immunity after covid-19 infection being 80% or greater, similar to the J&J vaccine.
In the 21st century we have safe vaccines so if someone is not “acclimated” or immune to a virus, they can gain the status easily via a free and safe vaccine. This removes the problems.
In any case, the discussion here is not about immunity passports themselves. It’s about whether only a vaccine should count, or if proof of natural infection should also count as equivalent to a vaccine record.