The contrary argument is reasonably well-stated within the article, it seems to be mostly a matter of what you assess to be the greatest risks going forward as to which argument you think is more valid.
After glancing at the endnotes, it seems that the bulk of the scientific references examining natural immunity date from before the delta variant established itself.
The reasoned answer is politics. One side of the aisle committed to a message before they had all the data. The other side did this too. Now it's too politically costly to change any of those positions, no matter how much anyone claims to "follow the science".
It seems much harder to quantify the level of immunity conferred by natural infection. It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection.
Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice. Refuses to get vaccinated now because "why bother? I have great immunity now." With no sense of irony, given that he's already been infected twice...
Why is it "harder"? I assume you mean harder to quantify than vaccination immunity and I don't believe that's the case, but I'm curious why you believe that is the case.
edit: surprising downvotes so I probably didn't communicate my point well.
I can't imagine a reason why natural immunity would be harder to quantify than vaccine induced immunity. It would seem to me the methodology to quantify both would be very similar.
we are testing for antibodies but antibodies aren't the only immune system response and depending on who you ask might not even be the "main" defense against covid.
With a vaccine, you get a standardised dosis of an agent resembling the disease or just a part of it. The remaining variability is the response to that standardised input.
With an infection, you have no control over the degree of exposure, so on top of the variability of the response comes the variability of the exposure.
Additionally, in case of exposure of the full pathogen, there is some variability to what part of the pathogen the immune system will respond. That part can actually be a good thing in total.
>It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection.
Pardon my ignorance, but does this mean by contrast that vaccines are designed to induce a uniform response across immune systems?
EDIT: A reply (deleted before I could respond) mentioned that immune systems will combat the infection by some "pattern" of it's own design, but a vaccine will encourage the immune system to respond in a predetermined way, (increasing likelihood of uniformity, answering my question).
there is no way for it to be perfectly uniform. Let's just say that the immune system employs several layers of RNG (random shuffling of DNA, and also it shoots mutations at certain segments of DNA) to evolve its responses.
A more uniform response than the pathogen itself? Yes. But I think the actual goal of modern vaccination is not a uniform response, but a directed response. Don't waste your time looking at these parts of the virus, spend it on this (important) part.
The vaccine either contains or triggers the production of a specific protein that is (fairly) stable across variants - so there's only one thing for the immune system to key off. The concern around natural immunity is that your immune system may respond to some aspect of the virus that isn't as stable, ie it ends up recognising part of the virus that's present in your current infection but may not be in a later infection.
In reality it seems that the immune system does tend to end up targeting the same protein that's in the vaccine, but may be targeting different portions of it (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ talks about this). My understanding is that current data suggests the naturally acquired immunity is about as robust as the vaccine acquired one, but this wasn't a given.
If you want to optimise for targeting a specific virus, then yes, narrowly targeting the most stable functional element of that virus is preferable to targeting other elements of that virus. If you want to optimise for having a broad response to related viruses, then a less narrowly targeted response is preferable.
What if instead of optimizing for "targeting" a "specific virus", i.e. score political points against a virus, you wanted to optimize for saving lives? That doesn't even come into your calculations, does it?
I was explaining why there's potentially a difference between natural immunity and vaccine-mediated immunity, and why one of these may well be preferable if the goal is to generate maximum immunity to a widespread virus. But that's not the actual goal, and as a result policy decisions may differ. Is the risk associated with vaccinating people who have some degree of natural immunity justified by any improvement in immunity they gain as a result? I don't know! I have opinions on the matter, but I'm not qualified to make that determination.
>Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice
How does he know he was infected twice?
Saying that a PCR test returned positive values two times isn't a great answer - since by its nature PCR is only counting the existence (above the programmed threshold post amplification).
Serology is the only way to know for certain you were/are infected.
This highlights one of the bigger issues we have: PCR test are a very cheap and a useful way for getting estimates but their failure rate is high enough to make it pretty poor basis for doing large scale data analysis.
I’ve had COVID twice - in December and then just a few weeks ago.
Long haul COVID doesn’t spring back to life and give you a fever for 12 days straight. I had essentially the same symptoms both times: fever, extreme fatigue, a dry cough, complete loss of taste of most things, etc.
Long story short, even if you didn’t get tested one of the two times (I tested positive both times) it’s pretty freaking obvious what you have as long as you don’t have a mild case. My wife got it this time around, and we got her an infusion of monoclonal antibodies early as she’s pregnant. She only had a fever one night, and in trying to explain how she felt I asked her “it feels like you just want to stop existing, right?” She agreed. Before that night it just seemed like a cold for her.
Thank you! I've been fortunate enough to not experience covid, though I've had quite a few family members with cases ranging from annoying and acute to quite devastating and chronic. I appreciate your input; though it's anecdotal, it does help give some greater sense for the individual experience of covid. Although let me not be crass: you have my greatest sympathies for your ill-experiences. I sincerely hope that you're well-recovered, and I wish the best for your loved ones.
In US culture this seems like it would potentially set up some perverse incentives among anti-vaxxers, leading to things like the "measles parties" that fueled the the 2019 NYC measles outbreak: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200527181329.h...
It's very concerning that the president is saying things like "your refusal has cost all of us" and "our patience is wearing this" when talking to people with natural immunity who have not received the vaccine.
As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens. It seems like he's doing the opposite. I'm not really sure why. My best guess is politics has become all about polarization lately.
The president would not be in the news if they acted reasonably and tried to work across party lines. There’s always going to be someone more extreme, louder, and obnoxious that will sell more ad views along with supporting whatever pet narrative the publication wants.
"Trying to work across party lines" went out the window when the Republicans decided that "prevent absolutely anything the Democrats want to do, no matter how objectively beneficial it would be or whether it was fully supported by Republicans in the past" was a viable and acceptable method of getting re-elected.
“If the public-health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it — absolutely," the California senator said during the first and only vice-presidential debate.
"But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not taking it." -Kamala Harris
Let’s not act like both parties don’t do the exact same thing, eh?
What does this quote mean to you? It is saying that if immunologists and epidemiologists do not recommend a vaccine but Donald Trump does then she wouldn't take it. As far as I know Donald Trump is not a scientist, that seems reasonable?
I'm not politically minded so I'm confused as to how you're interpreting that.
I take it as nothing more than it was, a political jab...if not a bit of a dangerous one from a public health perspective. It is, however, a perfectly illustrated point of "other side = bad."
She didn't say that if the FDA didn't approve it and Trump somehow magically bypassed the process and put it out there for people to take that she wouldn't take it. She implied that if the FDA approved it and Trump said people should take it that she wouldn't.
Debates are debates and people say stupid things, but that was far from the only moment of vaccine hesitancy to happen on the left just because Trump was president. Now, of course, it's flipped - and both show just how tribal America has become.
The moderator's question was "If the Trump administration approves a vaccine, before or after the election, should Americans take it and would you take it?"
Harris's answer was the right one, and the same one I would have given. An unqualified "yes" would be saying you'd take a vaccine approved by the administration even if the medical community wasn't confident in it, and the phrasing of the question was designed to elicit that clarification.
And let's not pretend it's surprising that her qualification was even needed; We're talking about the same president who used the presidential soap box to urge people to try curing and preventing COVID using Hydroxychloroquine despite no such recommendation from health officials or the medical community at large.
At times of national ... tragedy ... we sometimes hear about rallying behind the flag. The government's rhetoric seems like a ham-fisted effort at that.
Unfortunately, national US politics have devolved in some respects to a food fight of attacks on political opponents. Some viewed Trump's tax policies in this light, disfavoring residents of so-called 'Blue' states. It would, unfortunately, be very easy to recharacterize Biden's work-based vaccination requirement as an effort to get his staunchest political opponents fired, nationwide. I personally hope both sides can find a path to a more conciliatory approach to policy.
>As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens.
Through the pandemic, there have been ~40,000,000 COVID cases[0] in the US, and ~120,000,000 people are completely unvaccinated[1].
As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
Given that huge disparity, it's not surprising that the relevant public health authorities (which are mostly state and local, with support from the Federal government) are pushing vaccinations very hard.
I'd also point out that there are actual studies of the efficacy of COVID vaccines, while the data for "natural" immunity is much spottier.
As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection.
What's more, it's not the President's job to be everyone's friend. It's their job (among other things) to promote the general welfare of the population. Getting as many people as possible vaccinated is definitely within that purview.
Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't give me a pony! He's alienating me!"
>I won't be bullied into getting an unnecessary procedure just because the burden of proof has not been met (re: spotty studies).
Bullied? Where I live (NYC), they will pay you $100[0] to get vaccinated. I wish more folks would "bully" me that way.
I'd add, that at least in the US, no one is forcing anyone to have an unwanted procedure. Every single "vaccine mandate" has come with the caveat that you can avoid being vaccinated by getting tested regularly.
As to whether or not a COVID vaccination is necessary or not is, for some strange reason, a controversial question.
Have you been vaccinated against Polio? If so, why is that different than COVID? Not being snarky here, just genuinely curious as to how you see those as different.
Given a 100 bucks if you do, denied admission everywhere and job threatened if you don't.
I did not make the decision to vaccinate against polio, that was made for me. I trust my parents made an educated decision and its beside the point now, I am vaccinated. Does polio vaccine manufacturer have readily available risk/benefit data for people who've already had polio? Covid vaccines don't provide this data so burden of proof is not met. I'd judge polio vaccine the same way under the same circumstances.
Pretty sure you numbers are not factoring in children under the age they legally allowed to get the vaccine, because those numbers are way high if you exclude the ineligible
"All Persons" is not a valid statistic
>As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection
We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a big unknown right now
>Pretty sure you numbers are not factoring in children under the age they legally allowed to get the vaccine, because those numbers are way high if you exclude the ineligible
A fair point. There were approximately 45,000,000 children under the age of 12 in the US in 2019[0].
I'd guess that's probably still relatively accurate.
Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
>We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a big unknown right now
Another good point. I'd point out that while ongoing immunity is a big (and unanswered) question, bringing R0[1] down in high infection areas right now can significantly reduce the impact on our health care systems and economy.
What the situation will look like in 12-18 months is important, but given the high transmissibility and case rates in some areas of the US, increasing the ability of folks to avoid serious health consequences right now is, arguably, even more so.
> Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible, that leaves 35 million, less than the number of people who are immune from having contracted the virus.
That of course also doesn't take into account other people who cannot take it, and the number of unconfirmed cases of immunity from having contracted the virus. I don't have any estimates for those numbers so I won't speculate on what they are besides saying that the number of unvaccinated Americans that can and need to be vaccinated is probably a lot less than 35 million.
>Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible, that leaves 35 million, less than the number of people who are immune from having contracted the virus.
Note that I did not mention immunity. I mentioned vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.
Contracted/recovered from the virus != vaccinated.
As to levels of immunity from previous infection, I made no statement whatsoever.
Edit: clarified my initial statement vis a vis vaccination vs. immunity.
Well you're talking about 45 million ineligible children and then not taking that number into account, I see no reason why you've talked about them then.
> Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
This is what I'm responding to. It is incorrect. 120-40-45=35. 35 is far and away from almost twice as much as 40.
> As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40 million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other? Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're just going to disregard them?
> Removing those children from my calculation...
You're not removing them from a calculation, you're removing them from the 120 number and then ignoring the fact that you've also already removed 40 from that number, which was the calculation you're referring to.
Why even have this conversation if you're just going to arbitrarily decide to not consider a factor you've already considered prior? What are you trying to accomplish with this discussion?
>> As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
>So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40 million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other? Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're just going to disregard them?
Who says it doesn't apply? I said:
...there are more (perhaps much more) than twice
as many folks who have not had COVID who are
unvaccinated than there are those who have had
COVID.
The fact that there are ~45 million children who are unvaccinated because those under 12 haven't been approved for the vaccine(s) doesn't invalidate my point at all. In fact, it strengthens it.
The ~75 million folks who could get vaccinated but have not done so is still almost twice the number of recorded cases.
I'm trying really hard to assume good faith, so I'll make the leap and consider that perhaps English isn't your first language.
Your numbers are incorrect. The ~40,000,000 number represents cases confirmed through administered tests. The true number is probably somewhere closer to ~150,000,000[0]. Your comment is based on an incorrect assumption.
Unification in the eyes of many is "Do what we say, we gave you a choice, you choose wrong so now we have have to use force"
That is not unification or pluralism. They (including democrats and republicans but today right now mainly democrats) want a political mono-culture and are willing to use force to get it.
The article clearly states that one of the reasons for shrugging natural immunity is politics, there are prominent GOP figures supporting natural immunity in lieu of vaccines. So being against natural immunity becomes not only a public health policy but a political attack on one’s opponents and applauded by the base. This is what Biden is doing.
You are correct. This is the largest overreach I have ever seen: if you work for any company we can control by sniffing around government agencies to find a regulation we can leverage, we will make sure you can't even have a job unless you take a particular vaccine. When you overreach in this way, you would at least want to carve out every reasonable exception you could, to not unnecessarily hurt lives, right? For instance
- If you have a positive antibody test, you're exempt.
- If you work from home, you're exempt.
etc.
But they don't. I won't make your conclusions for you, but they are obvious.
I'm not against the vaccine, but I already had Covid, have been exposed and tested negative since having it, and haven't gotten the shot. I'm also a little bit of an adversarial person, and this move by Biden has made me seriously lean away from ever getting the jab.
I'm probably one of the more well-to-do people he's trying to target here, and if my first instinct is "Fuck you", this doesn't bode well for getting anyone else on-board.
If the only reason you aren't getting the vaccine is because the government wants you to it doesn't sound like you're actually exhibiting any control over your body. You're just putting a NOT gate in front of the government's choice.
I'd be back where I started if the government told me not to get it. Curious, debating it, but also completely unsure if it's any better than what I already have—natural immunity.
I honestly think this is a reasonable stance because, while I'm not an expert—to my current understanding, the immunity you acquired from having the virus is probably comparable to the immunity I got from my Pfizer shots, if not better in some respects.
As an American, I wish we could all just have an honest conversation about this. Yes, the mRNA vaccines are new technology and I don't begrudge anyone who feels hesitant about them; but I also think there's strong evidence for their safety, and I waited hours in line to get my shot as soon as it was available.
But this business of public health officials trying to shape people's behavior instead of giving them plain facts... I don't think we collectively appreciate how much damage this has done. It necessarily breeds mistrust. It works against the actual goal of ending this pandemic.
So..you're not getting a vaccine because of that? That's the reason? That?
That just sounds like being against the vaccine with extra steps. Because otherwise you wouldn't let what the government was trying to get you to do to affect your decision.
> US CDC estimates that SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 100 million Americans
That's probably why it doesn't count?
Would clearly cut into the profit lines of big pharma.
If you're extra skeptical, you could also argue Western governments are finding opportunities to accustom their citizens to more top down government intrusions into their lives, e.g. shifting towards a citizen management model that's used today by many non Western nations.
Yes, places like NYC are creating a system of getting entry to many places only if you present government authorization. Then they can start adding more conditions to that authorization. Maybe a red state later adds not being a felon or a blue state adds not being on some red flag list. After all, you can still eat, so it's okay. They represent systems for excluding certain classes of people from society.
I'm serving as a poll worker in SF today. There's a section in our manual (page 65, there's a PDF online somewhere) about what to do if a voter is not wearing a facial covering, the TLDR of which is to politely offer them a mask or curbside voting, and then let them vote regardless. We are a long way off from requiring vaccination.
Yeah, it’s really horrible when I have to show my age passport to get served a beer, too.
Edit: moreover, the party that wants fewer restrictions on voting is the same as the party that wants people to get vaccinated. And the party that is desperately trying to stop as many people from voting as possible is also very pro-disease. So this seems like a pretty unlikely scenario.
You kid, but that's a violation of your privacy as well and shouldn't exist.
That change in the US at least was also very contentious when it occurred, and subsequently every time the legal age was changed.
But say we decide that that is OK, which it appears most people have, they're still not really comparable because one is based on the assumption that you're too young to get inebriated responsibly, whereas this is proof you've had a medical procedure performed on your body. I'm sure you can see the glaring difference, one is significantly more extreme and invasive than the other.
Do we actually believe that "big pharma" (in the form of 3 companies that make US approved vaccines) have greater influence than all of the collective industries that would benefit from a looser mandate (so long as the public trusted it)? Pharma is more influential than the entire service sector, plus most manufacturing, and anything else that functionally requires people to be in the same room?
If you believe they are, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point. If you believe they're not, then I think it makes sense to look for another explanation.
So you're just going to pretend that the entire media and political establishment (at least in US) as well as many industries (ex. big tech) are not strongly supportive of big pharma when it comes to the vaccines?
Are you going to pretend people are not being actively censored, banned, cancelled, fired for being vaccine-sceptical?
Do you not believe that the extensively-documented mass manipulation of public opinion is a thing?
If this is the fantasy land you want to base your reasoning in, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point.
The media, political establishment (or at least half of it), and other industries are supportive of vaccine mandates. These loose groups of people can indeed influence the public, and are using this ability to promote vaccines. These premises are uncontroversial.
The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma. Either this is for an altruistic reason (hah!) or big pharma is actually more powerful than those people (or, maybe, that isn't actually happening).
I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
have you ever sat through the commercials of American TV news stations? pharma has a directly controlling interest in the media. this should be uncontroversial.
I watched broadcast news in America two days ago, in fact, though it's somewhat unusual (I prefer to read news). I do remember some pharma ads. I also remember ads for retail stores, chain restaurants, and tourism (an amusement park, a cruise line, and a more general "come visit place X").
Even if we presume that advertisers are the only stakeholders (forgetting, let's say, investors), I'd disagree that pharma has a controlling interest in the media.
> These loose groups of people can indeed influence the public, and are using this ability to promote vaccines.
There is nothing loose about the US media and political establishments. If you watch mainstream media with any regularity you'd think it was two departments of one corporation.
> The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma.
I didn't see anyone make that claim. There are many extensively documented cases of collusion between government and media. 9/11 coverage, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars, virtually any coverage of foreign adversaries (Russia, China, Iran), vaccines, etc. being some obvious examples.
> I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
Oh yeah, can't think of anything more comfortable to think of!
Regulatory capture is understood and happens in other industries (e.g. the MIC). Feel is pretty naive if you don't think politicians are willing to incur massive opportunity costs to society at large in order to enrich themselves and the establishment that they essentially work for.
Do we actually believe that "big pharma" (in the form of 3 companies that make US approved vaccines) have greater influence than all of the collective industries
They only need more influence in key places like FDA and CDC, not more influence overall, to push health policies.
The FDA and CDC are not involved in vaccine mandates. Even the coming federal mandate is through OSHA. They issue recommendations, but so do a lot of other influential people and organizations.
That said, this is a real phenomenon and worth bearing in mind when doing this type of reasoning.
I work for "big pharma" - we were one of the companies that tried to make COVID vaccine. We failed - it worked but was not as good as Pfizer and others (though if those didn't work out, ours would still be worth it).
Nobody is disappointed that we didn't succeed. It would be great PR - "company X is saving the world" but it would not make us all that much money, considering how much world governments are paying for COVID vaccines.
I find the claims of big pharma manipulating to selling more vaccines dubious.
Many other countries are fine considering documented prior infection as equivalent to vaccination for compliance purposes. There are some results hinting infection-recovery alone is better than vaccination alone, especially versus later variants.
The US CDC etc seems slow-moving on key scientific results, in ways that are unnecessarily increasing social conflict. But they’re not even paid by the click!
> You can get a COVID certificate if the COVID infection was confirmed with a positive PCR test and occurred no more than 180 days ago.
> You can request the COVID certificate from your cantonal authority using an online form. It will then be sent to you by post.
> Please note:
> As the COVID certificate is compatible with the EU Digital COVID Certificate, the standards applying to the EU certificate must also serve as a basis for the Swiss certificate. This means that a certificate is only issued to people who have recovered following a positive PCR test.
It is pretty useful though. Studies have found it compares well with vaccines or better.
However like vaccines it also fades. And prior immunity + infection is way better than prior immunity, so being infected no reason not to get vaccinated.
SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
Despite having an account since 2018, they have only posted 5 submissions. 4 of them were posted in the past 3 weeks, and all have to do questioning the viability of the vaccines.
I know we want to have a space here to freely discuss things without being dismissed, but I also think enough of us have managed enough websites to understand that this account shouldn't be taken seriously.
I'm not saying that they are a bot either. Their comments suggest otherwise. But this person has, after nearly three years on this site, decided that now is the time to start submitting articles to the front page, and all of them have been about the same politically controversial thing, so this person clearly has an agenda they are trying to push.
I admit that this has me fired up. But that is really the long and short of the explanation. You see "pushing agenda" I see "championing underrepresented not just opinion but facts in the face of government overreach and media blackout".
You can even argue that they're not facts, that they're wrong... but the OP is coming from the viewpoint that they appear to be facts. And, as such, it seems the OP is posting in good faith.
If they are pushing/submitting based on actual facts and studies, then I don't see the problem. It seems like the overall argument is following a pattern of
- A vaccination is currently a requirement for participating in society.
- There are studies showing that having the virues is just as effective (or more) than a vaccination.
- There are places where "having the vaccination" meets the requirement for participating in society.
And, from there, discussing why the US doesn't also follow this logic.
Now, I can't speak to the studies validity. And an argument can be made that it's harder to verify that someone has had the virus already or some such. Or one of any of a dozen other reasons "why not". But having a discussion of the "why not" seems perfectly reasonable.
The argument seems fine to me. Let people with natural immunity have the same privileges as vaccinated people assuming they have a piece of paper from a federal entity to prove it.
The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.
To what extent has the efficacy of natural immunity been characterized? There should be some minimum bar of understanding that must be met before something becomes a policy even in extreme cases such as these.
I love vaccines; especially the Pfizer until further research helps lower the Moderna (& Pfizer) doses.
If I'd had COVID, I'd want 1 extra dose, perhaps a half a year later, as an extra boost.
But it's unfair – & unscientific – to insist on such doses for the proven-recovered (who are also more likely to have bad vax reactions).
Other countries are doing this better – just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses to get more people 1st-dose vaccinated in early 2021.
Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
> just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses
> Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
Other countries delayed second doses either due to health and safety concerns or supply constraints while the US pushed forward with EUA before second dose efficacy was fully characterized. To me, this is the opposite of bureaucracy.
Supply constraints (not anything 'safety' related) were the original driving factor for slower 2nd doses elsewhere - but it was already confidently conjectured by domain experts that a longer spacing would likely be more effective. It's even taught in vaccination textbooks, pre-COVID, that a delay of at least 2 months is usually necessary to train the strongest/longest immune response.
(Much like 'spaced repetition' to consciously memorize facts, an immune-response is more-reinforced if a separate presentation happens at a distinctly-different time, when forgetting has begun but is reversible.)
Thus, those countries that trusted the pre-COVID science – like the UK or Canada – delayed 2nd shots for 8 weeks or more - giving more of their population the all-important 1st-dose sooner, & closely monitoring the effects on community cases.
In the meantime, Fauci did interviews insisting the 3/4 week rapid boosting was "optimal". (That was overconfident bluster unsupported by the rushed & limited trial data, which other more honest scientists pointed out.)
Surprise! With data, the textbooks were right. 8 week or longer delays generate immune responses that are stronger & last longer. In the UK, now without such tight supply constraints, it's considered dangerously negligent to not warn patients they should wait at least 8 weeks for the 2nd shot:
In the US, disease experts like Eric Topol & Monica Gandhi now suggest some of the 'fading' immunity showing up in Israeli & US studies, especially with Pfizer, is due to the rushed 3-week booster.
Our flailing CDC still insists, today in their vaccination FAQ, contra the science & the interests of Americans, that "you should get your second shot as close to the [21d or 28d] interval as possible". They're also still urging people not to use N95-quality masks, even though they are now cheap & plentiful and likely 2x-4x more effective than cloth or surgical masks.
The failure to recognize that prior infections are as protective as vaccinations is another error that's wasting vaccine & creating arguments that we could just... skip & do better for everyone.
Thus: "Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility."
You're rewriting history. The US approved EUA and rolled out warp speed before any of this was known for sure. There was speculation on both sides. One being that delaying would be helpul the other being that it would render vaccines useless or that covid would be so bad by then it wouldn't matter. Either way, the US chose a path based on science and data just like most other countries. It wasn't bureaucracy.
Why should the 2020 EUA or 2020 Warp Speed program excuse an early-2021 error in spacing?
Some countries, & domain experts, got it right from the get-go. Those countries have benefited – saving lives – with their proper reading of the precedent & limited trial data.
Fauci, & the US CDC/FDA advisory committees that could have corrected this early enough to benefit, got it wrong. Fauci, especially, misreported a schedule as "optimal" that better experts knew was conjectural, tentative, & rushed.
These managerial functionaries could correct the recommendations now, to help people, but still haven't. The US maximum delay, 6 weeks, is shorter than the minimum delay the UK's vax lead recommends – which is well backed by latest analyses.
What's that continuing failure, if not bureaucratic inertia? Loylty to 2020 guesses rather than 2021 science?
These institutions are slow to integrate new science, and bad at balancing prior knowledge with new info - instead consistently preferring what earlier committees rubber-stamped. And that's still killing Americans.
If catching COVID is only a risk to the people catching it I'd agree.
However by catching COVID you are also a burden to the health care system and possibly take away a hospital bed for someone who actually needs it (already happening). I do have a problem with that.
A great deal of burden on the health care system -- perhaps even more than completely eliminating COVID -- could be alleviated by people dedicating themselves to better diet and exercise. Why not mandate that?
OK that argument has been debunked a million times but here we go:
1. No one is talking about mandates
2. Yes living unhealthy is a burden on the health care system. But I am fine with that as long as your actions only have consequences in your own life. With an infectious disease that's different because you suddenly have a multiplier. I didn't hear about any ICU capacity issues because of obese people.
3. We (at least most countries) already have measures to increase the overall health of our society (smoking bans in certain places, age limits on alcohol consumptions, programs in schools to provide healthier food in cafeterias, you name it).
2. I didn't say anything about ICUs, or about obesity spreading to other people. Across the entire healthcare system, there could be much alleviation of burden if people took dietary and activity-based steps toward being healthier.
3. Banning smoking in public places doesn't stop smoking altogether. If the government wanted to end smoking, they could "mandate" the complete shutdown of tobacco companies. Or the tobacco companies themselves could shut down of their own accord. But folks involved care more about their business than about the health of their "customers". Healthier food in school cafeterias is great, but clearly not enough. People are being hammered with anti-COVID material left and right; nothing even close to that is being done toward pressuring people into taking better care of themselves through diet and exercise.
Poor phrasing on my side, I apologize. Your argument has not been debunked, it's still a bad one.
1. You are responding to a comment that didn't talk about mandates under an article that says nothing about mandates. You are the one who brought it up.
2 and 3: In isolation you are right, we should probably take more measurements towards healthy living. But if you only bring that up as a counter point to COVID measures, you are at very best making a flawed analogy.
My point is: if there is anything feasible measures we can take for healthier living, great we should do that. But we should ALSO do something about COVID.
Perhaps I also had poor phrasing. Let me try again:
We should strive to reduce the COVID burden on the emergency / ICU segment of the healthcare system. But I believe we could alleviate burden across the entire healthcare system if more people ate healthier diets and exercised better. Perhaps we could even alleviate more burden than what could be alleviated by way of completely eliminating COVID.
A lot of people are talking about mandating vaccines, and there is constant awareness of anti-COVID precautions everywhere you look. I think that if the same sort of intense campaign was rallied regarding better eating and exercise -- basically pressuring people, even borderline forcing them -- then we would see better progress in this area.
It is unfortunate, I think, that so many resources are being put into pressuring people to take the vaccine while comparatively little is being put into pressuring people to just be healthier overall. Which might in fact also help in the face of any virus!
Once all who want it are vaccinated, and further 80-95%-plus of the population is either vax- or post-infection- immune, the alleged 'multiplier' of danger-to-others is negligible. The protected are protected; those who want to take thir chances will hurt themselves, & get the painful immunity upgrade, soon enough.
Even with today's HIV treatments, its fatality rate is in the range of COVID. (And: living with it is no cakewalk.) But we haven't outlawed risky sex. People self-sort into compatible risk groupings.
Also, people are most certainly "talking about mandates" when they're discussing whether natural immunity should grant people the same rights to engage in normal activities as vaccination.
Poor diet and exercise produce a fairly steady burden on the health care system. We need to provide more health care than we would if people ate better and exercised more, but as diet and exercise deteriorated over the decades there was plenty of time to slowly expand the health care system to meet the increased need.
COVID places a much more dynamic burden on the health care system.
It's similar to the way there are many people could manage to afford a $10/month expense for the next 10 years ($1200 total) but would have a very hard time dealing with am extra one-time $200 expense.
Theoretically, and in places of transient surges, sure. But most of US isn't currently at that level of health-care rationing.
You know who else puts others at risk? Vaccinated people, overconfident, potentially walking around with their asymptomatic breakthrough infections (whereas an unvaxed person with a rougher case would self-isolate). But we live with that, because people can still protect themselves with vaccination, & by choosing to only come within infection-range of other vaxed people.
It's looking increasingly likelt that natural immunity is stronger against future variants, or stronger against transmission (mucosal immunity in nose/airways instead of in bloodstream), than vaccination alone. So when a young healthy person who's unlikely to land in an ICU gets & recovers from a natural infection, they might be net-lowering their community's risks, over the long run, versus mere vax-immunity. These population-level effects are often weird & non-linear that way.
I'd say, to the maximum extent possible: let their immune systems, and their peers, & their communities, learn in the way they choose. Some lessons are necessarily painful. Those with greater concern should keep their distance in the meantime – but realize the fastest & surest way to broad safety, via deeper herd immunity, is to let the laggards work through their hard lessons ASAP.
> The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.
I think that's a pretty important argument against allowing natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. A lot of people will go and deliberately infect themselves. Some of them will die. They will spread it to others. Many will tie up ICU beds, doctors, nurses and other hospital resources, causing tons of first- and second-order harm.
I'd assume that a lot of it is the existing polarization over the issue. It's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so. (Plus a lot of people who don't even know they've already had COVID, because of asymptomatic cases.)
The state of medical records in the USA is... not great, so it's easier to show evidence of the vaccination that can at least theoretically be verified.
EDIT: man, the rapid-downvoting is even worse here than in the Apple CSAM threads. :D
> because it's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so.
It's not actually. They're equivalent. The vaccine proof is PAPER which can be forged. And while evidence of a COVID19 test can be paper too, mine was digital.
It's why I said "at least theoretically" -- the vaccine cards have a date and vaccine lot number on them. I'm making the assumption that this has been recorded somewhere, such that you could at least check that a certain batch was administered on a certain day to a certain person.
Of course, this could all fail under the "medical records in the USA are garbage" issue.
Still, if nothing else, it's better for proving it than "I took a COVID test at home, trust me".
I'm in favor of vaccine mandates but if there was a better way of quantifying immunity I'd be all in favor of letting people with natural immunity get a waiver.
As everything with COVID, the lack of hard data and the poor communication of federal and state agencies has enabled politicians, con men and sectarians to exploit the confusion to their benefit.
There is, actually, antibody test. They are quite costly however.
Im my country, getting infected count as the 1rst dose (yes, i know, natural immunity is better with "real" infections, but rememeber that Covid sometime start an auto-immune disease, it's hard to test for this, so its less costly to just vaccinate people (the jab cost 12E)).
No scientific response. This is mostly pragmatic, and probably politic too. Its easier to just jab everyone you can while you can.
I know it's a bit hearthless, and i can't ask doctors to start triaging, but i'd really like that once everyone have had the possibility to get the double dose, we just stop everything covid related (maybe not the reduced maximum capacity and mask in public transport for the adults during peak hours: those restrictions should have been implemented way before covid).
Well, yes, $42 * 10M is expensive. Not that $15210M is not. And i'm pretty sure half the people who said "i got covid" last year did not have it (and i'm kind). So let's say we had tested half the population, and that half of this half have to get vaccinated anyway, since the test was negative. For France, that's one billion euros used for nothing.
I'm to tired to make sense, but you understand my point (if not, i'll have to explain the reasoning better).
Imagine half the uk population wanted to get tested before getting the vaccine, the cost for the NIH would be way higher than just vaccinating everybody. You can't tell people `if the antibody test is positive, you don't have to get vaccinated`, at least not until the vast majority is already vaccinated. And even then, it's mostly lost money.
You could have told people "pay for your own test", but in this case, the fabrication and distribution of those test would slow down the vaccination. And you have to make sure that the test are not faked, so a doctor should verify that the test was yours. I know some doctors who faked smallpox vaccine, so you can imagine how much of a good idea this is.
Also, even if the individual cost is not that high, telling people to `pay not to get vaccinated` (because it would've been spin like this, I've read UK newspapers) is not the best idea want the biggest issues for most western government is lack of trust.
So: it is more pragmatic to jab everybody. Easier to orchestrate, you don't expose your leadership too much. Overall, best solution for the governments. Is it the best solution for the population? Debatable. I'd say its the most cost-effective, the one with the less headaches, so yes?
You've been posting a ton of flamebait and unsubstantive comments. That's destructive of what this site is for and we ban accounts that do it. In fact - you've done almost nothing but post like that. I had to scroll back a long way in your comment history to see something that wasn't unsubstantive.
If you keep doing it, we will ban you. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please stop all of that now and review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start using the site as intended. Here's the basic idea: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
Its probably not worth your time, but I'd like to know which of my comments you consider unsubstantive. I'd say most my comments are terse and I don't care to provide references unless requested. My terseness has a point and I try to rely on big picture details that we can all agree on and are readily available to be provided if someone was curious to ask or look themselves (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...). When so many people are vocally willing to set a dangerous new precedent in a state of emergency I think a biting tone may become appropriate. Although I understand that this isn't necessarily a forum meant for discussing such politically charged happenings and you have precedents to worry about yourselves as moderators of this forum.
Comments like that aren't worth it to have on HN because the negative effect they have on the threads, and on the culture of the site, dominates any value they're adding.
It seems obvious, reading through your comment history, that you have an agenda about this topic. There's nothing wrong with having a view, of course, but an agenda is something different—that's when you're using the site to wage a battle in favor of your view. At that point curiosity has left the building, and curiosity is supposed to be the animating value here.
Definitely I've behaved selfishly and with an agenda. However it is not with a particular outcome in mind except to see a discussion happen among an excellent group of people under excellent moderation. I'm deeply concerned that I have wrong information and am begging to be skewered with the truth. I do think others wanted to see the discussion had as well, so while its selfish on my part its not without broader appeal. This forum is amazing and I thank you so much for your patient moderation.
A recent study from Israel said that natural immunity is an order of magnitude better than vaccine-induced immunity against delta variant. I don't know who to believe, but if that's the case, then the narrative of "well they should get vaccinated anyway" is really freaking suspicious. We need deeper research on this, and the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary.
I mean for someone with natural immunity to get the vaccine is not going to reduce their immunity, and might boost it (or might not). So with fairly little downside, it makes sense to vaccinate them surely?
I still think everybody should be vaccinated as far as it is possible, BUT it seems that what you said might not be true. The second vaccine dose can make your natural type immunity weaker.
The downside is that if you already have a strong immune response you will have a much harsher reaction to the vaccine, basically four days out of commission. A reaction that’s rather comparable to breakthrough COVID.
>Side effects can affect your ability to do daily activities, but they should go away in a few days.
> Common side effects: [Tiredness, Headache, Muscle pain, Chills, Fever, Nausea]
>Side effects after your second shot may be more intense than the ones you experienced after your first shot. These side effects are normal signs that your body is building protection and should go away within a few days.
I don't have a specific study for prior immunity vs. second shot, but neither COVID nor the vaccine are magic - both behave in a more or less standard manner. I've seen references to studies though:
>Dr. Erin Morcomb, a family medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and head of its COVID-19 vaccination team, confirms that the reactions can vary based on your health history. "What we've seen in studies is that the second dose does tend to have a little bit more potential to cause side effects than the first dose, but for people who have had COVID-19 infection previously and then recovered, they are at higher risk of having those same side effects after their first dose," she says.
I had Covid Original Flavor(tm). My case was considered "mild"--I "only" had a 103 fever for 2 1/2 weeks and my stamina was shot.
I also got vaccinated later. I had about a 24 hour reaction each time.
I wanted to make sure my body latched onto the spike protein. Immune systems latch onto all manner of things--sometimes relevant, sometimes not relevant, sometimes actively harmful.
This is an important point. Your body's reaction to natural Covid is far more unpredictable than to the vaccine. That may give you a more robust immune response--or that may give you something related to an autoimmune disorder.
As a comparison, I had a much worse reaction to Shingrix (the shingles vaccine) which hit me hard for about 4 days and I could barely move the arm that got the shot.
The same Israeli study found that among previously infected people, those who received a single dose of the vaccine were half as likely to be reinfected, compared to those who received zero doses.
I suspect the marginal utility is better in having a larger % vaccinated. If those on the fence about it hear that there are circumstances where it’s better to only take one dose, or none, many won’t vaccinate at all because it seems less important.
It's deeply unfortunate but not really surprising, these kinds of large scale experiments on humans are rather difficult to organize (for good reason) and outside of a naturally occurring disaster may not have happened at all.
It is not a conspiracy to vaccinate more people. The lens you are missing is that the vaccine card is at least somewhat difficult to forge. You can trace the lot number and say, did this person get this dose.
But with previous infection, there is a huge camp of people who are just going to lie about it and continue spreading the virus freely. People have shown that they cannot be trusted to act responsibly.
I assume the proposal is that the vaccine card would be a de-facto immunity card, where a test showing a high antibody count would still be logged on your card as an alternative to the vaccine.
But the devil's in the details anyways. How long would that be considered good for, since we'll probably be looking at regular annual boosters? Would extremist anti-vaxxers have a perverse incentive to get infected so as to rejoin society while avoiding the vaccine?
I’d support an immunity card with the same audit trail for antibody test. I think most people would - general common sense suggests that natural infection should be effective. How long it lasts, I guess we’ll need to study that.
Honestly the problem here is not the science. It’s the big clump of people who have turned being against the science into a part of their identity. Every time I think we have hit the bottom as a country in terms of the power of ignorance (and evil, on the part of the GOP establishment), we keep going.
What I find especially perverse is that these people are here! On Hacker News! I just don’t understand how someone can be in the technology field and yet so virulently pro-disease. Any comment that points out that IT IS THE REPUBLICANS WHO HAVE MURDERED 650,000 AMERICANS AND ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL AS MANY MORE AS THEY CAN gets downvoted below zero.
> Every time I think we have hit the bottom as a country in terms of the power of ignorance (and evil, on the part of the GOP establishment), we keep going.
> Any comment that points out that IT IS THE REPUBLICANS WHO HAVE MURDERED 650,000 AMERICANS AND ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL AS MANY MORE AS THEY CAN gets downvoted below zero.
That's because the comments like these are political hysteria designed to get others to vote for your team...
They’re not. They’re statements of fact. I mean them very sincerely - the modern Republican Party is Evil. True, pure evil, in a way that I would never have believed was possible in this country until a few years back. Anyone voting for them is at best ignorant and at worst complicit.
Please do not take HN threads further into political flamewar and please follow the site guidelines regardless of how bad another commenter's posts are, or you feel they are. Doing this only makes the thread even worse.
ITYM political projection. Fomenting hysteria is a well-documented tool of science deniers. Not so much the scientists, as their spoken words typically mirror reality.
Maybe you should question that conclusion when as you said people you respect are questioning what’s going on? I don’t know how to better put it but if the science requires unquestioning obedience to an already decided conclusion then maybe it isn’t science. I’m European and I’m outside that republican thing for the record, just in case that matters to you.
No one I respect is questioning this - on the contrary, I see a vast collection of people whom I despise in a dark alliance to kill as many people as possible to score points from their deluded base.
Could you please stop posting this sort of inflammatory dross to HN? It's getting downvoted for the obvious reason that it breaks the site guidelines and is not what this site is for.
Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this a ton lately. Moreover, we've asked you repeatedly in the past to stop. If you continue this way we're going to have to ban you, so really, would you please review the guidelines and use HN as intended?
I think the biggest issue is that a lot of people think they had covid previously but didn't get tested so they don't really know.
I thought I had covid early in the pandemic. Took a serology test and found out that I had not had it. I suspect a lot of people that think they had it are the same.
Except that antibodies don’t tell the whole story. They may wane after a while, but the immune system is primed to fight off the virus at the next infection thanks to memory B cells and T cells.
Unfortunately, T-cell tests are not available in Europe, and apparently not reliable in the US. Which confirms the original point: there seems to be little interest in detecting previous infections.
Which means that testing is really undependable. Probably better to vaccinate everyone, because our prediction of the immunity of people who have been vaccinated is a lot more reliable.
From an economic perspective, if the cost of the vaccine is less than the cost of the test, you just use the vaccine. "Natural immunity" makes sense as an objection if the individual had a recorded earlier infection, but administering 300M pre-infection tests and 200M vaccines is likely to be less efficient than just administering 300M vaccines. The more sophisticated of a test you demand, the stronger this argument becomes.
I think Canada accepts positive covid tests as proof of prior infection, and many people already have those tests done and just sitting in their email.
I mean, that's fine, but it's not what the parent was asking for. It seemed that they were implying we needed to catch every pre-infection, and the lack of development of highly sensitive tests for pre-infection was evidence of some negligence. I was arguing against developing "T-cell tests" for prior COVID infection.
My comment was not intended to be an argument against any testing for pre-infection; I think the rationale for that is pretty solid, but I think that the regulatory establishment needs to be prepared to inform people that they might not be able to prove their previous infection and in that case they should get vaccinated.
Canada doesn't have a national health care system, this is managed by each provinces.
Quebec is the only province that will let you get only 1 dose of the vaccine, instead of 2, if you were previously infected. With that 1 dose, that's enough to have access to the vaccine passport.
But there are absolutely no places in Canada that accepts prior infection as being fully vaccinated.
Can you be sure the temporary side effects (caused by the engagement of the immune system) wouldn't be diminished for people with existing immunity? It might not be as much of a concern.
I believe one of the major studies that found that natural immunity was better than the Pfizer shot alone also found that natural immunity plus the shot was better still.
You would just be administering a cure, without having an actual diagnosis, which is by definition more wasteful.
Particularly when natural immunity comes for "free" and apparently works better, at that point insisting on vaccines for everybody is just completely nonsensical.
Rather shift resources to testing to get costs for that down, which is more work, but also doesn't come with the risk of later discovering "Oops, this vaccine that made people filthy rich turned out to have some nasty long-term side-effects!".
Which is also a very real possibility, considering they've been developed and approved in record time with the population at large acting as subjects for the first non-clinical trials.
A vaccine is an innoculation and prophylactic, not a cure.
The prophylactic costs less than the diagnostic. It has negligible risk of harm. It's a determinable and unambiguous event, unlike trying to verify a possible infection and sustained immune response.
The obvious rational policy decision for public health is to mandate the vaccine for everyone.
Those not previously infected gain immunity. Those previously infected ... either get a not-strictly-necessary injection, or far more likely, a useful booster.
And the administration, diagnostic, and monitoring costs are far lower.
Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191.
The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label.
I had a friend think he had it 3 times (and the third time was probably legitimate). The symptoms the first two times? Typical cold symptoms. No fever. No major cough. No real loss of taste. I had another friend do the same thing.
This was back before tests were widely available. I have genuinely had it twice myself, but people largely have though for the past two years that if they were sick it was COVID.
Any serious policy which brings natural immunity into the fold would include the need for an actual medical diagnosis. I don't see the issue to raise to be a valid one because there are easy solutions.
This is a reasonable concern. My wife had it and got the test to prove it, I also had it and did not get tested, but considering that she was asymptomatic, and we continued all normal activities, as well as quarantining together, it would be silly to question if I had it.
I think this will be more relevant to vaccinating kids: If this result holds for kids as well, and considering that Covid is not dangerous for kids, maybe kids are better off getting covid
No, of course they are not, hence why we are vaccinating them. This is fud.
(Is this the dumbest argument yet? "If you just get COVID, you will have the best protection against COVID!"? I take it the dead people have the best protection to offer yet?)
Nowhere does it say they don’t recommend it. Just that they aren’t going to universally mandate it.
“For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The JCVI’s view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms.
Taking a precautionary approach, this margin of benefit is considered too small to support universal COVID-19 vaccination for this age group at this time. The committee will continue to review safety data as they emerge.”
Look, i don't care about back-and forth arguments, it 's better that i had listed the relevant evidence, and people can make up their minds on case-by-case, because it is possible that blind recommendations for vaccinations may end up being harmful. The phrase "universal vaccination" doesnt mean mandatory, it means that the benefit is so small that they don't recommend it to everyone, but only to kids in higher risk. The evidence seems to agree with them, despite governments' push for more vaccinations for their own reasons, which might be ineffective in the end. (There are countries that are pushing hard to vaccinate schoolchildren)
The silver lining of the covid pandemic is that kids have at a minuscule risk of covid complications. Smaller than flu, both hospitalizations and fatalities.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully. If someone else is wrong, for example, one good option is to patiently provide correct information.
I've seen this cited several times in this thread, but I've seen no one mention that (according their own FAQ):
> medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive and distribution server for complete but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The context is important, even if it turns out to be true.
For teens, UK [edit:] Chief Medical Officer recommends but not mandates first dose, and does not recommend second dose at least until spring. The benefits are marginal.
2 ICU prevented admissions / million first doses
87 hospital prevented admissions / million first doses
0.16 ICU prevented admissions / million second doses
6 hospital prevented admissions / million second doses
> Having the vaccine is not compulsory.
> Prof Whitty said an "offer" of vaccination will be made to all children aged 12-15.
> But he said young people and their parents needed to be supported and there should be no stigma attached to their choice.
On the other hand, the UK vaccination advisory board does not recommend vaccinating under-16s because they consider there to be inadequate evidence the risks outweigh the benefits. (Despite considerable and very public political pressure to come to a different conclusion, and if I remember correctly even some of the members who were most sceptical about it resigning and being replaced.)
Quoting from the recent BBC article: "The UK's chief medical officers recommended a single Pfizer dose for all children aged 12 to 15." Perhaps there is a difference of position between 'advisory board' and 'chief medical officer', I am not that familiar with the UK scene.
From the article: "They made their recommendation after the JCVI - the scientific body advising the government on vaccines - said it did not recommend vaccinating healthy children on health grounds alone." The JCVI are the body that normally makes these decisions and has for the pandemic so far, but they kept on repeatedly refusing to recommend vaccination for under-16s unless they had a pre-existing condition no matter how many times the government asked or how unsubtle their hints - so there was a kind of weird political fudge where the government found another body that'd approve of them, largely based on the potential to reduce disruption to kids' education. (However, that disruption was itself mostly a result of government policy decisions, and the main reason the UK actually seems to be vaccinating under-16s is because other countries have been doing it which makde it politically untenable not to do the same.)
Absolutely not the case. Children should be vaccinated. The Israeli study was useful in establishing that infection results in immunity. That’s it. It does not establish that infection is lower risk than vaccination.
Pushed reply too soon. Children are at low risk, but not no risk. To the extent that kids are running around with infections, they’re transmitting virus to others and providing a reservoir for mutation. That is not productive.
Let’s get the kids vaccinated. It’s the cheapest way out of this thing.
That is FUD and you should be ashamed of yourself. I have listened to scared people trying to blame people that are not vaccinated for the fact that vaccines are not that effective at preventing infection and that mild breakthrough infections are common. Most of it done with rather troubling political undertones. Such is life in US 2021. I don't like it, but I'll not engage directly. Hopefully the FUD will pass.
But obviously the largest percentage of unvaccinated people are children, which do not NEED the vaccine, at least according to the data we have so far. I will not tolerate scapegoating of kids. Please get a grip.
>I have listened to scared people trying to blame people that are not vaccinated for the fact that vaccines are not that effective at preventing infection and that mild breakthrough infections are common.
A. I reject on principle the reasoning that X must undergo unnecessary medical procedure to lower hypothetical odds of Y being afflicted by some negative outcome. STOP SCAPEGOATING.
B. Consider that the 'cases ratio' is tainted because of faulty CDC guidance. If you test more aggressively conditioned on vaccination status, you are going to get biased ratios. At this point anything but sampling studies is pretty much worthless in assessing how prevalent breakthrough infections are. We've got to thank CDC for that.
> Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there, all of us fully vaccinated. The next day, our host started to feel sick. The day after that, she tested positive for COVID-19. [...] At this point, 11 of the 15 have tested positive for COVID."
If the vaccines reduce breakthrough infections at 1 : 7 rate, an outbreak incident where 11 : 15 get infected has a probability of about 1 : 1,000,000,000. Rather unlikely, perhaps something else is at play:
> The official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline stated that, since I was fully vaccinated, I didn’t need to do anything different unless I started developing symptoms. I’m an epidemiologist at a major medical research university, which has a dedicated COVID exposure hotline for staff. I called it, and workers said I didn’t need to do anything.
> The CDC announced in May that it was only going to collect data on breakthrough infections that led to hospitalization or death, which are fortunately rare. But that means that outbreaks like ours will fly under the radar.
> I reject on principle the reasoning that X must undergo unnecessary medical procedure to lower hypothetical odds of Y being afflicted by some negative outcome.
It sounds like you reject the entire concept of public health. That is going to be a bit of a problem when you are engaging in a debate about public health policy.
Indeed, I do reject scapegoat-driven 'public health'.
The burden of proof is on the health authorities to quantify win/win scenarios. Not fly by the seat of their pants, sometimes based on faulty/incomplete data and guesswork. 'First, do no harm'. If you are unsure, then don't do it.
You want to make an R-based argument? What is the contribution of children in the past 4 weeks? Do you have evidence that children shed more covid compared with vaccinated adults? Do you have evidence that R is a constant, will your calculations hold 6 months from now? Are you accounting for the selection effect of leaky vaccines on virus evolutionary trajectory? What is the cumulative 20 year ADE risk?
For worst case scenario, do you have a 20 year study of leaky mRNA vaccines against infectious disease in some animal population? No, we're experimenting on humans in a world's first. There have been vaccine disasters. Fortunately not in humans. Warning: NSFL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
I don’t buy the “unvaccinated as a reservoir for mutation” line of thinking. For one, there are many, many countries with a low vaccination rate and it’s going to be like that for a long time.
Also, I haven’t see data on what the R0 is from vaccinated person to vaccinated person with Delta. If it’s above 1 then all we’re doing is creating immense selective pressure for vaccine escape.
The latter seems likely to me. I don’t understand how anyone thinks the blame for mutations lies solely or even mostly with the unvaccinated. Vaccines, distributed in a pandemic, are likely to cause immense selective pressure, and that is one of the reasons that the WHO originally planned on non-vaccine herd immunity when they wrote their respiratory pandemic game-plan prior to 2020.
I’m fully vaccinated, not anti-vax, and not an expert. This is just my understanding based on what I’ve read.
Has there ever been a vaccination program that was so successful, so fast, that we reached nearly 100% vaccination in less than what, a year or so? Why wouldn't every other virus simply mutate in these "reservoirs" and make vaccines a failed idea?
Not all viruses are created equal; some are much more prone to mutation than others. And indeed, vaccines for highly mutation-prone ones do "fail" in some sense -- that's why we need flu shots every year but one or two doses of the chickenpox vaccine are preventative for a lifetime: the flu is an RNA virus and also has a mechanism for swapping genes between different strains infecting an individual organism (including animals), so it changes a lot, and vaccines only last until the in-the-wild flu changes out from under them, whereas chickenpox/varicella is a DNA virus that's much more genetically stable.
* Flu, which has a particularly high mutation rate, does exactly that: in some years the flu vaccine is only 10% effective.
* Most viruses are less infectious than covid, especially delta covid.
* The covid vaccines are novel, targeting a specific protein. Natural immunity targets more than one protein, I've heard up to 28 in case of covid. This should make vaccine escape much harder, as it is significantly more difficult to mutate around 28 proteins at the same time. By 'natural immunity' I mean immunity gained by exposure to the natural pathogen, either through live infection or an inactivated pathogen vaccine.
> To the extent that kids are running around with infections, they’re transmitting virus to others and providing a reservoir for mutation
Can make the same argument for the vaccinated people. Vaccines don’t prevent infection, they reduce symptoms. So by same logic they run around with the infection spreading it to everyone.
Vaccines don't 100% prevent infections, but there's strong evidence that they both significantly reduce the rate at which people become infected and, should they become infected, the rate at which they can retransmit the virus to others, and we have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the same in children. It's not an all-or-nothing affair.
Its clearly been established that transmission is happening in vaccinated people. If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't vulnerable. Only the vulnerable should be vaccinated for a virus that shifts rapidly like most respiratory virus do.
Here's the thing - if you are vaccinated and benefiting from less severe infection, you'll be out and about socially and transmitting this. It may be so mild that it would be hard to contact trace and know when to isolate. You may even have a more severe (deadly) variant that your just boosted system doesn't have a problem with. Whereas a naive population would be more prone to be bed-ridden, isolated and not transmitting this more harmful variant.
Then when your immunity wanes from the recent shot (5 months it seems per Israel's experience) this more harmful variant may in fact hurt the vaccinated population if they don't get the next booster in time and the booster isn't formulated for this variant.
> If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't vulnerable.
That's not how R values work at all. Firstly, an R value of 1.5 and an R value of 5 have wildly different outcomes in terms of controlling spread, and vaccines that can reduce R values can reduce spread even if the R value remains above 1. More to the point, though, "transmission is happening in vaccinated people" doesn't imply that the R value is above 1, and it doesn't look like you've provided any evidence that that's the case, nor does the fact that infections sometimes occur, in and of itself, suggest it.
Only lockdowns brought it back down which creates other problems around immune health in the population. (see NZ for example, RSV is clogging up the hospitals now with young kids who had degraded their immune systems the last year or so with all the hardcore lockdowns there)
That suggests that lockdowns and vaccination together work better than vaccination alone, which is not particularly surprising. It seems, though, like you're suggesting that that means the vaccinations did nothing, which doesn't follow. It might well be that the case counts would have been twice as high if nobody had been vaccinated (or, who knows, ten times), and maybe some percentage of those additionally infected people would have died, or suffered long-term health outcomes. There's no way to know what the appropriate counterfactual is from this data alone.
Obviously lockdowns decrease transmission. But they make fragile immune systems. There's 200 other respiratory virus out there that we need constant exposure to or our immunity to them wanes. Then you get NZ which right now is overrunning their hospitals with children inflicted with severe RSV which never really happened in the pre-lockdown world.
And I agree vaccination even with this leaky vaccine is appropriate for vulnerable groups bit it creates a shit storm of hurt down the road when you apply it to an entire population and in the context of an easily mutating virus. See the chicken story: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
Applying it to a hard to mutate virus and the entire population makes total sense - see polio!
Gibraltar isn't an island in the middle of the ocean. It's a tiny peninsula attached to the Spanish city of La Linea de la Concepcion. Many Gibraltarians interact with Spaniards on a daily basis. And indeed, the spike in Gibraltar cases coincides exactly with a much larger spike in cases in Spain:
Fair point but the fact remains that transmission is occurring between vaccinated persons. Nobody is disputing this. Israel is one of the higher vaccinated populations and they're at R1.1 as of today.
> If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't vulnerable.
Is that actually true, though? I'm vaccinated - am I not better off having that vaccine, being less likely to be hospitalized or die even if I get a breakthrough case?
Even if natural immunity via infection is better in every way (no idea if this is true, but suppose it is for the sake of this question), am I not better off having that occur while vaccinated and therefore less likely to die?
It seems as though natural immunity is great if it doesn't kill you. And even if the death rate is low, 1% of a large number is still a lot of dead people. We could reduce that number and just deal with the less severe breakthrough cases.
I think we should be wary of those "easy way outs", because nothing seems to indicate that vaccines are a panacea. They are of course the best that us adults can do right now to protect ourselves, but if restrictions get too relaxed simultaneously, then we ve just created pressure on the virus to create a variant that will escape completely. This is a marathon and we are not yet done. a combination of vaccines with distancing will be required for a long time. Humans are adaptible, the earlier we start the better.
(Also, we shouldn't argue in absolutes, it s not going to fix anything)
Some children are at greater risk from the vaccine than covid so it seems reckless to just push vaccines. You will quite possibility kill more kids by pushing the vaccine on them.
I don't understand this whole push to vaccinate kids.
In the beginning all the panic was about the "most vulnerable" in the population, while the young ones apparently could deal with it fine enough.
A year and a half later and we are rushing to vaccinate the youngest ones, even tho it doesn't prevent them from spreading and they have great chances to get trough the disease without the vaccine already.
The ultimate goal here seems to be to just get everybody vaccinated, possibly even yearly.
In the beginning it was about the most vulnerable because those were the people dying and we didn't have enough vaccines.
Now we have enough for everyone and it turns out kids are spreading it to each other. It's true the vaccine doesn't totally stop someone from spreading the vaccine, but it does help.
There is finally a relevant flu analogy for those people to use, but they completely miss it in favor of some other non sequitur:
Exposure to this years seasonal flu will give better immunity to this year’s seasonal flu, than the vaccine for last year’s seasonal flu will give to this year’s seasonal fly. One day we’ll be able to say “Duh” in response to annual COVID flavors.
There will be vaccines specifically made for the delta variant and others.
Same study came to the result that getting a shot after surviving an infection (unvaccinated) gives even better protection. The real interesting comparison would be immunity after getting a breakthrough infection compared to other kinds of acquired immunity. I'm sure we'll get that study eventually.
This second result is a lot weaker than the first, however:
“Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in our cohort.”
At the moment, this does not justify mandating the vaccine for those previously infected.
I got vaxxed as soon as I reasonably could and I never want to get COVID, but if that's true it really does seem insulting to require vaccination for people who can prove they already had COVID. It's like they did get vaccinated but picked a much more difficult/risky and much more effective way to do so -- if that were their intention (and they avoided spreading it once they got it), one could say it was a heroic choice...
At the same time though, I can imagine it would be really difficult/expensive to verify the proof of previous infection vs. verifying vaccination, and there could be the appearance of incentivizing anti-vaxxers to go infect themselves with COVID.
I was sick earlier this year. A few weeks later I paid a pharmacy $20 or $25 to test my blood for antibodies. Strongly positive. Dr. agreed and wrote a letter with my facts.
I thought the process was straightforward, convenient, and cheap.
I had it before the vaccine. It was an absolute joke of an illness, and I'd rather not be referred to as "heroic" for getting a sneeze and a poor sense of smell for a while.
It's a waste of resources to figure out whether someone has natural immunity (its quite hard to do logistically). Much easier to just give them the vaccine, then your bases are covered. These are public health decisions -- they don't occur in a vacuum with unlimited resources.
So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test? How much fucking money has been spent due to this pandemic, amazing vaccine development, government backstops all over the place, but somehow a routine blood draw and test is seen as too absurd an idea?
> So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test
In short, yes, this is called good public health policy. It's not merely a simple blood test and it's not something just any lab could do. Anti-body testing is finicky, expensive, time-consuming, and not as reliable as has_vaccine (boolean). So in other words, we are going to make your medical decision for you because not doing so puts the health of many others at risk and you don't have the right to put countless others at risk. A simple utilitarian analysis yields this as the obvious solution. It is worth sacrificing your personal preference at no risk to yourself to save potentially many lives.
Even the vaccinated are at risk when a large percentage of the population runs around unvaccinated, because each transmission increases the risk of a mutation that gives rise to a vaccine-resistant strain with a higher death rate. Then we'd be back at square one. In the worst case scenario it could kill off the majority of the population.
This situation is exactly analogous to someone in the food industry saying they should have a religious exemption for hand-washing. The bad effects of allowing such an exemption (people dying from food poisoning and catching diseases from food) aren't worth the small sacrifice of simply having to wash your hands before preparing food. With good reason, we ignore people who say "there are microchips in the soap" and still make them wash their hands or seek employment elsewhere.
We could make individuals pay for it. Heck, we could tax it, make them pay through the nose for it, and reinvest it back into vaccinations. Up the costs even more if they want to be retested. Since it's not medically necessary, their insurance shouldn't have to cover it, meaning the costs won't have to be borne by everyone else.
Given the political discussions about “booster shots”, I find this quote pretty interesting:
> Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”
That sounds more like an argument for the Canadian model where we went several months between shots (on the assumption that a high percentage of the populace partially-protected was more useful than a small percentage fully protected). I'm assuming semiannual or quarterly shots will be where we land until Covid is no longer a major threat.
To be fair, that model wouldn't be as ideal with the greater proportion of the US population unwilling to get vaccinated, as well as the higher vaccine availability in the US. It seems like Canada would make a better case given the lower vaccine skepticism and vaccine supply.
> flu vaccines are based on weakened viral particles, not mRNA transcriptions of key viral proteins
Thankfully this is changing. Moderna is entering trials for an mRNA vaccine for seasonal flu. The faster development time for mRNA vaccines will mean more time to study the emerging flu strains before committing to which to include in the booster.
The one thing missing from the article is the thing the vaccines needed to have prior to approval: rigorous controlled double-blinded studies on infection rates. My guess would be that, to people interested in data-driven epidemiological decisions, this is considered pretty important. What the article provides instead is direct measurement of biological indicators of immune response, which while useful is not remotely the same thing.
This is, however, slightly unfair. You can't ethically have a rigorous controlled double-blinded study on infection rates of people who have already had SARS-CoV-2. This would require infecting some people with SARS-CoV-2, making others incorrectly think they had been infected, and then letting all of them go about their lives post-"recovery". The ethical problems are obvious.
That said, I'd frankly be fine with letting people with (state-)government-verified past COVID cases act as though they have been vaccinated for a period after recovery (not sure what the period should be). It would be one way to get the next best kind of data (an observational study of vaccinated and recovered patients). It would also incentivize people to get tested (so they get that government-verified past case). I'm not sure it's worth building that bureaucracy, but if that compromise were proposed I'd happily accept.
- COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose).
- We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
- We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe. Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals. Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue, you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
I don't believe the science is settled no matter how much the already vaccinated wish to turn the page. What do you have to say that studies of vaccine efficacy and risk conducted by drug companies exclude those with prior immunity. How could the science be settled for a cohort purposefully excluded?
You're asking me about something that I didn't say. Here is what I did say:
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
My post was about the logistical and cost problems associated with certifying people with natural immunity, and why that doesn't make sense unless you believe the vaccine is unsafe.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
I'm arguing against this particular point not the others.
I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who have already been infected the drug companies excluded those people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying here? When have we ever taken the position of prove its dangerous before you try to stop me from putting this in your body. Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
> I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who have already been infected the drug companies excluded those people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying here?
Except we now have data from the population itself, including people previously infected with COVID-19. We therefore do know it is safe. I think what you're saying is that you want to ignore inconvenient data and use outdated arguments.
> Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
You could have made that argument at one point, but you cannot now. We have enough population level data to call it safe beyond the studies that also showed that it was safe. It is baseless.
> COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose).
That's not a valid reason at all.
> We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
We also lacked vaccine quantity, and many people still do.
> We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
Meh, that's a very weak reason considering it's a small incremental cost to vaccine passports and covid testing.
> The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe.
That's just your 'implicit assumption'.
> Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
Except vaccine efficacy is much lower than natural immunity and vaccine efficacy wears off over time. We literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
> Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals.
Your comment here is a distraction. You literally haven't brought up a single fact or data point on vaccine vs natural immunity efficacy.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
How is it a settled issue when there is literally zero data on long-term effects?
> you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
- If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logistically).
- If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense. You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
> Furthermore we literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
The "but efficacy" response is confusing at best. If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people, it can still be the logical course of action at population scales for the other stated benefits (logistical, tracking, and cost).
Something you don't know. If you want a sincere discussion you might want to at least admit the obvious.
> If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logically).
First of all you don't know if it's cheaper. Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is. I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
> If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why do you keep with the 'if, if , if'? I did not make any assertions or assumptions that intersect with your ifs whatsoever. All of your 'ifs' are completely irrelevant, and I'm guessing by the fact that you start explaining every supposed hole with an 'if', that you understand that you can't even verify the validity of these supposed holes you found.
> Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense.
Because natural immunity is more effective and some people do not want to get the vaccine?
> You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
- We do not know the long-term side effects of mrna vaccines.
- MRNA vaccine efficacy is lower than natural immunity, and all data points to MRNA vaccines wearing off significantly after 6 months.
- Some people may not want to get the vaccine for other reasons, the actual reasons are completely irrelevant - in a free society people get to choose what biologically active substances they inject into their own bodies.
> You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
So looks like you did notice one of the reasons I gave you? Interesting that you quoted it, yet completely ignored the substance and failed to challenge or respond to the actual point.
> If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people,
Stop with the 'ifs'. If you don't know the validity of your own point, don't make the point.
> for the other stated benefits (logical, tracking, and cost).
These other stated benefits coming directly from your imagination right? Or are these the 'if' kind of benefits?
'IF the vaccines are a perfect solution, we should forcibly vaccinate everyone.' - cool story bud
Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine costs $16/dose in the US today.
> Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is.
Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these. The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
> I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
> I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
But they don't add up. Your "list" boils down to:
- It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
- The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
- It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
You've made zero arguments for why a cheaper and simpler safe vaccine is inferior to a more expensive and complex antibody test regime. That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
> Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine costs $16/dose in the US today.
You're ignoring economies of scale, ignoring basic economics (increase supply - price goes down), ignoring the fact that vaccines require 2 dozes - and potentially more, as well as ignoring the additional costs of administering vaccines multiple times. Also, I would like to see where you're getting those numbers from, since a quick google search directly contradicts your numbers:
> The U.S. government will pay Pfizer Inc nearly $2 billion for 100 million additional doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to bolster its supply as the country grapples with a nationwide spike in infections.
> Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these.
I literally just proposed it to your face 2 times in a row.
> The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
Oh, look at you, so concerned about the poorest citizen that you want to explicitly deny them the possibility to pay for their own tests and force them to get vaccinated against their will. What a champion of the poor.
> Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ? Do you want to respond to my actual statement or just continue with these weak strawmen?
> It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
> The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
Another strawman completely unrelated to anything I've said.
> - It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
Do you see the words 'safe' or 'unsafe' anywhere in my 3rd point? No? Are you going to continue making these fallacious, insincere strawmen, or are you secure enough with your beliefs to actually defend them honestly?
> That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
No, my entire argument is built on economies of scale. Which favor a vaccine for every person, rather than an antibody test for a subset of a subset.
> Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ?
You argued that people should be able to pay for and provide their own tests. That's self-certification. If you're arguing for the state to do it instead, then we're back to square one (i.e. that the logistics don't favor it).
> For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
You cannot argue these two thing together in good faith:
- Natural immunity provides long term immunity, without long term data.
- We cannot know on the vaccine because we lack long term data.
Pick one or the other. Not both.
> I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
So you didn't make any except that same one in every single one of your comments?
>No, my entire argument is built on economies of scale. Which favor a vaccine for every person, rather than an antibody test for a subset of a subset.
"Take this medical treatment you don't want because I believe in economies of scale"
"My body my choice, and you can put your economy of scale wherever you want but not in my bloodstream - I'd rather not since I've already had covid"
"bbbut I believe in economies of scale!"
the end
Forcing people to take medical procedures they don't want might be last step in a long chain of things, which include a test for natural immunity due to presence of antibodies.
> You argued that people should be able to pay for and provide their own tests. T
Where did I say 'provide their own tests'? I'll wait for a specific reference. That's about the 5th time you directly misquoted and misrepresented what I said. Liar.
Here's how it works:
You go to a government-certified testing location. You pay for your test and get tested. Which part confuses you so much?
> You cannot argue these two thing together in good faith:
You cannot reference what someone said while at the same time completely changing the wording. I don't understand how you still don't get that. You are just incredibly dishonest. Holy shit.
> - Natural immunity provides long term immunity, without long term data.
You realise that the ONLY data we have, as cited in the article of this very thread, shows that natural immunity is more effective than vaccines? Do you need me to provide you with more references? Will you admit that you are a dishonest liar if I do?
> We cannot know on the vaccine because we lack long term data.
Yes, we do not know the long term effects of the vaccine. Do you disagree? I mean, you already stated multiple times that the vaccine is fully safe while also indirectly admitting that we can't possibly know.... which one is it bud?
> Pick one or the other. Not both.
I think I won't pick either one of your dishonest strawmen. How about that?
> So you didn't make any except that same one in every single one of your comments?
'The same one in every single comment' being 'that same one' which you can't even directly quote a single time? I wonder why that is? Maybe it's because you are a liar?
Attaching vindictive clapbacks to every other sentence from OP is really not a way to help your argument, especially on HN. OP’s argument is clear; we have surplus vaccines, it’s statistically safer than getting COVID regardless of your infection status and cheaper than getting tested for natural immunity, not to mention the cost society needs to bear if your failed die roll lands you in an ICU. I’m not sure what yours is, something vague about a govt-backed immunity testing program that doesn't exist yet. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to call me a turd for not getting it rather than supply details. Surprise me, please.
you're not arguing in good faith and much of your argument is just illogical. There's no reason to do this, it won't convince anybody , in fact it will make most people just ignore you.
right? These word by word break down responses don't ever get anywhere
the whole argument he's making has operates on the presumtion that the vacccine is unsafe, contrary to mainstream scientific opinion. Then the only evidence he has to back that up is lack of evidence on long term effects.
But...the type of which would potentially appease him is only possible with a time machine, so it's literally impossible to appease him
This is precisely correct, especially wrt the cost/benefit. The antibody tests won't tell you when you were infected, with which variant, or how much viral dose, on top of their imperfect accuracy. And if you're going to bother going to a hospital to get your blood drawn, why not just... get the shot and remove all doubt?
Does the calculus change in the countries where vaccines are basically nonexistant? Yes, of course. But vaccines in the US are as nearly easy to get as Gatorade now, and have been for several months. We spent many billions making it that way - we don't need to turn around and start spending even more money on pox party incentives.
> COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose).
So a marginal cost of $24. Folks with natural immunity will have a stronger reaction to the vaccine, but let’s be conservative. Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time?
Full disclosure: happily vaccinated. The vaccine is safe, but it’s dammed inconvenient.
> Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time?
Other rich countries solve that problem by letting you take time off if you're sick.
Safety is not a binary condition. The vaccines have a good safety profile as confirmed through large-scale clinical trials, and have met stringent FDA criteria. However the risk isn't zero. The CDC has acknowledged a small risk of myocarditis for the mRNA vaccines.
This isn't generally a reason to avoid vaccination for most of the population, however the risk / benefit ratio may be different for some sub-populations. In particular there has been a higher than expected rate of adverse cardiac events for adolescent males.
So particularly for those adolescents who have already recovered from infection and have no other risk factors we should have a scientific discussion about whether vaccination makes sense from an evidence-based medicine perspective. Unfortunately the issue has been so politicized that any suggestion of caution often gets misinterpreted as being anti-vaccination.
More people will die waiting unvaxxed for their antibody results than will die from vaccine side effects. Please use real numbers when you talk about vaccine side effects.
On top of that, early on when the vaccine supply was constrained we didn't have enough data to know whether natural immunity was as effective as vaccination, and now vaccine supply in the US is in surplus[1], so there is no reason to be selective in who receives it.
So natural immunity didn't make sense to consider in the vaccination plan. It might make sense to consider in the booster plan though - if you've had a positive Covid test before or after being vaccinated, consider the later of those two actions to be a booster, and don't get another one. That would free up more doses for the rest of the world.
[1]We have a large amount of vaccine that has/is expiring shortly but there isn't enough time before the expiration date to redirect them overseas.
I generally agree with this analysis, but people who are looking for some sort of 'smoking gun' that our government is colluding with pharma to help them make money by forcing unnecessary vaccinations, are more interested in hearing sexy, exciting narratives about how Fauci is working for the devil.
> Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals. Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue, you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
I don't think this is a distraction, it's a difference in threat models.
Suppose a government official said that everyone should install a particular app on their phones. It's safe, they say. They ran it through antivirus checks and it came up clean. They measured performance of the phone and didn't see any regressions. All the old apps work normally. Major government security agencies are recommending everyone to install the app. Wouldn't it be normal to be suspicious? I mean, that app could do anything.
There are theories about the vaccine that are ridiculous. No, it doesn't have microchips. And so on. But on the other hand, the vaccine has been politicized by Republicans and Democrats alike. Democrats have a lot vested in the vaccine's success; if it turned out it had some serious flaw that was papered over because the benefits were perceived to be greater than the risks, it'd make them looks bad. In the same way that the operators of Fukushima Daiichi looked bad when their reactor failed, or BP looked bad when the blowout preventer didn't work. These are things where the experts said it was fine, but it wasn't. If you believe that government officials will cover up inconvenient facts for political reasons and your main source on the safety of the vaccines is government officials, then a rational choice is not to trust the vaccine.
If microchips aren't a realistic threat, what sort of realistic flaws might the vaccine have? Maybe it elevates risk of cancer or dementia twenty years down the line. Maybe it affects fertility in ways we haven't tested. And so on. Really we have no idea what the long term risks could be, we just know that the short and long term risks of Covid are pretty bad.
All that said, I got my two doses of the vaccine as soon as it was available, and I hope everyone else does the same. I'm just saying that given that some random person has no capacity to evaluate the safety of a vaccine on their own and supposing they have reasons to doubt that the people presented to them as experts regarding the safety of the vaccine would tell them the truth if there were real safety concerns with the vaccine, I can understand why they wouldn't want to get it. And I don't know what argument I could give that would change their minds. For the ones who've already gotten Covid and presumably have at least some reasonable amount of immunity, maybe there isn't really anything to be gained by trying to convince them.
In Slovenia antigen test (which is acceptable across EU for 48 hours) priced at 10 EUR in a walk-in center and 12 EUR in drive-in lab. I don't know about the first, but the second is definetely a commercial venture with people employed and a place rented and software written and supported, so it should be even less in wholesale.
The mods are surprisingly responsive on this site, so I say this without a hint of sarcasm - try emailing them about it. I recently had a thread unflagged within an hour.
Thanks dang. Will this then possibly be flagged by some other user? What is the visibility of a flagged post? Hidden from front page and search, viewable from other users comments?
The question in the title is very very easy to answer.
The political reason that natural immunity “doesn’t count” indeed is not directly about medical reality.
To say things are political is almost an insult these days—I don’t mean it that way at all. But policy has medical implications, and so politics is part of it. This policy-decision is being made because there have been political movements since early on to do variations on “Let 'er rip,” that is, to allow COVID-19 to run rampant until a herd immunity develops, while maybe implementing decontamination procedures in nursing homes instead or so. The most notable statement to this effect was the Great Barrington Declaration but of course there have been smaller ones that hit wider spread.
Policy needs to factor in things like the huge early oppositions to shutdowns, the huge oppositions to masking despite it being absurdly effective for how cheap it is... there remain very strong political forces in this divided country which overlook the significance of younger people with COVID flooding the emergency rooms and overtaxing our limited health workers (NYT today reports that in the US South, they are at this level right now), and the death that can come from this, simply because the danger for young people is usually considerably smaller when those hospitals are operating normally. (See India for a cautionary tale, there.)
Given this political reality, ‘vaccinate everyone’ is a political countermeasure meant to create a potential-energy-barrier to lying. It’s not medical advice, it’s public policy. Lying to say ‘Yeah I was COVID-exposed but it wasn’t bad enough to go to the hospital’ is very very cheap. Forging a CDC vaccination card takes a couple hours of time right now and opens you up to some fraud risks—it’s not a huge cost but if it’s higher than the cost of just going and getting vaccinated, there is a hope that vaccination will win out.
So it is a personal choice. Would you be OK with the consequences of qualifying it as such?
What if an unvaccinated (by personal choice) person comes down with COVID and has to be hospitalized or - worse - put into ICU. Do you think they would be OK if doctors, faced with the crunch of beds, place them into a second tier, behind all the breakthrough cases? Hospitals do not do that currently, but this is not unheard of (e.g. bumping smokers and alcoholic patients in organ donation queues).
I am willing to accept this is a personal choice if people making that choice accept responsibility for it.
They accept responsibility by paying for medical care, paying insurance, or paying taxes into a socialized healthcare system, depending on which country you live. Refusing to treat sick people is not forcing them to take responsibility for their decisions, it is coercing them into making a decision they don't want to make, and I think k you know that.
Imagine this scenario: You have one ICU bed and two people with gunshot wounds. One got the wound because he played with a gun and shot himself. The other got the wound because he was shot accidentally by the first person. Only one person gets the bed. Which one do you give the bed to?
Let's make it a little more topical: Both people were told not to play with the gun and that there were insufficient ICU beds. The first person still played with the gun and shot himself and another person. This was a personal choice he made. His luck was against him (and the person he shot).
Let's make it more topical still: The two people were told, "Look, we know you want to play with guns. We really don't want you to. Receiving treatment for gunshot wounds is less likely to lead to long life than simply not getting shot, and we have other illnesses we need to treat.
Here's an additional incentive: if we don't have sufficient medical resources to treat everyone, the people who ignore this warning will get treated after those who don't." Yes, this is coercion, inasmuch as it is influencing their decision, but under this definition of coercion, coercion hardly seems like something to worry about, certainly not as much as getting shot.
Should vaccine refusal then result in increased premiums, or increased coinsurance for covid-related care? How many people would make the choice if they had to bear even part of the expected value of their increased medical costs themselves?
Maybe, but that is for insurance companies to decide. Just like they decide rates for smokers, obese people, etc.
Although I don't know of any insurance companies that have rates for people that have not undergone certain medical procedures. That sounds unethical to me.
no, public health isn't a personal choice: public health exists to apply population wide, standardized (possibly tailored somewhat) principles and actions and their loss function is to minimize overall suffering.
Personal choice goes against that, because many people's personal choices will be selfish or convenient to them while putting other people in harm's way. Within a large society, we must be cognizant of the likely impact of our decisions, but history shows that most people will not do so, and therefore must be compelled, legally, to take actions which are for the best of society.
Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal, not personal level, with the goal of ensuring the national survives existential challenges (of which COVID may be one).
> Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal, not personal level...
That's one philosophy of governance. I believe it to be fundamentally incorrect. But that's your philosophy and your view on this topic stems from that. I get your point, I just disagree wholeheartedly.
I have a right to be selfish. I owe no obligation to anyone else that I have not voluntarily entered into. If you want to redefine "putting other people in harms way" to include breathing the air around me without getting a medical procedure you can, but it is wrong IMO.
This isn't just a philosophy of governance, it's how nearly every country in this world works. You clearly have limits on the freedoms you claim. For example, if you live in the US and you're male, you're subject to the draft and the government will put you in jail otherwise. There are no universal human rights to be selfish (or any others, either).
> You clearly have limits on the freedoms you claim
We aren't talking about how things are, we are talking about how things should be, specifically, whether there should be vaccine mandates or not. Other existing violations of rights are wrong also.
So it is fundamentally about philosophy of governance. You believe society should come first, individuals can be compelled to benefit society even potentially at great cost to themselves, and that a person is morally wrong for not wanting to go along with that. I believe that it is morally wrong to expect a person to value anyone over themselves that they have not chosen to, or to be compelled to do anything on behalf of someone else.
So, your argument is that personal choice can be ignored in favour of your personal definition of 'public health'? Take your logic a step further - why can't we just completely ignore your personal opinion of what's a public good or what is 'public health'? Another step further - ignore everyone's opinion of what's public good and have a small group of elites define this for us? Your argument is nothing more than blanket support for literally any top-down policy which labels itself 'for the public good'. Yawn.
Liberty has never been (nor should it be) unfettered. Public intervention of any kind, whether it's jailing murderers, enforcing speed limits, pulling over drunk drivers, or requiring minimum food safety standards in restaurants, represents a perceived "liberty" being infringed upon. Unless a specific right is protected in the Constitution, it's fair game when it comes to public policy.
I think that opinion is complacent... spawned out of modern wealth and qualify of life.
Liberty is incredibly broad.if you're approach to the constitution (which I think many today share) is that you may restrict anything that isn't specifically mentioned then you are missing the whole point. Eventually aspects of life/liberty that you hold important will be restricted by those who share your approach.
Because he was drafted and forced to fight? Or would have faced jail time and ostracism if not? Or maybe shot for deserting... Now better question is why did he not fight and liberate eastern Europe against soviets after Germany was defeated? Was he coward? Was he evil?
It's only a personal choice if you do not come in contact with anyone else as best as you can.
Else, you run the risk of being infected, not knowing it, passing it onto other people who "have made a personal choice", involuntary manslaughtering them (unless you're religious, then you've biblically murdered them); or, alternatively, you run the risk of ending up in the ICU, and now somebody who did get the vaccine now needs that ICU bed, and they die because you're wasting a perfectly good ICU slot because you "made a personal choice."
Your rights end where the rights of others begin, this is the fundamental rule of modern western society above all others. Be very careful when you think that doesn't apply to you, not all mistakes can be corrected.
Is it though? If it’s a personal choice, why is drunk driving banned, and why do we have seatbelt and helmet laws?
If you know that you feel sick, and haven’t been vaccinated, yet go to work at a nursing home and end up spreading a breakthrough infection that kills an immunocompromised resident, is that not manslaughter? How is it different from knowingly getting in a car when intoxicated, and then causing a deadly accident?
You can crash your car even while sober. And you can arrive home safely even while drunk. You don't have "complete control" over whether you crash. But the responsible thing to do is exercise what control you do have. Yes you could catch and spread the virus even after vaccinated but it is still irresponsible to disregard this and risk the lives and livelihoods of others. It is a trivial request and the consequences of spreading the virus are non-trivial.
I went down the rabbit hole of looking at COVID cases in Scotland, where vaccinations are quite common. It's worth considering all of the numbers here.
It can reduce or minimize the number of cases you spread while infected (i.e. you won't be infected for as long on average), though, and the positive impacts of this at scale are large. (Consider that case numbers grow exponentially, so even preventing e.g. 20% of transmissions in one month will have outsized effects weeks or months later.)
Since vaccinated are spreading this around nearly as much as unvaccinated, the involuntary manslaughter argument is moot. Getting your own vaccine doesn't help other people not die...only you. Even high-vaccination regions are having waves of infection that dwarf previous ones. (Israel, Scotland, Hawaii)
That said, allowing civil suits to punish people that gave you a virus that killed you, would be effective to keep both vaxed and unvaxxed careful and staying at home while sick. Hard to prove where you got it, but just a few successful suits will keep people honest.
I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but vaccination doesn't stop the spread of the virus. It probably slows the spread, which is good, but the magnitude is unclear.
Mea culpa, though: the chart I remember was of cases not spread/fan-out. I guess it is pretty hard to judge who is spreading it and who is not, in the public. Most articles tend to measure viral shedding or load as an indicator, which does support my stance, but that's science journalism which has been wrong a lot lately. I won't ask any HN reader to make a conclusion based on what I claimed.
And walking around after that still spreading the virus because you wouldn't feel the symptoms. The vaccinated people look to be the main source of infection these days.
Vaccinated people are way less likely to get infected.
And I don’t think there’s any evidence that vaccinated people have higher viral loads with less symptoms - that would be extremely surprising if true. I understand that vaccinated people can have high viral loads in breakout cases, but presumably in those cases they’re symptomatic - I don’t recall seeing any analysis of this.
The chances of infection for unvaccinated is 4 times of that for vaccinated. They have the same load - Wisconsin study for example, without control for symptoms. They have less symptoms - that is being tought by everybody everywhere. Putting these facts together is obvious.
When people appeal to morals it is an immediate big red sign for me as their appeal most probably have no backing or even goes directly against the facts, just like back in the USSR.
... yeah, this is not going to be a productive comment thread. Sadly, COVID has been so politicized that I tend to say "sit down, shut up, and let the public health people drive". Even if they're wrong, they're close-enough to right to satisfy me and that's better than opening public health up to debate.
well that's very loaded, as in, if they're wrong to the point of having long term damage to your body, then probably..don't just get it...right? albeit, we've seen no proof that this is the case at all thus far.
Here's the thing, the dilemma isn't "should I get the shot or shouldn't I get the shot".
The dilemma is "should I support the public experts even if their approach might have some minor flaws, or should I dissent and risk feeding credibility into their opponents that are prolonging this pandemic and getting innocent people killed as they clog up the hospital system".
This is a definite case where "perfect is the enemy of the good".
Natural immunity isn't subsidized by taxpayers, and does not enrich any party through sales of a vaccine... on those grounds, of course they are encouraged to receive the vaccine.
Also, forcing on person A something person B makes which is paid by entity C with absolutely no liability on B & C and the authority does make for good lead into a post public "service" career.
Then, you submit to constant tracking. All of a sudden things one could never have imagined just a couple of years ago become subject to whether a some unaccountable authority gives you permission.
i don’t see how it’d be wasteful to know how many people have natural immunity. seems quite useful actually even if we determine they should still get vaccine
Unfortunately that never really happened in the US. There were a few small seroprevalence studies in limited areas at specific times but nothing consistent on a nationwide basis.
Also note that there is more to immunity than antibodies, so assaying antibody levels alone will underestimate the level of immunity in the population. We should also be testing memory cell activity now that a test is approved.
I think you severely underestimate how hard it would be to organise every single person in the country having a blood test, and then sending out invites etc based on the results of those tests.
and more so, its extremely hard to track peoples blood test. Adobe Acrobat can easily change anyones name on a piece of paper with a blood test result, there wouldn't be a way to confirm this person has antibodies
In Israel a high antibody blood test gives you a "vaccine passport" for 6 months.
...to get that, you sign up for the blood test using your government ID # (SSN for the US), the government gets your results before you do, and the government issues you an encrypted barcode that can only be decrypted by a government built mobile app that restaurants or stadiums have. They scan it and compare to your own ID
Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government database?
We could only wish
Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
It's not the book-keeping that's the issue, it's the physical determination of status.
For antibody status, you have to do an antibody test, which is strictly more complex/expensive than a COVID vaccine (it took 3 days when I got it done), so it's not viable at population scale.
It's similar to the reason that monoclonal antibody therapy is not a scalable treatment for COVID infection - better to minimize the chance of needing such treatment by just getting vaccinated.
> Adobe Acrobat can easily change anyones name on a piece of paper with a blood test result
It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten - and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you fill in your own name at home.
> Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government database?
> We could only wish
No we don't. Americans are VERY against that kind of thing. Plus Social Security numbers are not supposed to be used as a national ID - that's not what they are for.
Not to mention how would you even do that? A Social Security card is not ID - you can say whatever number you want when getting vaccinated, no one would know.
> Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want that. Don't confuse the two.
> It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten - and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you fill in your own name at home.
That's absolutely true, because the government response has been disorganized and bullshit. It's also why vax passes won't work; because the records are probably trash.
> No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want that. Don't confuse the two.
No, we're really shit at it. Everybody who has been vaccinated would love for the government to have kept track of it, and would love to be able to ask for or give an easy proof of it. In my personal experience, the unvaccinated are also liars. They would, of course, not want it to be tracked, because they would like to continue to lie.
> running entire population through antibody test just to find
A red herring if I have ever seen one. Assuming for a moment the premise that one must be forced to establish their immunity to a particular disease before being allowed to leave their homes, all that would be required would be to allow individuals who believe they've had COVID-19 and do not wish to get the vaccine to be able use their test results as proof instead of having to show a vaccine card.
Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire population take specific tests.
But, the point of these vax passes is for all the authoritarian OCD afflicted Munchausen-by-proxy patients to demonstrate that they can force their preferences on everyone else just like it was the case with masks, distancing, no school, lockdown, etc.
> Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire population take specific tests.
The red herring is replying to someone saying that a lot of tests would have to be done with a denial that people would be forced to take tests.
Also, this would require that some authority would need to have those people take specific tests, monitored and tracked in a specific way. Allowing people to claim to have had it based on their own documentation and choice of tests is like allowing job applicants to supply their own drug test results: not completely dependable.
I'd be all for those people getting a vax pass. I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow, and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
> I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow
Nice.
> and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
Feel free to isolate yourself as long as you wish, but it sounds like you are feeling a little envious that other people were able to have fuller lives during this period.
I can guarantee there was more waste in the form of billions of money lost and human productivity and lives lost from locking down the world than if we just told scared people to stay at home at the beginning of the pandemic.
If you remember, nobody wanted to be first (except China) to tell their population to stay at home.
And then they did not wait until we got rid of the virus but were quick to tell people to get out and enjoy as soon as the infection rates fell a little bit.
If you look at this algorithm, it works like a thermostat. A dumb regulator designed TO REGULATE TEMPERATURE AT A CONSTANT LEVEL. Yes, that's what the policy ensured -- that we are keeping infection rates.
Not that this is important now. We are living with consequences of these decisions and the best we could do would be to vaccinate as many people as possible as fast as possible to prevent as many unnecessary tragedies.
Well, that is my point. I don't think there should have ever been regulations on what you could and couldn't do. Like I mentioned, scared people can stay home and others can go out and take precautions and manage their own risk. Saying the pandemic can only end when everyone gets their shots is basically denying science especially given articles like the one posted by OP. Remember, they could end the pandemic right now if they wanted to. The pandemic designation is a human-made one.
> Because it is pretty simple to account for who got the vaccine and who did not.
So it's about tracking people so the government can more easily keep the public safe. Let's give them all the power in the world to keep us safer!
We should be demanding OPTIONS. Even from a pragmatic standpoint, this would convince more people. When they mandate only one thing, it's as if they are pushing towards a dictatorship just for our own safety. How convenient.
I'm sorry, but people are a bit too eager to go there just because of fear. We were in this situation with the Patriot Act and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Governments have a track record of doing this!
DR. GUPTA: "I get calls all the time, people say, 'I've already had COVID, I'm protected.' And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine?"
DR. FAUCI: "I don't have a really firm answer for you on that."
I think the full response better convey's his position:
"You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that. That's something that we're going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response.
The one thing that paper from Israel didn't tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural infection, what's the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine? So it is conceivable that you got infected, you're protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time.
So, I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said."
What Fauci doesn't mention is that there isn't just one paper from Israel.
There are 15 large-scale studies.
Every single one demonstrates that natural immunity is at least as protective as the jab.
And depending on when the study was done protection is shown for over 10 months (basically however long as whatever data was available). Many of the papers logically extend the protection to lifetime in their conclusions.
> David Rubenstein: And the best way for me to prevent getting an infectious disease and having to have you as my doctor is, what, um, wearing a mask?
> Anthony Fauci: [smiling] No, no, no.
> David Rubenstein: Somebody — I can see they're ready to sneeze or cough — walk away?
> Anthony Fauci: You avoid all the paranoid aspects and do something positive. A: good diet. B: you don't smoke, I know. I know you don't drink, at least not very much, so that's pretty good. Get some exercise; I know that you don't get as much exercise as you should...
> David Rubenstein: That's correct.
> Anthony Fauci: ...get good sleep. I think that the normal, low-tech, healthy things are the best thing you can do, David, to stay healthy.
They have some data on durability and natural immunity seems more durable. As seen in the recent Israeli study for example over time pfizer fades more.
Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
On the other hand places with good vaccination rates are reimposing lockdowns and mask mandates. Quite a few public events are getting canceled or rescheduled.
By any metric the COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best breakeven in terms of cost effectiveness. Since the risk of COVID is lower now both due to the vaccine and also just our knowledge of treatment, any lockdown/mandate response will have a lower cost effectiveness.
IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case) and end all other restrictions. Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
It would be better to just do a vaccine/verified immunity passport like program but that is practically impossible in the US. Too many people won't like/use the governments app including both the normal conspiracy nuts but also the privacy-minded HN crowd. It also does not help that there are half a dozen passport like apps from insurance companies and various government agencies.
Think about this for a second. If you give 100,000 pre-teens an HPV vaccine, how long do you have to wait to discover if they are more or less likely to contract genital warts? Now compare that to how long you would have to wait to see if they contract COVID. This is not a valid comparison.
> Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
> Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12.
We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children.
I'd lean towards "probably not safe"; we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself:
Woah, that's super intense. Wow. I think i will still vaccinate my 12 year old boy because he wants to get the shot and these numbers are still low, but yeah, now i want more info. Thank you.
Regardless of where we end up with respect to vaccination of children for COVID-19, I hope we can all agree that the child's opinion is irrelevant, given that they are not equipped to make an informed decision.
Neither can we expect an average adult to be able to make an informed decision on a topic like this. But if he really wants it, and the shot is optional, why do you believe that should be irrelevant to my decision?
The child's opinion certainly isn't irrelevant, especially if they are a child with special needs who can find the process of getting a vaccine very traumatic.
The background here is that hospitalization from covid increases dramatically with age. Teenagers are at low risk of hospitalization from covid themselves, but I expect that vaccination would still reduce the risk of teenagers transmitting the virus to others.
> Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised[sic] from Covid-19
there is a large range of poor outcomes that are not "hospitalized" if they get covid. they are susceptible to getting long covid and also to bring it home and potentially infect their parents unknowingly. just because one risk is higher doesn't mean the sum of the other risks suddenly don't matter.
That is a misleading headline. Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild and did not require hospitalization, so it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison.
If you want to say COVID and myocarditis are equally bad, you should compare the rates of both of them. You are saying myocarditis (often mild) should be compared to COVID (but only the cases that require hospitalization.)
By that logic, my investment strategy of invest in index funds (goes up over time) is inferior to yours of invest in lottery tickets (but we only consider tickets that won.)
> Researchers found that the risk of heart complications for boys aged 12-15 following the vaccine was 162.2 per million, which was the highest out of all the groups they looked at.
> Meanwhile, the risk of a healthy boy needing hospital treatment owing to Covid-19 in the next 120 days is 26.7 per million. This means the risk they face from heart complications is 6.1 times higher than that of hospitalisation.
It would seem more "apples to apples" to compare rates of hospitalization due to myo/pericarditis to hospitalization due to COVID, or rates of diagnosis of each condition.
The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Unfortunate regardless.
How did I find out about it? It's trending on Twitter because the father was on Alex Jones.
I've looked at the VAERS reports of 16-year-old males that died in 2021. There are four cases (one suicide), none match this one. While it's likely that the boy died due to a pre-existing condition, his case should still show up on VAERS (even suicides are included).
The takeaway is that if you hear about something like this, it's not mainstream media. Nobody wants to "harm" the vaccination campaign. Unfortunately, suppressing such cases further erodes trust in media/authorities, which has the opposite of the intended effect. Also, VAERS data appears to be incomplete, rendering risk estimates unreliable.
> we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself:
That's not what the study says. They compared all reports of possible cardiac events in the days following vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine myocarditis.
This is the conclusion from the study:
> Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence.
They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs, but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in teenagers.
It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. If anything, this would make the vaccines look even worse.
> It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations.
No, the CAEs in the vaccine study included a lot of transient issues that didn't require hospitalization. Most cases of myocarditis resolve on their own relatively quickly.
Myocarditis is common after COVID infections, too. They're just less likely to be explicitly noted because everything gets chalked up to COVID and the patient is already resting anyway, which is the primary treatment for myocarditis. It's not clear why the authors didn't try to compare against that.
In addition to being somewhat misleading as other commenters hawe pointed out, the first author of this non-peer-reviewed study appears to have a degree in the questionably relevant field of sports medicine.
> Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results.
Serology is a thing, sure. But two points:
Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious.
Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bouncer checking vaccination status at the door is not likely to know anything about serology. The same goes for people eager not to get Covid and the people eager not to accidentally kill grandma. Every bit of complexity is met with complaints and confusion; every change in regulation makes it harder for people to know what to do and therefore less likely to do it.
In some future pandemic might we want to create a two-pathway system? E.g., such that there's a government-issued "safe to mingle" digital passport? Sure. That seems like a great thing to start preparing now so it's ready the next time a disease hops the species barrier. For now, though, I think we should stick with the current plan: vaccination for (almost) everybody.
Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value.
The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be concerned that the card itself exists.
> Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people,
FYI: The current legislation requires weekly testing or proof of vaccination, but it doesn't actually impose the vaccine on anyone who doesn't want it.
It is my understanding that the latest executive orders do require vaccination of US federal employees and contractors; other employers may offer weekly testing as an alternative. So I believe that, if you are a federal employee or contractor, you do in fact have to choose between getting vaccinated or keeping your job. (Or do you consider allowing people to choose to quit rather than get vaccinated sufficient flexibility to not be an "imposition"?)
Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the benefit of changing things again becomes very large.
And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.
In my experience talking with people, trust is reduced a lot more when politicians and the media fixate on a vaccine and largely ignore natural immunity. A lot of people are perceiving this as authoritarian and punitive (governments want to compel citizens to receive an unnecessary injection) which burns a lot more trust than "good news! we've learned that natural immunity is sufficient to earn privileges that were previously reserved for the vaccinated!".
> Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic
I specifically don't see how your hypothesis works: "if we allow for natural immunity, it will confuse people and some of them will die". Presumably the failure mode is that some of the "bouncers" of society are too dumb to understand "vaccine OR natural immunity" and will thus reject more people than necessary (either the vaccinated or the naturally immune) and thus our risk of spread will be slightly reduced at the expense of our liberties. In any case, I have a hard time imagining large failure rates here, and the risk associated with any given error is very small (a given failure doesn't significantly increase anyone's risk of serious illness or death).
> Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value.
No, this is just not correct. Compulsory vaccination has been a thing for hundreds of years.
Nobody has a full system of vaccination status cards and databases. There are just too many people who will avoid vaccination at the slightest excuse. We're in a war and every day of delay costs thousands, or tens of thousands of lives.
We need simple rules that we can apply on a massive scale quickly. The US is a country where more than half of people can't work out if a 1/3 pound burger is bigger or smaller than a 1/4 pound burger.
No one said anything about multiple cards, nor about any databases whatsoever.
Single-mindedness is not a rationale for imposing medical treatment on people.
I'll circle back to my driver's license analogy - the bouncer does not need to know that I was docked 3 points from my driving test for failing to signal - he only needs to know that some granting authority, with expertise in the realm being licensed, granted me the license. (or that I'm old enough to enter the bar, etc.)
'Mandatory medical treatment' sounds like a big deal, but the tragedy of the commons happens with every vaccine. No one benefits much from their own vaccination, we all benefit must from others'. Which is why vaccinations almost always have a requirement, or they don't work (cf flu, cf hpv).
When 1500 Americans are dying every day of a preventable disease, it is absolutely reasonable to take feasibility of enforcement into account. And enforcement has to be done where the greatest risk of spreading occurs. People might not like getting carded at a restaurant, but there is a point where lots of people are dying and it makes sense, right? We card for alcohol, we card for driving, and those we do every day.
I would think someone who tested positive should be able to get a ca state qr code. It seems the science supports that. Having each validator check that the test is the right test, and the doctor and hospital exist, seems not feasible, but getting a state qr code - then using that at the point of enforcement - seems practical.
I largely agree with most everything that you said, regarding enforcement pragmatism and the like.
But I must remind that, at least in this particular conversation, we're talking about people who've just had the illness in question. We don't know how many of the 1,500/day are people who have previously contracted the illness or else contracted the illness from someone else who previously caught the illness, but in all likelihood the proportion of such cases is likely very low. So referencing the 1,500/day likely has very little relevance to a discussion of natural immunity.
> Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied.
The difference is that the serum test is risk free. If I knew I was already immune, I would not have gotten the vaccine to be completely honest, no matter how small the risk is. For the same reason I don't get other safe and effective treatments for diseases I do not have.
It will definitely not be better studied because it the focus and the funding is on how well vaccination works. Vaccines have a revenue model; natural immunity doesn't.
Not sure what you mean, if the test determines I have immunity similar to what a vaccine provides and knowing that I choose not to get it, what are the downstream impacts?
I see, I guess I don't know either way, seems like something that isn't particularly difficult to study though so I'd be surprised if it wasn't known at this point.
I'm sure it's quite difficult to study, but no less so than studying the vaccine. I'd be surprised if we didn't already know at least as much about natural immunity, but whether the media are effectively communicating that information is another question.
You are making all those strange excuses to force people to get vaccinated. Some people don’t want to for whatever reasons, if they want to get positive test results, that’s their choice. Stop using twisted logic and marginal cases to make up arguments to satisfy your authoritarian desire.
The people who would be confused by two pathways are already confused. It would not increase confusion. You have a vaccination card or you have a positive test card.
Right now there are already at least two pathways. You have a vaccination card or a negative test card within an allowable date range.
The bigger issues are privacy, etc. Not, "Oh no, there are two options! I'm so confused."
If the bar bouncer can see a card that says you have been vaccinated then they can see a card that says you have covid antibodies or that you have had a positive covid test at some point in the past. I don't think this is too burdensome for our hypothetical bouncer.
You probably don't even need to photoshop your name on the card. In most scenarios you could take a small and slightly blurry photo of anyone's card, bring it up on your phone to show someone, and they'll shrug and accept it as evidence that you're vaccinated.
They usually ask for your ID to match the info on the card
I asked and they may have a city agent scanning cards — then you simply stand in line behind someone and see whether or not they are scanning it versus just visually inspecting. If the latter — you are good to go
That doesn't strike me as particularly dumb. It's pretty easy to print out a fake driver's license (or use someone else's) that's going to work fine getting into most bars, and the risks of getting into legal trouble for attempting to use a fake ID to buy alcohol are probably pretty similar to the risks of using a fake vaccine card, and yet most people don't argue that that system is a dumb way to enforce the drinking age (ignoring whether the drinking age itself is a reasonable policy).
there was a fitness instructor in colorado that didn't get the vaccine because he had tested and had antibodies in his blood. then he got covid again(or maybe the first time?) and it just absolutely decimated his body. he lost 70 lbs and is walking around with an oxygen bottle. the only real way to make sure you have proper antibodies and B and T cell responses is to have either gotten a symptomatic case of covid that lasted a while or getting the vaccine.(yes that's also not foolproof wrt antibodies/t/b response but it's a generally good method)
That's cool - you can also love playing Russian Roulette itself - that doesn't mean we have to make it legal for you to actually do that.
If the worst thing a vaccine mandate is doing is preventing you from getting your jollies from being an idiot I see no problem with enforcing a mandate.
You may be surprised to hear this - but it's actually the case that fewer people died this year to Russian Roulette than to COVID - and a lot of those people didn't volunteer to spin the wheel. I don't think the specifics about proportional chance of loss are particularly relevant.
He has likely done major damage to his body through the use of steroids. He was a professional bodybuilder who admitted to using. This is definitely not a good anecdote.
You can't learn much from a sample size of 1. In particular, there are people who have been vaccinated who have also died of COVID. The question is whether or not natural immunity affords comparable (or better) protection to the virus than the vaccine, and it seems that the data are indicating that it does. This should be a good thing--instead of being angry that it takes away our justification to force others to do something, we should be happy at the prospect of combatting covid without having to force people to do anything.
> Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
One critical difference is that there will be legal consequences if you're using a fake proof of vaccination.
Because we don't have a good legal definition of "natural immunity"? Compared to that, vaccination status is official record which is subject to forgery law and its effectiveness has been well studied against most COVID variants.
Note that it is pretty tricky to define natural immunity in a legal way since there is no good scientific consensus on the correlation between some proxy of natural immunity (e.g. antibody level) and its effectiveness against infection/transmission.
Yep, crazy that this is the top comment when clearly we already know that none of the studies for kids are completed. Is it likely to be safe? Yes. But we still need to go through the proper process to ensure confidence in the vaccine.
> We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children.
True, and the obvious example is that kids don't die of covid, or so little that it is hard to make statistics. For just that reason, vaccines have to be incredibly safe (basically zero risk) for the risk/benefit to be acceptable.
If it wasn't for the risk of transmission to adults there would be no reason for vaccinating kids.
>Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
There is a difference. Covid is 10 times more lethal than the average flu. It's not always that they can't either, it's also that their body won't develop enough antibodies.
Main reason for lockdown is so that your hospitals can keep functioning, or in the case of New Zealand, so that you can go back to complete normal life except for travel outside the country.
I'm not sure why death is the only thing we're trying to avoid. Currently, children's ICUs in Oklahoma are full in part due to the number of Covid patients. I'd rather my child not end up in the hospital, much less be turned away from one in a time of need.
Then you should be concerned about the considerable risk they will end up there due to heart inflammation (in the case of male children).
Edit: I'm not going to respond to every comment below that points out that it's extremely rare, other than to ask that you compare that chance to the chance of hospitalization due to covid, which according to the link above is less likely.
Plus that's comparing one risk of the vaccine to one risk of the virus. You need a holistic comparison. COVID messes you up in lots of other ways too, ways in which the vaccine does not.
“Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.” [0]
So there’s a preprint stating that COVID-19 causes myocarditis at a higher rate than via vaccination. So it’s not quite clear to me whether or not, if looking at it from a risk of myocarditis, that not getting vaccinated is the better choice.
And according to the JCVI, it still is marginally beneficial to get vaccinated over not getting vaccinated. So it’s not like they are advising that natural infection is safer than vaccination.
“For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The JCVI’s view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms.” [1]
"The medium- to long-term effects are unknown and long-term follow-up is being conducted.
Given the very low risk of serious COVID-19 disease in otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year olds, considerations on the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very finely balanced and a precautionary approach was agreed." [1]
As a concerned parent, this is how I will be approaching vaccination for my sons.
The term hospitalization implies an inpatient (or at least observation) stay, as opposed to an outpatient encounter like the emergency department or a clinic. Most diagnoses made in the outpatient setting do not require hospitalization, which could include both COVID and myo/pericarditis.
> myocarditis is being diagnosed and reported in children if not at the hospital?
The vast majority of people who visit a doctor are diagnosed with no hospitalization and the recommended course for most myocarditis cases is not hospitalization. If the recommendation were hospitalization then many more infected young males would be hospitalized based on myocarditis diagnosis.
you're deferring thinking to an unnamed mystery expert and then arguing on behalf of that unnamed mystery expert as if you know what they'd say. lol, just lol.
The cdc link provided raw numbers. The telegraph link is a journalist deducing a conclusion. I don’t think any experts provided any conclusive evidence in this thread (which I gather was the point of the comment you replied to)
Anyone can claim to be an expert. Once one comes forward we can evaluate to see if their claims hold up.
In this case experts have pointed out that the analysis is wrong because it doesn't compare mycardius in the control group even through we know covid also causes that. Nor do they consider harm, despite vaccine caused mycardious being mild.
That "data point" is that that group is 6x more likely to be affected by myocarditis after receiving a vaccine than to be hospitalized due to COVID. I would like to see an actually useful comparison, like, say, the likelihood of being affected by myocarditis after receiving a vaccine versus the likelihood of being affected by myocarditis after a COVID infection.
Myocarditis, in this circumstance, were cases reported in VAERS, which isn't a mild or asymptomatic condition -- it usually means hospitalization. Furthermore, the researchers who have been analyzing the rates are going back to the VAERS records and actually looking at the case data.
These are severe enough cases to require medical attention.
What is the baseline utilization of ICU space? I’m also curious what happened to those heroic efforts of retrofitting parking garages into field-expedient hospitals. Oh, and the notorious “gunshot victims are being left to die because of all the covid, bros!” misinformation that respectable journalists printed without any effort to check the facts.
>that respectable journalists printed without any effort to check the facts.
Journalists from the same publication (Rolling Stone) were responsible for the whole fabricated "A Rape On Campus" article as well. I would not give them the respectable journalist moniker anymore except in jest.
Kids can also be carriers, and more spread among a partially resistant population means more mutation and more variants. Vaccines are in the process of being approved for all ages.
I think it is very likely that vaccinated people are contracting COVID-19 less than unvaccinated people, but because most testing is done on symptomatic people, and the vaccine is known to reduce symptoms, the sampling bias is likely overstating the effect.
"A growing body of evidence indicates that people fully vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) are less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2 or to transmit it to others."
Vaccinations reduce your chance of getting infected and reduce the average duration of the infection. The combination of these two factors thus reduce the R value of covid in vaccinated populations when compared to unvaccinated populations with identical network topologies and behaviors.
> Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19.
What use is it to compare two different things? Those heart problems aren't all hospitalizations. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are more likely to have heart problems than teenage boys who get vaccinated. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized than teenage boys who get vaccinated. Many young men have died of COVID-19, and none have died of the vaccine.
> Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid. [0]
More than twice as many died in August as in July or as in August of last year. With Delta and school in session, expect this number to go up for September.
“Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.”
This is out of date and incorrect. The latest data shows that the risk of myocarditis in children after two doses vastly exceeds the risk of myocarditis posed by the virus:
This number has been steadily increasing, as time passes. Current consensus seems to be that one dose is the optimal tradeoff between risk and reward for young children.
That report doesn’t appear to talk about case rates of myocarditis due to COVID at all. It compares COVID hospitalization rates to vaccine-related myocarditis case rates. Is it your assumption that all myocarditis cases are as serious as a COVID hospitalization?
Covid hospitalizations are a superset of myocarditis cases. If you broke out Covid-induced myocarditis, the comparison would be even more lop-sided against the vaccines.
> Is it your assumption that all myocarditis cases are as serious as a COVID hospitalization?
Yes. It is not an assumption. Myocarditis is not a mild condition, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
The (very) few kids who end up hospitalized for Covid have serious co-morbidities that are easy to pre-screen (e.g. severe obesity). For these children, a full vaccination is recommended. Nobody is arguing about that. For healthy kids, it's very different.
It's great that most kids with myocarditis don't end up in the ICU, but being put in the hospital to get hooked up to an IV and an MRI scan is not a good outcome for an otherwise healthy kid who would would have -- at most -- a head cold from SARS-CoV2.
Even if we accept this reasoning (It’s not clear to me that the myocarditis cases are more than ‘call your doc, rest up and take ibuprofen’, and I believe that applies to cases among non-hospitalized COVID patients too), but the last I saw the effective reproduction rate for COVID was >1, so every otherwise healthy kid who gets a ‘head cold’ is also going to pass it on to someone else, right?
> Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid.
How many avoided death because they had good health care?
One of my pet peeves about this pandemic is how death metrics keep being pushed around, as if it was not a big deal.
If this pandemic had hit before we had modern health care facilities, it would have been comparable to the great pandemics in history.
Besides, what happened to the children that didn't die? What sort of issues this could cause that may affect their development? We don't know, so we should play it safe.
> from the vaccine
There isn't just one vaccine. There are several. If one is potentially causing issues, use another.
Also, what about heart problems from Covid-19, even among those not hospitalized?
I can't read your paywalled article, but I've found another link. The 'heart problems' are myocarditis, which in most cases is mild and _resolves_ by itself.
> How many avoided death because they had good health care?
If you are going play that game, you also need to ask how many died between March - June 2020 because of panicked doctors intubating everyone left and right with no one around to advocate for the patients.
> you also need to ask how many died between March - June 2020 because of panicked doctors intubating everyone left and right with no one around to advocate for the patients.
Not sure what this is implying, or what kind of advocacy would have made a better call. Doctors intubated people (despite a shortage of ventilators and the difficulty of triage) because the patients were struggling to breathe, and given available data the medical profession though it would help those patients recover. They've since learned more about the outcomes from this particular disease and when a ventilator is appropriate. Your comment makes it sound as though any idiot off the street could tell who should be on a ventilator and who should not.
It's nothing to do with them catching it, it's about them spreading it.
The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the pandemic.
Without the teenagers vaccinated, that's never going to get hit.
Wait until winter hits and the cases spike, then it's suddenly going to become "necessary", but if they'd made that hard decision 3 months ago this would already be over.
How can they know that figure (80%) without knowing % of people with natural immunity? We can guess but there hasn't been much of an effort made to track this.
> The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the pandemic.
That was pre-Delta. The higher the R0, the more mitigation we need to do. The question is what gets RE below zero.
At this point, with Delta's R0 and the vaccine's effectiveness, it looks like mere vaccination without masks is going to be insufficient in large groups (e.g. at a giant concert, a big play). But, since all the precautions have a multiplier, that's fine. It means we can keep doing those things as long as we take precautions while we do it and not assume vaccine = ignore COVID.
If you are skeptical and think "COVID involved" according to CDC might mean they could have died of other things but also happened to have COVID, then here is an exercise you should do: First, go to CDC and download all the death data for 2015-2020. Second, import this into your spreadsheet of choice and plot all of these deaths as 6 individual time-series plots with Jan-Dec as the X axis. Third, observe that the curves are nearly identical for 2015-2019, with the exception of a very slightly elevated curve for one of the flu seasons (I think it was the tail end of 2017 / start of 2018). Now observe that the curve for 2020 has several giant bumps in it that precisely correlate with the COVID surges in both size and shape. Calculate the area between that curve and any of the previous years. Now observe that it very, very closely matches the number the CDC is reporting as "covid involved" deaths for 2020.
I did this. This is quite convincing to me that the "COVID involved" deaths are not mis-categorized and they actually are related to COVID unless CDC is straight up fabricating death numbers on a massive scale. The stories about the COVID death categorizations being overstated are pure FUD.
The OP asked about kids specifically. Counterpoint:
> Data from the first 12 months of the pandemic in England shows 25 under-18s died from Covid.
> Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities
> Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years - though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed
Were the children with complex neuro-disabilities pushed over the edge by covid? Quite possibly. Is that a reason for parents of healthy children to worry? Unlikely.
Good thing the only thing that matters is death, not any other issue.
Good thing children never transmit viruses to adults.
Good thing reservoirs of disease never allow for novel mutations.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare projections in one case to actual results in the other.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare one rate in the general population to a rate in an already selected group.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare self-reported issues to actually verified cases.
Good thing your source[1] didn't make a big deal about the huge multiplier difference between two exceedingly small numbers (0.01622% vs 0.00261%)
Good thing your source[1] didn't falsely imply "hospitalization" and "myocarditis " as equivalently severe, ignoring that the myocarditis responded well and quickly to treatment[2] whereas COVID does not, leading to long hospital stays and/or ventilation and/or death.
I'm not arguing with you, but I'm not 100% sure what specifically was wrong. Can I trouble you to provide a little more context? Was it stylistic? I originally wrote up my issues with his source as a paragraph, but that seemed harder to read. Was it the repetitive beginning of each line? Or was I just being too snarky?
Yes, too snarky, and that sort of repetition is a rhetorical device that acts as a hammer. It is a device for political battle, not curious conversation. No one speaks that way in a conversation.
The thing about comments like that is that they polarize the discussion even further, because those who agree with you will become intensified in their agreement while those who disagree with you will react the way people react when someone hammers them repeatedly. This kind of polarization makes curious conversation impossible, because curious conversation has to do with maintaining connection across differences.
> Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
This ignores the existence of antibody tests, and there's no reason that lying about a positive antibody test would be easier to get away with than lying about being vaccinated.
I've got a child under 12, and while everyone in my household over 12 is vaccinated, I'm not sure if the vaccine has any point for him. If you look at CDC stats, today there are only 412 reported covid19 deaths in the 0-17 age group, 138 in the 0-4 group, meaning 274 in the 4-17 group out of 670,000. Furthermore, kids rarely need treatment, so most infections go undiagnosed.
While I have no objection to a vaccine, and I don't question the efficacy of these, the trivial chance of my son's covid19 complications versus forcing him to a doctor's office over his fear of needles, which will cause him a lot of angst, makes me question whether to do it. These decisions aren't always entirely about death percentages.
Not sure how accurate that is based on the children’s hospitals in the southern United States being at capacity from COVID. Long symptoms have also become an issue in children.
If you'd like to appear serious, I'd recommend doing a little basic googling before asking anybody for a source. Maybe this isn't true for you, but there are plenty of querulous people who ask for information that are not sincerely interested, but just work to wear out their opponents.
I'd recommend when you decide to make claims you go ahead and provide a source rather than becoming passive-aggressive and telling someone it isn't your job to educate them.
I would agree with you if I was questioning water fluoridation or if vaccines gave people autism.
A request to support a claim about the "long term" effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years ago, in a rapidly changing environment, for which it seems pretty improbable for there to have already been robust, repeated, falsifiable studies done, is different.
Long Covid in children is an established phenomenon. Which you would know if you had typed "long Covid in children" into Google and looked quickly through the top results.
I would also suggest that if you want "robust, repeated, falsifiable studies" for "effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years ago" you have set your standard implausibly high. That's not how medicine progresses for urgent things, because it's fantastically negligent. Contrast the rapid global Covid response, which saved millions of lives, with the incredible foot-dragging surrounding AIDS in the 80s. If we had waited for perfect knowledge before taking action, hospitals would have been stacking bodies in the streets.
At this stage you get papers saying things like, "A quarter of children experienced persistent symptoms months after hospitalization with acute covid-19 infection, with almost one in ten experiencing multi-system involvement. [...] Our findings highlight the need for replication and further investigation [...]". [1]
Being skeptical of "Long COVID" claims around (typically) asymptomic or mild COVID cases in children is reasonable. Nevertheless, we should vaccinate children -- ordinary acute COVID is bad enough, and of course they are still a transmission vector.
Long COVID isn't well-defined in general; some large subset of it is psychosomatic. The main non-psychosomatic problem seems to be fallout from ARDS (Acute Respitory Distress Syndrome), which is directly related to severe bouts of COVID (and generally younger people have less severe COVID, with or without vaccines).
Thanks! Based on the nature.com link, it looks like there needs to be more time and work done to make concrete claims (as I suspected with something as complicated as "long covid").
I would also be interested in seeing comparisons to "long <other infectious diseases>".
I'd like to see a better definition of what "long COVID" is. The minimum definition I see most often is symptoms lasting longer than 3 weeks. I've never had a cold where all symptoms were gone at the 3 week mark.
We have been made to associate the term "long COVID" with debilitating illness lasting many months, talk of people joining online support groups, etc. I'd like a better breakdown of what is common.
Edit: Downvotes why? It isn't reasonable to want to know how many people are having "any symptom at all past 3 weeks" and how many are suffering from debilitating syndromes?
Never ending fatigue, random muscle and joint pains, blood pressure fluctuations, constant low-grade headache, numbness of extremities, tinnitus, shortness of breath, chest pain, tachycardia, back pain, anxiety and depression.. and usually its combination of the above that come and go continuously in what seems like waves.
There are probably more symptoms I’m missing, but that is what I experienced for 9 months
My partner is a nurse, and something I think that gets lots a lot in discussing these stats is that many times 'surviving' doesn't mean 'back to normal like nothing happened".
Her stories of it radically complicating totally unrelated illnesses and the potential severe long term effects are more than enough reason to take precautions seriously despite what group or demographic you might be in.
I think about this a lot but almost never hear it brought up, so I agree that the point gets overlooked often. For every death there are probably many people experiencing serious effects. Anyone who has experienced significant long term health problems knows that they can have a massive impact on your life.
This reminds me of a bad take that comes up from time to time around war casualties. Some will see that only a thousand soldiers out of a million died in some conflict and think that it wasn't that dangerous, but for every death in war there can be dozens of people who suffer severe mental and physical harm that negatively affects the rest of their life.
IMO the issue is children & schools are the perfect combination for the spread of illnesses. While no one wants to make definitive statements on how much the vaccine reduces the duration & level of contagiousness -> it is almost certainly not 0%.
I think as long as the vaccine is an option for all/most ages then it isn't much of an issue. Although it would be interesting if we allowed kids to get the vaccine at school - possibly without parental permission. (Sort of a tricky area... I think some places provide the HPV vaccine like this since some parents won't let their kids get it.)
A large number of the breakthrough cases I'm (personally) aware of are coming from unvaccinated kids to their parents. I would definitely vaccinate your child once it's approved for under 12 - for your whole family's sake. Then tell them they're doing it to protect their family and let them feel like a brave hero.
Why wouldn't you just have the vulnerable adults get vaccinated? At what point will done of these people just start vaccinating in the womb or just treat it like circumcision? Circumcision is not needed but might as well just poke babies with needles immediately after their born to make sure we traumatize them as much as possible.
While I posted above about being on the fence about vaccinating my kid, I was in a similar case as you. I'm in my late 40's, and I came down with covid early in the pandemic, before general availability of PCR tests, but I did manage to get an antibody test, and I was positive.
I did get vaccinated because the vaccine reinforces antibodies which are correlated with fewer complications upon subsequent infection. There are some epitopes on sars-cov-2 which closely resemble parts our own clotting factors and interferons, and the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present. So, it seems a vaccine only helps.
One thing about getting vaccinated after recovery from covid, though, is that both the first and second doses knock you on your butt, not just the second.
> the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present
Exactly! The point of many COVID vaccines is to teach the immune system to destroy a very specific and very important protein, which is the spike protein. Without that the virus can't enter cells. It's not present in our own body.
We have no idea what kind of immune response any given person might get with an actual infection. Reinfections are a thing.
Your last paragraph makes little sense. We have no idea what kind of immune response any given person might get with a vaccine (any vaccine) either. What kind of test this is? And infections after covid vaccines are sadly also a thing.
> I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies, my results were a “76” (I assume percentage?).
It does not mean percentage. The fact that we cannot directly relate antibody levels to immunological protection is one of the reasons we can't [yet?] use antibody tests to "count" as immunity.
To provide additional protection (especially since given that timing it almost certainly wasn't the delta variant that you got). Maybe you are protected by your previous infection and maybe you aren't.
It was my understanding that you basically just punch these mRNA sequences into a computer and you could have a new formulation ready for manufacture over the weekend. If it's a regulatory issue, maybe the regulations should be adjusted. Why have a booster of the original stuff that's not working as well?
It's really not that simple. I'm not current, but I studied immunology as part of medical school a long time ago.
The Delta variant replicates really quickly, that is its evolutionary advantage over other strains, it's not that your immune system is weaker to it. What happens is that at first it ramps up a lot faster than your immune response, and during this period, it produce a lot more virions, and your immune system has a bigger fight on its hands.
There are many immunologists working on identifying the nature of the immune response to sars-cov-2, and so far, something on the order of 80 unique antibodies have been identified which are induced by vaccination, and about 200 unique antibodies which are induced by actual infection. The convalescent antibodies target the nucleocapsid (the ball) more than the spike protein.
It appears that the delta variant escapes approximately 1/8 of the antibodies in both cases, so you still have a very strong immune response, just one which doesn't ramp up as fast as the virus.
Now, as for the mRNA sequences, we can create them in a DNA printer (then transcribe to RNA), however, this triggers new safety and efficacy trials at the FDA.
Are you willing to bet that the tweaked Moderna vaccine (the trials of it was announced, right?) shows worse efficacy than the original? Odds 51:49 in your favor, null hypothesis of the same efficacy is a tie. That's generous I think, if nobody knows.
Most proteins are safe, of course, and the odds that any particular new mRNA target is safe is pretty good. But it's not trivial to predict with computational models, and so it requires testing.
I've seen several patients that were sicker the second time they got COVID, including people dying in their 20s and 30s. I can't speculate on what their antibody tests might have showed beforehand.
I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies after receiving the vaccine. My results were "0." And yet I experienced all the typical side effects from the vaccine, indicating that I probably had an immune response to it.
Nobody knows what any particular antibody count means with respect to risk to your health from a future COVID infection. Instead, we need to be looking at the hard statistics about who's getting admitted into hospitals and who's dying.
The data I've seen is not great, in part because reinfection is pretty rare. This study [0] indicating rates of 31.0% and 3.4% respectively is the best I've seen, but I'd hazard a guess that there's some sampling bias - i.e., healthier people are less likely to get symptomatic reinfection and therefore to get tested, so unhealthy people are overrepresented in the data - so those rates are probably overestimates.
People get sick with COVID multiple times, and natural immunity is more hit-or-miss with regards to protection against variants. Reinfections are also frequently nastier than the first infection. It also costs absolutely nothing and at worst will act as an additional safety that makes you feel uncomfortable for a few days.
It is a free vaccine that could save your life, has been safely administered to billions of people and greatly reduces the odds of you getting infected, transmitting to others or ending up in hospital.
What is the downside? or are you just apathetic to getting it.
clinical trials are ongoing for <12 year olds. The biggest change is that the dosages will have to be lower. If you give a young child the current adult dose they will have a higher chance of side effects.
> Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
> IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case)
That's a terrible idea. Children are not small adults, and you can't use the same medicine for children as for adults. There are Pediatricians who work specifically with children. Giving drugs to children is unlike the scenario where a heavy car takes twice the gasoline a ligher care takes.
"Therefore, the risk of cardiac adverse events following the second dose of the mRNA vaccine could be around 3.7 times more likely than hospitalization due to COVID-19 in healthy 12-15-year-old boys during periods when the pandemic is better under control 2.1 times in 16-17-year-olds. The group found that this trend remains even when SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates are high, with vaccination being riskier than hospitalization from COVID-19. The long-term health effect of the mRNA vaccines on teenage boys is unknown. Few clinical trials have been conducted due to the early observation of adverse events." [1]
"Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12"
From what I understand, different ages of people tend to have different sorts of immune responses. While vaccines are safe and effective, it takes some time to get the dosages right for children because of the way their immune system responds to things - at least, with a new vaccine. I'm not an expert, though, and I got this information while looking up variances in side effects (older folks get less than younger folks, and folks with two x chromosomes - mostly females - tend to get more as well).
> "for boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day Covid-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at times of high weekly Covid-19 hospitalization,"
> Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12
The main issue here is that covid is less of a problem for people who are younger.
That means rarer issues can start to outweigh benefits. It's easily possible for vaccines to be beneficial over a certain age and detrimental under.
Also - while the vaccines lower transmission they do not stop it entirely so again it comes to weighing benefits.
The other issue is about testing how well the vaccines work in different groups. Just because it works well in a 65y grandfather doesn't mean it'll work well in a 2mo baby, or help with dosing decisions.
> Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
I think this is the main point.
We are dealing with a large anti-vax disinformation campaign that America's enemies are fanning [0] because they want to destabilize the country.
Many of the anti-vax people people are now pushing natural immunity.
Yes there is something to be said about natural immunity in conditions in which, say, vaccine supply was critically low and needed to be triaged.
But when there is approximately zero marginal cost to getting vaccinated, and very high likelihood of fraud among the nature immunity promotors, it doesn't make sense as policy.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 443 ms ] threadAfter glancing at the endnotes, it seems that the bulk of the scientific references examining natural immunity date from before the delta variant established itself.
Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice. Refuses to get vaccinated now because "why bother? I have great immunity now." With no sense of irony, given that he's already been infected twice...
edit: surprising downvotes so I probably didn't communicate my point well.
I can't imagine a reason why natural immunity would be harder to quantify than vaccine induced immunity. It would seem to me the methodology to quantify both would be very similar.
but this is a good point I hadn't considered, thanks
With an infection, you have no control over the degree of exposure, so on top of the variability of the response comes the variability of the exposure.
Additionally, in case of exposure of the full pathogen, there is some variability to what part of the pathogen the immune system will respond. That part can actually be a good thing in total.
Pardon my ignorance, but does this mean by contrast that vaccines are designed to induce a uniform response across immune systems?
EDIT: A reply (deleted before I could respond) mentioned that immune systems will combat the infection by some "pattern" of it's own design, but a vaccine will encourage the immune system to respond in a predetermined way, (increasing likelihood of uniformity, answering my question).
Is this accurate?
Also not an expert and curious, would that not be a (the?) design goal of any vaccine?
A more uniform response than the pathogen itself? Yes. But I think the actual goal of modern vaccination is not a uniform response, but a directed response. Don't waste your time looking at these parts of the virus, spend it on this (important) part.
How is that different from a vaccine?
In reality it seems that the immune system does tend to end up targeting the same protein that's in the vaccine, but may be targeting different portions of it (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ talks about this). My understanding is that current data suggests the naturally acquired immunity is about as robust as the vaccine acquired one, but this wasn't a given.
Be honest: have you passed high school biology?
How does he know he was infected twice?
Saying that a PCR test returned positive values two times isn't a great answer - since by its nature PCR is only counting the existence (above the programmed threshold post amplification).
Serology is the only way to know for certain you were/are infected.
This highlights one of the bigger issues we have: PCR test are a very cheap and a useful way for getting estimates but their failure rate is high enough to make it pretty poor basis for doing large scale data analysis.
Long haul COVID doesn’t spring back to life and give you a fever for 12 days straight. I had essentially the same symptoms both times: fever, extreme fatigue, a dry cough, complete loss of taste of most things, etc.
Long story short, even if you didn’t get tested one of the two times (I tested positive both times) it’s pretty freaking obvious what you have as long as you don’t have a mild case. My wife got it this time around, and we got her an infusion of monoclonal antibodies early as she’s pregnant. She only had a fever one night, and in trying to explain how she felt I asked her “it feels like you just want to stop existing, right?” She agreed. Before that night it just seemed like a cold for her.
1) If you have natural immunity already, great! Provide evidence of your positive test
2) If you don't have evidence that you've been SARS-COV-19 positive, go get a shot so you don't have a severe hospitalization.
3) No, we don't suggest getting infected on purpose over the shot. Go read #2
Instead, the US federal government is being purposefully ignorant of how effective natural immunity is.
As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens. It seems like he's doing the opposite. I'm not really sure why. My best guess is politics has become all about polarization lately.
"But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not taking it." -Kamala Harris
Let’s not act like both parties don’t do the exact same thing, eh?
I'm not politically minded so I'm confused as to how you're interpreting that.
She didn't say that if the FDA didn't approve it and Trump somehow magically bypassed the process and put it out there for people to take that she wouldn't take it. She implied that if the FDA approved it and Trump said people should take it that she wouldn't.
Debates are debates and people say stupid things, but that was far from the only moment of vaccine hesitancy to happen on the left just because Trump was president. Now, of course, it's flipped - and both show just how tribal America has become.
Harris's answer was the right one, and the same one I would have given. An unqualified "yes" would be saying you'd take a vaccine approved by the administration even if the medical community wasn't confident in it, and the phrasing of the question was designed to elicit that clarification.
And let's not pretend it's surprising that her qualification was even needed; We're talking about the same president who used the presidential soap box to urge people to try curing and preventing COVID using Hydroxychloroquine despite no such recommendation from health officials or the medical community at large.
Unfortunately, national US politics have devolved in some respects to a food fight of attacks on political opponents. Some viewed Trump's tax policies in this light, disfavoring residents of so-called 'Blue' states. It would, unfortunately, be very easy to recharacterize Biden's work-based vaccination requirement as an effort to get his staunchest political opponents fired, nationwide. I personally hope both sides can find a path to a more conciliatory approach to policy.
Through the pandemic, there have been ~40,000,000 COVID cases[0] in the US, and ~120,000,000 people are completely unvaccinated[1].
As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
Given that huge disparity, it's not surprising that the relevant public health authorities (which are mostly state and local, with support from the Federal government) are pushing vaccinations very hard.
I'd also point out that there are actual studies of the efficacy of COVID vaccines, while the data for "natural" immunity is much spottier.
As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection.
What's more, it's not the President's job to be everyone's friend. It's their job (among other things) to promote the general welfare of the population. Getting as many people as possible vaccinated is definitely within that purview.
Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't give me a pony! He's alienating me!"
[0] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu
[1] https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...
I won't be bullied into getting an unnecessary procedure just because the burden of proof has not been met (re: spotty studies).
> Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't give me a pony! He's alienating me!"
That seems uncalled for.
Bullied? Where I live (NYC), they will pay you $100[0] to get vaccinated. I wish more folks would "bully" me that way.
I'd add, that at least in the US, no one is forcing anyone to have an unwanted procedure. Every single "vaccine mandate" has come with the caveat that you can avoid being vaccinated by getting tested regularly.
As to whether or not a COVID vaccination is necessary or not is, for some strange reason, a controversial question.
Have you been vaccinated against Polio? If so, why is that different than COVID? Not being snarky here, just genuinely curious as to how you see those as different.
[0] https://www1.nyc.gov/site/coronavirus/vaccines/vaccine-incen...
I did not make the decision to vaccinate against polio, that was made for me. I trust my parents made an educated decision and its beside the point now, I am vaccinated. Does polio vaccine manufacturer have readily available risk/benefit data for people who've already had polio? Covid vaccines don't provide this data so burden of proof is not met. I'd judge polio vaccine the same way under the same circumstances.
"All Persons" is not a valid statistic
>As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection
We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a big unknown right now
A fair point. There were approximately 45,000,000 children under the age of 12 in the US in 2019[0].
I'd guess that's probably still relatively accurate.
Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
>We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a big unknown right now
Another good point. I'd point out that while ongoing immunity is a big (and unanswered) question, bringing R0[1] down in high infection areas right now can significantly reduce the impact on our health care systems and economy.
What the situation will look like in 12-18 months is important, but given the high transmissibility and case rates in some areas of the US, increasing the ability of folks to avoid serious health consequences right now is, arguably, even more so.
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/457786/number-of-childre...
[1] https://www.mastersindatascience.org/resources/r0-infectious...
Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible, that leaves 35 million, less than the number of people who are immune from having contracted the virus.
That of course also doesn't take into account other people who cannot take it, and the number of unconfirmed cases of immunity from having contracted the virus. I don't have any estimates for those numbers so I won't speculate on what they are besides saying that the number of unvaccinated Americans that can and need to be vaccinated is probably a lot less than 35 million.
Note that I did not mention immunity. I mentioned vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.
Contracted/recovered from the virus != vaccinated.
As to levels of immunity from previous infection, I made no statement whatsoever.
Edit: clarified my initial statement vis a vis vaccination vs. immunity.
> Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
This is what I'm responding to. It is incorrect. 120-40-45=35. 35 is far and away from almost twice as much as 40.
Actually, the calculation is 120 (total unvaccinated)-45 (children under 12)=75.
Whether or not someone has contracted the virus or not is irrelevant to whether or not they have (or can) receive a vaccination.
Whether or not those 40 million cases have some level of immunity is also irrelevant to whether or not they are vaccinated.
> As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40 million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other? Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're just going to disregard them?
> Removing those children from my calculation...
You're not removing them from a calculation, you're removing them from the 120 number and then ignoring the fact that you've also already removed 40 from that number, which was the calculation you're referring to.
Why even have this conversation if you're just going to arbitrarily decide to not consider a factor you've already considered prior? What are you trying to accomplish with this discussion?
>So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40 million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other? Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're just going to disregard them?
Who says it doesn't apply? I said: ...there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
The fact that there are ~45 million children who are unvaccinated because those under 12 haven't been approved for the vaccine(s) doesn't invalidate my point at all. In fact, it strengthens it.
The ~75 million folks who could get vaccinated but have not done so is still almost twice the number of recorded cases.
I'm trying really hard to assume good faith, so I'll make the leap and consider that perhaps English isn't your first language.
[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... (the estimates here do not account for infections before February 2020 or after May 2021, which means all early infections as well as the "delta surge" are unaccounted for).
That is not unification or pluralism. They (including democrats and republicans but today right now mainly democrats) want a political mono-culture and are willing to use force to get it.
- If you have a positive antibody test, you're exempt. - If you work from home, you're exempt. etc.
But they don't. I won't make your conclusions for you, but they are obvious.
I'm probably one of the more well-to-do people he's trying to target here, and if my first instinct is "Fuck you", this doesn't bode well for getting anyone else on-board.
As an American, I wish we could all just have an honest conversation about this. Yes, the mRNA vaccines are new technology and I don't begrudge anyone who feels hesitant about them; but I also think there's strong evidence for their safety, and I waited hours in line to get my shot as soon as it was available.
But this business of public health officials trying to shape people's behavior instead of giving them plain facts... I don't think we collectively appreciate how much damage this has done. It necessarily breeds mistrust. It works against the actual goal of ending this pandemic.
That just sounds like being against the vaccine with extra steps. Because otherwise you wouldn't let what the government was trying to get you to do to affect your decision.
That's probably why it doesn't count?
Would clearly cut into the profit lines of big pharma.
If you're extra skeptical, you could also argue Western governments are finding opportunities to accustom their citizens to more top down government intrusions into their lives, e.g. shifting towards a citizen management model that's used today by many non Western nations.
That SCOTUS case would be quite interesting to watch.
Edit: moreover, the party that wants fewer restrictions on voting is the same as the party that wants people to get vaccinated. And the party that is desperately trying to stop as many people from voting as possible is also very pro-disease. So this seems like a pretty unlikely scenario.
That change in the US at least was also very contentious when it occurred, and subsequently every time the legal age was changed.
But say we decide that that is OK, which it appears most people have, they're still not really comparable because one is based on the assumption that you're too young to get inebriated responsibly, whereas this is proof you've had a medical procedure performed on your body. I'm sure you can see the glaring difference, one is significantly more extreme and invasive than the other.
If you believe they are, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point. If you believe they're not, then I think it makes sense to look for another explanation.
Are you going to pretend people are not being actively censored, banned, cancelled, fired for being vaccine-sceptical?
Do you not believe that the extensively-documented mass manipulation of public opinion is a thing?
If this is the fantasy land you want to base your reasoning in, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point.
The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma. Either this is for an altruistic reason (hah!) or big pharma is actually more powerful than those people (or, maybe, that isn't actually happening).
I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
Even if we presume that advertisers are the only stakeholders (forgetting, let's say, investors), I'd disagree that pharma has a controlling interest in the media.
There is nothing loose about the US media and political establishments. If you watch mainstream media with any regularity you'd think it was two departments of one corporation.
> The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma.
I didn't see anyone make that claim. There are many extensively documented cases of collusion between government and media. 9/11 coverage, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars, virtually any coverage of foreign adversaries (Russia, China, Iran), vaccines, etc. being some obvious examples.
> I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
Oh yeah, can't think of anything more comfortable to think of!
They only need more influence in key places like FDA and CDC, not more influence overall, to push health policies.
That said, this is a real phenomenon and worth bearing in mind when doing this type of reasoning.
Nobody is disappointed that we didn't succeed. It would be great PR - "company X is saving the world" but it would not make us all that much money, considering how much world governments are paying for COVID vaccines.
I find the claims of big pharma manipulating to selling more vaccines dubious.
Many other countries are fine considering documented prior infection as equivalent to vaccination for compliance purposes. There are some results hinting infection-recovery alone is better than vaccination alone, especially versus later variants.
The US CDC etc seems slow-moving on key scientific results, in ways that are unnecessarily increasing social conflict. But they’re not even paid by the click!
The EU digital certificate is for - you had the vaccine - you had a negative result - you recovered from the virus.
Recovering from the virus gives you 180 days of certification. https://www.sns24.gov.pt/guia/certificado-digital-covid-da-u...
Source: I live here. Also, the government: https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-...
> People who have recovered – what to do
> You can get a COVID certificate if the COVID infection was confirmed with a positive PCR test and occurred no more than 180 days ago.
> You can request the COVID certificate from your cantonal authority using an online form. It will then be sent to you by post.
> Please note:
> As the COVID certificate is compatible with the EU Digital COVID Certificate, the standards applying to the EU certificate must also serve as a basis for the Swiss certificate. This means that a certificate is only issued to people who have recovered following a positive PCR test.
—————————
It is pretty useful though. Studies have found it compares well with vaccines or better.
However like vaccines it also fades. And prior immunity + infection is way better than prior immunity, so being infected no reason not to get vaccinated.
My understanding was that there were many more studies of vaccine protection than immunity after infection.
Some links to those studies of immunity after infection would be greatly appreciated.
Comparing SARS-CoV-2 natural immunity to vaccine-induced immunity: reinfections versus breakthrough infections https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
Prior COVID-19 protects against reinfection, even in the absence of detectable antibodies https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)002...
SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
Risk of Reinfection After Seroconversion to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2): A Population-based Propensity-score Matched Cohort Study https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
Assessment of the Risk of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Reinfection in an Intense Reexposure Setting https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...
Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection 1 Year After Primary Infection in a Population in Lombardy, Italy https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
SARS-CoV-2 antibody-positivity protects against reinfection for at least seven months with 95% efficacy https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258953702...
Association of SARS-CoV-2 Seropositive Antibody Test With Risk of Future Infection https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
Quantifying the risk of SARS-CoV-2 reinfection over time https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34043841/
Longitudinal observation of antibody responses for 14 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325385/
Persistence of neutralizing antibodies a year after SARS-CoV-2 infection https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.13.21260426v...
Antibody Responses 8 Months after Asymptomatic or Mild SARS-CoV-2 Infection https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7920668/
Necessity of...
But there's more evidence for natural immunity, from the 1B+ people worldwide who've had COVID & recovered.
I know we want to have a space here to freely discuss things without being dismissed, but I also think enough of us have managed enough websites to understand that this account shouldn't be taken seriously.
I'm not saying that they are a bot either. Their comments suggest otherwise. But this person has, after nearly three years on this site, decided that now is the time to start submitting articles to the front page, and all of them have been about the same politically controversial thing, so this person clearly has an agenda they are trying to push.
You can even argue that they're not facts, that they're wrong... but the OP is coming from the viewpoint that they appear to be facts. And, as such, it seems the OP is posting in good faith.
- A vaccination is currently a requirement for participating in society.
- There are studies showing that having the virues is just as effective (or more) than a vaccination.
- There are places where "having the vaccination" meets the requirement for participating in society.
And, from there, discussing why the US doesn't also follow this logic.
Now, I can't speak to the studies validity. And an argument can be made that it's harder to verify that someone has had the virus already or some such. Or one of any of a dozen other reasons "why not". But having a discussion of the "why not" seems perfectly reasonable.
The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.
"Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine"
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
I love vaccines; especially the Pfizer until further research helps lower the Moderna (& Pfizer) doses.
If I'd had COVID, I'd want 1 extra dose, perhaps a half a year later, as an extra boost.
But it's unfair – & unscientific – to insist on such doses for the proven-recovered (who are also more likely to have bad vax reactions).
Other countries are doing this better – just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses to get more people 1st-dose vaccinated in early 2021.
Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
> Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
Other countries delayed second doses either due to health and safety concerns or supply constraints while the US pushed forward with EUA before second dose efficacy was fully characterized. To me, this is the opposite of bureaucracy.
(Much like 'spaced repetition' to consciously memorize facts, an immune-response is more-reinforced if a separate presentation happens at a distinctly-different time, when forgetting has begun but is reversible.)
Thus, those countries that trusted the pre-COVID science – like the UK or Canada – delayed 2nd shots for 8 weeks or more - giving more of their population the all-important 1st-dose sooner, & closely monitoring the effects on community cases.
In the meantime, Fauci did interviews insisting the 3/4 week rapid boosting was "optimal". (That was overconfident bluster unsupported by the rushed & limited trial data, which other more honest scientists pointed out.)
Surprise! With data, the textbooks were right. 8 week or longer delays generate immune responses that are stronger & last longer. In the UK, now without such tight supply constraints, it's considered dangerously negligent to not warn patients they should wait at least 8 weeks for the 2nd shot:
https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/covid-vaccine-second-jab-early-e...
In the US, disease experts like Eric Topol & Monica Gandhi now suggest some of the 'fading' immunity showing up in Israeli & US studies, especially with Pfizer, is due to the rushed 3-week booster.
Our flailing CDC still insists, today in their vaccination FAQ, contra the science & the interests of Americans, that "you should get your second shot as close to the [21d or 28d] interval as possible". They're also still urging people not to use N95-quality masks, even though they are now cheap & plentiful and likely 2x-4x more effective than cloth or surgical masks.
The failure to recognize that prior infections are as protective as vaccinations is another error that's wasting vaccine & creating arguments that we could just... skip & do better for everyone.
Thus: "Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility."
Some countries, & domain experts, got it right from the get-go. Those countries have benefited – saving lives – with their proper reading of the precedent & limited trial data.
Fauci, & the US CDC/FDA advisory committees that could have corrected this early enough to benefit, got it wrong. Fauci, especially, misreported a schedule as "optimal" that better experts knew was conjectural, tentative, & rushed.
These managerial functionaries could correct the recommendations now, to help people, but still haven't. The US maximum delay, 6 weeks, is shorter than the minimum delay the UK's vax lead recommends – which is well backed by latest analyses.
What's that continuing failure, if not bureaucratic inertia? Loylty to 2020 guesses rather than 2021 science?
These institutions are slow to integrate new science, and bad at balancing prior knowledge with new info - instead consistently preferring what earlier committees rubber-stamped. And that's still killing Americans.
However by catching COVID you are also a burden to the health care system and possibly take away a hospital bed for someone who actually needs it (already happening). I do have a problem with that.
1. No one is talking about mandates 2. Yes living unhealthy is a burden on the health care system. But I am fine with that as long as your actions only have consequences in your own life. With an infectious disease that's different because you suddenly have a multiplier. I didn't hear about any ICU capacity issues because of obese people. 3. We (at least most countries) already have measures to increase the overall health of our society (smoking bans in certain places, age limits on alcohol consumptions, programs in schools to provide healthier food in cafeterias, you name it).
1. Lots of people are talking about mandates.
2. I didn't say anything about ICUs, or about obesity spreading to other people. Across the entire healthcare system, there could be much alleviation of burden if people took dietary and activity-based steps toward being healthier.
3. Banning smoking in public places doesn't stop smoking altogether. If the government wanted to end smoking, they could "mandate" the complete shutdown of tobacco companies. Or the tobacco companies themselves could shut down of their own accord. But folks involved care more about their business than about the health of their "customers". Healthier food in school cafeterias is great, but clearly not enough. People are being hammered with anti-COVID material left and right; nothing even close to that is being done toward pressuring people into taking better care of themselves through diet and exercise.
1. You are responding to a comment that didn't talk about mandates under an article that says nothing about mandates. You are the one who brought it up.
2 and 3: In isolation you are right, we should probably take more measurements towards healthy living. But if you only bring that up as a counter point to COVID measures, you are at very best making a flawed analogy.
My point is: if there is anything feasible measures we can take for healthier living, great we should do that. But we should ALSO do something about COVID.
We should strive to reduce the COVID burden on the emergency / ICU segment of the healthcare system. But I believe we could alleviate burden across the entire healthcare system if more people ate healthier diets and exercised better. Perhaps we could even alleviate more burden than what could be alleviated by way of completely eliminating COVID.
A lot of people are talking about mandating vaccines, and there is constant awareness of anti-COVID precautions everywhere you look. I think that if the same sort of intense campaign was rallied regarding better eating and exercise -- basically pressuring people, even borderline forcing them -- then we would see better progress in this area.
It is unfortunate, I think, that so many resources are being put into pressuring people to take the vaccine while comparatively little is being put into pressuring people to just be healthier overall. Which might in fact also help in the face of any virus!
Even with today's HIV treatments, its fatality rate is in the range of COVID. (And: living with it is no cakewalk.) But we haven't outlawed risky sex. People self-sort into compatible risk groupings.
Also, people are most certainly "talking about mandates" when they're discussing whether natural immunity should grant people the same rights to engage in normal activities as vaccination.
COVID places a much more dynamic burden on the health care system.
It's similar to the way there are many people could manage to afford a $10/month expense for the next 10 years ($1200 total) but would have a very hard time dealing with am extra one-time $200 expense.
You know who else puts others at risk? Vaccinated people, overconfident, potentially walking around with their asymptomatic breakthrough infections (whereas an unvaxed person with a rougher case would self-isolate). But we live with that, because people can still protect themselves with vaccination, & by choosing to only come within infection-range of other vaxed people.
It's looking increasingly likelt that natural immunity is stronger against future variants, or stronger against transmission (mucosal immunity in nose/airways instead of in bloodstream), than vaccination alone. So when a young healthy person who's unlikely to land in an ICU gets & recovers from a natural infection, they might be net-lowering their community's risks, over the long run, versus mere vax-immunity. These population-level effects are often weird & non-linear that way.
I'd say, to the maximum extent possible: let their immune systems, and their peers, & their communities, learn in the way they choose. Some lessons are necessarily painful. Those with greater concern should keep their distance in the meantime – but realize the fastest & surest way to broad safety, via deeper herd immunity, is to let the laggards work through their hard lessons ASAP.
I think that's a pretty important argument against allowing natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. A lot of people will go and deliberately infect themselves. Some of them will die. They will spread it to others. Many will tie up ICU beds, doctors, nurses and other hospital resources, causing tons of first- and second-order harm.
The state of medical records in the USA is... not great, so it's easier to show evidence of the vaccination that can at least theoretically be verified.
EDIT: man, the rapid-downvoting is even worse here than in the Apple CSAM threads. :D
It's not actually. They're equivalent. The vaccine proof is PAPER which can be forged. And while evidence of a COVID19 test can be paper too, mine was digital.
Of course, this could all fail under the "medical records in the USA are garbage" issue.
Still, if nothing else, it's better for proving it than "I took a COVID test at home, trust me".
https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/
As everything with COVID, the lack of hard data and the poor communication of federal and state agencies has enabled politicians, con men and sectarians to exploit the confusion to their benefit.
Im my country, getting infected count as the 1rst dose (yes, i know, natural immunity is better with "real" infections, but rememeber that Covid sometime start an auto-immune disease, it's hard to test for this, so its less costly to just vaccinate people (the jab cost 12E)).
No scientific response. This is mostly pragmatic, and probably politic too. Its easier to just jab everyone you can while you can.
I know it's a bit hearthless, and i can't ask doctors to start triaging, but i'd really like that once everyone have had the possibility to get the double dose, we just stop everything covid related (maybe not the reduced maximum capacity and mask in public transport for the adults during peak hours: those restrictions should have been implemented way before covid).
https://www.labcorp.com/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/individ...
I'm to tired to make sense, but you understand my point (if not, i'll have to explain the reasoning better).
Anyway, it's pragmatism and not wasting money.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid...
Imagine half the uk population wanted to get tested before getting the vaccine, the cost for the NIH would be way higher than just vaccinating everybody. You can't tell people `if the antibody test is positive, you don't have to get vaccinated`, at least not until the vast majority is already vaccinated. And even then, it's mostly lost money.
You could have told people "pay for your own test", but in this case, the fabrication and distribution of those test would slow down the vaccination. And you have to make sure that the test are not faked, so a doctor should verify that the test was yours. I know some doctors who faked smallpox vaccine, so you can imagine how much of a good idea this is.
Also, even if the individual cost is not that high, telling people to `pay not to get vaccinated` (because it would've been spin like this, I've read UK newspapers) is not the best idea want the biggest issues for most western government is lack of trust.
So: it is more pragmatic to jab everybody. Easier to orchestrate, you don't expose your leadership too much. Overall, best solution for the governments. Is it the best solution for the population? Debatable. I'd say its the most cost-effective, the one with the less headaches, so yes?
If you keep doing it, we will ban you. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please stop all of that now and review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start using the site as intended. Here's the basic idea: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
as well as "Eschew flamebait", of course.
Examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28515653
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28514509
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28531159
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28530286
Comments like that aren't worth it to have on HN because the negative effect they have on the threads, and on the culture of the site, dominates any value they're adding.
It seems obvious, reading through your comment history, that you have an agenda about this topic. There's nothing wrong with having a view, of course, but an agenda is something different—that's when you're using the site to wage a battle in favor of your view. At that point curiosity has left the building, and curiosity is supposed to be the animating value here.
I had to pay £50 for my one in the UK.
Can you clarify who you mean by "they"? I don't suspect you mean Israel in that context.
>Side effects can affect your ability to do daily activities, but they should go away in a few days.
> Common side effects: [Tiredness, Headache, Muscle pain, Chills, Fever, Nausea]
>Side effects after your second shot may be more intense than the ones you experienced after your first shot. These side effects are normal signs that your body is building protection and should go away within a few days.
I don't have a specific study for prior immunity vs. second shot, but neither COVID nor the vaccine are magic - both behave in a more or less standard manner. I've seen references to studies though:
>Dr. Erin Morcomb, a family medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and head of its COVID-19 vaccination team, confirms that the reactions can vary based on your health history. "What we've seen in studies is that the second dose does tend to have a little bit more potential to cause side effects than the first dose, but for people who have had COVID-19 infection previously and then recovered, they are at higher risk of having those same side effects after their first dose," she says.
from https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/strong-reaction-to-...
I also got vaccinated later. I had about a 24 hour reaction each time.
I wanted to make sure my body latched onto the spike protein. Immune systems latch onto all manner of things--sometimes relevant, sometimes not relevant, sometimes actively harmful.
This is an important point. Your body's reaction to natural Covid is far more unpredictable than to the vaccine. That may give you a more robust immune response--or that may give you something related to an autoimmune disorder.
As a comparison, I had a much worse reaction to Shingrix (the shingles vaccine) which hit me hard for about 4 days and I could barely move the arm that got the shot.
Your mileage may vary.
And without some hard numbers comparing the two fairly little downsides we shouldn't attempt to compel people's behavior either way.
How does it make sense then for them to vaccinate?
But with previous infection, there is a huge camp of people who are just going to lie about it and continue spreading the virus freely. People have shown that they cannot be trusted to act responsibly.
But the devil's in the details anyways. How long would that be considered good for, since we'll probably be looking at regular annual boosters? Would extremist anti-vaxxers have a perverse incentive to get infected so as to rejoin society while avoiding the vaccine?
Honestly the problem here is not the science. It’s the big clump of people who have turned being against the science into a part of their identity. Every time I think we have hit the bottom as a country in terms of the power of ignorance (and evil, on the part of the GOP establishment), we keep going.
What I find especially perverse is that these people are here! On Hacker News! I just don’t understand how someone can be in the technology field and yet so virulently pro-disease. Any comment that points out that IT IS THE REPUBLICANS WHO HAVE MURDERED 650,000 AMERICANS AND ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL AS MANY MORE AS THEY CAN gets downvoted below zero.
> Any comment that points out that IT IS THE REPUBLICANS WHO HAVE MURDERED 650,000 AMERICANS AND ARE ACTIVELY TRYING TO KILL AS MANY MORE AS THEY CAN gets downvoted below zero.
That's because the comments like these are political hysteria designed to get others to vote for your team...
Then I submit you are embarrassingly ignorant of history and the rest of the world.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this a ton lately. Moreover, we've asked you repeatedly in the past to stop. If you continue this way we're going to have to ban you, so really, would you please review the guidelines and use HN as intended?
If the vaccine fails you then you will get covid (like you would have in the same situation without vaccine) and will develop natural immunity then.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
I thought I had covid early in the pandemic. Took a serology test and found out that I had not had it. I suspect a lot of people that think they had it are the same.
Does the US now have a digital verifiable certificate system for tested or previously infected as well as vaccinated or is it still a piece of paper?
Without this you have to just vaccinate everyone because there is no other way to manage it.
Unfortunately, T-cell tests are not available in Europe, and apparently not reliable in the US. Which confirms the original point: there seems to be little interest in detecting previous infections.
Which T-cell test(s) are you referencing? What are the rates of false negatives or false positives?
My comment was not intended to be an argument against any testing for pre-infection; I think the rationale for that is pretty solid, but I think that the regulatory establishment needs to be prepared to inform people that they might not be able to prove their previous infection and in that case they should get vaccinated.
Quebec is the only province that will let you get only 1 dose of the vaccine, instead of 2, if you were previously infected. With that 1 dose, that's enough to have access to the vaccine passport.
But there are absolutely no places in Canada that accepts prior infection as being fully vaccinated.
Particularly when natural immunity comes for "free" and apparently works better, at that point insisting on vaccines for everybody is just completely nonsensical.
Rather shift resources to testing to get costs for that down, which is more work, but also doesn't come with the risk of later discovering "Oops, this vaccine that made people filthy rich turned out to have some nasty long-term side-effects!".
Which is also a very real possibility, considering they've been developed and approved in record time with the population at large acting as subjects for the first non-clinical trials.
The prophylactic costs less than the diagnostic. It has negligible risk of harm. It's a determinable and unambiguous event, unlike trying to verify a possible infection and sustained immune response.
The obvious rational policy decision for public health is to mandate the vaccine for everyone.
Those not previously infected gain immunity. Those previously infected ... either get a not-strictly-necessary injection, or far more likely, a useful booster.
And the administration, diagnostic, and monitoring costs are far lower.
Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191.
The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-...
Previous Covid Prevents Delta Infection Better Than Pfizer Shot
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label.
How soon after you were ill? Aren't the antibodies nigh undetectable XX weeks after you recover?
This was back before tests were widely available. I have genuinely had it twice myself, but people largely have though for the past two years that if they were sick it was COVID.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
I think this will be more relevant to vaccinating kids: If this result holds for kids as well, and considering that Covid is not dangerous for kids, maybe kids are better off getting covid
(Is this the dumbest argument yet? "If you just get COVID, you will have the best protection against COVID!"? I take it the dead people have the best protection to offer yet?)
They recommend it, they don’t mandate it.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advic...
“For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The JCVI’s view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms.
Taking a precautionary approach, this margin of benefit is considered too small to support universal COVID-19 vaccination for this age group at this time. The committee will continue to review safety data as they emerge.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58547659
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful. Note this one:
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
> medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive and distribution server for complete but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The context is important, even if it turns out to be true.
2 ICU prevented admissions / million first doses
87 hospital prevented admissions / million first doses
0.16 ICU prevented admissions / million second doses
6 hospital prevented admissions / million second doses
> Having the vaccine is not compulsory.
> Prof Whitty said an "offer" of vaccination will be made to all children aged 12-15.
> But he said young people and their parents needed to be supported and there should be no stigma attached to their choice.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57888429
Children are at low risk from COVIS
Let’s get the kids vaccinated. It’s the cheapest way out of this thing.
That is FUD and you should be ashamed of yourself. I have listened to scared people trying to blame people that are not vaccinated for the fact that vaccines are not that effective at preventing infection and that mild breakthrough infections are common. Most of it done with rather troubling political undertones. Such is life in US 2021. I don't like it, but I'll not engage directly. Hopefully the FUD will pass.
But obviously the largest percentage of unvaccinated people are children, which do not NEED the vaccine, at least according to the data we have so far. I will not tolerate scapegoating of kids. Please get a grip.
Completely ridiculous.
https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio...
They're not perfect, but arguing they're not that effective is just stupid.
B. Consider that the 'cases ratio' is tainted because of faulty CDC guidance. If you test more aggressively conditioned on vaccination status, you are going to get biased ratios. At this point anything but sampling studies is pretty much worthless in assessing how prevalent breakthrough infections are. We've got to thank CDC for that.
> Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there, all of us fully vaccinated. The next day, our host started to feel sick. The day after that, she tested positive for COVID-19. [...] At this point, 11 of the 15 have tested positive for COVID."
If the vaccines reduce breakthrough infections at 1 : 7 rate, an outbreak incident where 11 : 15 get infected has a probability of about 1 : 1,000,000,000. Rather unlikely, perhaps something else is at play:
> The official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline stated that, since I was fully vaccinated, I didn’t need to do anything different unless I started developing symptoms. I’m an epidemiologist at a major medical research university, which has a dedicated COVID exposure hotline for staff. I called it, and workers said I didn’t need to do anything.
> The CDC announced in May that it was only going to collect data on breakthrough infections that led to hospitalization or death, which are fortunately rare. But that means that outbreaks like ours will fly under the radar.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0804-bre...
Edit: Especially if the ratios do not match ratios calculated in other countries where delta case reduction is around 1 : 2.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
It sounds like you reject the entire concept of public health. That is going to be a bit of a problem when you are engaging in a debate about public health policy.
The burden of proof is on the health authorities to quantify win/win scenarios. Not fly by the seat of their pants, sometimes based on faulty/incomplete data and guesswork. 'First, do no harm'. If you are unsure, then don't do it.
You want to make an R-based argument? What is the contribution of children in the past 4 weeks? Do you have evidence that children shed more covid compared with vaccinated adults? Do you have evidence that R is a constant, will your calculations hold 6 months from now? Are you accounting for the selection effect of leaky vaccines on virus evolutionary trajectory? What is the cumulative 20 year ADE risk?
For worst case scenario, do you have a 20 year study of leaky mRNA vaccines against infectious disease in some animal population? No, we're experimenting on humans in a world's first. There have been vaccine disasters. Fortunately not in humans. Warning: NSFL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
Inaction is not an escape from responsibility or prevent consequences. Doing nothing is sometimes the worst choice.
Also, I haven’t see data on what the R0 is from vaccinated person to vaccinated person with Delta. If it’s above 1 then all we’re doing is creating immense selective pressure for vaccine escape.
I’m fully vaccinated, not anti-vax, and not an expert. This is just my understanding based on what I’ve read.
Emphasis on created
* Most viruses are less infectious than covid, especially delta covid.
* The covid vaccines are novel, targeting a specific protein. Natural immunity targets more than one protein, I've heard up to 28 in case of covid. This should make vaccine escape much harder, as it is significantly more difficult to mutate around 28 proteins at the same time. By 'natural immunity' I mean immunity gained by exposure to the natural pathogen, either through live infection or an inactivated pathogen vaccine.
Can make the same argument for the vaccinated people. Vaccines don’t prevent infection, they reduce symptoms. So by same logic they run around with the infection spreading it to everyone.
Here's the thing - if you are vaccinated and benefiting from less severe infection, you'll be out and about socially and transmitting this. It may be so mild that it would be hard to contact trace and know when to isolate. You may even have a more severe (deadly) variant that your just boosted system doesn't have a problem with. Whereas a naive population would be more prone to be bed-ridden, isolated and not transmitting this more harmful variant.
Then when your immunity wanes from the recent shot (5 months it seems per Israel's experience) this more harmful variant may in fact hurt the vaccinated population if they don't get the next booster in time and the booster isn't formulated for this variant.
That's not how R values work at all. Firstly, an R value of 1.5 and an R value of 5 have wildly different outcomes in terms of controlling spread, and vaccines that can reduce R values can reduce spread even if the R value remains above 1. More to the point, though, "transmission is happening in vaccinated people" doesn't imply that the R value is above 1, and it doesn't look like you've provided any evidence that that's the case, nor does the fact that infections sometimes occur, in and of itself, suggest it.
Only lockdowns brought it back down which creates other problems around immune health in the population. (see NZ for example, RSV is clogging up the hospitals now with young kids who had degraded their immune systems the last year or so with all the hardcore lockdowns there)
And I agree vaccination even with this leaky vaccine is appropriate for vulnerable groups bit it creates a shit storm of hurt down the road when you apply it to an entire population and in the context of an easily mutating virus. See the chicken story: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
Applying it to a hard to mutate virus and the entire population makes total sense - see polio!
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/spain
Is that actually true, though? I'm vaccinated - am I not better off having that vaccine, being less likely to be hospitalized or die even if I get a breakthrough case?
Even if natural immunity via infection is better in every way (no idea if this is true, but suppose it is for the sake of this question), am I not better off having that occur while vaccinated and therefore less likely to die?
It seems as though natural immunity is great if it doesn't kill you. And even if the death rate is low, 1% of a large number is still a lot of dead people. We could reduce that number and just deal with the less severe breakthrough cases.
Source?
I think we should be wary of those "easy way outs", because nothing seems to indicate that vaccines are a panacea. They are of course the best that us adults can do right now to protect ourselves, but if restrictions get too relaxed simultaneously, then we ve just created pressure on the virus to create a variant that will escape completely. This is a marathon and we are not yet done. a combination of vaccines with distancing will be required for a long time. Humans are adaptible, the earlier we start the better.
(Also, we shouldn't argue in absolutes, it s not going to fix anything)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...
In the beginning all the panic was about the "most vulnerable" in the population, while the young ones apparently could deal with it fine enough.
A year and a half later and we are rushing to vaccinate the youngest ones, even tho it doesn't prevent them from spreading and they have great chances to get trough the disease without the vaccine already.
The ultimate goal here seems to be to just get everybody vaccinated, possibly even yearly.
Now we have enough for everyone and it turns out kids are spreading it to each other. It's true the vaccine doesn't totally stop someone from spreading the vaccine, but it does help.
It's pre-print FWIW
Exposure to this years seasonal flu will give better immunity to this year’s seasonal flu, than the vaccine for last year’s seasonal flu will give to this year’s seasonal fly. One day we’ll be able to say “Duh” in response to annual COVID flavors.
There will be vaccines specifically made for the delta variant and others.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
“Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in our cohort.”
At the moment, this does not justify mandating the vaccine for those previously infected.
At the same time though, I can imagine it would be really difficult/expensive to verify the proof of previous infection vs. verifying vaccination, and there could be the appearance of incentivizing anti-vaxxers to go infect themselves with COVID.
I thought the process was straightforward, convenient, and cheap.
In short, yes, this is called good public health policy. It's not merely a simple blood test and it's not something just any lab could do. Anti-body testing is finicky, expensive, time-consuming, and not as reliable as has_vaccine (boolean). So in other words, we are going to make your medical decision for you because not doing so puts the health of many others at risk and you don't have the right to put countless others at risk. A simple utilitarian analysis yields this as the obvious solution. It is worth sacrificing your personal preference at no risk to yourself to save potentially many lives.
Even the vaccinated are at risk when a large percentage of the population runs around unvaccinated, because each transmission increases the risk of a mutation that gives rise to a vaccine-resistant strain with a higher death rate. Then we'd be back at square one. In the worst case scenario it could kill off the majority of the population.
This situation is exactly analogous to someone in the food industry saying they should have a religious exemption for hand-washing. The bad effects of allowing such an exemption (people dying from food poisoning and catching diseases from food) aren't worth the small sacrifice of simply having to wash your hands before preparing food. With good reason, we ignore people who say "there are microchips in the soap" and still make them wash their hands or seek employment elsewhere.
The situation is analogous to making someone wash their hands who has already washed their hands.
AKA it's super easy and simplifies things
> Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”
i have normal flu booster shots ever year -- and that's fine. why not for covid?
The flu booster shot is actually a full vaccination based on the leading 2-3 variants they predict will be dominant in the coming flu season.
Also, flu vaccines are based on weakened viral particles, not mRNA transcriptions of key viral proteins... so the two really aren't comparable.
Thankfully this is changing. Moderna is entering trials for an mRNA vaccine for seasonal flu. The faster development time for mRNA vaccines will mean more time to study the emerging flu strains before committing to which to include in the booster.
Being less politically loaded, perhaps such studies could shed insight on COVID epidemiology and help improve policy.
This is, however, slightly unfair. You can't ethically have a rigorous controlled double-blinded study on infection rates of people who have already had SARS-CoV-2. This would require infecting some people with SARS-CoV-2, making others incorrectly think they had been infected, and then letting all of them go about their lives post-"recovery". The ethical problems are obvious.
That said, I'd frankly be fine with letting people with (state-)government-verified past COVID cases act as though they have been vaccinated for a period after recovery (not sure what the period should be). It would be one way to get the next best kind of data (an observational study of vaccinated and recovered patients). It would also incentivize people to get tested (so they get that government-verified past case). I'm not sure it's worth building that bureaucracy, but if that compromise were proposed I'd happily accept.
- COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose).
- We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
- We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe. Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals. Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue, you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
My post was about the logistical and cost problems associated with certifying people with natural immunity, and why that doesn't make sense unless you believe the vaccine is unsafe.
I'm arguing against this particular point not the others.
I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who have already been infected the drug companies excluded those people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying here? When have we ever taken the position of prove its dangerous before you try to stop me from putting this in your body. Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
Except we now have data from the population itself, including people previously infected with COVID-19. We therefore do know it is safe. I think what you're saying is that you want to ignore inconvenient data and use outdated arguments.
> Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
You could have made that argument at one point, but you cannot now. We have enough population level data to call it safe beyond the studies that also showed that it was safe. It is baseless.
That's not a valid reason at all.
> We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
We also lacked vaccine quantity, and many people still do.
> We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
Meh, that's a very weak reason considering it's a small incremental cost to vaccine passports and covid testing.
> The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe.
That's just your 'implicit assumption'.
> Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
Except vaccine efficacy is much lower than natural immunity and vaccine efficacy wears off over time. We literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
> Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals.
Your comment here is a distraction. You literally haven't brought up a single fact or data point on vaccine vs natural immunity efficacy.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
How is it a settled issue when there is literally zero data on long-term effects?
> you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
Cool story bud.
- If the vaccine is safe.
- If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logistically).
- If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense. You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
> Furthermore we literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
The "but efficacy" response is confusing at best. If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people, it can still be the logical course of action at population scales for the other stated benefits (logistical, tracking, and cost).
Something you don't know. If you want a sincere discussion you might want to at least admit the obvious.
> If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logically).
First of all you don't know if it's cheaper. Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is. I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
> If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why do you keep with the 'if, if , if'? I did not make any assertions or assumptions that intersect with your ifs whatsoever. All of your 'ifs' are completely irrelevant, and I'm guessing by the fact that you start explaining every supposed hole with an 'if', that you understand that you can't even verify the validity of these supposed holes you found.
> Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense.
Because natural immunity is more effective and some people do not want to get the vaccine?
> You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
- We do not know the long-term side effects of mrna vaccines.
- MRNA vaccine efficacy is lower than natural immunity, and all data points to MRNA vaccines wearing off significantly after 6 months.
- Some people may not want to get the vaccine for other reasons, the actual reasons are completely irrelevant - in a free society people get to choose what biologically active substances they inject into their own bodies.
> You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
So looks like you did notice one of the reasons I gave you? Interesting that you quoted it, yet completely ignored the substance and failed to challenge or respond to the actual point.
> If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people,
Stop with the 'ifs'. If you don't know the validity of your own point, don't make the point.
> for the other stated benefits (logical, tracking, and cost).
These other stated benefits coming directly from your imagination right? Or are these the 'if' kind of benefits?
'IF the vaccines are a perfect solution, we should forcibly vaccinate everyone.' - cool story bud
Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine costs $16/dose in the US today.
> Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is.
Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these. The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
> I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
> I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
But they don't add up. Your "list" boils down to:
- It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
- The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
- It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
You've made zero arguments for why a cheaper and simpler safe vaccine is inferior to a more expensive and complex antibody test regime. That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
You're ignoring economies of scale, ignoring basic economics (increase supply - price goes down), ignoring the fact that vaccines require 2 dozes - and potentially more, as well as ignoring the additional costs of administering vaccines multiple times. Also, I would like to see where you're getting those numbers from, since a quick google search directly contradicts your numbers:
> The U.S. government will pay Pfizer Inc nearly $2 billion for 100 million additional doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to bolster its supply as the country grapples with a nationwide spike in infections.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-pf...
> Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these.
I literally just proposed it to your face 2 times in a row.
> The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
Oh, look at you, so concerned about the poorest citizen that you want to explicitly deny them the possibility to pay for their own tests and force them to get vaccinated against their will. What a champion of the poor.
> Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ? Do you want to respond to my actual statement or just continue with these weak strawmen?
> It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
> The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
Another strawman completely unrelated to anything I've said.
> - It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
Do you see the words 'safe' or 'unsafe' anywhere in my 3rd point? No? Are you going to continue making these fallacious, insincere strawmen, or are you secure enough with your beliefs to actually defend them honestly?
> That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
It's pretty cringy how dishonest you are tbh.
No, my entire argument is built on economies of scale. Which favor a vaccine for every person, rather than an antibody test for a subset of a subset.
> Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ?
You argued that people should be able to pay for and provide their own tests. That's self-certification. If you're arguing for the state to do it instead, then we're back to square one (i.e. that the logistics don't favor it).
> For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
You cannot argue these two thing together in good faith:
- Natural immunity provides long term immunity, without long term data.
- We cannot know on the vaccine because we lack long term data.
Pick one or the other. Not both.
> I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
So you didn't make any except that same one in every single one of your comments?
"Take this medical treatment you don't want because I believe in economies of scale"
"My body my choice, and you can put your economy of scale wherever you want but not in my bloodstream - I'd rather not since I've already had covid"
"bbbut I believe in economies of scale!"
the end
Forcing people to take medical procedures they don't want might be last step in a long chain of things, which include a test for natural immunity due to presence of antibodies.
Where did I say 'provide their own tests'? I'll wait for a specific reference. That's about the 5th time you directly misquoted and misrepresented what I said. Liar.
Here's how it works:
You go to a government-certified testing location. You pay for your test and get tested. Which part confuses you so much?
> You cannot argue these two thing together in good faith:
You cannot reference what someone said while at the same time completely changing the wording. I don't understand how you still don't get that. You are just incredibly dishonest. Holy shit.
> - Natural immunity provides long term immunity, without long term data.
You realise that the ONLY data we have, as cited in the article of this very thread, shows that natural immunity is more effective than vaccines? Do you need me to provide you with more references? Will you admit that you are a dishonest liar if I do?
> We cannot know on the vaccine because we lack long term data.
Yes, we do not know the long term effects of the vaccine. Do you disagree? I mean, you already stated multiple times that the vaccine is fully safe while also indirectly admitting that we can't possibly know.... which one is it bud?
> Pick one or the other. Not both.
I think I won't pick either one of your dishonest strawmen. How about that?
> So you didn't make any except that same one in every single one of your comments?
'The same one in every single comment' being 'that same one' which you can't even directly quote a single time? I wonder why that is? Maybe it's because you are a liar?
the whole argument he's making has operates on the presumtion that the vacccine is unsafe, contrary to mainstream scientific opinion. Then the only evidence he has to back that up is lack of evidence on long term effects.
But...the type of which would potentially appease him is only possible with a time machine, so it's literally impossible to appease him
The natural immunity workflow:
Do I feel sick?
No -> Go about your day
Yes -> Stay at home
Citation? The linked article quotes medical experts who say the opposite.
Does the calculus change in the countries where vaccines are basically nonexistant? Yes, of course. But vaccines in the US are as nearly easy to get as Gatorade now, and have been for several months. We spent many billions making it that way - we don't need to turn around and start spending even more money on pox party incentives.
So a marginal cost of $24. Folks with natural immunity will have a stronger reaction to the vaccine, but let’s be conservative. Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time?
Full disclosure: happily vaccinated. The vaccine is safe, but it’s dammed inconvenient.
Other rich countries solve that problem by letting you take time off if you're sick.
Even if working minimum wage.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...
This isn't generally a reason to avoid vaccination for most of the population, however the risk / benefit ratio may be different for some sub-populations. In particular there has been a higher than expected rate of adverse cardiac events for adolescent males.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
So particularly for those adolescents who have already recovered from infection and have no other risk factors we should have a scientific discussion about whether vaccination makes sense from an evidence-based medicine perspective. Unfortunately the issue has been so politicized that any suggestion of caution often gets misinterpreted as being anti-vaccination.
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...
So natural immunity didn't make sense to consider in the vaccination plan. It might make sense to consider in the booster plan though - if you've had a positive Covid test before or after being vaccinated, consider the later of those two actions to be a booster, and don't get another one. That would free up more doses for the rest of the world.
[1]We have a large amount of vaccine that has/is expiring shortly but there isn't enough time before the expiration date to redirect them overseas.
There is little point getting knickers twisted over small percentage wins when a large population (children) are unvaccinated.
I don't think this is a distraction, it's a difference in threat models.
Suppose a government official said that everyone should install a particular app on their phones. It's safe, they say. They ran it through antivirus checks and it came up clean. They measured performance of the phone and didn't see any regressions. All the old apps work normally. Major government security agencies are recommending everyone to install the app. Wouldn't it be normal to be suspicious? I mean, that app could do anything.
There are theories about the vaccine that are ridiculous. No, it doesn't have microchips. And so on. But on the other hand, the vaccine has been politicized by Republicans and Democrats alike. Democrats have a lot vested in the vaccine's success; if it turned out it had some serious flaw that was papered over because the benefits were perceived to be greater than the risks, it'd make them looks bad. In the same way that the operators of Fukushima Daiichi looked bad when their reactor failed, or BP looked bad when the blowout preventer didn't work. These are things where the experts said it was fine, but it wasn't. If you believe that government officials will cover up inconvenient facts for political reasons and your main source on the safety of the vaccines is government officials, then a rational choice is not to trust the vaccine.
If microchips aren't a realistic threat, what sort of realistic flaws might the vaccine have? Maybe it elevates risk of cancer or dementia twenty years down the line. Maybe it affects fertility in ways we haven't tested. And so on. Really we have no idea what the long term risks could be, we just know that the short and long term risks of Covid are pretty bad.
All that said, I got my two doses of the vaccine as soon as it was available, and I hope everyone else does the same. I'm just saying that given that some random person has no capacity to evaluate the safety of a vaccine on their own and supposing they have reasons to doubt that the people presented to them as experts regarding the safety of the vaccine would tell them the truth if there were real safety concerns with the vaccine, I can understand why they wouldn't want to get it. And I don't know what argument I could give that would change their minds. For the ones who've already gotten Covid and presumably have at least some reasonable amount of immunity, maybe there isn't really anything to be gained by trying to convince them.
The political reason that natural immunity “doesn’t count” indeed is not directly about medical reality.
To say things are political is almost an insult these days—I don’t mean it that way at all. But policy has medical implications, and so politics is part of it. This policy-decision is being made because there have been political movements since early on to do variations on “Let 'er rip,” that is, to allow COVID-19 to run rampant until a herd immunity develops, while maybe implementing decontamination procedures in nursing homes instead or so. The most notable statement to this effect was the Great Barrington Declaration but of course there have been smaller ones that hit wider spread.
Policy needs to factor in things like the huge early oppositions to shutdowns, the huge oppositions to masking despite it being absurdly effective for how cheap it is... there remain very strong political forces in this divided country which overlook the significance of younger people with COVID flooding the emergency rooms and overtaxing our limited health workers (NYT today reports that in the US South, they are at this level right now), and the death that can come from this, simply because the danger for young people is usually considerably smaller when those hospitals are operating normally. (See India for a cautionary tale, there.)
Given this political reality, ‘vaccinate everyone’ is a political countermeasure meant to create a potential-energy-barrier to lying. It’s not medical advice, it’s public policy. Lying to say ‘Yeah I was COVID-exposed but it wasn’t bad enough to go to the hospital’ is very very cheap. Forging a CDC vaccination card takes a couple hours of time right now and opens you up to some fraud risks—it’s not a huge cost but if it’s higher than the cost of just going and getting vaccinated, there is a hope that vaccination will win out.
What if an unvaccinated (by personal choice) person comes down with COVID and has to be hospitalized or - worse - put into ICU. Do you think they would be OK if doctors, faced with the crunch of beds, place them into a second tier, behind all the breakthrough cases? Hospitals do not do that currently, but this is not unheard of (e.g. bumping smokers and alcoholic patients in organ donation queues).
I am willing to accept this is a personal choice if people making that choice accept responsibility for it.
Let's make it a little more topical: Both people were told not to play with the gun and that there were insufficient ICU beds. The first person still played with the gun and shot himself and another person. This was a personal choice he made. His luck was against him (and the person he shot).
Let's make it more topical still: The two people were told, "Look, we know you want to play with guns. We really don't want you to. Receiving treatment for gunshot wounds is less likely to lead to long life than simply not getting shot, and we have other illnesses we need to treat. Here's an additional incentive: if we don't have sufficient medical resources to treat everyone, the people who ignore this warning will get treated after those who don't." Yes, this is coercion, inasmuch as it is influencing their decision, but under this definition of coercion, coercion hardly seems like something to worry about, certainly not as much as getting shot.
Should vaccine refusal then result in increased premiums, or increased coinsurance for covid-related care? How many people would make the choice if they had to bear even part of the expected value of their increased medical costs themselves?
Although I don't know of any insurance companies that have rates for people that have not undergone certain medical procedures. That sounds unethical to me.
Personal choice goes against that, because many people's personal choices will be selfish or convenient to them while putting other people in harm's way. Within a large society, we must be cognizant of the likely impact of our decisions, but history shows that most people will not do so, and therefore must be compelled, legally, to take actions which are for the best of society.
Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal, not personal level, with the goal of ensuring the national survives existential challenges (of which COVID may be one).
That's one philosophy of governance. I believe it to be fundamentally incorrect. But that's your philosophy and your view on this topic stems from that. I get your point, I just disagree wholeheartedly.
I have a right to be selfish. I owe no obligation to anyone else that I have not voluntarily entered into. If you want to redefine "putting other people in harms way" to include breathing the air around me without getting a medical procedure you can, but it is wrong IMO.
We aren't talking about how things are, we are talking about how things should be, specifically, whether there should be vaccine mandates or not. Other existing violations of rights are wrong also.
So it is fundamentally about philosophy of governance. You believe society should come first, individuals can be compelled to benefit society even potentially at great cost to themselves, and that a person is morally wrong for not wanting to go along with that. I believe that it is morally wrong to expect a person to value anyone over themselves that they have not chosen to, or to be compelled to do anything on behalf of someone else.
Liberty is incredibly broad.if you're approach to the constitution (which I think many today share) is that you may restrict anything that isn't specifically mentioned then you are missing the whole point. Eventually aspects of life/liberty that you hold important will be restricted by those who share your approach.
Else, you run the risk of being infected, not knowing it, passing it onto other people who "have made a personal choice", involuntary manslaughtering them (unless you're religious, then you've biblically murdered them); or, alternatively, you run the risk of ending up in the ICU, and now somebody who did get the vaccine now needs that ICU bed, and they die because you're wasting a perfectly good ICU slot because you "made a personal choice."
Your rights end where the rights of others begin, this is the fundamental rule of modern western society above all others. Be very careful when you think that doesn't apply to you, not all mistakes can be corrected.
Oh please. The hyperbole is getting real old.
If you know that you feel sick, and haven’t been vaccinated, yet go to work at a nursing home and end up spreading a breakthrough infection that kills an immunocompromised resident, is that not manslaughter? How is it different from knowingly getting in a car when intoxicated, and then causing a deadly accident?
Considering you can be contagious before you feel sick, I think the point is even more valid.
I don't have the slightest idea. It would be like making sugar or alcohol illegal as it merely involves the person wearing the seatbelt or helmet.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-53511877
That said, allowing civil suits to punish people that gave you a virus that killed you, would be effective to keep both vaxed and unvaxxed careful and staying at home while sick. Hard to prove where you got it, but just a few successful suits will keep people honest.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02187-1
Mea culpa, though: the chart I remember was of cases not spread/fan-out. I guess it is pretty hard to judge who is spreading it and who is not, in the public. Most articles tend to measure viral shedding or load as an indicator, which does support my stance, but that's science journalism which has been wrong a lot lately. I won't ask any HN reader to make a conclusion based on what I claimed.
IMHO, unless you’re a hermit, and excluding certain other extremely rare edge cases, the only moral choice is taking it.
And walking around after that still spreading the virus because you wouldn't feel the symptoms. The vaccinated people look to be the main source of infection these days.
And I don’t think there’s any evidence that vaccinated people have higher viral loads with less symptoms - that would be extremely surprising if true. I understand that vaccinated people can have high viral loads in breakout cases, but presumably in those cases they’re symptomatic - I don’t recall seeing any analysis of this.
Please feel free to prove me wrong.
When people appeal to morals it is an immediate big red sign for me as their appeal most probably have no backing or even goes directly against the facts, just like back in the USSR.
I agree if you haven’t had it previously you should get it, but that’s not what this study is examining.
well that's very loaded, as in, if they're wrong to the point of having long term damage to your body, then probably..don't just get it...right? albeit, we've seen no proof that this is the case at all thus far.
The dilemma is "should I support the public experts even if their approach might have some minor flaws, or should I dissent and risk feeding credibility into their opponents that are prolonging this pandemic and getting innocent people killed as they clog up the hospital system".
This is a definite case where "perfect is the enemy of the good".
Then, you submit to constant tracking. All of a sudden things one could never have imagined just a couple of years ago become subject to whether a some unaccountable authority gives you permission.
And running entire population through antibody test just to find, in most cases, that you still need to administer the vaccine is just wasteful.
In a country as large as US it would be enough to test probably one in 10 thousand people to get accurate statistics.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...
Unfortunately that never really happened in the US. There were a few small seroprevalence studies in limited areas at specific times but nothing consistent on a nationwide basis.
Also note that there is more to immunity than antibodies, so assaying antibody levels alone will underestimate the level of immunity in the population. We should also be testing memory cell activity now that a test is approved.
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...
In Israel a high antibody blood test gives you a "vaccine passport" for 6 months.
...to get that, you sign up for the blood test using your government ID # (SSN for the US), the government gets your results before you do, and the government issues you an encrypted barcode that can only be decrypted by a government built mobile app that restaurants or stadiums have. They scan it and compare to your own ID
Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government database?
We could only wish
Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
For antibody status, you have to do an antibody test, which is strictly more complex/expensive than a COVID vaccine (it took 3 days when I got it done), so it's not viable at population scale.
It's similar to the reason that monoclonal antibody therapy is not a scalable treatment for COVID infection - better to minimize the chance of needing such treatment by just getting vaccinated.
It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten - and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you fill in your own name at home.
> Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government database?
> We could only wish
No we don't. Americans are VERY against that kind of thing. Plus Social Security numbers are not supposed to be used as a national ID - that's not what they are for.
Not to mention how would you even do that? A Social Security card is not ID - you can say whatever number you want when getting vaccinated, no one would know.
> Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want that. Don't confuse the two.
That's absolutely true, because the government response has been disorganized and bullshit. It's also why vax passes won't work; because the records are probably trash.
> No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want that. Don't confuse the two.
No, we're really shit at it. Everybody who has been vaccinated would love for the government to have kept track of it, and would love to be able to ask for or give an easy proof of it. In my personal experience, the unvaccinated are also liars. They would, of course, not want it to be tracked, because they would like to continue to lie.
If only these blocks cooperated!
A red herring if I have ever seen one. Assuming for a moment the premise that one must be forced to establish their immunity to a particular disease before being allowed to leave their homes, all that would be required would be to allow individuals who believe they've had COVID-19 and do not wish to get the vaccine to be able use their test results as proof instead of having to show a vaccine card.
Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire population take specific tests.
But, the point of these vax passes is for all the authoritarian OCD afflicted Munchausen-by-proxy patients to demonstrate that they can force their preferences on everyone else just like it was the case with masks, distancing, no school, lockdown, etc.
The red herring is replying to someone saying that a lot of tests would have to be done with a denial that people would be forced to take tests.
Also, this would require that some authority would need to have those people take specific tests, monitored and tracked in a specific way. Allowing people to claim to have had it based on their own documentation and choice of tests is like allowing job applicants to supply their own drug test results: not completely dependable.
I'd be all for those people getting a vax pass. I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow, and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
Nice.
> and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
Feel free to isolate yourself as long as you wish, but it sounds like you are feeling a little envious that other people were able to have fuller lives during this period.
You might want to read https://amzn.to/3hxFCFa
Also, note the comment I am replying to said:
>> > running entire population through antibody test just to find
So, I don't know what game you are playing.
And then they did not wait until we got rid of the virus but were quick to tell people to get out and enjoy as soon as the infection rates fell a little bit.
If you look at this algorithm, it works like a thermostat. A dumb regulator designed TO REGULATE TEMPERATURE AT A CONSTANT LEVEL. Yes, that's what the policy ensured -- that we are keeping infection rates.
Not that this is important now. We are living with consequences of these decisions and the best we could do would be to vaccinate as many people as possible as fast as possible to prevent as many unnecessary tragedies.
So it's about tracking people so the government can more easily keep the public safe. Let's give them all the power in the world to keep us safer!
We should be demanding OPTIONS. Even from a pragmatic standpoint, this would convince more people. When they mandate only one thing, it's as if they are pushing towards a dictatorship just for our own safety. How convenient.
I'm sorry, but people are a bit too eager to go there just because of fear. We were in this situation with the Patriot Act and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Governments have a track record of doing this!
DR. FAUCI: "I don't have a really firm answer for you on that."
https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1436417459314171904
"You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that. That's something that we're going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response.
The one thing that paper from Israel didn't tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural infection, what's the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine? So it is conceivable that you got infected, you're protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time.
So, I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said."
There are 15 large-scale studies.
Every single one demonstrates that natural immunity is at least as protective as the jab.
And depending on when the study was done protection is shown for over 10 months (basically however long as whatever data was available). Many of the papers logically extend the protection to lifetime in their conclusions.
https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-15-studies-that-indi...
> David Rubenstein: And the best way for me to prevent getting an infectious disease and having to have you as my doctor is, what, um, wearing a mask?
> Anthony Fauci: [smiling] No, no, no.
> David Rubenstein: Somebody — I can see they're ready to sneeze or cough — walk away?
> Anthony Fauci: You avoid all the paranoid aspects and do something positive. A: good diet. B: you don't smoke, I know. I know you don't drink, at least not very much, so that's pretty good. Get some exercise; I know that you don't get as much exercise as you should...
> David Rubenstein: That's correct.
> Anthony Fauci: ...get good sleep. I think that the normal, low-tech, healthy things are the best thing you can do, David, to stay healthy.
Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
On the other hand places with good vaccination rates are reimposing lockdowns and mask mandates. Quite a few public events are getting canceled or rescheduled.
By any metric the COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best breakeven in terms of cost effectiveness. Since the risk of COVID is lower now both due to the vaccine and also just our knowledge of treatment, any lockdown/mandate response will have a lower cost effectiveness.
IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case) and end all other restrictions. Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
It would be better to just do a vaccine/verified immunity passport like program but that is practically impossible in the US. Too many people won't like/use the governments app including both the normal conspiracy nuts but also the privacy-minded HN crowd. It also does not help that there are half a dozen passport like apps from insurance companies and various government agencies.
Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
> Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12.
We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-ris...
https://archive.is/ixG5G
The background here is that hospitalization from covid increases dramatically with age. Teenagers are at low risk of hospitalization from covid themselves, but I expect that vaccination would still reduce the risk of teenagers transmitting the virus to others.
there is a large range of poor outcomes that are not "hospitalized" if they get covid. they are susceptible to getting long covid and also to bring it home and potentially infect their parents unknowingly. just because one risk is higher doesn't mean the sum of the other risks suddenly don't matter.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
As are the vast majority of COVID cases in young boys and girls.
By that logic, my investment strategy of invest in index funds (goes up over time) is inferior to yours of invest in lottery tickets (but we only consider tickets that won.)
Link to (as yet not peer-reviewed) study: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
> Meanwhile, the risk of a healthy boy needing hospital treatment owing to Covid-19 in the next 120 days is 26.7 per million. This means the risk they face from heart complications is 6.1 times higher than that of hospitalisation.
It would seem more "apples to apples" to compare rates of hospitalization due to myo/pericarditis to hospitalization due to COVID, or rates of diagnosis of each condition.
The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Unfortunate regardless.
Do we want to see it? I've just found out about the this boy, who died in April:
https://twitter.com/rgvrunner01
How did I find out about it? It's trending on Twitter because the father was on Alex Jones.
I've looked at the VAERS reports of 16-year-old males that died in 2021. There are four cases (one suicide), none match this one. While it's likely that the boy died due to a pre-existing condition, his case should still show up on VAERS (even suicides are included).
The takeaway is that if you hear about something like this, it's not mainstream media. Nobody wants to "harm" the vaccination campaign. Unfortunately, suppressing such cases further erodes trust in media/authorities, which has the opposite of the intended effect. Also, VAERS data appears to be incomplete, rendering risk estimates unreliable.
That's not what the study says. They compared all reports of possible cardiac events in the days following vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine myocarditis.
This is the conclusion from the study:
> Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence.
Full text: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v... )
They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs, but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in teenagers.
No, the CAEs in the vaccine study included a lot of transient issues that didn't require hospitalization. Most cases of myocarditis resolve on their own relatively quickly.
Myocarditis is common after COVID infections, too. They're just less likely to be explicitly noted because everything gets chalked up to COVID and the patient is already resting anyway, which is the primary treatment for myocarditis. It's not clear why the authors didn't try to compare against that.
Serology is a thing, sure. But two points:
Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious.
Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bouncer checking vaccination status at the door is not likely to know anything about serology. The same goes for people eager not to get Covid and the people eager not to accidentally kill grandma. Every bit of complexity is met with complaints and confusion; every change in regulation makes it harder for people to know what to do and therefore less likely to do it.
In some future pandemic might we want to create a two-pathway system? E.g., such that there's a government-issued "safe to mingle" digital passport? Sure. That seems like a great thing to start preparing now so it's ready the next time a disease hops the species barrier. For now, though, I think we should stick with the current plan: vaccination for (almost) everybody.
The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be concerned that the card itself exists.
FYI: The current legislation requires weekly testing or proof of vaccination, but it doesn't actually impose the vaccine on anyone who doesn't want it.
Fuck off and die somewhere else, seems to be the general sentiment of people I know.
And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.
> Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic
I specifically don't see how your hypothesis works: "if we allow for natural immunity, it will confuse people and some of them will die". Presumably the failure mode is that some of the "bouncers" of society are too dumb to understand "vaccine OR natural immunity" and will thus reject more people than necessary (either the vaccinated or the naturally immune) and thus our risk of spread will be slightly reduced at the expense of our liberties. In any case, I have a hard time imagining large failure rates here, and the risk associated with any given error is very small (a given failure doesn't significantly increase anyone's risk of serious illness or death).
No, this is just not correct. Compulsory vaccination has been a thing for hundreds of years.
We need simple rules that we can apply on a massive scale quickly. The US is a country where more than half of people can't work out if a 1/3 pound burger is bigger or smaller than a 1/4 pound burger.
Single-mindedness is not a rationale for imposing medical treatment on people.
I'll circle back to my driver's license analogy - the bouncer does not need to know that I was docked 3 points from my driving test for failing to signal - he only needs to know that some granting authority, with expertise in the realm being licensed, granted me the license. (or that I'm old enough to enter the bar, etc.)
When 1500 Americans are dying every day of a preventable disease, it is absolutely reasonable to take feasibility of enforcement into account. And enforcement has to be done where the greatest risk of spreading occurs. People might not like getting carded at a restaurant, but there is a point where lots of people are dying and it makes sense, right? We card for alcohol, we card for driving, and those we do every day.
I would think someone who tested positive should be able to get a ca state qr code. It seems the science supports that. Having each validator check that the test is the right test, and the doctor and hospital exist, seems not feasible, but getting a state qr code - then using that at the point of enforcement - seems practical.
But I must remind that, at least in this particular conversation, we're talking about people who've just had the illness in question. We don't know how many of the 1,500/day are people who have previously contracted the illness or else contracted the illness from someone else who previously caught the illness, but in all likelihood the proportion of such cases is likely very low. So referencing the 1,500/day likely has very little relevance to a discussion of natural immunity.
The difference is that the serum test is risk free. If I knew I was already immune, I would not have gotten the vaccine to be completely honest, no matter how small the risk is. For the same reason I don't get other safe and effective treatments for diseases I do not have.
In what way?
Right now there are already at least two pathways. You have a vaccination card or a negative test card within an allowable date range.
The bigger issues are privacy, etc. Not, "Oh no, there are two options! I'm so confused."
I asked and they may have a city agent scanning cards — then you simply stand in line behind someone and see whether or not they are scanning it versus just visually inspecting. If the latter — you are good to go
https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article253708748.htm... (Unvaccinated fitness guru gets COVID and spends 47 days intubated. ‘I made a mistake’)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Phillips_(author)
Some people love to gamble.
There exist people who are risk averse, risk neutral, or risk loving (in an economic or psychologic sense): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_aversion
If the worst thing a vaccine mandate is doing is preventing you from getting your jollies from being an idiot I see no problem with enforcing a mandate.
Not the specific guy, but... https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/half-people-did-had-no-11063...
One critical difference is that there will be legal consequences if you're using a fake proof of vaccination.
Note that it is pretty tricky to define natural immunity in a legal way since there is no good scientific consensus on the correlation between some proxy of natural immunity (e.g. antibody level) and its effectiveness against infection/transmission.
The obvious solution is to use "positive COVID or serological test" as the legal standard.
True, and the obvious example is that kids don't die of covid, or so little that it is hard to make statistics. For just that reason, vaccines have to be incredibly safe (basically zero risk) for the risk/benefit to be acceptable.
If it wasn't for the risk of transmission to adults there would be no reason for vaccinating kids.
There is a difference. Covid is 10 times more lethal than the average flu. It's not always that they can't either, it's also that their body won't develop enough antibodies.
Main reason for lockdown is so that your hospitals can keep functioning, or in the case of New Zealand, so that you can go back to complete normal life except for travel outside the country.
The vaccine is not important for people under 18.
Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid. [0]
Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19. [1]
[0] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex...
[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-ris...
Edit: I'm not going to respond to every comment below that points out that it's extremely rare, other than to ask that you compare that chance to the chance of hospitalization due to covid, which according to the link above is less likely.
It’s still considered extremely rare post vaccination.
This is comparing rates of myocarditis vs rates of hospitalization, which is two different things.
We would need to see rates of myocarditis due to vaccination vs rates of myocarditis due to natural infection.
Heart inflammation is not typical in children or adolescents. This is not based on self-reporting.
Are you aware that UK regulators have not approved the vaccine for 12-15 year-olds (or any children younger), based on this risk, specifically?
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-58438669
So there’s a preprint stating that COVID-19 causes myocarditis at a higher rate than via vaccination. So it’s not quite clear to me whether or not, if looking at it from a risk of myocarditis, that not getting vaccinated is the better choice.
And according to the JCVI, it still is marginally beneficial to get vaccinated over not getting vaccinated. So it’s not like they are advising that natural infection is safer than vaccination.
“For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The JCVI’s view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms.” [1]
[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advic...
"The medium- to long-term effects are unknown and long-term follow-up is being conducted.
Given the very low risk of serious COVID-19 disease in otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year olds, considerations on the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very finely balanced and a precautionary approach was agreed." [1]
As a concerned parent, this is how I will be approaching vaccination for my sons.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/jcvi-issues-updated-advic...
EDIT: speling
The vast majority of people who visit a doctor are diagnosed with no hospitalization and the recommended course for most myocarditis cases is not hospitalization. If the recommendation were hospitalization then many more infected young males would be hospitalized based on myocarditis diagnosis.
In this case experts have pointed out that the analysis is wrong because it doesn't compare mycardius in the control group even through we know covid also causes that. Nor do they consider harm, despite vaccine caused mycardious being mild.
These are severe enough cases to require medical attention.
Journalists from the same publication (Rolling Stone) were responsible for the whole fabricated "A Rape On Campus" article as well. I would not give them the respectable journalist moniker anymore except in jest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus
https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-case-rates-vaccination-...
Kill pathogens more quickly, you'll be infectious for less time, and whoever do you infect will have a lower viral load.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br...
What use is it to compare two different things? Those heart problems aren't all hospitalizations. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are more likely to have heart problems than teenage boys who get vaccinated. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized than teenage boys who get vaccinated. Many young men have died of COVID-19, and none have died of the vaccine.
> Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid. [0]
More than twice as many died in August as in July or as in August of last year. With Delta and school in session, expect this number to go up for September.
Where is the comparison between myocarditis induced by vaccination vs natural infection?
[0] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v...
“Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.”
https://twitter.com/ID_ethics/status/1437876328640876544
Better breakdowns by age and gender show a risk of myocarditis after two doses as high as 1 in 3000:
https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1437067899089219589
This number has been steadily increasing, as time passes. Current consensus seems to be that one dose is the optimal tradeoff between risk and reward for young children.
> Is it your assumption that all myocarditis cases are as serious as a COVID hospitalization?
Yes. It is not an assumption. Myocarditis is not a mild condition, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
> With or without treatment, the "clinical course appears mild"
> Patients commonly received NSAIDs, steroids, and colchicine for treatment of vaccine-associated myocarditis.
These are.. not comparable to typical COVID hospitalization outcomes, are they?
The (very) few kids who end up hospitalized for Covid have serious co-morbidities that are easy to pre-screen (e.g. severe obesity). For these children, a full vaccination is recommended. Nobody is arguing about that. For healthy kids, it's very different.
It's great that most kids with myocarditis don't end up in the ICU, but being put in the hospital to get hooked up to an IV and an MRI scan is not a good outcome for an otherwise healthy kid who would would have -- at most -- a head cold from SARS-CoV2.
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/what-does-it-mean-to-be-ant...
How many avoided death because they had good health care?
One of my pet peeves about this pandemic is how death metrics keep being pushed around, as if it was not a big deal.
If this pandemic had hit before we had modern health care facilities, it would have been comparable to the great pandemics in history.
Besides, what happened to the children that didn't die? What sort of issues this could cause that may affect their development? We don't know, so we should play it safe.
> from the vaccine
There isn't just one vaccine. There are several. If one is potentially causing issues, use another.
Also, what about heart problems from Covid-19, even among those not hospitalized?
I can't read your paywalled article, but I've found another link. The 'heart problems' are myocarditis, which in most cases is mild and _resolves_ by itself.
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
If you are going play that game, you also need to ask how many died between March - June 2020 because of panicked doctors intubating everyone left and right with no one around to advocate for the patients.
Not sure what this is implying, or what kind of advocacy would have made a better call. Doctors intubated people (despite a shortage of ventilators and the difficulty of triage) because the patients were struggling to breathe, and given available data the medical profession though it would help those patients recover. They've since learned more about the outcomes from this particular disease and when a ventilator is appropriate. Your comment makes it sound as though any idiot off the street could tell who should be on a ventilator and who should not.
The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the pandemic.
Without the teenagers vaccinated, that's never going to get hit.
Wait until winter hits and the cases spike, then it's suddenly going to become "necessary", but if they'd made that hard decision 3 months ago this would already be over.
If you mean something else, you're a victim of fake news.
That was pre-Delta. The higher the R0, the more mitigation we need to do. The question is what gets RE below zero.
At this point, with Delta's R0 and the vaccine's effectiveness, it looks like mere vaccination without masks is going to be insufficient in large groups (e.g. at a giant concert, a big play). But, since all the precautions have a multiplier, that's fine. It means we can keep doing those things as long as we take precautions while we do it and not assume vaccine = ignore COVID.
That 412 number is "covid involved", not "covid caused".
This could be that the death was not at all due to covid, but the cadaver tested positive. They were in a car accident, for example.
This could be actually caused by covid primarily.
This could be covid tipped someone over the edge who was already very ill.
EDIT: also hospitalizations for children are rare
https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html
That's not how "covid involved" is defined, no.
EDIT: please post a url or something.
I did this. This is quite convincing to me that the "COVID involved" deaths are not mis-categorized and they actually are related to COVID unless CDC is straight up fabricating death numbers on a massive scale. The stories about the COVID death categorizations being overstated are pure FUD.
> Data from the first 12 months of the pandemic in England shows 25 under-18s died from Covid.
> Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities
> Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years - though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed
Were the children with complex neuro-disabilities pushed over the edge by covid? Quite possibly. Is that a reason for parents of healthy children to worry? Unlikely.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57766717
Good thing children never transmit viruses to adults.
Good thing reservoirs of disease never allow for novel mutations.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare projections in one case to actual results in the other.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare one rate in the general population to a rate in an already selected group.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare self-reported issues to actually verified cases.
Good thing your source[1] didn't make a big deal about the huge multiplier difference between two exceedingly small numbers (0.01622% vs 0.00261%)
Good thing your source[1] didn't falsely imply "hospitalization" and "myocarditis " as equivalently severe, ignoring that the myocarditis responded well and quickly to treatment[2] whereas COVID does not, leading to long hospital stays and/or ventilation and/or death.
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Oh, and sorry.
The thing about comments like that is that they polarize the discussion even further, because those who agree with you will become intensified in their agreement while those who disagree with you will react the way people react when someone hammers them repeatedly. This kind of polarization makes curious conversation impossible, because curious conversation has to do with maintaining connection across differences.
This ignores the existence of antibody tests, and there's no reason that lying about a positive antibody test would be easier to get away with than lying about being vaccinated.
While I have no objection to a vaccine, and I don't question the efficacy of these, the trivial chance of my son's covid19 complications versus forcing him to a doctor's office over his fear of needles, which will cause him a lot of angst, makes me question whether to do it. These decisions aren't always entirely about death percentages.
Source?
Asking a source for an imprecise, sensational-sounding claim doesn't deserve this level of hostility.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
A request to support a claim about the "long term" effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years ago, in a rapidly changing environment, for which it seems pretty improbable for there to have already been robust, repeated, falsifiable studies done, is different.
I would also suggest that if you want "robust, repeated, falsifiable studies" for "effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years ago" you have set your standard implausibly high. That's not how medicine progresses for urgent things, because it's fantastically negligent. Contrast the rapid global Covid response, which saved millions of lives, with the incredible foot-dragging surrounding AIDS in the 80s. If we had waited for perfect knowledge before taking action, hospitals would have been stacking bodies in the streets.
At this stage you get papers saying things like, "A quarter of children experienced persistent symptoms months after hospitalization with acute covid-19 infection, with almost one in ten experiencing multi-system involvement. [...] Our findings highlight the need for replication and further investigation [...]". [1]
[1] https://erj.ersjournals.com/content/early/2021/06/10/1399300...
Long COVID isn't well-defined in general; some large subset of it is psychosomatic. The main non-psychosomatic problem seems to be fallout from ARDS (Acute Respitory Distress Syndrome), which is directly related to severe bouts of COVID (and generally younger people have less severe COVID, with or without vaccines).
https://www.statnews.com/2021/03/22/we-need-to-start-thinkin...
I would also be interested in seeing comparisons to "long <other infectious diseases>".
We have been made to associate the term "long COVID" with debilitating illness lasting many months, talk of people joining online support groups, etc. I'd like a better breakdown of what is common.
Edit: Downvotes why? It isn't reasonable to want to know how many people are having "any symptom at all past 3 weeks" and how many are suffering from debilitating syndromes?
There are probably more symptoms I’m missing, but that is what I experienced for 9 months
Her stories of it radically complicating totally unrelated illnesses and the potential severe long term effects are more than enough reason to take precautions seriously despite what group or demographic you might be in.
This reminds me of a bad take that comes up from time to time around war casualties. Some will see that only a thousand soldiers out of a million died in some conflict and think that it wasn't that dangerous, but for every death in war there can be dozens of people who suffer severe mental and physical harm that negatively affects the rest of their life.
I think as long as the vaccine is an option for all/most ages then it isn't much of an issue. Although it would be interesting if we allowed kids to get the vaccine at school - possibly without parental permission. (Sort of a tricky area... I think some places provide the HPV vaccine like this since some parents won't let their kids get it.)
My comment covered breakthrough cases. Those occur among the vaccinated.
I was covid positive last October and kicked it fine (verified with a test).
I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies, my results were a “76” (I assume percentage?).
Why should I get vaccinated?
I did get vaccinated because the vaccine reinforces antibodies which are correlated with fewer complications upon subsequent infection. There are some epitopes on sars-cov-2 which closely resemble parts our own clotting factors and interferons, and the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present. So, it seems a vaccine only helps.
One thing about getting vaccinated after recovery from covid, though, is that both the first and second doses knock you on your butt, not just the second.
Exactly! The point of many COVID vaccines is to teach the immune system to destroy a very specific and very important protein, which is the spike protein. Without that the virus can't enter cells. It's not present in our own body.
We have no idea what kind of immune response any given person might get with an actual infection. Reinfections are a thing.
It does not mean percentage. The fact that we cannot directly relate antibody levels to immunological protection is one of the reasons we can't [yet?] use antibody tests to "count" as immunity.
Is there, like, a rational reason?
The Delta variant replicates really quickly, that is its evolutionary advantage over other strains, it's not that your immune system is weaker to it. What happens is that at first it ramps up a lot faster than your immune response, and during this period, it produce a lot more virions, and your immune system has a bigger fight on its hands.
There are many immunologists working on identifying the nature of the immune response to sars-cov-2, and so far, something on the order of 80 unique antibodies have been identified which are induced by vaccination, and about 200 unique antibodies which are induced by actual infection. The convalescent antibodies target the nucleocapsid (the ball) more than the spike protein.
It appears that the delta variant escapes approximately 1/8 of the antibodies in both cases, so you still have a very strong immune response, just one which doesn't ramp up as fast as the virus.
Now, as for the mRNA sequences, we can create them in a DNA printer (then transcribe to RNA), however, this triggers new safety and efficacy trials at the FDA.
Give this a read, Immunology Is Where Intuition Goes To Die. (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/covid-19-...)
Are you willing to bet that the tweaked Moderna vaccine (the trials of it was announced, right?) shows worse efficacy than the original? Odds 51:49 in your favor, null hypothesis of the same efficacy is a tie. That's generous I think, if nobody knows.
If not - why not?
Not all proteins are safe to have in the body.
Most proteins are safe, of course, and the odds that any particular new mRNA target is safe is pretty good. But it's not trivial to predict with computational models, and so it requires testing.
Why would you not get vaccinated?
Your post is using scary anecdotes to try and persuade. That does not come off as trustworthy.
Nobody knows what any particular antibody count means with respect to risk to your health from a future COVID infection. Instead, we need to be looking at the hard statistics about who's getting admitted into hospitals and who's dying.
[0] https://ehrn.org/articles/covid-19-testing-and-possible-rein...
It's been widely reported by authorities on the subject that vaccination after infection with Alpha confers immunity to all currently known variants.
The same is not true for natural immunity from just an Alpha infection AIUI.
So why not get vaccinated?
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...
I'm not a doctor. There are numerous reports from people who got a second infection that it was worse.
It is a free vaccine that could save your life, has been safely administered to billions of people and greatly reduces the odds of you getting infected, transmitting to others or ending up in hospital.
What is the downside? or are you just apathetic to getting it.
Can you share some of those any metrics? Legitimately asking.
> IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case)
That's a terrible idea. Children are not small adults, and you can't use the same medicine for children as for adults. There are Pediatricians who work specifically with children. Giving drugs to children is unlike the scenario where a heavy car takes twice the gasoline a ligher care takes.
"Therefore, the risk of cardiac adverse events following the second dose of the mRNA vaccine could be around 3.7 times more likely than hospitalization due to COVID-19 in healthy 12-15-year-old boys during periods when the pandemic is better under control 2.1 times in 16-17-year-olds. The group found that this trend remains even when SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates are high, with vaccination being riskier than hospitalization from COVID-19. The long-term health effect of the mRNA vaccines on teenage boys is unknown. Few clinical trials have been conducted due to the early observation of adverse events." [1]
[1] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210913/The-rate-of-vacci...
From what I understand, different ages of people tend to have different sorts of immune responses. While vaccines are safe and effective, it takes some time to get the dosages right for children because of the way their immune system responds to things - at least, with a new vaccine. I'm not an expert, though, and I got this information while looking up variances in side effects (older folks get less than younger folks, and folks with two x chromosomes - mostly females - tend to get more as well).
Maybe because there's concerns.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v...
> "for boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day Covid-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at times of high weekly Covid-19 hospitalization,"
The main issue here is that covid is less of a problem for people who are younger.
That means rarer issues can start to outweigh benefits. It's easily possible for vaccines to be beneficial over a certain age and detrimental under.
Also - while the vaccines lower transmission they do not stop it entirely so again it comes to weighing benefits.
The other issue is about testing how well the vaccines work in different groups. Just because it works well in a 65y grandfather doesn't mean it'll work well in a 2mo baby, or help with dosing decisions.
I think this is the main point.
We are dealing with a large anti-vax disinformation campaign that America's enemies are fanning [0] because they want to destabilize the country.
Many of the anti-vax people people are now pushing natural immunity.
Yes there is something to be said about natural immunity in conditions in which, say, vaccine supply was critically low and needed to be triaged.
But when there is approximately zero marginal cost to getting vaccinated, and very high likelihood of fraud among the nature immunity promotors, it doesn't make sense as policy.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-removes-russian-...