Title shortened from "COVID-19 Cases and Hospitalizations by COVID-19 Vaccination Status and Previous COVID-19 Diagnosis — California and New York, May–November 2021".
Context here is concerning conferred immunity from natural infection. From the abstract:
During May–November 2021, case and hospitalization rates were highest among persons who were unvaccinated without a previous diagnosis. Before Delta became the predominant variant in June, case rates were higher among persons who survived a previous infection than persons who were vaccinated alone. By early October, persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone.
Implications:
[V]accination remains the safest strategy for averting future SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, long-term sequelae, and death. Primary vaccination, additional doses, and booster doses are recommended for all eligible persons.
The results speak more to the likely epidemiological consequences of widespread exposures due to the Omicron variant than any changes to existing guidelines. Note that the study does not cover the period in which the Omicron variant was pervasive, instead focusing on Delta and earlier variants of the SARS-COV-2 virus.
That said, if the findings hold, where Omicron has been widespread most people will end up with exposure and probable improved immune response. It is still advisable to get vaccinated and boosted, but there's some increased hope that the worst of the COVID-19 global pandemic may finally be passing, if not now then in the near future, after the wave has passed in more parts of the world.
Continued mutations and variants of the SARS-COV-2 virus remain a concern, and so long as the virus is extant in human and animal populations, such mutations are all but inevitable. Their implications are exceedingly difficult to predict.
> Four cohorts of adults aged ≥18 years were considered: persons who were 1) unvaccinated with no previous laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, 2) vaccinated (14 days after completion of a primary COVID-19 vaccination series) with no previous COVID-19 diagnosis, 3) unvaccinated with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, and 4) vaccinated with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis.
Note that "14 days" gap in point 2. Having completed vaccinations but not yet past those 14 days is a sort of dead zone that either ends up grouped in with "unvaccinated" or, I suppose, could be just dropped altogether.
That group really needs to be broken out into its own thing, as that's (one of) the thing(s) the people who are straight against these vaccines are concerned about. They're saying that for those 14 days, you're more prone to infection than someone who is actually unvaccinated, and end up counted in the unvaccinated stats if you are infected.
Of course one would like to see the data broken down more granularly.
That said, nothing we know about how vaccines or the immune system works should lead us to believe someone is more susceptible to a disease immediately after being vaccinated.
Although, if we're already talking about "people straight up agains these vaccines", then it's pretty evident they already don't give two shits about the science and it's just some weird sociopolitical agenda or conspiracy theory.
I don’t think it’s cherry picking so much as maybe working with the limitations of merging 50 datasets vs 2?
They at least acknowledge the dataset bias in the discussion section, and they cite a couple similar findings from other countries, and also they start with this:
> By November 30, 2021, approximately 130,781 COVID-19– associated deaths, one in six of all U.S. deaths from COVID-19, had occurred in California and New York
I guess, but it’s a heterogeneous dataset. They even discuss in this manuscript differences between how CA reports stuff compared with NY. (This is kind of a separate issue where CDC could have lead on data standardization, but not everyone in the US agrees about the Feds playing that role in this case; kind of a separate issue)
The CDC also has covidnet, which doesn’t have the data heterogeneity problem so much, but I’m not sure it has the vaccination status breakdown needed for this study. CDC has famously not done a good job breaking that down…
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covid-n...
Anyway, none of this is to say that they’re definitely not doing a cherry picking exercise, but at least one should read the paper and decide if the choices they make about data sources and analysis are reasonable. Not super productive to just immediately assume bad faith, IMO. Especially since the conclusions are consistent with research from other institutions/countries
False, as is specifically noted in TFA discussing data sources. Those are:
Statewide immunization databases in California are the California Immunization Registry, Regional Immunization Data Exchange, and San Diego Immunization Registry; the laboratory system is the California COVID Reporting System (CCRS). In New York, immunization information systems include Citywide Immunization Registry and the New York State Immunization Information System; the laboratory system is the Electronic Clinical Laboratory Reporting System (ECLRS). California data were matched between the immunization and case registries using a probabilistic algorithm with exact match for zip code and date of birth and fuzzy match on first name and last name. New York data were matched to the ECLRS with the use of a deterministic algorithm based on first name, last name, and date of birth. In California, person-level hospitalization data from CCRS and supplementary hospitalization reports were used to identify COVID-19–associated hospitalizations.
Specifically acknowledged are:
Dana Jaffe, California Department of Public Health; Rebecca Hoen, Meng Wu, New York State Department of Health; Citywide Immunization Registry Program, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
From whom those data were likely in substantial part obtained.
By November 30, 2021, approximately 130,781 COVID-19–associated deaths, one in six of all U.S. deaths from COVID-19, had occurred in California and New York.
First sentence of TFA.
California and New York both have excellent statewide medical data collection, provide high-quality data, have been free of the data politics (or shear inadequacy) of numerous other states, they have both large urban and remote rural regions, they tend to see Covid impacts earlier than many other states due to travel and similar patterns. California alone is over 10% of the US population, together it and New York State represent 60 million people.
Data analysis is highly dependent on availability, quality, and import considerations. Having a large quantity of high-quality data from a small number of sources counts for a lot.
Conclusion: Natural immunity with or without the vaccine provides strong protection against hospitalization. There wasn't much difference between the two.
This study took place during Delta (May–November 2021).
They also found that pre-delta (when a lot of the US was getting their primary series) vaccine immunity was more protective against hospitalization with alpha or whatever it was at the time in the US
I’m not sure if there is a good study that can distinguish the change point as due to waning immunity from the vaccines or if it’s because of vaccine escape, or if infection-mediated immunity from delta is just better…
The data I’ve seen from omicron suggest that a primary vaccine series offers about equal protection as infection with delta, FWIW
As a person who was infected in February 2021, before I was eligible to get vaccinated, we now know that there was minimal to zero medical benefit to me getting this vaccine.
The tragedy detailed above made me realize that there was a risk, albeit small, to getting vaccinated. If I didn't have natural immunity, the risk was worth it. But since I did, I chose to not get vaccinated, only after weeks of research and poring through large N studies.
Here is a comment I made 5 months ago that got downvoted for citing multiple studies that had informed my decision:
The arrogant, smug hive minders deemed it misinformation.
I was harassed by coworkers for not having the shot, and they dismissed my claim of natural immunity as a conspiracy theory. Some of them deliberately selected a restaurant that required proof of vaccination to rub it in my face. They knew I had recovered in February. They knew my family was grieving over my mother-in-law (she lived with my wife and I for ten years until 2 years before her death) but they didn't care. They dehumanized me. I then had to face a federal government mandate for a shot I wouldn't benefit from.
I am beyond bitter. They were wrong. The feds were wrong. Most HNers we're wrong. The censors deleting my posts were wrong. And I know I will never get an apology.
I now have attitudes towards centralized authority I never had before. All due to smug, self righteous people throwing away their principles and cheering on as the US government threatened my livelihood as a cudgel to violate my rights. To those of you who went along, you are cowards, and I hope you reconsider your arrogance in the future.
This doesn't appear to be the case with Omicron. It seems like everyone who has gotten it in the last couple of months has been vaccinated. At least half the people I know (almost all of which are vaccinated) have gotten it in this wave. I only knew 2 people that got it in the 1st wave before vaccines existed. I know it's more contagious now, but most people have had this same experience.
if of 100 people 90 are vaccinated and your hospitalization number is 6 unvaccinated and 44 vaccinated this would still mean risk is higher for unvaccinated (6/10) compared to vaccinated (44/90).
That’s also why your anecdote are useless and not science
I suggest you familiarize yourself with the latest science/data which show that relative risk of death is higher for vaccinated and unboosted than it is for unvaccinated.
thanks for sharing i will take a look.
I only looked at the latest data for USA and Canada so far and they both looked much better for vaccinated people.
Why do you think scotland and Britain are different?
The great thing about being right, is it doesn't matter how many people were wrong. If you know you're right, never give in to the masses.
It's been enlightening to see how quick so many people are to dehumanize "the others" as soon as it becomes socially acceptable to do so. Psychology is fascinating.
If the government says natural immunity lets you not get vaccinated, the next pandemic, more people will try to get infected. It's the same reason there were no immunity passports prior to vaccines. The government's policy is correct to protect the most people and reduce economic impact.
Most governments in the EU allow proof of prior infection as a substitute for vaccination for a green pass. Your assumption that people are so stupid that they would purposely get infected instead of getting vaccinated is speculative, and didn't happen in Europe. You may likely be a highly intelligent person, but that doesn't mean that everyone else is as stupid as you think they are. There is a certain arrogance to that level of paternalistic thinking.
Getting vaccinated would have improved your immunity and would be safer to get now than risk getting omicron. Your prior infection alone will provide you very little protection from infection with omicron. You won't get an apology because you are wrong.
do you have science to back this claim ?
It’s not like the vaccine was designed specifically against omicron, the vaccine development started a long time ago ( before omicron)
I'm not particularly thrilled with public health authorities using coercion. It would solve my needs, sure, but I just think it's counterproductive in the long term.
The most effective way to guarantee that rednecks will absolutely never do a thing is to tell them they have to do it. This actually doesn't just apply to rural white Americans, but also many other people who are from "honor cultures". Nortenos fall into this category and they are a very high percentage of Latinos in the United States. These are cultures that for historical reasons have absolute hatred of centralized authority. Black Americans in the South and their descendants in many Northern cities also fall into this category. It is truly self-defeating. I can assure you that I know a medical doctor who is fully licensed and runs several clinics and he offered to take me into his office, inject the vaccine syringe into the sink and then write in his records that I was vaccinated and provide me a card. I did not take him up on this because I wanted to make sure that I would feel the pain of the law as an example to my kids. He himself is fully vaccinated but he is completely against the mandate for reasons of principle. How many more are like him? Are we going to do something to prevent doctors like him from doing this? What kind of enforcement will that take? If politicians that most hn readers dislike take over the federal government are they going to be able to use these enforcement mechanisms to outlaw abortion?
Regarding putting the life of your family in danger, I don't think the science supports this, at least not with the current vaccine. It doesn't appear to have markedly diminished transmissibility for Delta and doesn't appear to have any form of reduction for omicron.
However, for the original variant, I think it was completely fair to talk about unvaccinated people being the primary carriers, and therefore putting other people at risk. But it does call into question the fact that a vaccine that requires you to still be afraid of other people who haven't had that vaccine isn't really much of a vaccine is it??
With current variant "omicron" you are still 11x to 40x more likely to get hospitalized if you are not vaccinated.
So because I am vaccinated I am 11 times less likely to get sick and this is enough for me to not be personally afraid.
But I am afraid for my 4 years old son who still cannot get the vaccine and is at extreme risk of pneumonia if he get a regular cold because of a previous lung injury. So if he get corvid he is almost guarantee to be hospitalized for this reason it make sense to not hang-out with a bunch of people that are 11 time more likely to be carriers.
Regarding your original point "The most effective way to guarantee that rednecks will absolutely never do a thing is to tell them they have to do it"
If this is true how come they still file income tax returns, wouldn't they instead decide not to do it because you told them they are required to do it ?
I don't disagree that your natural antibodies probably gave you more or less the equivalent benefit of the vaccine (depending on the strain). However, there are plenty of bad actors saying they had it when they didn't just to bypass any sort of mandate for work, travel, etc. Because of that it's hard to trust folks at their word.
Finally your natural immunity will eventually wear off though I am not sure if there is consensus on when that happens. I acknowledge that there is some risk and hand waving "it's a one in a million chances" doesn't help when it's someone you love.
There are also lots of people that have had bad experiences with the medical field, the government, etc. so don't trust the vaccine. I don't agree with them but I can't blame them for their conclusions. It for sure doesn't help to berate them or you.
I deeply appreciate your thoughtful response here.
I don't disagree with your points on bad actors either. It should be noted that my positive test in Feb 21 was digitally recorded, reported to the state of Colorado as well as my county health department, and I was then contacted by them. I also have the email from the lab company. My point is that, like the EU, taking people's "word for it" is not a good way to do things, as you said.
I have no doubt my natural immunity will wane. Certainly my free antibodies will, and it's an open question as to how long t-cell memory remains. In fact, there are many countries investigating having people like me be able to go straight to getting booster shots.
One thing that I think is important when it comes to trust, and my family's experience:
My comments from May/June are a lot more hopeful, and optimistic. At the time, I was told my mother-in-law's death was reported to VAERS. I now know it wasn't. I don't think it was deliberate, but I've pulled the flat files for the system twice since August. There is no record of a woman her age in Nebraska with anything remotely like what happened to her. (Sudden cardiac arrest and death aren't hard to spot in that system, and I work with data as a professional all day. I even used Spacy to analyze the dataset to ensure I wasn't going crazy. I was in shock when I realized the hospital forgot to put her in the system.). I investigated this, and it turns out that there is no carrot, and no stick with VAERS. The hospital in Omaha where she died probably was overwhelmed with COVID patients, and they just forgot to put it in. It takes 30 minutes on a shitty website to enter the record in.
The end result: I thought somebody was going to investigate what happened to her. I thought we would get some explanation. I WANTED them to tell us that there was an air bubble in the needle, and the vaccine itself wasn't the culprit. I wanted some kind of explanation. Unfortunately, nothing was ever done. No follow up. Nothing. It's been soul crushing for us.
I pinned all my hopes for some kind of research on a friend of mine, Adam, who is a pretty prominent coder in the ML space. (I won't say his last name, but he was one of the early founders of a well-known name in the machine learning space). Adam suffered an event very similar to my mother-in-law's, but because of his younger age, survived. Also due to his young age, there was a much bigger interest in researching his incident. A team from the Mayo Clinic began working his case. He was kind enough to get them to start to look at my mother-in-law. We thought we were going to get answers. Unfortunately, in August, the team at the Mayo Clinic "ghosted" (his words, not mine) him. As part of the agreement to collect multiple samples of heart tissue from him, he had required he be included in any pre-prints produced by the team. They stopped replying to any of his communications in August. His exact words to me when we spoke on the phone in September: "They are sweeping this under the rug."
It should be noted that the damage to his heart is permanent. He's in his mid-30s. He can't even hike anymore.
Our further conversations have reached a the following conclusion:
The funding for the Mayo team, for the MRNA vaccine, all come from the same source. This source is treating it like a friendly-fire incident. In the midst of the most massive public health campaign in history, there is no benefit to learning what happened to him or my MIL. Any answer will only undermine that goal. Like a lung cancer researcher funded by Big Tobacco, or a medical cannabis researcher funded by the Feds, questions that potentially lead to inconvenient answers are crushed before they can yield answers that might conflict with the goals of the funding organization.
That is very concerning. I'd still follow Hanlon's Razor: Never Attribute to Malice That Which is Adequately Explained by Stupidity. The Mayo Clinic has less excuse but the health care folks not entering your MIL's data I can definitely semi-understand based on what the emergency rooms looked like at that time. Still not acceptable to not get it right after you repeatedly reminded them though!
I kind of disagree that "Any answer will only undermine that goal" because giving both the bad news of side effects with the good news of the efficacy of the vaccine strengthens trust in science and the people doing this research. But I see your point because the average person WILL probably say "I'll take my chances with covid because I (or my kids) will be fine" vs. 1 .001% chance of heart damage.
I appreciate the dialog about this and thanks for giving your story.
That is misinformation. There is no reliable scientific evidence that natural cellular immunity will wear off. You might be confused by antibody levels, which are relatively unimportant.
I will try to listen to this soon but don't have the time at the moment.
To what do attribute the ability to be reinfected if not "wearing off"? Am I using the wrong terminology? I think you are implying antibodies may wane but t-cells should provide fairly long term immunity?
It was also my understanding that recovery from one varient does not necessarily provide protection from a different varient. And also infection is not cut and dried and influenced buy duration, viral load and many variables.
> we now know that there was minimal to zero medical benefit to me getting this vaccine
Actually the opposite is true.
Data from other countries shows that during the delta wave you had 2-3 times less change to catch it. Both risks very relatively low but yours was still better.
Now with omicron wave that has clear advantage to escape previous immune response, you still have similar advantage but convalescents without vaccination have much higher change to catch it than before. You are now dodging real bullets.
You were absolutely correct there in your conclusion.
I believe that people are very reactive to so called natural immunity because of misguided suggestion at the beginning of epidemic to reach the herd immunity by mass infection.
We later wound out that many of those people were actually anti-vaxxers in disguise because they continue to suggest this even after we had vaccines available.
But don't be mad - you now have much better immunity against omicron.
I am sorry for your loss and it was shameful of your coworkers to treat you like this but you were right and you were actually much more protected than they were.
How is this a helpful conclusion? Getting disease-induced immunity only happens after you get a disease that will quite possibly kill or, if you’re younger, permanently disable you.
Regular vaccination poses no such risk.
The take home message should be clear: getting a vaccine is essential to staying safe, especially if you haven’t previously been infected. Even if you have been previously infected, the vaccine will reduce the chance that you get sick and pass the disease on to others.
> the vaccine will reduce the chance that you get sick and pass the disease on to others.
You cannot treat that as a forgone conclusion that is the whole point of studies like this. As this study states, hazard ratio does not depend on vaccination after someone has recovered.
The data is super thin on that (we don't know very much about people that are getting sick and not seeking care).
This article discusses an analysis of household transmission in Denmark. It was much higher in households with Omicron cases, but lower (56% lower) among boosted individuals compared to two dose vaccination:
Note that the data for this study is entirely pre-Omicron, which is known to have higher breakthrough rates (both for vaccines and for prior infection.)
Given that Omicron is now the dominant strain everywhere, unfortunately this study isn't particularly informative regarding a decision to vaccinate or not or for epidemiological purposes.
The article is informative on whether or not to vaccinate: you should vaccinate, particularly if you've not already had Covid-19. Severity and mortality for vaccinated individuals is far lower than for unvaccinated.
For those who have had Covid-19, the vaccination ... provides little noticeable additional benefit. In discussion of this article on YouTube, John Campbell, a nurse-trainer PhD (retired) suggests that targeting vaccines to those who have not yet had Covid-19 might be supportable, but that recommendation carries the costs of determinng and tracking this status. As an epidemiological practice, ensuring a full course of vaccinations for all might well be the most effective and logistically-viable option.
That's actually where I ran across the bulletin. The description and discussion are excellent, and I'd meant to link to them myself for those having issues following the MMWR text. (I'm the submitter.)
John Campbell's commentary on the Covid pandemic has been excellent and a source I've returned to repeatedly since I discovered it fairly early on. Clear-spoken, understated, research and facts based, tends to usually go along with concensus, though he will break on occasion where newer evidence or experience suggests advice is flawed, and there he's typically been right.
If he flubs a fact or point, he typically addresses that at the top of the next video.
52 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 106 ms ] threadContext here is concerning conferred immunity from natural infection. From the abstract:
During May–November 2021, case and hospitalization rates were highest among persons who were unvaccinated without a previous diagnosis. Before Delta became the predominant variant in June, case rates were higher among persons who survived a previous infection than persons who were vaccinated alone. By early October, persons who survived a previous infection had lower case rates than persons who were vaccinated alone.
Implications:
[V]accination remains the safest strategy for averting future SARS-CoV-2 infections, hospitalizations, long-term sequelae, and death. Primary vaccination, additional doses, and booster doses are recommended for all eligible persons.
The results speak more to the likely epidemiological consequences of widespread exposures due to the Omicron variant than any changes to existing guidelines. Note that the study does not cover the period in which the Omicron variant was pervasive, instead focusing on Delta and earlier variants of the SARS-COV-2 virus.
That said, if the findings hold, where Omicron has been widespread most people will end up with exposure and probable improved immune response. It is still advisable to get vaccinated and boosted, but there's some increased hope that the worst of the COVID-19 global pandemic may finally be passing, if not now then in the near future, after the wave has passed in more parts of the world.
Continued mutations and variants of the SARS-COV-2 virus remain a concern, and so long as the virus is extant in human and animal populations, such mutations are all but inevitable. Their implications are exceedingly difficult to predict.
> Four cohorts of adults aged ≥18 years were considered: persons who were 1) unvaccinated with no previous laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis, 2) vaccinated (14 days after completion of a primary COVID-19 vaccination series) with no previous COVID-19 diagnosis, 3) unvaccinated with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis, and 4) vaccinated with a previous COVID-19 diagnosis.
Note that "14 days" gap in point 2. Having completed vaccinations but not yet past those 14 days is a sort of dead zone that either ends up grouped in with "unvaccinated" or, I suppose, could be just dropped altogether.
That group really needs to be broken out into its own thing, as that's (one of) the thing(s) the people who are straight against these vaccines are concerned about. They're saying that for those 14 days, you're more prone to infection than someone who is actually unvaccinated, and end up counted in the unvaccinated stats if you are infected.
That said, nothing we know about how vaccines or the immune system works should lead us to believe someone is more susceptible to a disease immediately after being vaccinated.
Although, if we're already talking about "people straight up agains these vaccines", then it's pretty evident they already don't give two shits about the science and it's just some weird sociopolitical agenda or conspiracy theory.
They at least acknowledge the dataset bias in the discussion section, and they cite a couple similar findings from other countries, and also they start with this:
> By November 30, 2021, approximately 130,781 COVID-19– associated deaths, one in six of all U.S. deaths from COVID-19, had occurred in California and New York
The CDC also has covidnet, which doesn’t have the data heterogeneity problem so much, but I’m not sure it has the vaccination status breakdown needed for this study. CDC has famously not done a good job breaking that down… https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/covid-n...
Anyway, none of this is to say that they’re definitely not doing a cherry picking exercise, but at least one should read the paper and decide if the choices they make about data sources and analysis are reasonable. Not super productive to just immediately assume bad faith, IMO. Especially since the conclusions are consistent with research from other institutions/countries
Statewide immunization databases in California are the California Immunization Registry, Regional Immunization Data Exchange, and San Diego Immunization Registry; the laboratory system is the California COVID Reporting System (CCRS). In New York, immunization information systems include Citywide Immunization Registry and the New York State Immunization Information System; the laboratory system is the Electronic Clinical Laboratory Reporting System (ECLRS). California data were matched between the immunization and case registries using a probabilistic algorithm with exact match for zip code and date of birth and fuzzy match on first name and last name. New York data were matched to the ECLRS with the use of a deterministic algorithm based on first name, last name, and date of birth. In California, person-level hospitalization data from CCRS and supplementary hospitalization reports were used to identify COVID-19–associated hospitalizations.
Specifically acknowledged are:
Dana Jaffe, California Department of Public Health; Rebecca Hoen, Meng Wu, New York State Department of Health; Citywide Immunization Registry Program, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
From whom those data were likely in substantial part obtained.
First sentence of TFA.
California and New York both have excellent statewide medical data collection, provide high-quality data, have been free of the data politics (or shear inadequacy) of numerous other states, they have both large urban and remote rural regions, they tend to see Covid impacts earlier than many other states due to travel and similar patterns. California alone is over 10% of the US population, together it and New York State represent 60 million people.
Data analysis is highly dependent on availability, quality, and import considerations. Having a large quantity of high-quality data from a small number of sources counts for a lot.
This study took place during Delta (May–November 2021).
I’m not sure if there is a good study that can distinguish the change point as due to waning immunity from the vaccines or if it’s because of vaccine escape, or if infection-mediated immunity from delta is just better…
The data I’ve seen from omicron suggest that a primary vaccine series offers about equal protection as infection with delta, FWIW
I had a family tragedy with the vaccine in May that I commented on at the time here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27467803
The tragedy detailed above made me realize that there was a risk, albeit small, to getting vaccinated. If I didn't have natural immunity, the risk was worth it. But since I did, I chose to not get vaccinated, only after weeks of research and poring through large N studies.
Here is a comment I made 5 months ago that got downvoted for citing multiple studies that had informed my decision:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28170099
The arrogant, smug hive minders deemed it misinformation.
I was harassed by coworkers for not having the shot, and they dismissed my claim of natural immunity as a conspiracy theory. Some of them deliberately selected a restaurant that required proof of vaccination to rub it in my face. They knew I had recovered in February. They knew my family was grieving over my mother-in-law (she lived with my wife and I for ten years until 2 years before her death) but they didn't care. They dehumanized me. I then had to face a federal government mandate for a shot I wouldn't benefit from.
I am beyond bitter. They were wrong. The feds were wrong. Most HNers we're wrong. The censors deleting my posts were wrong. And I know I will never get an apology.
I now have attitudes towards centralized authority I never had before. All due to smug, self righteous people throwing away their principles and cheering on as the US government threatened my livelihood as a cudgel to violate my rights. To those of you who went along, you are cowards, and I hope you reconsider your arrogance in the future.
This is not true and this very study shows that. The vaccine reduces the chance that you catch COVID and spread it to others.
if of 100 people 90 are vaccinated and your hospitalization number is 6 unvaccinated and 44 vaccinated this would still mean risk is higher for unvaccinated (6/10) compared to vaccinated (44/90).
That’s also why your anecdote are useless and not science
Scotland (14 per 100k vs 10 per 100k): https://publichealthscotland.scot/media/11318/22-01-26-covid...
Britain: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
Why do you think scotland and Britain are different?
Where does this study show that?
It's been enlightening to see how quick so many people are to dehumanize "the others" as soon as it becomes socially acceptable to do so. Psychology is fascinating.
People aren't as stupid as you think they are. They understand and respond to incentives.
Would requiring to show this card be acceptable?
I’m on your side (natural anti body is as good as vaccine) but most of my anti-vax friend have neither and putting the life of my family in danger.
I'm not particularly thrilled with public health authorities using coercion. It would solve my needs, sure, but I just think it's counterproductive in the long term.
The most effective way to guarantee that rednecks will absolutely never do a thing is to tell them they have to do it. This actually doesn't just apply to rural white Americans, but also many other people who are from "honor cultures". Nortenos fall into this category and they are a very high percentage of Latinos in the United States. These are cultures that for historical reasons have absolute hatred of centralized authority. Black Americans in the South and their descendants in many Northern cities also fall into this category. It is truly self-defeating. I can assure you that I know a medical doctor who is fully licensed and runs several clinics and he offered to take me into his office, inject the vaccine syringe into the sink and then write in his records that I was vaccinated and provide me a card. I did not take him up on this because I wanted to make sure that I would feel the pain of the law as an example to my kids. He himself is fully vaccinated but he is completely against the mandate for reasons of principle. How many more are like him? Are we going to do something to prevent doctors like him from doing this? What kind of enforcement will that take? If politicians that most hn readers dislike take over the federal government are they going to be able to use these enforcement mechanisms to outlaw abortion?
Regarding putting the life of your family in danger, I don't think the science supports this, at least not with the current vaccine. It doesn't appear to have markedly diminished transmissibility for Delta and doesn't appear to have any form of reduction for omicron.
However, for the original variant, I think it was completely fair to talk about unvaccinated people being the primary carriers, and therefore putting other people at risk. But it does call into question the fact that a vaccine that requires you to still be afraid of other people who haven't had that vaccine isn't really much of a vaccine is it??
So because I am vaccinated I am 11 times less likely to get sick and this is enough for me to not be personally afraid. But I am afraid for my 4 years old son who still cannot get the vaccine and is at extreme risk of pneumonia if he get a regular cold because of a previous lung injury. So if he get corvid he is almost guarantee to be hospitalized for this reason it make sense to not hang-out with a bunch of people that are 11 time more likely to be carriers.
Regarding your original point "The most effective way to guarantee that rednecks will absolutely never do a thing is to tell them they have to do it" If this is true how come they still file income tax returns, wouldn't they instead decide not to do it because you told them they are required to do it ?
I don't disagree that your natural antibodies probably gave you more or less the equivalent benefit of the vaccine (depending on the strain). However, there are plenty of bad actors saying they had it when they didn't just to bypass any sort of mandate for work, travel, etc. Because of that it's hard to trust folks at their word.
Finally your natural immunity will eventually wear off though I am not sure if there is consensus on when that happens. I acknowledge that there is some risk and hand waving "it's a one in a million chances" doesn't help when it's someone you love.
There are also lots of people that have had bad experiences with the medical field, the government, etc. so don't trust the vaccine. I don't agree with them but I can't blame them for their conclusions. It for sure doesn't help to berate them or you.
I don't disagree with your points on bad actors either. It should be noted that my positive test in Feb 21 was digitally recorded, reported to the state of Colorado as well as my county health department, and I was then contacted by them. I also have the email from the lab company. My point is that, like the EU, taking people's "word for it" is not a good way to do things, as you said.
I have no doubt my natural immunity will wane. Certainly my free antibodies will, and it's an open question as to how long t-cell memory remains. In fact, there are many countries investigating having people like me be able to go straight to getting booster shots.
One thing that I think is important when it comes to trust, and my family's experience:
My comments from May/June are a lot more hopeful, and optimistic. At the time, I was told my mother-in-law's death was reported to VAERS. I now know it wasn't. I don't think it was deliberate, but I've pulled the flat files for the system twice since August. There is no record of a woman her age in Nebraska with anything remotely like what happened to her. (Sudden cardiac arrest and death aren't hard to spot in that system, and I work with data as a professional all day. I even used Spacy to analyze the dataset to ensure I wasn't going crazy. I was in shock when I realized the hospital forgot to put her in the system.). I investigated this, and it turns out that there is no carrot, and no stick with VAERS. The hospital in Omaha where she died probably was overwhelmed with COVID patients, and they just forgot to put it in. It takes 30 minutes on a shitty website to enter the record in. The end result: I thought somebody was going to investigate what happened to her. I thought we would get some explanation. I WANTED them to tell us that there was an air bubble in the needle, and the vaccine itself wasn't the culprit. I wanted some kind of explanation. Unfortunately, nothing was ever done. No follow up. Nothing. It's been soul crushing for us.
I pinned all my hopes for some kind of research on a friend of mine, Adam, who is a pretty prominent coder in the ML space. (I won't say his last name, but he was one of the early founders of a well-known name in the machine learning space). Adam suffered an event very similar to my mother-in-law's, but because of his younger age, survived. Also due to his young age, there was a much bigger interest in researching his incident. A team from the Mayo Clinic began working his case. He was kind enough to get them to start to look at my mother-in-law. We thought we were going to get answers. Unfortunately, in August, the team at the Mayo Clinic "ghosted" (his words, not mine) him. As part of the agreement to collect multiple samples of heart tissue from him, he had required he be included in any pre-prints produced by the team. They stopped replying to any of his communications in August. His exact words to me when we spoke on the phone in September: "They are sweeping this under the rug." It should be noted that the damage to his heart is permanent. He's in his mid-30s. He can't even hike anymore.
Our further conversations have reached a the following conclusion: The funding for the Mayo team, for the MRNA vaccine, all come from the same source. This source is treating it like a friendly-fire incident. In the midst of the most massive public health campaign in history, there is no benefit to learning what happened to him or my MIL. Any answer will only undermine that goal. Like a lung cancer researcher funded by Big Tobacco, or a medical cannabis researcher funded by the Feds, questions that potentially lead to inconvenient answers are crushed before they can yield answers that might conflict with the goals of the funding organization.
I kind of disagree that "Any answer will only undermine that goal" because giving both the bad news of side effects with the good news of the efficacy of the vaccine strengthens trust in science and the people doing this research. But I see your point because the average person WILL probably say "I'll take my chances with covid because I (or my kids) will be fine" vs. 1 .001% chance of heart damage.
I appreciate the dialog about this and thanks for giving your story.
https://peterattiamd.com/covid-part2/
These are an older article so not sure if there is something more recent. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/reinfe... https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/about-...
It was also my understanding that recovery from one varient does not necessarily provide protection from a different varient. And also infection is not cut and dried and influenced buy duration, viral load and many variables.
Actually the opposite is true.
Data from other countries shows that during the delta wave you had 2-3 times less change to catch it. Both risks very relatively low but yours was still better.
Now with omicron wave that has clear advantage to escape previous immune response, you still have similar advantage but convalescents without vaccination have much higher change to catch it than before. You are now dodging real bullets.
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28170099
You were absolutely correct there in your conclusion.
I believe that people are very reactive to so called natural immunity because of misguided suggestion at the beginning of epidemic to reach the herd immunity by mass infection.
We later wound out that many of those people were actually anti-vaxxers in disguise because they continue to suggest this even after we had vaccines available.
But don't be mad - you now have much better immunity against omicron.
I am sorry for your loss and it was shameful of your coworkers to treat you like this but you were right and you were actually much more protected than they were.
Regular vaccination poses no such risk.
The take home message should be clear: getting a vaccine is essential to staying safe, especially if you haven’t previously been infected. Even if you have been previously infected, the vaccine will reduce the chance that you get sick and pass the disease on to others.
You cannot treat that as a forgone conclusion that is the whole point of studies like this. As this study states, hazard ratio does not depend on vaccination after someone has recovered.
Recent news would say the exact opposite statement
This article discusses an analysis of household transmission in Denmark. It was much higher in households with Omicron cases, but lower (56% lower) among boosted individuals compared to two dose vaccination:
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
That's a pretty big reduction.
Given that Omicron is now the dominant strain everywhere, unfortunately this study isn't particularly informative regarding a decision to vaccinate or not or for epidemiological purposes.
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportion...
For those who have had Covid-19, the vaccination ... provides little noticeable additional benefit. In discussion of this article on YouTube, John Campbell, a nurse-trainer PhD (retired) suggests that targeting vaccines to those who have not yet had Covid-19 might be supportable, but that recommendation carries the costs of determinng and tracking this status. As an epidemiological practice, ensuring a full course of vaccinations for all might well be the most effective and logistically-viable option.
Someone who has already had Delta is susceptible to Omicron infection. Probably not a severe case, but it's a possibility.
More recent data indicates that adding a vaccination on top of a prior infection takes the risk of severe infection way way down.
https://youtu.be/25-iJKPA1CA
John Campbell's commentary on the Covid pandemic has been excellent and a source I've returned to repeatedly since I discovered it fairly early on. Clear-spoken, understated, research and facts based, tends to usually go along with concensus, though he will break on occasion where newer evidence or experience suggests advice is flawed, and there he's typically been right.
If he flubs a fact or point, he typically addresses that at the top of the next video.
Not selling anything.