6 ms·

> It almost seems like a lot of people don't want the data to indicate that natural immunity is strong and long lasting, even though the data shows that reinfec

by xienze 5y ago

> It almost seems like a lot of people don't want the data to indicate that natural immunity is strong and long lasting, even though the data shows that reinfection is extemely rare. I too remember when the concept of "natural immunity to Covid" was a wild, dangerous conspiracy theory, along with the "came out of the Wuhan lab" theory. Funny watching the narrative change in real time.

DC-3 5y ago
Natural immunity was never a dangerous conspiracy theory. It was simply the case that it was too early to have blind faith in it. No-one credible ever denied that it was possible or even that it was likely that people would gain natural immunity.
- ultralite 5y ago
  > No-one credible ever denied that it was possible or even that it was likely that people would gain natural immunity. Let's not rewrite history. It was clear that the media (e.g. BBC, below) chose to amplify messages that discredited natural immunity. [Prof Wendy Barclay said:] "On the balance of evidence, I would say it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that this is an indication of waning immunity." https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 Oct 2020.
  - Guvante 5y ago
    I don't know that discrediting is a fair assessment. There is evidence of fewer or no markers in blood tests of patients who previously tested positive. Unfortunately it was impossible to tell whether that impacted immunity due insufficient time to collect data. If losing markers is often an indicator of lost immunity then saying the expectation is lost immunity isn't wrong, even if that like ends up being false. For instance data around infections from recovered and vaccinated people to others is still scarce to my knowledge. While we know that the health benefits for you are there whether it is enough immunity to completely prevent spread is still hard to examine.
  - i386 5y ago
    > media [sic] chose to amplify messages that discredited natural immunity The media is not a recognised scientific body.
    - ultralite 5y ago
      The BBC in this case were covering research by Imperial College London, one of the leading contributors to UK COVID-19 research. In Oct 2020, if someone saw https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 and commented, as you just have, "The media is not a recognised scientific body.", what would you have said?
      - i386 5y ago
        You are deliberately missing the point. BBC is not a recognized scientific body. It’s an editorial body that editorializes stories and publishes them. It is not a journal. A lot of things have been said in the media about COVID, most of them wrong and few correct. There is no conspiracy.
  - 8note 5y ago
    The messages I saw were that achieving herd immunity through infections would result in a whole ton of deaths.
Guvante 5y ago
Technically the wild and crazy ones were "it was bio engineered" and "let's ignore it and gain herd immunity". The former was being touted as justification for violence against Asians and the latter would involve millions of deaths in most countries. Tens of millions world wide.
- sdsaga12 5y ago
  Approximately 3.5 million globally have died from covid according to the WHO: https://covid19.who.int/ https://covid19.who.int/ If you include deaths from related factors, like increased poverty or unrest, I'm sure the numbers go up a bit, but not to tens of millions. I don't state this as an attack, by the way. Covid and its entangled cultural and political issues are enormously emotionally charged, and, one way or another, that tends to skew our perception of even relatively simple facts. One thing I think the Hacker News community does well, at least aspirationally, is try to keep sight of the fundamental technical details of issues. For a pandemic, having an accurate intuition of its scale falls into this category IMO.
  - Guvante 5y ago
    COVID has a death per case rate of 3% give or take. It is estimated that only 1/3 of cases are confirmed. Thus we lose 1% of the people infected. 70% herd immunity without vaccines is 0.7% of your population basically. While I don't think we would lose the 49 million that implies unless we ignored it completely that does make saying we would lose 10s of millions if not for vaccinations not far fetched. Yes I would put good odds we stay under 10 million in reality. I was only talking about the "natural herd immunity" idea.
    - sdsaga12 5y ago
      I see, I thought you were listing your understanding of the death toll that had already been reached in actuality and not the theoretical potential death toll without vaccine intervention. That makes more sense.
- dsyrk 5y ago
epakai 5y ago
They probably just don't want a repeat of the mis-steps that characterized early covid response. Early information changed a lot and resulted in distrust, and poor adherence to recommended measures. Rolling back precautionary measures is a one time thing. They don't get to say "hey we messed up, put those masks back on" because nobody will comply. It just makes sense to come up with a sure consensus before natural immunity is bandied about. The lab leak theory is still not proven. Collected evidence over time points to it being more likely. The "narrative" was there early on, but attacking China as leverage in a trade war surely cemented any desire to hide their own faults. What did we stand to gain by pointing fingers without proof or even a preponderance of evidence? Even now is it likely to lead to reform in virus and gain of function research?
- ipaddr 5y ago
  China wants to hide their own faults. Everything they do supports this narrative. To lose face might mean an end to power. Reforms are only possible by pointing likely theories because the proof is gone and it happened months before the outbreak was even registered.
jonnycomputer 5y ago
Natural immunity is great. If you survive. And if you don't give it to others. Almost impossible not to give it to others. Relying on it was pretty reckless, especially given how little we understand it.
- toiletfuneral 5y ago
  I don’t think we’re appreciating the nuance surrounding “survived”...anecdotally my partner who worked in a hospital during peak infection has horror stories of “survivors” with debilitating long term effects and unexpected complications with other diseases. Something to consider when we talk numbers.
- plank_time 5y ago
  This statement is overly alarmist. 98% of people survive covid. >85% are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. The vast majority of people survive without any issues. The biggest problem with covid is how infectious it is, which is what really overwhelms health care systems.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    Over alarmist? You're saying 2% of people who get an incredibly transmissible disease die, and you aren't alarmed? I mean, sure its not Ebola, but its not a cold either. Sheez.
- procombo 5y ago
  > Almost impossible not to give it to others. Your facts are old, very old. Transmissibility has been linked to the nasopharyngeal viral load during onset symptoms. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33296437/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33296437/] The virus may not be as present in your nasal discharge, or breath. We've also known from the start transmissibility is also definitely not linked to the severity of symptoms. When you read from articles from the CDC such as [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...] they don't mean all people spread it the same way, just "we have found it spreads commonly in these three ways". Ironically enough, we traced my positive infection to a non-human animal which sneezed in my face. Within a day I had conjunctivitis (pinkeye). I had non-typical symptoms before severe fatigue set in. I just thought I was going through bad caffeine withdrawal at the time. Locked inside the house with my spouse and kids for two weeks with symptoms, breathing all over each other, laughing in each others faces, touching the same items, etc. I only got tested on day 13 when the respiratory and heart symptoms set in. 6 months later I still have some lingering issues. Nobody else in the house or who I associated with ever got it, and they tested every 5 days for a month.

by xienze 5y ago

DC-3 5y ago

Natural immunity was never a dangerous conspiracy theory. It was simply the case that it was too early to have blind faith in it. No-one credible ever denied that it was possible or even that it was likely that people would gain natural immunity.

ultralite 5y ago
> No-one credible ever denied that it was possible or even that it was likely that people would gain natural immunity. Let's not rewrite history. It was clear that the media (e.g. BBC, below) chose to amplify messages that discredited natural immunity. [Prof Wendy Barclay said:] "On the balance of evidence, I would say it would look as if immunity declines away at the same rate as antibodies decline away, and that this is an indication of waning immunity." https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 Oct 2020.
- Guvante 5y ago
  I don't know that discrediting is a fair assessment. There is evidence of fewer or no markers in blood tests of patients who previously tested positive. Unfortunately it was impossible to tell whether that impacted immunity due insufficient time to collect data. If losing markers is often an indicator of lost immunity then saying the expectation is lost immunity isn't wrong, even if that like ends up being false. For instance data around infections from recovered and vaccinated people to others is still scarce to my knowledge. While we know that the health benefits for you are there whether it is enough immunity to completely prevent spread is still hard to examine.
- i386 5y ago
  > media [sic] chose to amplify messages that discredited natural immunity The media is not a recognised scientific body.
  - ultralite 5y ago
    The BBC in this case were covering research by Imperial College London, one of the leading contributors to UK COVID-19 research. In Oct 2020, if someone saw https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-54696873 and commented, as you just have, "The media is not a recognised scientific body.", what would you have said?
    - i386 5y ago
      You are deliberately missing the point. BBC is not a recognized scientific body. It’s an editorial body that editorializes stories and publishes them. It is not a journal. A lot of things have been said in the media about COVID, most of them wrong and few correct. There is no conspiracy.
- 8note 5y ago
  The messages I saw were that achieving herd immunity through infections would result in a whole ton of deaths.

Guvante 5y ago

Technically the wild and crazy ones were "it was bio engineered" and "let's ignore it and gain herd immunity". The former was being touted as justification for violence against Asians and the latter would involve millions of deaths in most countries. Tens of millions world wide.

sdsaga12 5y ago
Approximately 3.5 million globally have died from covid according to the WHO: https://covid19.who.int/ https://covid19.who.int/ If you include deaths from related factors, like increased poverty or unrest, I'm sure the numbers go up a bit, but not to tens of millions. I don't state this as an attack, by the way. Covid and its entangled cultural and political issues are enormously emotionally charged, and, one way or another, that tends to skew our perception of even relatively simple facts. One thing I think the Hacker News community does well, at least aspirationally, is try to keep sight of the fundamental technical details of issues. For a pandemic, having an accurate intuition of its scale falls into this category IMO.
- Guvante 5y ago
  COVID has a death per case rate of 3% give or take. It is estimated that only 1/3 of cases are confirmed. Thus we lose 1% of the people infected. 70% herd immunity without vaccines is 0.7% of your population basically. While I don't think we would lose the 49 million that implies unless we ignored it completely that does make saying we would lose 10s of millions if not for vaccinations not far fetched. Yes I would put good odds we stay under 10 million in reality. I was only talking about the "natural herd immunity" idea.
  - sdsaga12 5y ago
    I see, I thought you were listing your understanding of the death toll that had already been reached in actuality and not the theoretical potential death toll without vaccine intervention. That makes more sense.
dsyrk 5y ago

epakai 5y ago

They probably just don't want a repeat of the mis-steps that characterized early covid response. Early information changed a lot and resulted in distrust, and poor adherence to recommended measures. Rolling back precautionary measures is a one time thing. They don't get to say "hey we messed up, put those masks back on" because nobody will comply. It just makes sense to come up with a sure consensus before natural immunity is bandied about. The lab leak theory is still not proven. Collected evidence over time points to it being more likely. The "narrative" was there early on, but attacking China as leverage in a trade war surely cemented any desire to hide their own faults. What did we stand to gain by pointing fingers without proof or even a preponderance of evidence? Even now is it likely to lead to reform in virus and gain of function research?

ipaddr 5y ago
China wants to hide their own faults. Everything they do supports this narrative. To lose face might mean an end to power. Reforms are only possible by pointing likely theories because the proof is gone and it happened months before the outbreak was even registered.

jonnycomputer 5y ago

Natural immunity is great. If you survive. And if you don't give it to others. Almost impossible not to give it to others. Relying on it was pretty reckless, especially given how little we understand it.

toiletfuneral 5y ago
I don’t think we’re appreciating the nuance surrounding “survived”...anecdotally my partner who worked in a hospital during peak infection has horror stories of “survivors” with debilitating long term effects and unexpected complications with other diseases. Something to consider when we talk numbers.
plank_time 5y ago
This statement is overly alarmist. 98% of people survive covid. >85% are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. The vast majority of people survive without any issues. The biggest problem with covid is how infectious it is, which is what really overwhelms health care systems.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Over alarmist? You're saying 2% of people who get an incredibly transmissible disease die, and you aren't alarmed? I mean, sure its not Ebola, but its not a cold either. Sheez.
procombo 5y ago
> Almost impossible not to give it to others. Your facts are old, very old. Transmissibility has been linked to the nasopharyngeal viral load during onset symptoms. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33296437/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33296437/] The virus may not be as present in your nasal discharge, or breath. We've also known from the start transmissibility is also definitely not linked to the severity of symptoms. When you read from articles from the CDC such as [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/how-covid-spreads.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-si...] they don't mean all people spread it the same way, just "we have found it spreads commonly in these three ways". Ironically enough, we traced my positive infection to a non-human animal which sneezed in my face. Within a day I had conjunctivitis (pinkeye). I had non-typical symptoms before severe fatigue set in. I just thought I was going through bad caffeine withdrawal at the time. Locked inside the house with my spouse and kids for two weeks with symptoms, breathing all over each other, laughing in each others faces, touching the same items, etc. I only got tested on day 13 when the respiratory and heart symptoms set in. 6 months later I still have some lingering issues. Nobody else in the house or who I associated with ever got it, and they tested every 5 days for a month.