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Any other result would have been surprising. Why is this interesting, beyond just confirming what we were already 99.99% certain we knew? -- biochemist

by epgui 5y ago

StavrosK 5y ago
It's just nice for us laymen to have more confirmation.
symlinkk 5y ago
Because openly stating this obvious fact would get you downvoted on here a few months ago.
- Panther34543 5y ago
  Or shadow banned, unfortunately.
- adventured 5y ago
  > Because openly stating this obvious fact would get you downvoted on here a few months ago. Attempting to discuss it here will still commonly get you downvoted. HN is not a particularly rational forum. People make the mistake of thinking it is because a lot of engineers hang out here. Engineers are not especially rational, that's a common myth derived from failing to understand the way people mentally compartmentalize; how they can frequently be rational about one subject and irrational about another. Try this one for example: the numbers they've been reporting about Covid infections the past year are not the actual infection numbers, not even remotely close. Yet they're held up everywhere as being representative of how many infections there have been. This is still the biggest comedy going about the pandemic. It's hilarious how batshit crazy people can be. If the US were a sane nation, the people that have been trying to represent the supposedly official infection count as being fully representative of the number of infections that have occurred - those people would be publicly mocked and shamed for being anti-science, the equivalent of flat-earthers. Instead, the flat-earthers dominate the media and national discussion. That's why the lab-leak theory was buried under so much censorship and for so long, those same people have been holding that conversation back very aggressively. Most people know on some level that the held-up official infection tally is not representative of the real number of infections. And yet the mainstream media, without exception, pretends those are the legitimate infection numbers. Any attempt to discuss how many infections have really occurred, will be shouted down. The shrieking emotionalism that pours out when you open this can of worms, is endlessly fascinating to me. If you say: how many people in the US have had Covid, they'll point at the magic official number, which is not correct. If we wanted to have a serious discussion nationally about herd immunity (for example), one of the most important steps is one they intentionally refuse to take: let's try to get a more serious estimate on how many people nationally have actually had Covid. They won't have that conversation and the media goes out of its way to avoid it (and has done so for a year now). Why? Pick your poison on the why answer. Political psychopaths lusting for control, looking to prolong their ability to take advantage of a disaster (the 'ol never waste a good crisis mentality). Wildly irrational anti-science types in power that pretend they represent science, which is the wing that Fauci belongs to. Maybe a combination. Maybe it's just the fear that if the masses of people think we're anywhere near herd immunity, the vaccination rates will plunge even faster, so some people want to maintain the false illusion (on the actual infection counts) as long as possible.
  - epgui 5y ago
    You're fixating on a very strange point. No scientist ever believes any measurement to be perfectly accurate, and different types of random error, systematic errors, and statistical biases always need to be accounted for. And they are.
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    I’d love to see real numbers of how many people have been infected, but I have no idea how you would get them. Do you have any suggestions?
    - nradov 5y ago
      The most accurate approach would be to do repeated blood tests of a large nationwide study population looking at both antibodies and memory T cells. The CDC really should have been doing that nationwide for the past year.
      - manwe150 5y ago
        The Red Cross Blood Donation centers perhaps come closest to doing this. From their emails, it sounded like they never saw widespread active antibodies (until a few months ago).
        nradov 5y ago
        The Red Cross only did antibody testing which has a significant false negative rate, especially on patients who recovered from mild infections many months ago. That's why getting accurate numbers would require repeatedly testing the same subjects at regular intervals, and also assaying their memory T cells.
      - ping_pong 5y ago
        How can you do that with over 50% of the population fully vaccinated?
        5y ago
OJFord 5y ago
Because it's not public health policy anywhere that I'm aware of? But vaccine rollout would be way quicker, and 'positive test or vaccinated' proportion of populations would be way higher, and that would influence discussion of other aspects, like 'herd immunity' for example.
- epgui 5y ago
  I don't think this is incompatible with public health policy even if public health policy treats previously-infected people the same way as never-infected people. Owing to the dramatic risk asymmetry between vaccine and disease, it's probably better to implement a policy that optimizes more for expediency, simplicity (fewer rules and fewer exceptions) and, in this case, minimizing the number of false assumptions made about the status of individuals. ie.: in the context of vaccination it's sometimes better to not assume that everyone who claims to have been previously infected was actually infected, even if we have lab data to back up this assumption. I'm not saying current policies all make perfect sense or anything, but it doesn't particularly surprise me that everyone is being accounted for in the same way WRT the vaccine.
- handmodel 5y ago
  My one anti-vax friend (who I make fun of constantly for not getting it) is constantly bombarded with people telling him that his previous infection doesn't give him any immunity. I already knew that was false - and I think he knew that too. It probably fed into his (motivated) reasoning to hold out this long if people are telling him so much information they know to be untrue. Still, I don't see how public health would benefit from not recommending shots to everyone as there is no downside.
  - OJFord 5y ago
    > I don't see how public health would benefit from not recommending shots to everyone as there is no downside. You'd get all the never infected people vaccinated sooner; so 'everyone' (except anti-vax not infected prior to effective 'herd immunity') would be immune sooner.
AndrewBissell 5y ago
My brother-in-law who recovered from Covid was told that it actually put him at higher risk from a subsequent infection, and therefore taking the vaccine was even more important than if he had never had it. Every time someone with any prominence says, "I'm not getting vaccinated because I was already infected" there's a whole "well ackshually!" army that descends to insist that yes it's still SUPER IMPORTANT to get the shot. So I think your 99.99% number is overstating certainly the general public's level of knowledge on this question.
- epgui 5y ago
  The person who told your brother this is either a non-expert, or some expert who for some reason is giving medical advice which is incompatible with the scientific consensus (this would really boggle my mind). PS.: my 99.99% refers to the state of human knowledge and is more about what experts in the field know than what the general public knows.
  - rajin444 5y ago
    > some expert who for some reason is giving medical advice which is incompatible with the scientific consensus Does that really boggle your mind? We're all human. I don't think there's a relationship between being an expert and being honest.
    - epgui 5y ago
      I know there's always going to be PhDs who believe the earth is flat, because humans are like that... But it's just so hard to relate to super intelligent people believing crazy things. It really does boggle my mind!
      - unanswered 5y ago
        You understand that people may not always say the same thing they believe to be true, right? People lie.
tootie 5y ago
There were stories of reinfection happening. Also variants. Also, every covid study of every kind is getting an enormous amount of attention and resources
- epgui 5y ago
  Given a large enough sample size, reinfections are pretty much guaranteed to happen. These are not incompatible with each other.
psychlops 5y ago
It's consistent with the past years saturated reporting of the obvious about infectious diseases.
void_mint 5y ago
Further evidence is further evidence, no? You have to measure and assess to get results...
briefcomment 5y ago
Most authorities are downplaying natural immunity, despite evidence like this. The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.
- rectang 5y ago
  The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised. I personally don't think in terms of "blanked demonizing" people, but neither am I going to blanket-absolve all the unvaccinated — especially willful anti-vaxxers. Regardless, this study is good news — because it means that every person who is infected and then recovers contributes towards herd immunity, regardless of their outlook on vaccines.
  - briefcomment 5y ago
    I'm talking about those who have recovered when I say natural immunity, not all unvaccinated.
  - jdminhbg 5y ago
    > The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised Is it actually the case that immunocompromised people cannot be vaccinated? The ones that I know have been; as far as I know, the mRNA vaccines by virtue of not being based on live virus are not dangerous to those with weakened immune systems.
    - jacobolus 5y ago
      Immunocompromised people can safely get the vaccine, but it might not work, leaving them still vulnerable to the virus. In recent studies something like half of organ transplant recipients did not produce antibodies after being vaccinated, and there have been a few cases where a group of vaccinated transplant recipients caught Covid (e.g. from a vaccinated nurse who had an asymptomatic infection) and had severe symptoms including some deaths.
rriepe 5y ago
There's a bunch of hidden social rules around commenting on immunity because the last big pandemic was HIV.
cuchoi 5y ago
What made you 99.99% before reading this? I have seen plenty of experts saying that they don't know how long immunity will last. Anecdotal data: my wife and I got COVID twice 9 months apart last year. The second time my wife ended up in the hospital.
- shitgoose 5y ago
  Aren't pcr tests notoriously unreliable? Maybe you didn't have it first time?
  - cuchoi 5y ago
    Had the same symptoms both times (dry cough for 5 weeks, using inhalator, loss of smell, etc.). It could have been a very a flu very similar to COVID at the exact time NYC was locking down due to COVID?
rickspencer3 5y ago
All scientific findings are obvious or wrong.
bregma 5y ago
If medicine depended on what we already know to be true then Big Leech would be in control of healthcare.

Any other result would have been surprising. Why is this interesting, beyond just confirming what we were already 99.99% certain we knew? -- biochemist

by epgui 5y ago

Any other result would have been surprising. Why is this interesting, beyond just confirming what we were already 99.99% certain we knew? -- biochemist

StavrosK 5y ago

It's just nice for us laymen to have more confirmation.

symlinkk 5y ago

Because openly stating this obvious fact would get you downvoted on here a few months ago.

Panther34543 5y ago
Or shadow banned, unfortunately.
adventured 5y ago
> Because openly stating this obvious fact would get you downvoted on here a few months ago. Attempting to discuss it here will still commonly get you downvoted. HN is not a particularly rational forum. People make the mistake of thinking it is because a lot of engineers hang out here. Engineers are not especially rational, that's a common myth derived from failing to understand the way people mentally compartmentalize; how they can frequently be rational about one subject and irrational about another. Try this one for example: the numbers they've been reporting about Covid infections the past year are not the actual infection numbers, not even remotely close. Yet they're held up everywhere as being representative of how many infections there have been. This is still the biggest comedy going about the pandemic. It's hilarious how batshit crazy people can be. If the US were a sane nation, the people that have been trying to represent the supposedly official infection count as being fully representative of the number of infections that have occurred - those people would be publicly mocked and shamed for being anti-science, the equivalent of flat-earthers. Instead, the flat-earthers dominate the media and national discussion. That's why the lab-leak theory was buried under so much censorship and for so long, those same people have been holding that conversation back very aggressively. Most people know on some level that the held-up official infection tally is not representative of the real number of infections. And yet the mainstream media, without exception, pretends those are the legitimate infection numbers. Any attempt to discuss how many infections have really occurred, will be shouted down. The shrieking emotionalism that pours out when you open this can of worms, is endlessly fascinating to me. If you say: how many people in the US have had Covid, they'll point at the magic official number, which is not correct. If we wanted to have a serious discussion nationally about herd immunity (for example), one of the most important steps is one they intentionally refuse to take: let's try to get a more serious estimate on how many people nationally have actually had Covid. They won't have that conversation and the media goes out of its way to avoid it (and has done so for a year now). Why? Pick your poison on the why answer. Political psychopaths lusting for control, looking to prolong their ability to take advantage of a disaster (the 'ol never waste a good crisis mentality). Wildly irrational anti-science types in power that pretend they represent science, which is the wing that Fauci belongs to. Maybe a combination. Maybe it's just the fear that if the masses of people think we're anywhere near herd immunity, the vaccination rates will plunge even faster, so some people want to maintain the false illusion (on the actual infection counts) as long as possible.
- epgui 5y ago
  You're fixating on a very strange point. No scientist ever believes any measurement to be perfectly accurate, and different types of random error, systematic errors, and statistical biases always need to be accounted for. And they are.
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  I’d love to see real numbers of how many people have been infected, but I have no idea how you would get them. Do you have any suggestions?
  - nradov 5y ago
    The most accurate approach would be to do repeated blood tests of a large nationwide study population looking at both antibodies and memory T cells. The CDC really should have been doing that nationwide for the past year.
    - manwe150 5y ago
      The Red Cross Blood Donation centers perhaps come closest to doing this. From their emails, it sounded like they never saw widespread active antibodies (until a few months ago).
      - nradov 5y ago
        The Red Cross only did antibody testing which has a significant false negative rate, especially on patients who recovered from mild infections many months ago. That's why getting accurate numbers would require repeatedly testing the same subjects at regular intervals, and also assaying their memory T cells.
    - ping_pong 5y ago
      How can you do that with over 50% of the population fully vaccinated?
      - 5y ago

OJFord 5y ago

Because it's not public health policy anywhere that I'm aware of? But vaccine rollout would be way quicker, and 'positive test or vaccinated' proportion of populations would be way higher, and that would influence discussion of other aspects, like 'herd immunity' for example.

epgui 5y ago
I don't think this is incompatible with public health policy even if public health policy treats previously-infected people the same way as never-infected people. Owing to the dramatic risk asymmetry between vaccine and disease, it's probably better to implement a policy that optimizes more for expediency, simplicity (fewer rules and fewer exceptions) and, in this case, minimizing the number of false assumptions made about the status of individuals. ie.: in the context of vaccination it's sometimes better to not assume that everyone who claims to have been previously infected was actually infected, even if we have lab data to back up this assumption. I'm not saying current policies all make perfect sense or anything, but it doesn't particularly surprise me that everyone is being accounted for in the same way WRT the vaccine.
handmodel 5y ago
My one anti-vax friend (who I make fun of constantly for not getting it) is constantly bombarded with people telling him that his previous infection doesn't give him any immunity. I already knew that was false - and I think he knew that too. It probably fed into his (motivated) reasoning to hold out this long if people are telling him so much information they know to be untrue. Still, I don't see how public health would benefit from not recommending shots to everyone as there is no downside.
- OJFord 5y ago
  > I don't see how public health would benefit from not recommending shots to everyone as there is no downside. You'd get all the never infected people vaccinated sooner; so 'everyone' (except anti-vax not infected prior to effective 'herd immunity') would be immune sooner.

AndrewBissell 5y ago

My brother-in-law who recovered from Covid was told that it actually put him at higher risk from a subsequent infection, and therefore taking the vaccine was even more important than if he had never had it. Every time someone with any prominence says, "I'm not getting vaccinated because I was already infected" there's a whole "well ackshually!" army that descends to insist that yes it's still SUPER IMPORTANT to get the shot. So I think your 99.99% number is overstating certainly the general public's level of knowledge on this question.

epgui 5y ago
The person who told your brother this is either a non-expert, or some expert who for some reason is giving medical advice which is incompatible with the scientific consensus (this would really boggle my mind). PS.: my 99.99% refers to the state of human knowledge and is more about what experts in the field know than what the general public knows.
- rajin444 5y ago
  > some expert who for some reason is giving medical advice which is incompatible with the scientific consensus Does that really boggle your mind? We're all human. I don't think there's a relationship between being an expert and being honest.
  - epgui 5y ago
    I know there's always going to be PhDs who believe the earth is flat, because humans are like that... But it's just so hard to relate to super intelligent people believing crazy things. It really does boggle my mind!
    - unanswered 5y ago
      You understand that people may not always say the same thing they believe to be true, right? People lie.

tootie 5y ago

There were stories of reinfection happening. Also variants. Also, every covid study of every kind is getting an enormous amount of attention and resources

epgui 5y ago
Given a large enough sample size, reinfections are pretty much guaranteed to happen. These are not incompatible with each other.

psychlops 5y ago

It's consistent with the past years saturated reporting of the obvious about infectious diseases.

void_mint 5y ago

Further evidence is further evidence, no? You have to measure and assess to get results...

briefcomment 5y ago

Most authorities are downplaying natural immunity, despite evidence like this. The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.

rectang 5y ago
The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised. I personally don't think in terms of "blanked demonizing" people, but neither am I going to blanket-absolve all the unvaccinated — especially willful anti-vaxxers. Regardless, this study is good news — because it means that every person who is infected and then recovers contributes towards herd immunity, regardless of their outlook on vaccines.
- briefcomment 5y ago
  I'm talking about those who have recovered when I say natural immunity, not all unvaccinated.
- jdminhbg 5y ago
  > The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised Is it actually the case that immunocompromised people cannot be vaccinated? The ones that I know have been; as far as I know, the mRNA vaccines by virtue of not being based on live virus are not dangerous to those with weakened immune systems.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    Immunocompromised people can safely get the vaccine, but it might not work, leaving them still vulnerable to the virus. In recent studies something like half of organ transplant recipients did not produce antibodies after being vaccinated, and there have been a few cases where a group of vaccinated transplant recipients caught Covid (e.g. from a vaccinated nurse who had an asymptomatic infection) and had severe symptoms including some deaths.

rriepe 5y ago

There's a bunch of hidden social rules around commenting on immunity because the last big pandemic was HIV.

cuchoi 5y ago

What made you 99.99% before reading this? I have seen plenty of experts saying that they don't know how long immunity will last. Anecdotal data: my wife and I got COVID twice 9 months apart last year. The second time my wife ended up in the hospital.

shitgoose 5y ago
Aren't pcr tests notoriously unreliable? Maybe you didn't have it first time?
- cuchoi 5y ago
  Had the same symptoms both times (dry cough for 5 weeks, using inhalator, loss of smell, etc.). It could have been a very a flu very similar to COVID at the exact time NYC was locking down due to COVID?

rickspencer3 5y ago

All scientific findings are obvious or wrong.

bregma 5y ago

If medicine depended on what we already know to be true then Big Leech would be in control of healthcare.