5 ms·

Why is it that so many people seem to be biased against evidence that our immune systems do a pretty good job? It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only t

by daenz 5y ago

Why is it that so many people seem to be biased against evidence that our immune systems do a pretty good job? It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Our immune systems are pretty amazing. It's also good to help them along sometimes.
- daenz 5y ago
  That does not conflict with being unbiased towards evidence that our immune systems are effective against covid.
  - jquery 5y ago
    As long as the initial infection didn’t kill or incapacitate you. Edit: most bubonic plague infections didn’t kill so I don’t know what the point of “most people survive” is. The problem is that some don’t.
    - colordrops 5y ago
      Which is most of covid infections.
    - ping_pong 5y ago
      The Black Death, if that's what you're talking about, killed about 2/3 of all Europeans.
      - thaumasiotes 5y ago
        I usually see estimates more in the 40-50% range?
  - f6v 5y ago
    > our immune systems are effective against covid When you say "our", who do you mean? 30yo with no underlying health conditions? A leukemia patient? An HIV-positive person? A 50yo diabetic? 40% of the adult obese Americans? Yes, healthy immune system can be effective at fighting covid. But vaccination is a matter of public health. You aim to eradicate the disease so that everyone is safe.
    - daenz 5y ago
      Again this does not conflict with being unbiased against the evidence.
cdolan 5y ago
Fear is one hell of a drug. But really, I think many people are laser focused on not just minimizing risk of COVID, but now trying to zero out COVID risk, that having any reason to delay receipt of a vaccine isn't a pre-existing medical condition is considered a form of aggression. At some point we transitioned from "bend the curve" to "eradicate the virus", and this seems like a byproduct of that mental shift.
- jswny 5y ago
  Why would you not want to eradicate Covid?
  - calvano915 5y ago
    Obviously we can and maybe should, but at what costs in order to do so? Are there better infectious diseases to invest in and focus on instead?
    - anoncake 5y ago
      We can't, and we've known that for months, possibly since the beginning.
  - cdolan 5y ago
    Why do you not want to eradicate hunger, inequality, mental health problems, and general suffering? I ask such an absurd question in response to your equally absurd question because of course everyone wants to eradicate these issues! But it is not possible to fully eliminate being monetarily poor (by somehow making everyone wealthy), or hunger (by overproducing food and creating distribution), etc.... and so a realization that tradeoffs must be made given our finite resources will better frame our collective decisions as a society.
ping_pong 5y ago
Because the issue has turned into a political and morality issue now. In the US, over 40% of Democrats think that hospitalization rates for COVID are 50% or higher, and 28% of Democrats tink that hospitalization from COVID is 20-49%. It's really 1-5%.So the vast majority of Democrats think that COVID is over an order of magnitude worse than it actually is. So people who don't want to take the vaccine because they are concerned about taking a new medication or they already have been infected and don't need it, are now "immoral right wing Trumpists". I read on the Bay Area subreddit how someone was called a 'Republican' for not wearing a mask outside, even though the mandate now is that you don't need to wear a mask outside if you're vaccinated and not in a large group of people.
f6v 5y ago
> It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID Our immune system didn't evolve to cope with living in incredibly tight spaces surrounded by millions of people. Our immune system also isn't good at dealing with infections as we age: it's simply unnatural to survive past 70. We need to keep vaccinating, to create a collective immunity that protects the vulnerable.
- leoedin 5y ago
  Vaccinating is literally training the immune system to look for a specific protein and treat it as a threat. When your immune system learns how to fight off a virus, it does it by creating antibodies for a specific protein - treating that protein as a threat. They're effectively the same thing. The only thing the vaccine does differently is it doesn't exponentially reproduce in your cells. So anyone who survived Covid by definition has an immune system which can recognise the virus and attack it. Otherwise they wouldn't have survived.
  - f6v 5y ago
    How does that relate to my point? I said that the vaccination is a matter of public health. Instead of letting everyone get sick, we aim to eradicate the virus by vaccinating as many people as possible. This helps reduce the death toll.
astrange 5y ago
They do a pretty good job, that's why we don't have a pandemic every year. But the fact that we have a pandemic now is clear evidence that it's not doing a good enough job. Similarly, if you get a rabies infection you're going to die, even though you have an immune system.
estaseuropano 5y ago
Good science tests assumptions. Even if the result often ends up unsurprising it is important to test assumptions as else we never find out which ones are wrong. There were a number of cases of individuals being infected a second time after covid recovery. This article corroborates the evidence that individuals that had covid might have a low chance of reinfection and therefore might not need a vaccine. If you look at some other comments here you will see that still the evidence is not 100% clear cut, so good that data analysis continues in the future, e.g. to see if there are differences in how long the effect lasts between different kinds of vaccines and natural infection (there is also more than one way to have covid).
kalleboo 5y ago
I assumed that the fear was that lots of people who think they got covid but were never tested (or people who falsely tested negative) would use this as an excuse to not get the vaccine
FearlessNebula 5y ago
I think many of us are so exhausted from fighting to get people to just sort of follow the rules. I’d rather just tell everyone to get the vaccine and leave no room for error here
matthewdgreen 5y ago
Anecdotally: I know a number of people who say they "had COVID" but when you poke a little bit deeper it turns out they never had a formal diagnosis or test result -- they just self-diagnosed based on some symptoms. I have no data about the numbers here, but I suspect that these people make up a non-trivial percentage of the "already had COVID" crowd. Vaccination seems like a pretty good precaution for these folks.
sschueller 5y ago
This seems to be a US thing at least at the moment. Here is Switzerland the government specifically says if you have had a positive Corona test you should not vaccinate for at least 6 month and if you do after that only 1 shot not 2. Then again we had a vaccine shortage so that may also have something to do with it.

by daenz 5y ago

Why is it that so many people seem to be biased against evidence that our immune systems do a pretty good job? It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID.

ceejayoz 5y ago

Our immune systems are pretty amazing. It's also good to help them along sometimes.

daenz 5y ago
That does not conflict with being unbiased towards evidence that our immune systems are effective against covid.
- jquery 5y ago
  As long as the initial infection didn’t kill or incapacitate you. Edit: most bubonic plague infections didn’t kill so I don’t know what the point of “most people survive” is. The problem is that some don’t.
  - colordrops 5y ago
    Which is most of covid infections.
  - ping_pong 5y ago
    The Black Death, if that's what you're talking about, killed about 2/3 of all Europeans.
    - thaumasiotes 5y ago
      I usually see estimates more in the 40-50% range?
- f6v 5y ago
  > our immune systems are effective against covid When you say "our", who do you mean? 30yo with no underlying health conditions? A leukemia patient? An HIV-positive person? A 50yo diabetic? 40% of the adult obese Americans? Yes, healthy immune system can be effective at fighting covid. But vaccination is a matter of public health. You aim to eradicate the disease so that everyone is safe.
  - daenz 5y ago
    Again this does not conflict with being unbiased against the evidence.

cdolan 5y ago

Fear is one hell of a drug. But really, I think many people are laser focused on not just minimizing risk of COVID, but now trying to zero out COVID risk, that having any reason to delay receipt of a vaccine isn't a pre-existing medical condition is considered a form of aggression. At some point we transitioned from "bend the curve" to "eradicate the virus", and this seems like a byproduct of that mental shift.

jswny 5y ago
Why would you not want to eradicate Covid?
- calvano915 5y ago
  Obviously we can and maybe should, but at what costs in order to do so? Are there better infectious diseases to invest in and focus on instead?
  - anoncake 5y ago
    We can't, and we've known that for months, possibly since the beginning.
- cdolan 5y ago
  Why do you not want to eradicate hunger, inequality, mental health problems, and general suffering? I ask such an absurd question in response to your equally absurd question because of course everyone wants to eradicate these issues! But it is not possible to fully eliminate being monetarily poor (by somehow making everyone wealthy), or hunger (by overproducing food and creating distribution), etc.... and so a realization that tradeoffs must be made given our finite resources will better frame our collective decisions as a society.

ping_pong 5y ago

Because the issue has turned into a political and morality issue now. In the US, over 40% of Democrats think that hospitalization rates for COVID are 50% or higher, and 28% of Democrats tink that hospitalization from COVID is 20-49%. It's really 1-5%.So the vast majority of Democrats think that COVID is over an order of magnitude worse than it actually is. So people who don't want to take the vaccine because they are concerned about taking a new medication or they already have been infected and don't need it, are now "immoral right wing Trumpists". I read on the Bay Area subreddit how someone was called a 'Republican' for not wearing a mask outside, even though the mandate now is that you don't need to wear a mask outside if you're vaccinated and not in a large group of people.

f6v 5y ago

> It's as if they want the vaccine to be the only thing that helps stop COVID Our immune system didn't evolve to cope with living in incredibly tight spaces surrounded by millions of people. Our immune system also isn't good at dealing with infections as we age: it's simply unnatural to survive past 70. We need to keep vaccinating, to create a collective immunity that protects the vulnerable.

leoedin 5y ago
Vaccinating is literally training the immune system to look for a specific protein and treat it as a threat. When your immune system learns how to fight off a virus, it does it by creating antibodies for a specific protein - treating that protein as a threat. They're effectively the same thing. The only thing the vaccine does differently is it doesn't exponentially reproduce in your cells. So anyone who survived Covid by definition has an immune system which can recognise the virus and attack it. Otherwise they wouldn't have survived.
- f6v 5y ago
  How does that relate to my point? I said that the vaccination is a matter of public health. Instead of letting everyone get sick, we aim to eradicate the virus by vaccinating as many people as possible. This helps reduce the death toll.

astrange 5y ago

They do a pretty good job, that's why we don't have a pandemic every year. But the fact that we have a pandemic now is clear evidence that it's not doing a good enough job. Similarly, if you get a rabies infection you're going to die, even though you have an immune system.

estaseuropano 5y ago

Good science tests assumptions. Even if the result often ends up unsurprising it is important to test assumptions as else we never find out which ones are wrong. There were a number of cases of individuals being infected a second time after covid recovery. This article corroborates the evidence that individuals that had covid might have a low chance of reinfection and therefore might not need a vaccine. If you look at some other comments here you will see that still the evidence is not 100% clear cut, so good that data analysis continues in the future, e.g. to see if there are differences in how long the effect lasts between different kinds of vaccines and natural infection (there is also more than one way to have covid).

kalleboo 5y ago

I assumed that the fear was that lots of people who think they got covid but were never tested (or people who falsely tested negative) would use this as an excuse to not get the vaccine

FearlessNebula 5y ago

I think many of us are so exhausted from fighting to get people to just sort of follow the rules. I’d rather just tell everyone to get the vaccine and leave no room for error here

matthewdgreen 5y ago

Anecdotally: I know a number of people who say they "had COVID" but when you poke a little bit deeper it turns out they never had a formal diagnosis or test result -- they just self-diagnosed based on some symptoms. I have no data about the numbers here, but I suspect that these people make up a non-trivial percentage of the "already had COVID" crowd. Vaccination seems like a pretty good precaution for these folks.

sschueller 5y ago

This seems to be a US thing at least at the moment. Here is Switzerland the government specifically says if you have had a positive Corona test you should not vaccinate for at least 6 month and if you do after that only 1 shot not 2. Then again we had a vaccine shortage so that may also have something to do with it.