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That's good news for people who have already recovered from Covid. We should definitely take that into account for policies around opening up again, i.e. by tre

That's good news for people who have already recovered from Covid. We should definitely take that into account for policies around opening up again, i.e. by treating recovered people like vaccinated people. Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least.

nostromo 5y ago
People should obviously get vaccinated, yes. It does suggest that the vaccines could be improved to be even more effective. It’s also interesting that the people most resistant to delta are people that were both infected and vaccinated.
- lottin 5y ago
  I seem to recall someone suggested that since a large percentage of the population is vaccinated and are therefore protected against severe covid, we should now actually try to catch it to develop a natural immunity to the virus.
  - _Microft 5y ago
    I had skimmed and summarized such an article (submitted by someone else) a few weeks ago. I'm not sure that I would actually agree with it though. You can find it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28109055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28109055
  - throwawaycities 5y ago
    The “problem” is that vaccinated people with the virus but experiencing no symptoms is that they still spread it to both unvaccinated and vaccinated alike. While many might not feel sympathy for the unvaccinated, a small % can’t get the vaccination, and there will still be that % of vaccinated people that do have a bad health outcome.
    - nradov 5y ago
      At this point the Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect unvaccinated individuals. They're going to get exposed and infected eventually no matter what we do. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - mlyle 5y ago
        Maybe. I quibble with "no significant herd immunity." I'm in an area with a very high vaccination rate (>87% of those over age 12 having had at least one dose, >80% fully vaccinated). Our case counts are a fraction of the rest of the country. The country's rates would be expected to be 3x lower if we could simply extrapolate my locale's rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people to those fractions of the population in the rest of the country. This seems to hold up in other high-vaccination regions, though obviously there are confounds. The phase delay and greatly decreased count even makes me speculate that my locale (which is still using some mitigations) may be operating in a regime of Rt < 1.0 right now, and all case chains (slowly) geometrically decay from outside introductions from travel, etc. And we expect immunity to improve further, from kids being vaccinated and from more unvaccinated people getting infected. Maybe this isn't true. But we seem, at the least, to be experiencing some benefit beyond the direct benefits for vaccinated individuals.
        nradov 5y ago
        Case counts are meaningless as they largely reflect the level of testing. In most places there's not enough random population testing going on to get accurate infection counts. In the US the CDC estimates that infections are about 4× officially counted "cases".
        mlyle 5y ago
  - pengaru 5y ago
    It's not a hare brained idea, and it's been presented in the msm recently like @ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58270098 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58270098
  - foogazi 5y ago
    > we should now actually try to catch it to develop a natural immunity to the virus. We should catch it to get immunity so we don’t catch it ? I don’t get your thinking here
trhway 5y ago
>Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least. "Get Covid to better protect others from Covid" - Stronger immunity results in less chances to get infected again and less viral spread when infected. Ie. given that existing vaccines don't protect much against infection by delta, and that once infected the vaccinated spread the virus like unvaccinated, one can see that the people with natural immunity are much more preferable to have around than vaccinated.
- teachrdan 5y ago
  >once infected the vaccinated spread the virus like unvaccinated You are spreading disinformation. Vaccinated people who do get sick are less likely to spread the virus, and have a high viral load in their system for a shorter duration: --- A vaccinated person may have the same viral loads as an unvaccinated person, but that high level of virus lasts only three to four days compared with an unvaccinated person who could be contagious for up to 10 days, said Suresh Mittal, professor of virology at Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Individuals who are vaccinated have a good immune response. If they get in contact with people who are infected, they might get infected, but the majority may not transmit,” he said. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/11/covid-transmission-among-vaccinated-unvaccinated-what-experts-say/5488398001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/11/covid-...
  - trhway 5y ago
    >Vaccinated people who do get sick are less likely to spread the virus https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v... "We find no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections. " >that high level of virus lasts only three to four days compared with an unvaccinated person who could be contagious for up to 10 days may be. Yet it is the first days what matter until one notices that s/he is ill. And the article you cite has gems like this >Cases of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated remain rare. Where is for example in MA - with 65% vaccination rate - out of the 1400 new daily infections the 400+ are breakthrough : https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/mass-has-3098-new-breakthrough-cases-7-more-covid-deaths-among-vaccinated/2475214/ https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/mass-has-3098-new... And there is similar data from highly vaccinated places like UK, Israel, Singapore.
Gibbon1 5y ago
Well you have two options. Either 1) You force everyone to get tested for Covid. Then vaccinate everyone who tests negative. 2) Or you just vaccinate everyone knowing those that had it will just end up with stronger immunity. Seems like 2 is the cheapest most straightforward option.
- nradov 5y ago
  Those aren't the only options. It would be unethical to force testing on everyone.
  - Gibbon1 5y ago
    You can't trust people to self report having covid. Because a very high percentage will lie about it. Same as rules that allow vaccinated people to not wear masks. Unvaccinate people will up and lie about being vaccinated.
  - bserge 5y ago
    It's unethical to withhold mental health medication, too, but strangely no one gives a fuck about that.
  - retrac 5y ago
    We don't need to. People could be given the option of testing, or of going into isolation for the incubation period. Several countries had great effect from ordering a lockdown and testing the entire population over a day or two, releasing those who are negative from lockdown, and repeating this process multiple times in badly affected areas. Slovakia did this and it seems to have been extremely effective, though obviously not enough to eradicate it: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4761 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4761
    - nradov 5y ago
      Irrelevant. What appeared to work temporarily in Slovakia last year has no bearing on management of the more contagious Delta variant. Community transmission in most countries is so widespread now that there's simply no practical way to isolate so many people. It's just too late for that to work.
H8crilA 5y ago
Wait, which country isn't treating the recovered like the vaccinated? I thought it's standard, at least in Europe.
- aqme28 5y ago
  I know for my flight from the US to Europe, I need proof of vaccination. Proof "of immunity" is not sufficient.
  - H8crilA 5y ago
    Weird. I guess it's different for non citizens. https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...
- nostromo 5y ago
  That’s not the case in the US.
- dogma1138 5y ago
  In Europe you can get a certification only if you had a positive PCR result in the past 180 days. So if you want to travel right now freely you need to be double dosed unless you have recovered recently.
marlo111 5y ago
I've had COVID multiple times since this all started, no symptoms, I have positive tests and Antibodies. The pressure of getting the vaccine finally got to me. I didn't want to get it. Coming from a science background, my understanding is that my body is neutralizing COVID before it can cause any clinically expressed inflammation. The media, politics, and big pharma need to stay out of medicine, but it's too late.

nostromo 5y ago

People should obviously get vaccinated, yes. It does suggest that the vaccines could be improved to be even more effective. It’s also interesting that the people most resistant to delta are people that were both infected and vaccinated.

lottin 5y ago
I seem to recall someone suggested that since a large percentage of the population is vaccinated and are therefore protected against severe covid, we should now actually try to catch it to develop a natural immunity to the virus.
- _Microft 5y ago
  I had skimmed and summarized such an article (submitted by someone else) a few weeks ago. I'm not sure that I would actually agree with it though. You can find it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28109055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28109055
- throwawaycities 5y ago
  The “problem” is that vaccinated people with the virus but experiencing no symptoms is that they still spread it to both unvaccinated and vaccinated alike. While many might not feel sympathy for the unvaccinated, a small % can’t get the vaccination, and there will still be that % of vaccinated people that do have a bad health outcome.
  - nradov 5y ago
    At this point the Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect unvaccinated individuals. They're going to get exposed and infected eventually no matter what we do. https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immunity-not-possible-astrazeneca-developer-2021-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Maybe. I quibble with "no significant herd immunity." I'm in an area with a very high vaccination rate (>87% of those over age 12 having had at least one dose, >80% fully vaccinated). Our case counts are a fraction of the rest of the country. The country's rates would be expected to be 3x lower if we could simply extrapolate my locale's rates among vaccinated and unvaccinated people to those fractions of the population in the rest of the country. This seems to hold up in other high-vaccination regions, though obviously there are confounds. The phase delay and greatly decreased count even makes me speculate that my locale (which is still using some mitigations) may be operating in a regime of Rt < 1.0 right now, and all case chains (slowly) geometrically decay from outside introductions from travel, etc. And we expect immunity to improve further, from kids being vaccinated and from more unvaccinated people getting infected. Maybe this isn't true. But we seem, at the least, to be experiencing some benefit beyond the direct benefits for vaccinated individuals.
      - nradov 5y ago
        Case counts are meaningless as they largely reflect the level of testing. In most places there's not enough random population testing going on to get accurate infection counts. In the US the CDC estimates that infections are about 4× officially counted "cases".
        mlyle 5y ago
- pengaru 5y ago
  It's not a hare brained idea, and it's been presented in the msm recently like @ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58270098 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-58270098
- foogazi 5y ago
  > we should now actually try to catch it to develop a natural immunity to the virus. We should catch it to get immunity so we don’t catch it ? I don’t get your thinking here

trhway 5y ago

>Beside that it is of little use, is it? "Get Covid to be better protected from Covid" doesn't make a lot of sense to me, at least. "Get Covid to better protect others from Covid" - Stronger immunity results in less chances to get infected again and less viral spread when infected. Ie. given that existing vaccines don't protect much against infection by delta, and that once infected the vaccinated spread the virus like unvaccinated, one can see that the people with natural immunity are much more preferable to have around than vaccinated.

teachrdan 5y ago
>once infected the vaccinated spread the virus like unvaccinated You are spreading disinformation. Vaccinated people who do get sick are less likely to spread the virus, and have a high viral load in their system for a shorter duration: --- A vaccinated person may have the same viral loads as an unvaccinated person, but that high level of virus lasts only three to four days compared with an unvaccinated person who could be contagious for up to 10 days, said Suresh Mittal, professor of virology at Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. “Individuals who are vaccinated have a good immune response. If they get in contact with people who are infected, they might get infected, but the majority may not transmit,” he said. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/11/covid-transmission-among-vaccinated-unvaccinated-what-experts-say/5488398001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/11/covid-...
- trhway 5y ago
  >Vaccinated people who do get sick are less likely to spread the virus https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v... "We find no difference in viral loads when comparing unvaccinated individuals to those who have vaccine “breakthrough” infections. " >that high level of virus lasts only three to four days compared with an unvaccinated person who could be contagious for up to 10 days may be. Yet it is the first days what matter until one notices that s/he is ill. And the article you cite has gems like this >Cases of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated remain rare. Where is for example in MA - with 65% vaccination rate - out of the 1400 new daily infections the 400+ are breakthrough : https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/mass-has-3098-new-breakthrough-cases-7-more-covid-deaths-among-vaccinated/2475214/ https://www.nbcboston.com/news/coronavirus/mass-has-3098-new... And there is similar data from highly vaccinated places like UK, Israel, Singapore.

Gibbon1 5y ago

Well you have two options. Either 1) You force everyone to get tested for Covid. Then vaccinate everyone who tests negative. 2) Or you just vaccinate everyone knowing those that had it will just end up with stronger immunity. Seems like 2 is the cheapest most straightforward option.

nradov 5y ago
Those aren't the only options. It would be unethical to force testing on everyone.
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  You can't trust people to self report having covid. Because a very high percentage will lie about it. Same as rules that allow vaccinated people to not wear masks. Unvaccinate people will up and lie about being vaccinated.
- bserge 5y ago
  It's unethical to withhold mental health medication, too, but strangely no one gives a fuck about that.
- retrac 5y ago
  We don't need to. People could be given the option of testing, or of going into isolation for the incubation period. Several countries had great effect from ordering a lockdown and testing the entire population over a day or two, releasing those who are negative from lockdown, and repeating this process multiple times in badly affected areas. Slovakia did this and it seems to have been extremely effective, though obviously not enough to eradicate it: https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4761 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4761
  - nradov 5y ago
    Irrelevant. What appeared to work temporarily in Slovakia last year has no bearing on management of the more contagious Delta variant. Community transmission in most countries is so widespread now that there's simply no practical way to isolate so many people. It's just too late for that to work.

H8crilA 5y ago

Wait, which country isn't treating the recovered like the vaccinated? I thought it's standard, at least in Europe.

aqme28 5y ago
I know for my flight from the US to Europe, I need proof of vaccination. Proof "of immunity" is not sufficient.
- H8crilA 5y ago
  Weird. I guess it's different for non citizens. https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-response/safe-covid-19-vaccines-europeans/eu-digital-covid-certificate_en https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...
nostromo 5y ago
That’s not the case in the US.
dogma1138 5y ago
In Europe you can get a certification only if you had a positive PCR result in the past 180 days. So if you want to travel right now freely you need to be double dosed unless you have recovered recently.

marlo111 5y ago

I've had COVID multiple times since this all started, no symptoms, I have positive tests and Antibodies. The pressure of getting the vaccine finally got to me. I didn't want to get it. Coming from a science background, my understanding is that my body is neutralizing COVID before it can cause any clinically expressed inflammation. The media, politics, and big pharma need to stay out of medicine, but it's too late.