52 ms·

Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

• peteradio 5y ago
  This article also has long form responses. I'd love to see a reasoned contrary response.
  • toolz 5y ago
    There already is one response from 2 MDs and one MPH with citations. Glad you pointed out the long-form response section as it was a good read.
  • blacksqr 5y ago
    The contrary argument is reasonably well-stated within the article, it seems to be mostly a matter of what you assess to be the greatest risks going forward as to which argument you think is more valid. After glancing at the endnotes, it seems that the bulk of the scientific references examining natural immunity date from before the delta variant established itself.
    • mcguire 5y ago
      And many of them were concerned about prioritization during the rollout, when vaccine doses were scarce.
  • rpmisms 5y ago
    The reasoned answer is politics. One side of the aisle committed to a message before they had all the data. The other side did this too. Now it's too politically costly to change any of those positions, no matter how much anyone claims to "follow the science".
• rootusrootus 5y ago
  It seems much harder to quantify the level of immunity conferred by natural infection. It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection. Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice. Refuses to get vaccinated now because "why bother? I have great immunity now." With no sense of irony, given that he's already been infected twice...
  • toolz 5y ago
    Why is it "harder"? I assume you mean harder to quantify than vaccination immunity and I don't believe that's the case, but I'm curious why you believe that is the case. edit: surprising downvotes so I probably didn't communicate my point well. I can't imagine a reason why natural immunity would be harder to quantify than vaccine induced immunity. It would seem to me the methodology to quantify both would be very similar.
    • jeffbee 5y ago
      Nobody knows what dose was delivered to the “natural immunity” group, how many times, or when.
      • mythrwy 5y ago
        Seems we should be able to test for antibodies though. Why aren't we?
        • toolz 5y ago
          we are testing for antibodies but antibodies aren't the only immune system response and depending on who you ask might not even be the "main" defense against covid.
        • kemayo 5y ago
          It's a blood test, and I suspect that it's even harder to motivate everyone to get a blood draw than to get a vaccine.
      • toolz 5y ago
        there are very similar issues with the vaccine - the same dosage of the vaccine will not behave the same in everyone but this is a good point I hadn't considered, thanks
    • yokaze 5y ago
      With a vaccine, you get a standardised dosis of an agent resembling the disease or just a part of it. The remaining variability is the response to that standardised input. With an infection, you have no control over the degree of exposure, so on top of the variability of the response comes the variability of the exposure. Additionally, in case of exposure of the full pathogen, there is some variability to what part of the pathogen the immune system will respond. That part can actually be a good thing in total.
• neuronexmachina 5y ago
  In US culture this seems like it would potentially set up some perverse incentives among anti-vaxxers, leading to things like the "measles parties" that fueled the the 2019 NYC measles outbreak: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200527181329.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200527181329.h...
  • defaulty 5y ago
    We are well past that. It's not that hard to say: 1) If you have natural immunity already, great! Provide evidence of your positive test 2) If you don't have evidence that you've been SARS-COV-19 positive, go get a shot so you don't have a severe hospitalization. 3) No, we don't suggest getting infected on purpose over the shot. Go read #2 Instead, the US federal government is being purposefully ignorant of how effective natural immunity is.
    • deleted 5y ago
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• rajin444 5y ago
  It's very concerning that the president is saying things like "your refusal has cost all of us" and "our patience is wearing this" when talking to people with natural immunity who have not received the vaccine. As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens. It seems like he's doing the opposite. I'm not really sure why. My best guess is politics has become all about polarization lately.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • lithos 5y ago
    The president would not be in the news if they acted reasonably and tried to work across party lines. There’s always going to be someone more extreme, louder, and obnoxious that will sell more ad views along with supporting whatever pet narrative the publication wants.
    • danaris 5y ago
      "Trying to work across party lines" went out the window when the Republicans decided that "prevent absolutely anything the Democrats want to do, no matter how objectively beneficial it would be or whether it was fully supported by Republicans in the past" was a viable and acceptable method of getting re-elected.
      • AuryGlenz 5y ago
        “If the public-health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it — absolutely," the California senator said during the first and only vice-presidential debate. "But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not taking it." -Kamala Harris Let’s not act like both parties don’t do the exact same thing, eh?
        • syvolt 5y ago
          What does this quote mean to you? It is saying that if immunologists and epidemiologists do not recommend a vaccine but Donald Trump does then she wouldn't take it. As far as I know Donald Trump is not a scientist, that seems reasonable? I'm not politically minded so I'm confused as to how you're interpreting that.
• poorjohnmacafee 5y ago
  > US CDC estimates that SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 100 million Americans That's probably why it doesn't count? Would clearly cut into the profit lines of big pharma. If you're extra skeptical, you could also argue Western governments are finding opportunities to accustom their citizens to more top down government intrusions into their lives, e.g. shifting towards a citizen management model that's used today by many non Western nations.
  • collegeburner 5y ago
    Yes, places like NYC are creating a system of getting entry to many places only if you present government authorization. Then they can start adding more conditions to that authorization. Maybe a red state later adds not being a felon or a blue state adds not being on some red flag list. After all, you can still eat, so it's okay. They represent systems for excluding certain classes of people from society.
    • colpabar 5y ago
      I'm extremely interested to see whether voting locations will start requiring proof of vaccination.
      • quartesixte 5y ago
        Someone might have already tried to implement this un-ironically — only a matter of when probably. That SCOTUS case would be quite interesting to watch.
      • nanis 5y ago
        I would be interested in seeing if NYC will require the same proof of identity for voting that they do for their vax pass.
      • wolfgang42 5y ago
        I'm serving as a poll worker in SF today. There's a section in our manual (page 65, there's a PDF online somewhere) about what to do if a voter is not wearing a facial covering, the TLDR of which is to politely offer them a mask or curbside voting, and then let them vote regardless. We are a long way off from requiring vaccination.
• eltondegeneres 5y ago
  OP keeps posting articles pushing the idea that COVID-19 infection alone is sufficient to protect individuals.
  • gojomo 5y ago
    Maybe it is? Many other countries are fine considering documented prior infection as equivalent to vaccination for compliance purposes. There are some results hinting infection-recovery alone is better than vaccination alone, especially versus later variants. The US CDC etc seems slow-moving on key scientific results, in ways that are unnecessarily increasing social conflict. But they’re not even paid by the click!
  • timr 5y ago
    The current data suggests that's true, which is why it counts in other countries, and the US stance is seen as anomalous.
    • rscho 5y ago
      It doesn't count in at least Switzerland, and I believe all through western Europe as well...
      • sprafa 5y ago
        You're wrong. The EU digital certificate is for - you had the vaccine - you had a negative result - you recovered from the virus. Recovering from the virus gives you 180 days of certification. https://www.sns24.gov.pt/guia/certificado-digital-covid-da-ue/ https://www.sns24.gov.pt/guia/certificado-digital-covid-da-u...
      • vinay427 5y ago
        It does count in Switzerland. Source: I live here. Also, the government: https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-epidemien-pandemien/aktuelle-ausbrueche-epidemien/novel-cov/covid-zertifikat.html https://www.bag.admin.ch/bag/en/home/krankheiten/ausbrueche-... > People who have recovered – what to do > You can get a COVID certificate if the COVID infection was confirmed with a positive PCR test and occurred no more than 180 days ago. > You can request the COVID certificate from your cantonal authority using an online form. It will then be sent to you by post. > Please note: > As the COVID certificate is compatible with the EU Digital COVID Certificate, the standards applying to the EU certificate must also serve as a basis for the Swiss certificate. This means that a certificate is only issued to people who have recovered following a positive PCR test.
• leifg 5y ago
  The argument seems fine to me. Let people with natural immunity have the same privileges as vaccinated people assuming they have a piece of paper from a federal entity to prove it. The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.
  • deelowe 5y ago
    To what extent has the efficacy of natural immunity been characterized? There should be some minimum bar of understanding that must be met before something becomes a policy even in extreme cases such as these.
    • gojomo 5y ago
      There's growing evidence one natural infection is better than any vax for future immunity. One recent report, based on Israeli data: "Having SARS-CoV-2 once confers much greater immunity than a vaccine" https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... I love vaccines; especially the Pfizer until further research helps lower the Moderna (& Pfizer) doses. If I'd had COVID, I'd want 1 extra dose, perhaps a half a year later, as an extra boost. But it's unfair – & unscientific – to insist on such doses for the proven-recovered (who are also more likely to have bad vax reactions). Other countries are doing this better – just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses to get more people 1st-dose vaccinated in early 2021. Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
      • deelowe 5y ago
        > just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses > Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility. Other countries delayed second doses either due to health and safety concerns or supply constraints while the US pushed forward with EUA before second dose efficacy was fully characterized. To me, this is the opposite of bureaucracy.
• kemayo 5y ago
  I'd assume that a lot of it is the existing polarization over the issue. It's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so. (Plus a lot of people who don't even know they've already had COVID, because of asymptomatic cases.) The state of medical records in the USA is... not great, so it's easier to show evidence of the vaccination that can at least theoretically be verified. EDIT: man, the rapid-downvoting is even worse here than in the Apple CSAM threads. :D
  • defaulty 5y ago
    > because it's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so. It's not actually. They're equivalent. The vaccine proof is PAPER which can be forged. And while evidence of a COVID19 test can be paper too, mine was digital.
    • kemayo 5y ago
      It's why I said "at least theoretically" -- the vaccine cards have a date and vaccine lot number on them. I'm making the assumption that this has been recorded somewhere, such that you could at least check that a certain batch was administered on a certain day to a certain person. Of course, this could all fail under the "medical records in the USA are garbage" issue. Still, if nothing else, it's better for proving it than "I took a COVID test at home, trust me".
    • tomjakubowski 5y ago
      California has digital vaccination proof. I had a paper copy too but lost it. https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/ https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/
• zwieback 5y ago
  I'm in favor of vaccine mandates but if there was a better way of quantifying immunity I'd be all in favor of letting people with natural immunity get a waiver. As everything with COVID, the lack of hard data and the poor communication of federal and state agencies has enabled politicians, con men and sectarians to exploit the confusion to their benefit.
  • orwin 5y ago
    There is, actually, antibody test. They are quite costly however. Im my country, getting infected count as the 1rst dose (yes, i know, natural immunity is better with "real" infections, but rememeber that Covid sometime start an auto-immune disease, it's hard to test for this, so its less costly to just vaccinate people (the jab cost 12E)). No scientific response. This is mostly pragmatic, and probably politic too. Its easier to just jab everyone you can while you can. I know it's a bit hearthless, and i can't ask doctors to start triaging, but i'd really like that once everyone have had the possibility to get the double dose, we just stop everything covid related (maybe not the reduced maximum capacity and mask in public transport for the adults during peak hours: those restrictions should have been implemented way before covid).
    • mcguire 5y ago
      $42.13? https://www.labcorp.com/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/individuals/antibody-test https://www.labcorp.com/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/individ...
      • orwin 5y ago
        Well, yes, $42 * 10M is expensive. Not that $15210M is not. And i'm pretty sure half the people who said "i got covid" last year did not have it (and i'm kind). So let's say we had tested half the population, and that half of this half have to get vaccinated anyway, since the test was negative. For France, that's one billion euros used for nothing. I'm to tired to make sense, but you understand my point (if not, i'll have to explain the reasoning better). Anyway, it's pragmatism and not wasting money.
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• deleted 5y ago
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• darthvoldemort 5y ago
  A recent study from Israel said that natural immunity is an order of magnitude better than vaccine-induced immunity against delta variant. I don't know who to believe, but if that's the case, then the narrative of "well they should get vaccinated anyway" is really freaking suspicious. We need deeper research on this, and the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary.
  • RIMR 5y ago
    >the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary Can you clarify who you mean by "they"? I don't suspect you mean Israel in that context.
  • petre 5y ago
    Do take an antibody test and decide for yourself. How can one make decisions without any metric?
    • pbaka 5y ago
      I think the point of the policies is you shouldn't. It's like in the army : don't think, we've done the thinking for you.
    • mike00632 5y ago
      You know what's easier than getting an antibody tests and ensures immunity to COVID?
  • frockington1 5y ago
    Follow the money. Lots of money to be made with each round of shots the population is encouraged to get
    • lame-robot-hoax 5y ago
      Follow the money, lots of money to be made by dissuading people from becoming vaccinated, so they are more likely to need expensive medical services.
• sam0x17 5y ago
  It's a waste of resources to figure out whether someone has natural immunity (its quite hard to do logistically). Much easier to just give them the vaccine, then your bases are covered. These are public health decisions -- they don't occur in a vacuum with unlimited resources.
  • peteradio 5y ago
    So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test? How much fucking money has been spent due to this pandemic, amazing vaccine development, government backstops all over the place, but somehow a routine blood draw and test is seen as too absurd an idea?
    • sam0x17 5y ago
      > So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test In short, yes, this is called good public health policy. It's not merely a simple blood test and it's not something just any lab could do. Anti-body testing is finicky, expensive, time-consuming, and not as reliable as has_vaccine (boolean). So in other words, we are going to make your medical decision for you because not doing so puts the health of many others at risk and you don't have the right to put countless others at risk. A simple utilitarian analysis yields this as the obvious solution. It is worth sacrificing your personal preference at no risk to yourself to save potentially many lives. Even the vaccinated are at risk when a large percentage of the population runs around unvaccinated, because each transmission increases the risk of a mutation that gives rise to a vaccine-resistant strain with a higher death rate. Then we'd be back at square one. In the worst case scenario it could kill off the majority of the population. This situation is exactly analogous to someone in the food industry saying they should have a religious exemption for hand-washing. The bad effects of allowing such an exemption (people dying from food poisoning and catching diseases from food) aren't worth the small sacrifice of simply having to wash your hands before preparing food. With good reason, we ignore people who say "there are microchips in the soap" and still make them wash their hands or seek employment elsewhere.
      • 5y ago
• extheat 5y ago
  Given the political discussions about “booster shots”, I find this quote pretty interesting: > Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”
  • Pxtl 5y ago
    That sounds more like an argument for the Canadian model where we went several months between shots (on the assumption that a high percentage of the populace partially-protected was more useful than a small percentage fully protected). I'm assuming semiannual or quarterly shots will be where we land until Covid is no longer a major threat.
    • vinay427 5y ago
      To be fair, that model wouldn't be as ideal with the greater proportion of the US population unwilling to get vaccinated, as well as the higher vaccine availability in the US. It seems like Canada would make a better case given the lower vaccine skepticism and vaccine supply.
  • fernandotakai 5y ago
    i really don't understand why booster shots are a "political discussion" i have normal flu booster shots ever year -- and that's fine. why not for covid?
    • TimTheTinker 5y ago
      Every year influenza mutates. The flu booster shot is actually a full vaccination based on the leading 2-3 variants they predict will be dominant in the coming flu season. Also, flu vaccines are based on weakened viral particles, not mRNA transcriptions of key viral proteins... so the two really aren't comparable.
• amalcon 5y ago
  The one thing missing from the article is the thing the vaccines needed to have prior to approval: rigorous controlled double-blinded studies on infection rates. My guess would be that, to people interested in data-driven epidemiological decisions, this is considered pretty important. What the article provides instead is direct measurement of biological indicators of immune response, which while useful is not remotely the same thing. This is, however, slightly unfair. You can't ethically have a rigorous controlled double-blinded study on infection rates of people who have already had SARS-CoV-2. This would require infecting some people with SARS-CoV-2, making others incorrectly think they had been infected, and then letting all of them go about their lives post-"recovery". The ethical problems are obvious. That said, I'd frankly be fine with letting people with (state-)government-verified past COVID cases act as though they have been vaccinated for a period after recovery (not sure what the period should be). It would be one way to get the next best kind of data (an observational study of vaccinated and recovered patients). It would also incentivize people to get tested (so they get that government-verified past case). I'm not sure it's worth building that bureaucracy, but if that compromise were proposed I'd happily accept.
• Someone1234 5y ago
  The answers aren't medical, they're pragmatic. - COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose). - We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need. - We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost). The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe. Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards. Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals. Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue, you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
  • bitcurious 5y ago
    > COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose). So a marginal cost of $24. Folks with natural immunity will have a stronger reaction to the vaccine, but let’s be conservative. Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time? Full disclosure: happily vaccinated. The vaccine is safe, but it’s dammed inconvenient.
    • pessimizer 5y ago
      Eh, I had it on Saturday, and had a nice sleepy Sunday. Definitely fatigue, but nothing to remember on Monday.
    • CaptainZapp 5y ago
      > Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time? Other rich countries solve that problem by letting you take time off if you're sick. Even if working minimum wage.
  • 5y ago
• criticaltinker 5y ago
  Why is this post flagged? And why is the vouch button unavailable?
  • colpabar 5y ago
    The mods are surprisingly responsive on this site, so I say this without a hint of sarcasm - try emailing them about it. I recently had a thread unflagged within an hour.
    • peteradio 5y ago
      I've mailed.
      • colpabar 5y ago
        I'm glad! Look at all this discussion.
        • peteradio 5y ago
          You saved it, I wouldn't have thought to without your comment.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I think the vouch button is only available once the post is dead. (Same for comments.)
    • detaro 5y ago
      yes
  • dang 5y ago
    It was flagged because users flagged it. This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
• crdrost 5y ago
  The question in the title is very very easy to answer. The political reason that natural immunity “doesn’t count” indeed is not directly about medical reality. To say things are political is almost an insult these days—I don’t mean it that way at all. But policy has medical implications, and so politics is part of it. This policy-decision is being made because there have been political movements since early on to do variations on “Let 'er rip,” that is, to allow COVID-19 to run rampant until a herd immunity develops, while maybe implementing decontamination procedures in nursing homes instead or so. The most notable statement to this effect was the Great Barrington Declaration but of course there have been smaller ones that hit wider spread. Policy needs to factor in things like the huge early oppositions to shutdowns, the huge oppositions to masking despite it being absurdly effective for how cheap it is... there remain very strong political forces in this divided country which overlook the significance of younger people with COVID flooding the emergency rooms and overtaxing our limited health workers (NYT today reports that in the US South, they are at this level right now), and the death that can come from this, simply because the danger for young people is usually considerably smaller when those hospitals are operating normally. (See India for a cautionary tale, there.) Given this political reality, ‘vaccinate everyone’ is a political countermeasure meant to create a potential-energy-barrier to lying. It’s not medical advice, it’s public policy. Lying to say ‘Yeah I was COVID-exposed but it wasn’t bad enough to go to the hospital’ is very very cheap. Forging a CDC vaccination card takes a couple hours of time right now and opens you up to some fraud risks—it’s not a huge cost but if it’s higher than the cost of just going and getting vaccinated, there is a hope that vaccination will win out.
• deleted 5y ago
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• neonate 5y ago
  https://archive.is/2Jden https://archive.is/2Jden
• kcb 5y ago
  Just get the vaccine.
  • stronglikedan 5y ago
    Or don't. It's a personal choice.
    • ziziyO 5y ago
      This is completely incorrect. Public health isn’t a personal choice.
      • betwixthewires 5y ago
        Yes, it is.
        • mynegation 5y ago
          So it is a personal choice. Would you be OK with the consequences of qualifying it as such? What if an unvaccinated (by personal choice) person comes down with COVID and has to be hospitalized or - worse - put into ICU. Do you think they would be OK if doctors, faced with the crunch of beds, place them into a second tier, behind all the breakthrough cases? Hospitals do not do that currently, but this is not unheard of (e.g. bumping smokers and alcoholic patients in organ donation queues). I am willing to accept this is a personal choice if people making that choice accept responsibility for it.
          • betwixthewires 5y ago
            They accept responsibility by paying for medical care, paying insurance, or paying taxes into a socialized healthcare system, depending on which country you live. Refusing to treat sick people is not forcing them to take responsibility for their decisions, it is coercing them into making a decision they don't want to make, and I think k you know that.
• Pxtl 5y ago
  ... yeah, this is not going to be a productive comment thread. Sadly, COVID has been so politicized that I tend to say "sit down, shut up, and let the public health people drive". Even if they're wrong, they're close-enough to right to satisfy me and that's better than opening public health up to debate.
  • dougmwne 5y ago
    Productive or not, the debate must go on. It is the foundation of our republics.
  • kuraudo 5y ago
    I think everyone should get the vaccine, but this is the kind of comment that births brand new skeptics.
  • volkk 5y ago
    > Even if they're wrong well that's very loaded, as in, if they're wrong to the point of having long term damage to your body, then probably..don't just get it...right? albeit, we've seen no proof that this is the case at all thus far.
    • Pxtl 5y ago
      Here's the thing, the dilemma isn't "should I get the shot or shouldn't I get the shot". The dilemma is "should I support the public experts even if their approach might have some minor flaws, or should I dissent and risk feeding credibility into their opponents that are prolonging this pandemic and getting innocent people killed as they clog up the hospital system". This is a definite case where "perfect is the enemy of the good".
      • deleted 5y ago
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  • betwixthewires 5y ago
    I agree that these discussions aren't very productive, but I take a different approach: let people decide for themselves.
• clipradiowallet 5y ago
  Natural immunity isn't subsidized by taxpayers, and does not enrich any party through sales of a vaccine... on those grounds, of course they are encouraged to receive the vaccine.
  • kcb 5y ago
    He's figured it out. Dispatch the team.
  • pzh 5y ago
    Somebody can still make money by offering a test that proves natural immunity.
  • RedComet 5y ago
    ISaaS - Immune System as a Service
  • nanis 5y ago
    Also, forcing on person A something person B makes which is paid by entity C with absolutely no liability on B & C and the authority does make for good lead into a post public "service" career. Then, you submit to constant tracking. All of a sudden things one could never have imagined just a couple of years ago become subject to whether a some unaccountable authority gives you permission.
• lmilcin 5y ago
  Because it is pretty simple to account for who got the vaccine and who did not. And running entire population through antibody test just to find, in most cases, that you still need to administer the vaccine is just wasteful.
  • ffggvv 5y ago
    i don’t see how it’d be wasteful to know how many people have natural immunity. seems quite useful actually even if we determine they should still get vaccine
    • lmilcin 5y ago
      You can get to know how many people have natural immunity without testing them all. In a country as large as US it would be enough to test probably one in 10 thousand people to get accurate statistics.
      • nradov 5y ago
        The UK public health officials have been doing random population sampling with antibody tests throughout the pandemic. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveyantibodyandvaccinationdatafortheuk/1september2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... Unfortunately that never really happened in the US. There were a few small seroprevalence studies in limited areas at specific times but nothing consistent on a nationwide basis. Also note that there is more to immunity than antibodies, so assaying antibody levels alone will underestimate the level of immunity in the population. We should also be testing memory cell activity now that a test is approved. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-adaptive-biotechnologies-t-detect-covid-test https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavi...
    • jpxw 5y ago
      I think you severely underestimate how hard it would be to organise every single person in the country having a blood test, and then sending out invites etc based on the results of those tests.
• gorwell 5y ago
  DR. GUPTA: "I get calls all the time, people say, 'I've already had COVID, I'm protected.' And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine?" DR. FAUCI: "I don't have a really firm answer for you on that." https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1436417459314171904 https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1436417459314171904
  • SigmundA 5y ago
    I think the full response better convey's his position: "You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that. That's something that we're going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response. The one thing that paper from Israel didn't tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural infection, what's the durability compared to the durability of a vaccine? So it is conceivable that you got infected, you're protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time. So, I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said."
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • hammock 5y ago
      What Fauci doesn't mention is that there isn't just one paper from Israel. There are 15 large-scale studies. Every single one demonstrates that natural immunity is at least as protective as the jab. And depending on when the study was done protection is shown for over 10 months (basically however long as whatever data was available). Many of the papers logically extend the protection to lifetime in their conclusions. https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-15-studies-that-indicate-natural-immunity-from-prior-infection-is-more-robust-than-the-covid-vaccines https://www.theblaze.com/op-ed/horowitz-15-studies-that-indi...
    • mmazing 5y ago
      Yeah but it's more fun to ruffle people's feathers with a soundbite, apparently.
• KingMachiavelli 5y ago
  Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18. On the other hand places with good vaccination rates are reimposing lockdowns and mask mandates. Quite a few public events are getting canceled or rescheduled. By any metric the COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best breakeven in terms of cost effectiveness. Since the risk of COVID is lower now both due to the vaccine and also just our knowledge of treatment, any lockdown/mandate response will have a lower cost effectiveness. IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case) and end all other restrictions. Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses. It would be better to just do a vaccine/verified immunity passport like program but that is practically impossible in the US. Too many people won't like/use the governments app including both the normal conspiracy nuts but also the privacy-minded HN crowd. It also does not help that there are half a dozen passport like apps from insurance companies and various government agencies.
  • loudtieblahblah 5y ago
    > I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18. Maybe because there's concerns. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v... > "for boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day Covid-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at times of high weekly Covid-19 hospitalization,"
    • loudtieblahblah 5y ago
      i like the downvotes and lack of response. it's always a good 1-2 punch.
  • 5y ago
• aml702 5y ago
  Follow the money. That's why.
  • vernie 5y ago
    Woozy face
• trhway 5y ago
  That would shrink vaccine market in US by at least 70-80M. No sane politician would do that. Like with private prisons they got to provide the promised body count no matter what.
• EamonnMR 5y ago
  Administrative overhead.
• jowday 5y ago
  The answer is pretty simple - the moment authorities start saying "well, natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination, we'll accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes", a huge segment of the population who's on the fence about getting the vaccine might just opt to wait until they're infected naturally, or, even worse, get infected purposefully (EG, chicken pox parties). Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks. In a perfect world, everyone would understand that getting the vaccine is the appropriate choice of action and we could accept natural immunity from people who were infected before vaccines were available - but unfortunately we're forced into playing these weird games where authorities have to try to incentivize people who aren't behaving rationally - which in turn leads to further distrust from people on the fence.
  • aqme28 5y ago
    Europe (or Germany at least) accepts natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. As far as I've heard, no one has been getting covid on purpose as a result.
    • mdoms 5y ago
      German culture is not as feircly selfish as American culture. They also have far lower vaccine hesitancy rates.
      • epicureanideal 5y ago
        “Selfishness” is not how I would characterize the motivations of people who haven’t vaccinated. By the way, I have been vaccinated for months, but I can understand that others may not want to for reasons other than those I would describe as “selfish”.
        • sneak 5y ago
          Regardless of their motivation, remaining unvaccinated is a selfish choice, same as driving around burning gasoline recreationally.
        • 5y ago
• jpxw 5y ago
  Pros vs cons of taking natural immunity into account: Pros: - An extremely small number of people who would get side effects now wouldn’t Cons: - Logistics: you now need to perform a blood test on every single person in the country, process the results, send out vaccine invites based on the results, and set up some system where people can prove their blood test results. None of the aforementioned components currently exist. You also need to come up with some arbitrary threshold for “enough” antibodies. - Cost: the blood test costs 4x as much as the vaccine, from what I see in other comments - Incentives: you risk incentivising vaccine skeptics to deliberately contract COVID
  • bitcurious 5y ago
    Some notes: >Pros: >- An extremely small number of people who would get side effects now wouldn’t What is an 'extremely small' number? The CDC[0] states that [Headache..., Fever, Nausea] are "common." Sadly 'common' is not defined, but with >100,000,000 folks with natural immunity it's hard to imagine a definition of 'common' that squares with any reasonable definition of 'extremely small'. >Cons: >- Logistics: you now need to perform a blood test on every single person in the country, For a large chunk of the population you have past positive test results. For the rest, you just need to offer the option of taking a blood test. Furthermore, the majority of the US is already vaccinated. So in just a few steps you go from "every single person" to, if you allow me to guesstimate, somewhere in the single digit percentages. Also a missing pro: You have a government whose vaccine policies are grounded in proper science and medical ethics, reducing the number of vaccine hesitant individuals. [0]https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/after.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/expect/af...
    • jpxw 5y ago
      I suspect that using past positive tests would make things even more complicated. It’s very easy to underestimate how difficult things are at the “tens of millions of people” scale, particularly for governments. > You have a government whose vaccine policies are grounded in proper science and medical ethics, reducing the number of vaccine hesitant individuals Circular argument, no? This point is only relevant to whether natural immunity should be correct if you accept that your own position (natural immunity should be taken into account) is correct.
• mactitan 5y ago
  From this article: “When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’t get it,” he says. For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.” The authors here agree (I’d really like professionals to discuss this for it’s highly disturbing; but obvious why it wasn’t communicated to subjects) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645850/ THE RISK OF ADE IN COVID‐19 VACCINES IS NON‐THEORETICAL AND COMPELLING
  • wrl 5y ago
    That article was published on 4th December, 2020. Have the concerns expressed therein borne out in the 10 month interim?
    • mactitan 5y ago
      Yes it’s interesting that they are using previous corona profiles. You would think a yr is long enough but I’m patient and will hedge my bet by losing my job.
      • noofen 5y ago
        Since you appear to have skin in the game, I recommend reading Geert Vanden Bossche's latest post [0] on the long-term effects of vaccine mandates. He's been ostracized from the "experts", but has a lot of experience in vaccine research. It's a little disturbing. [0]: https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/the-last-post https://www.geertvandenbossche.org/post/the-last-post
      • wrl 5y ago
        Previous corona profiles? The article was written before the vaccines were widely available, so the only people who had received them were in the clinical trials. A year is absolutely long enough. To quote Derek Lowe in the "From the Pipeline" article: "We have hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated to produce antibodies against the non-Delta coronavirus protein domains and are who are now being exposed to the Delta variant. To reiterate, there is (to the best of my knowledge) no evidence whatsoever of ADE in this situation. In fact, we see the opposite: people who have been vaccinated are far less likely to become infected with the Delta variant, and if they become infected, they are far less likely to experience severe disease. These trends have been seen over and over in different populations, and they are the exact opposite of what you would see if ADE were operating. If the mechanism proposed by Yahi et al. were happening in the real world, then we should see higher Delta infection rates among vaccinated people, with more severe disease. We are not. We are seeing the reverse. The vaccines simply to not appear to be causing ADE, no matter how many reasons one might be able to spin for them to do so." Just get the vaccine.
• jtdev 5y ago
  I think we can safely say that counting natural immunity would harm too many $$$ dollars and prevent politicians from maximizing the tragedy of C19 for political, power, and financial gain.
• issa 5y ago
  Take this as anecdotal because I am not aware of a study being done, but many people with long COVID report the vaccination improving their symptoms. This seems to argue that there is additional defense in getting vaccinated.
• jonstaab 5y ago
  First balanced take I've seen from the establishment yet, good for them. Over a year and a half of completely bizarre policy surrounding covid, I've warmed up to the idea that the West is currently in the process of importing China's brand of social-credit totalitarianism to the rest of the world. I know it sounds crazy, but if you have a little intellectual curiosity, I encourage you to listen to "LaserHodl's" case for Monetary Reset: - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/265-monetary-reset-malthusian-wizardy-and-bitcoin-as/id1292381204?i=1000530983673 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/265-monetary-reset-mal... - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/270-better-understanding-monetary-reset-with-laserhodl/id1292381204?i=1000534252700 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/270-better-understandi... - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=posr1XHh8JA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=posr1XHh8JA
  • mdoms 5y ago
    Yeah I'm going to go ahead and skip "LaserHodl's" opinions on this whole issue.
    • jonstaab 5y ago
      Did I not hedge enough? Two years ago I was a happy, contented liberal raising a family and working at my job. I still am, but I believe some quite different things about what is happening in the world, which old me would have dismissed out of hand.
      • dougmwne 5y ago
        Can you synthesize your thoughts on this? I won't dismiss ideas just because of where they come from, but can't wade through a 2 hour podcast to guess at what you might have meant. For my own part, I have been quite shocked by the leadership vacuum during the pandemic. It's increasingly clear to me that no one is really at the wheel in the larger part of the West, but many are pretending to be steering the ship. I don't assign anything uber-nefarious to it beyond basic human greed, fear, power lust, incompetence and bullshit. A Chinese style government forced on US, would be, to quote Stalin, a "saddle on a cow." There may be some other countries that would cotton on to it quite readily though if the western coalition were to continue to weaken.
• babesh 5y ago
  Internal politics. The pseudo left power structure wants to use covid to increase their power by training/compelling people to comply and by using the right outrage to rile their base. The right reflexively acts against whatever the left does. So they are reflexively against vaccines. The people in power are mostly just hypocrites who are in it for the power and manipulate the masses to amass power.
• throwaway984393 5y ago
  As far as I can tell, natural immunity relates to the variant. If you had Alpha, and then you encounter Delta, your natural immunity may help you a little, but possibly not enough to prevent hospitalization, since Delta is 2.5x more likely to cause a serious hospitalization. So natural immunity counts, but maybe not against powerful variants. And we should be doing whatever we can to prevent people from becoming infectious and spreading it further.
  • tim333 5y ago
    Not so - the recent Israeli data is mostly about people catching covid classic and being protected against delta. Natural seems to cope with variants better, probably because it exposed you to the whole virus, not just the spike protein.
• not2b 5y ago
  The vaccines are cheap (government paid about $20 per dose to buy them in mass quantities), safe, and effective, and in plentiful supply (at least in developed countries). Even if natural immunity provides some protection, better to just get everyone vaccinated to maximize the protection, because it would cost more to determine that someone has effective antibodies than to just give them the shot. The only reason people are resisting this is because there has been an antivax propaganda campaign.
  • sk2020 5y ago
    Phase 3 trials won’t be complete for years. There is a revolving door between the leadership at the FDA and Pfizer. Countries with high vaccination rates have not reported the expected reduction in cases or deaths. The non-pharmaceutical interventions adopted by some states appear to have no impact on outcomes when compared to states without them. FDA approval of Comirnaty, which nobody got, is a pretty transparent rhetorical stratagem. The guarantees of safety are testimonials from people who either provided material support in the creation of this virus or inflicted Microsoft on the world (I’m not sure which is worse). You may not find these (non-exhaustive) reasons compelling, but I don’t think hesitancy is the result of some unnamed cabal of villains casting aspersions on the pure intentions of the American politburo and pharmaceutical industry.
    • not2b 5y ago
      You make a lot of claims here, but it doesn't seem that they are supported by data. Hospitalization rates and death rates since early summer are drastically different for the vaccinated than for the unvaccinated. Different policies in different US states are producing very different outcomes. You claimed otherwise but did not offer data; here's some data you might consider. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/10/inescapable-overlap-pandemic-politics/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/09/10/inescapab...
      • sk2020 5y ago
        So I Brave searched “cdc weekly provisional counts of deaths by state and select cause 2020-2021”, and I got a useful table from the CDC that you may want to look at yourself. I summed deaths for all causes for FL and CA and divided by their population 39.5M and 21.5M respectively. Yep, FL has about 1.4x more deaths per capita than CA. Then I downloaded the table for 2014-2019 and performed the same calculations. For that same period FL has … 1.4x more deaths per capita than CA. Maybe that has more to do with the age distribution of their respective populations rather than the wise rule of Gavin Newsome. I don’t recommend letting journalists do your stats for you.
• babesh 5y ago
  Sometimes on Hacker News, you won't get a right answer because it isn't in the Overton window.
  • babesh 5y ago
    dang
• Andys 5y ago
  Because its too expensive to measure it (B-cell test)
• dooopy 5y ago
  It's not that complicated - No one has died getting their immunity from the vaccine, but lots die in the process of getting natural immunity from the actual virus. The vaccine is a much safer way to get your antibodies going.
  • borplk 5y ago
    > No one has died getting their immunity from the vaccine Wow. Really? No one? There are 13k+ COVID-19 vaccine related deaths on VAERS alone. Those are ONLY the ones that have been certified and given a permanent VAERS number (as opposed to a temporary VAERS number that is given out initially). The report submission process is time consuming, most of those are submitted by doctors and it's a crime to submit false info as well.
    • glial 5y ago
      As far as I can tell, that's misinformation. https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid19-vaers-idUSL1N2PB2H3 https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid19-vaers-idUS... > According to CDC guidance listed on its page reporting adverse events from COVID-19 vaccines, seen here , there have been 6,340 reports of death (0.0019%) recorded from December 14, 2020, to July 26, 2021 "among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine." It is important to note that the "FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it is unclear whether the vaccine was the cause.” Please correct me if I'm wrong.
      • borplk 5y ago
        Firstly these "fact check" websites, including Reuters have become a joke. They clearly have an agenda and many also have conflicts of interest. They pretend that just because they call themselves "fact checkers" it automatically makes everything they say true. They have nameless faceless self-proclaimed "experts" that often make a straw man and "fact check" the straw man as false and call it a day. And a naive person just googles a few keywords, sees the - usually first link - "Fact-check: that thing you were told is totally wrong" article and thinks "Hah! Fact checkers say it's false! Debunked misinformation again!" Big pharma has billions of dollars of interests to protect. The average so called "anti vax" person has nothing to gain or lose from whether other people do or don't take a vaccine. So a rational person should not so easily accept the commercial propaganda pushed by these companies. Secondly health care professionals submit the report when they have reason to believe that it is a "vaccine adverse event". Otherwise the "event" is not relevant, the person will not even consider or bother to make the report to begin with. "even if it is unclear whether the vaccine was the cause" part is a technicality because yes at the time they are submitting it "is not clear" if vaccine is indeed the cause and it is to be investigated. They will then contact the person that submitted it and if it's a valid report they will assign a permanent number to the report. There are many obstacles to submitting the report. And since it is voluntary it is under counting. In Australia 9 deaths are officially accepted as vaccine-related. Again unlike with covid they do anything they can to keep this number low. It is a minimum. I don't claim to know what the actual number is but it absolutely positively is not ZERO.
• Tycho 5y ago
  Yesterday in England, they published statistics that showed (among other things) the rate of non-covid deaths among vaccinated people greatly increased from March to August. By a factor that dwarfs the improvement in covid-related deaths. For some reason they didn't feel it was necessary to comment on or explain this surprising pattern. I can think of a number of explanations, but it makes me wonder if they are really on the ball, and would really make sound judgements on other matters such as natural immunity. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/deathsbyvaccinationstatusengland https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
  • oplav 5y ago
    Do you know how the rate compares to 2019?
    • Tycho 5y ago
      Without looking extensively, it seems that it's usually between 1000 and 1500 per 100k per annum, so between 20 to 30 per week as a direct comparison. This seems steady over recent history. This compared to a rate for the vaccinated that went from 20 to 100 over spring and summer. The only thing that springs to mind is that maybe the treatment of with-covid/from-covid deaths became less significant through the year and previously understated alternative causes start showing up in non-covid deaths. Still strange that it has risen so high in absolute terms though. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregistrationsummarytables/2019#age-standardised-mortality-rates-by-sex https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
      • glial 5y ago
        I took a look at the data, and it looks like deaths after 1 dose go up by ~3x vs unvaccinated, while deaths after 2 doses go down ~3x vs unvaccinated. Am I reading that right? Any idea why that might be?
        • 5y ago
• m-p-3 5y ago
  My mother-in-law works in Healthcare as N auxiliary nurse and caught COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic. She was officially recorded as positive by the govt (through a periodic PCR test at work, and received a quarantine order). She received one dose since. But even though they're saying an infection is protecting as much as one vaccine dose, they aren't acknowledging it in the vaccine passport as "adequately protected". She'll get the second dose, but she was under the impression she was already covered, it's a bit frustrating.
  • pfdietz 5y ago
    I wish I could get a third dose. She in effect has had a booster.
  • walterbell 5y ago
    EU recognizes natural immunity for travel to/in EU and national health pass checks.
    • cdolan 5y ago
      Where is this information able to be confirmed?
      • walterbell 5y ago
        EU website, "recovered from COVID-19": 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...
        • cdolan 5y ago
          Thank you
  • jayd16 5y ago
    >even though they're saying an infection is protecting as much as one vaccine dose That's not the same thing as saying it can replace one vaccine dose, though.
• kristjansson 5y ago
  Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? Millions of people will just (continue to) take the risk, get sick, go to hospital, and die (in decreasing proportions), incurring substantial personal and social costs along the way. Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs. Should there be a third policy option - accepting test-verified infection and recovery as of _now_ as evidence of protection, but discounting future recoveries? Based on the observational studies cited all over this thread , probably yes. Seems like associated costs would be higher though, and the only benefit would be less gnashing of teeth here and elsewhere, so its understandable the CDC isn't rushing to implement it. Should those people just be allowed to assume the risk? Not while the costs are predominantly social. Insurance (or tax-payers) pay the financial costs, healthcare workers bear the burden of treating a preventable illness, and we all assume the risk that healthcare resources will be stretched to the point of unavailability. While risk-takers do pay into the same system, their premiums don't yet reflect the increased expected costs of their personal choice. While ICUs often run close to or at capacity in one hospital, rarely do they run close at every hospital in a region, as is happening in the south and will happen elsewhere. While it would be nice if there were more doctors, nurses and facilities able to treat patients, we're at war with the army we've got.
  • ghiculescu 5y ago
    If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination.
    • soperj 5y ago
      they did, and they are now. Society didn't crumble because of extreme monetary policy measures.
      • nostrademons 5y ago
        Arguably society is in the process of crumbling now. Jan 6th was part of that, as were the BLM protests, the anti-vax protests, the contentious school-board meetings, the constant tug-of-war between Federal/state/local/individual authorities, high inflation, supply shortages, people refusing to go back to work, etc.
• gexla 5y ago
  Because we don't have enough data.
• littlelamb 5y ago
  Articles like this is exactly why I can't take the US covid response seriously. - "You're protected if you get antibodies... except if from natural infection" - "Masks don't help... oops they actually they do... nah they don't... hmmm they might" - "Can't fly into the country.... unless you come through the southern border" - "Covid is scary for kids... even though the flu kills an order of magnitude more kids" So much cognitive dissonance I don't think I'll ever be able to trust public health ever again... they're either dishonest or completely incompetent at this point.
  • cdolan 5y ago
    Perhaps both?
• ThinkBeat 5y ago
  The often-repeated phrase is "The vaccine is safe". We (as in the world) do not yet have data to say that "The vaccine" is safe. Nor is there one vaccine, there are many. That all work equally well and have the same side effects and outcomes is unlikely. We are living in a gigantic experiment at the moment. Should we not be treated that way? 15 % get vaccine A 15 % get vaccine B .. . 20% get no vaccine. Then we watch and learn. The specific number are not important since much smarter brains than mine would have to work it out. If one vaccine turns out to be terrible for whatever reason we have mitigated the risk. There is a couple of datapoints now that one vaccine -may- cause a reduction in fertility for men. I am not saying it does, but -if- it should turn out to be true having it impact a controlled portion of the population would be prudent. We are also continuously learning more about Covid and how it impacts those who do get. As it evolves and mutates, we may find better way of targeting treatment and vaccinations. I mean what are the odds that the first "alpha" vaccine gets it all right? If people start getting boosters or re-vaccinated with a better vaccine in a year, the possible outcomes of mixing vaccines within a singel person will also be interesterting and unpredictable. In my opinion we will have enough data in 10 - 20 years. Or maybe longer. I am a pessimist and I spend too much time writing code to handle all edge cases (which I never manage to). So far the roll out, of all the vaccines that are presently in circulation appears to have been a huge success. How can that be? Billions of people. Not well tested vaccines. Each person with different immune systems, different medical histories, different medication, different genetic makeups, some fat, some skinny, some anorexic, diabetes, there are a staggering number of different permutations that you will hit in. population of 3 billion people. I would have expected more people to die and more people to have severe reactions. We seem to have been incredibly lucky or just insanely great at creating safe and effective vaccines. More people have adverse reactions to sleeping pills, suntan lotions, ibuprofen etc I am fully vaccinated, to shots of Pfizer myself
• linuxhansl 5y ago
  Personally I think it should be perfectly acceptable to provide a serology test that shows you had Covid in lieu of a vaccination. That is a statement about the past: "I am immune and here's proof. (either by vaccination or serology test)" What we do about the future to contain the pandemic is separate question. If you're not a immune you should get a vaccine now. That is the statement about the future: "I will get vaccinated, because I am not yet immune." In an ideal world we'd be done here. Together these two statements make perfect sense to me. Unfortunately there is some inexplicable (again, to me) resistance to getting the vaccine in some people. And hence it is not wise to end here.
  • mike00632 5y ago
    Easier just to get the vaccine.
• throwlejos 5y ago
  Of course natural immunity doesn’t count, that would mean the mandates are about health, and they are not.
• benmw333 5y ago
  1) Doesn't grant political power 2) Doesn't enable transfer of wealth
• elmalto 5y ago
  The way I understand the science is that we can say with some certainty that… - we know vaccines work and they’re safe - we know natural immunity works - we have a good estimate on how well/long the vaccines work over time (probably 9-12 months with potential boosters) given a plethora of studies - we don’t know how long natural immunity lasts, but we can (safely) assume it’s going to be 6+ months? Maybe 12, maybe 18, who knows. Does it matter? - everyone wants to be safe, but the goal cannot be 100% safety/certainty, but severely reducing the spread and impact of covid without giving up our freedom, liberties as well as our economy Rather than calling it a vaccine passport, call it something else that is less controversial, such as a covid protection status - if you have been vaccinated/ bolstered using authorized vaccines in the last x months, you’re protected - if you have an authorized lab based positive results in the last y months, you’re protected - if you have neither, but can show antibodies from an authorized lab, you’re protected for z months Let’s set best guesstimates on x, y and z and then call it a day? E.g. Make it 12 months for x and y, 3 or 6 months for z. I feel like 90% of people could work within this framework. The other 10% is probably too far gone…
  • mike00632 5y ago
    Or, hear me out, just get the vaccine.
• tomrod 5y ago
  It is definitely considered [0]. However, natural immunity has a lot of unknowns -- length of time, etc. [0]https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.21.0288 https://catalyst.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/CAT.21.0288
• Causality1 5y ago
  Are these people asleep? The vaccines are demonstrably better at producing immunity against strains other than the one you were infected with, particularly against Delta for people who were infected with vanilla or Alpha.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • tim333 5y ago
    That seems completely untrue from the recent Israeli data.
    • Causality1 5y ago
      This is the data I've seen: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm7032e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
      • tim333 5y ago
        That study seems to be showing that vax + natural is better than natural alone but does not seem to compare vax alone to natural alone.
        • Causality1 5y ago
          Right. The article is arguing against vaccinating people who already had covid. I'm saying the data shows there's significant benefit to vaccination even if you were already infected.
• jader201 5y ago
  Why do we still not have data on the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID breaking all three down by groups that are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, fully vaccinated, and previously infected? It seems like we have some data — hospitalizations and deaths of vaccinated — but even that isn’t clearly and consistently reported anywhere that I’ve seen (e.g. try finding a chart in [1]). We need to do better at tracking and reporting on this data, so that we can finally have answers to a lot of questions around effectiveness of vaccines and natural immunity from prior infection. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+hospitalizations+and+deaths+vaccinated+vs+unvaccinated https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+hospitalizations+and+d...
• phkahler 5y ago
  >> In public health, “the primary objective is to protect as many people as you can,” he says. “It’s called collective insurance, and I think it’s irresponsible from a public health perspective to let people pick and choose what they want to do.” If it were really about maximizing defenses against the virus, we would also be told to maintain vitamin D sufficiency among other things that can help. So clearly the goal isnt that. It seems the goal is simply to vaccinate as many people as possible.
• senectus1 5y ago
  it does matter, but your chances of getting it without taking more damage than you started with is a hell of a lot lower than getting it via vaccination. Gov's are not good at granular management. they have to make broad sweeping rules that everyone needs to fit into or they get nothing done.
• dinobones 5y ago
  I like to put numbers to things. People give up freedoms when there is a chance they or many other people die. Look at 9/11, not only did we give up multiple freedoms, but subsequently killed many Americans and other civilians in the Middle East as additional fallout. 9/11 killed: 2,977 people (only during the attack, many more likely received cancer or long-term illness and side-effects) COVID19 has killed (in the US): 664,000 people Even if you make the argument that 90% of COVID deaths are people who were well past their life expectancy, or obese, or had other health conditions, then that leaves 10% who were otherwise perfectly healthy people who died directly because of COVID, and that is about 66,000 people. So, by this extremely conservative estimate, COVID has killed ~22x the amount of people 9/11 did. With that number in mind, do I personally feel like mandating the vaccine ("government tyranny"), or putting innocent people at risk ("dozens of deaths in young women due from clotting, ~1,000 confirmed cases of myocarditis in young people") makes logical sense? I actually think, yes, it does, 66,000 is a lot of people, it's too many, the death rate of this virus is just too high. If the virus was less transmissible, killed less people, or showed signs of quickly fading away, I would disagree, but it seems like the vaccine is actually a fairly logical tradeoff in reducing needless loss of human life. How does this tie to the original post? The reason the vaccine is mandated, is because it simplifies public signaling and policy decisions, otherwise too many would assume "natural immunity" is okay and forego the vaccine, even if they did not themselves have COVID, leading to more needless deaths.
  • fsociety 5y ago
    This is good solid math that I encourage everyone to think hard about, and that death rate is only going to go up.
• h0nd 5y ago
  Because its the strongest immunity you can get, in all measurable dimensions.
• d1a2n 5y ago
  Comment section here proving once again that high IQ nerds are, when it comes to the stuff that actually matters, overtly authoritarian. You might be all for giving children hormone blockers and championing the right to vote without ID, but it turns out the liberalism was just a LARP all along. I am fortunate to be in a position where my livelihood is not being threatened, and I will never get an unnecessary medical procedure to satisfy either contemptible neurotics, pharma shareholders, or the government. Freedom is the freedom to say "fuck you", and I don't need to justify why, though with the facts as they currently stand, it's about the easiest thing in the world. Seethe and cope, because at the end of the day you are a slave, and I will never be.
  • PoignardAzur 5y ago
    > Seethe and cope, because at the end of the day you are a slave, and I will never be. See, I'm not that petty, and I mostly content myself with living in a country where hospitalization rates are at a record low thanks to vaccine mandates. I don't need to seethe or think about it that much. But if I were that petty, I think my seething and coping would be abated by the knowledge a lot of you people are dying these days, unless they can afford top-of-the-line fetus-based therapy.
    • d1a2n 5y ago
      > a lot of you people are dying these days What's the death rate again?
      • hug 5y ago
        In the US, about a thousand a day averaged over the pandemic, I believe.
      • cgrealy 5y ago
        9/11 every two days. https://www.axios.com/covid-deaths-september-11-8b2b230f-9dd4-4c4c-b677-6df2be18ccc9.html https://www.axios.com/covid-deaths-september-11-8b2b230f-9dd...
    • 5y ago
• transfire 5y ago
  Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.
• notacoward 5y ago
  Flip side: why does vaccination automatically count even though there are conditions and medications that can prevent the body from mounting a sufficient immune response? It's a rare case, but if the goal is to prove immunity then test for immunity (i.e. antibody levels) regardless of cause.
• AnnoyedComment 5y ago
  Because if everyone is vaccinated there is no control group.