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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

by 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.
    - mike00632 5y ago
      Wait, how is it non-selfish? I've only ever heard selfish reasons to not get the vaccine, e.g. that there could be side effects to them personally so they selfishly decide to not get the vaccine.
      - BrandonM 5y ago
        You have a bazillion replies sprayed across this whole thread. Many of them are extremely confrontational, baselessly accusatory, and certainly not convincing. What do you think you’re accomplishing? I got the vaccine. Still, I can easily come up with like a dozen good faith, non-selfish reasons to avoid getting it. Are you unwilling to brainstorm a little, or are you just being disingenuous?
      - aqme28 5y ago
        The only non-selfish reason I can think of is that you're misinformed.
  - nanis 5y ago
    > German culture is not as feircly selfish Oh, let's please not delve too deeply into "German culture". Update/PS: Maybe the downvoters can explain how the unselfish German culture works when it comes to things like considering Turks to be equally valuable human beings.
  - sbakzbsmx 5y ago
    Do we really want to start extolling the virtues of German culture and its obsession with virtues such as orderliness, obedience, hygiene? German culture is all nice and tidy until someone, necessarily a deviant, needs to shout out: “STOP! We’re committing a crime!” Teutons don't tolerate deviants.
- jowday 5y ago
  I mean ultimately we’re guessing at the rationale of the leadership of each of these countries - but I’d guess based on vaccination rates that Europe generally has less of an antivax problem than the US, so authorities there might be less concerned about vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy in the US is also very regionally concentrated - maybe less so in Germany? “COVID parties” are also a worst case scenario - I think the vast majority of people would just opt to not get vaccinated and live their lives as usual - which would lead to more outbreaks, deaths, mutations, etc.
  - nradov 5y ago
    There is a huge variance in vaccination rates of European countries. The US is behind most western European countries but ahead of most eastern European countries. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
    - jowday 5y ago
      I was talking about Germany specifically in the parent - the least vaccinated state in Germany has a ~10% higher vaccination rates than the least vaccinated state in the US. But it looks like there is a good deal of variance even inside Germany.
      - nickff 5y ago
        There are also only 16 states in Germany; Even a naive statistician would presume that the USA is likely to have larger differences between min and max than Germany. Another post on the HN frontpage is relevant to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28526966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28526966
    - rendang 5y ago
      Specifcally this part: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations#attitudes-to-covid-19-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations#attitudes-to-c... The US has more skeptics than Germany and France, but it's a pretty slim difference
- gtufano 5y ago
  Rule in Italy is only one shot after at least 3 months (and no more of 6 months) after the first Covid-negative test.
- Koffiepoeder 5y ago
  In Belgium there is an organization threatening covid parties right now, because the government wants to introduce covid-safe-passports in Brussels due to the low vaccination rate [0]. [0] https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/184786/la-boum-calls-for-weekly-parties-if-brussels-introduces-covid-safe-ticket/ https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/184786/la-boum-calls-f...
glogla 5y ago
> Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks. Worse, it leads to 1. new COVID variants, some of which will be worse than what we have, 2. more deaths from people who had some other health emergency while unvaccinated idiots are slowly dying in the hospitals taking valuable beds, and 3. to more burned out, dead and PTSD suffering healthcare personal. I would recommend everyone to browse [1] and [2]. Not being vaccinated if you can, is truly disgusting, selfish and stupid choice. [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/nursing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nursing/
- swader999 5y ago
  If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe outcome. Mass vaccinating the entire population for a respiratory virus that mutates so easily creates a whole host of other problems and a never ending pandemic of variants that may actually get more severe.
  - jowday 5y ago
    >If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe outcome. But there's a chance of you spreading the infection to someone who's vulnerable in the process of recovering from it. Or someone else who ends up spreading it to someone who's vulnerable. Could just be that you pass by someone in your apartment building on the way to pick up your antibodies. Or exhausting medical care supplies if you do end up needing treatment. I'm not equipped to tell whether your claim about mass vaccinations are true, but if that's correct are yearly flu shots also a bad idea?
    - swader999 5y ago
      If you are naive and not vaccinated then when you get covid you'll likely notice it, isolate and not spread it (if it is particularly severe you may be bed ridden and unable to be social). If vaccinated and getting a less severe infection you may not need to isolate and likely be more social and prone to spread it. Yearly flu shots if they went out to the entire population would most likely create a similar problem. But with only 40% of the uptake and usually to the more vulnerable they haven't had this effect. Mass vaccinations to a virus like polio make perfect sense because this virus is not able to mutate and still successfully infect the host. You can confer long lasting immunity with vacinations on this. The spike protein on Sars can mutate many ways to Sunday and still break through the cell wall. So your constantly reformulating and boosting and trying to keep ahead of a changing target that if left to its own devices would just peter out due to it becoming less and less severe (too severe and it dies due to less transmission, less severe get more transmission and win and the virus becomes more benign over time). With a leaky vacccine you can be a happy chicken with a severe variant and be totally fine until your immunity wanes and the next designed booster is off the mark. See this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
isolli 5y ago
While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.
- jowday 5y ago
  I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true. I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.
  - errantmind 5y ago
    Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      > skepticism that resulted from the lies Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        Vaccination rates were equal between democrats and Republicans as late as the end of April.
pasquinelli 5y ago
hasn't it blown up in their face everytime the authorities tried to be strategic with their messaging (a nice way to say play silly games)?
- jowday 5y ago
  Yeah, I pointed this out in my comment - I wish I could say that I think this would have all gone a lot more smoothly if authorities were just honest about things from the start, but I think a lot of the outrage about, say, Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies early on only provided ammo for people who were already going to disregard COVID. At this point I’m not even sure it matters. The states with the lowest vaccination rates are never going to have vaccine passports anyways. Mentally and culturally the pandemic is over for most people, vaccinated or not.
  - epicureanideal 5y ago
    > Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies Right. It provided proof that the authorities were willing to lie “for the greater good”. So at that point their statements cannot be seen as truthful but only “possibly good for us to believe” (they think). And as soon as people accepted that possibility, combine that with their personal estimate of how often “greater good” might conflict with what they personally would consider the actual good of the country or themselves, and you have a situation where many people don’t comply with the recommendations. Lying to the public is a bad long term strategy for achieving cooperation.
    - jowday 5y ago
      I think most people who disregarded COVID had made their choice before these lies came to light - it just provided justification for them later on. The small town my family's in in the South's COVID response consisted of closing Wal-Mart for a couple of days in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before the mask discourse happened. But a lot of these people (perhaps justifiably) already viewed media and public officials as perfectly willing to lie to them or ignore their concerns - this extends beyond the pandemic itself and is part of a broader trend of mutual distrust.
nanis 5y ago
Crying wolf repeatedly to cajole and coerce people is not a good long run strategy.
- mike00632 5y ago
  4.55 million people dead means that this isn't "crying wolf"
usrusr 5y ago
Deliberate infection (or deliberate infection risk-taking) can be a valid concern, but I believe that validity depends a lot on the spreading characteristics of the virus in question. For SARS-COV-2 ca June 2020 I'd fully support the argument (the virus that was so bad at spreading from human to human that we thought that washing hands would make a meaningful difference). But with "chicken pox fast" delta, I doubt that it would make much difference. Anti-vaxxers will go through their first contact infection pretty soon wether they try or not. Just like the vaccinated. Or rather: in a very different way, rarely but still too often.
throwawayfear 5y ago
Past covid gives antibodies that are superior to two shots of Pfizer. 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... So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating them is illogical here. And don't even get me started on vaccine passports, which are completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely needs proof of vaccination, like the NICU at the hospital or a nursing home or a college dorm, that information can be relayed via existing protocols. We don't need a "papers please" society where paper shufflers and bureaucrats can arbitrarily gate access to society this way.
- jowday 5y ago
  I'd agree with you that vaccine passports definitely represent a sacrifice of individual liberty for safety - but what makes you say that that they're "completely unnecessary"? If we accept that a vaccinated person has a lowered, but not eliminated, chance of contracting and transmitting COVID, wouldn't it make sense to avoid contact with people that are at a much higher risk of infection? If you feel that the tradeoff between liberty and safety here is too high, that makes sense - but do you really think vaccination passports don't reduce the transmission of the virus?
  - throwawayfear 5y ago
    They would reduce transmission of the virus in the same way that locking everyone in temperature-controlled air-corrected 24/7-monitored government housing pods would reduce the transmission. Maybe those pods are better, because they could ship us food and let us out for exercise at times determined by an efficiency algorithm! The question is, is the cost worth it? There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liberty for safety." That's Orwellian talk for going along with tyranny. By this point, the majority of Americans are going to have antibodies before long from a combination of vaccinations and past covid. Over 100 million already had past covid and I already shared links about how those antibodies are superior to two shots of Pfizer. So how is it necessary for those people to have to subject to a "papers please" tyranny? No thanks. Implementing these passports will cause something even worse than some covid spread to happen. A two-tiered society where one segment of society is viewed as unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous. History is replete with examples of this being a bad thing. And philosophy aside, there's also newer evidence showing that for some segments of the population it may be riskier to vaccinate. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... So why start enforcing passports? To accidentally find out later on, after creating a two-tiered society, that there may be unintended long-term consequences for the teenagers? Nope. Time for YOU, reader, to say no and realize that these passports are just about control. They don't care about your health. It's about power. Think critically about the system being built. It's about the control.
bigodbiel 5y ago
From the article’s conclusion: ‘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.”’
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
rednerrus 5y ago
It seems like the best solution, if you're a healthy adult, is to get vaccinated then expose yourself to a variant better tolerated by the vaccines.
- redler 5y ago
  Since we will all likely be exposed, I find it hard to fathom the logic that it’s not better, from a risk perspective, to encounter it vaccinated.
  - rednerrus 5y ago
    Isn't that what I'm saying?
fridif 5y ago
How can getting the vaccine be the appropriate course of action when 4,000 people have died from it, according to the CDC themselves? I am talking specifically about people who already have been infected with the virus and have survived.
- steveywevy 5y ago
  Source?
  - fridif 5y ago
    https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad... "7,653 reports of death" is the string to ctrl-f for
    - BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
      You should probably continue reading at least to the end of a paragraph if it's the basis of an argument you're making: "FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem." This is essentially an unrestricted database containing raw reports. Nothing is done to eliminate or control for the entries where the cause of death is unrelated to the vaccine, and the data isn't a replacement for a controlled study. Deaths that can actually be attributed to reactions to the vaccine are so far much lower than that figure (and even if they weren't, millions of people have been vaccinated; COVID-19 is significantly more likely to kill you or leave you with long-term health problems).
      - fridif 5y ago
        You should probably continue the rest of the page I linked in which over 1,000 events of serious heart conditions occurred in patients. Notice I originally said 4,000 deaths and not 7,000, since I was assuming a certain number of them were not directly vaccine related. Could you explain to me your opinion on all of the children who are going to the emergency room with heart conditions a few days after vaccination?
IAmGraydon 5y ago
As we saw when mask mandates were dropped for the vaccinated, the unvaccinated just lied and said they were. Same here - everyone who has neither been vaccinated nor infected will just claim they’ve had Covid. That is, unless we start testing everyone for antibodies.
- kelnos 5y ago
  Which we should do! If the medical science can tell us a level of antibodies that confers similar protection to a vaccine, then we should make a "CDC post-infection immunity card", and give it to people who get antibody tests that show sufficient levels.
thomasahle 5y ago
> a huge segment of the population [might just] get infected purposefully This made sense as a fear before vaccines were available. If immunity passports existed, and the only way to get one was to be infected - sure some people would do they. Howver now it would be much easier to get vaccinated than finding an infection and get it registered. The policy would save a bunch of people from a couple of vaccine induced sick days without any reasonable downsides. Seems like an easy decision to make.
wrycoder 5y ago
We can test whether someone has natural immunity.
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
Natural immunity isn’t a singular binary consistent thing: it varies greatly in duration and effectiveness. You have some natural immunity for some amount of time after you get COVID, but that is nowhere consistent as can a vaccine will give (and its much easier to track vaccine effectiveness, adjust as needed, then each individual’s natural immunity response). And vaccine are still beneficial to those who have natural immunity. Authorities aren’t trying to “trick people”, they are manage an epidemic with more of a sure thing (vaccines) rather than something that is much less reliable.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think this is mostly correct but the distrust was partly earned and vaccine mandates don't really help here.
LudvigVanHassen 5y ago
Your first paragraph is correct, but you seem to think it's a problem that people might choose to be naturally infected. That's a valid choice people can make. I believe most people who aren't vaccinated are doing so on purpose. Delta has actually been helpful towards getting herd immunity because is it so contagious but far less lethal than the earlier strains. We can reach herd immunity with a combination of vaccines and natural immunity. You will not be able to vaccinate everyone.

by jowday 5y ago

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.
  - mike00632 5y ago
    Wait, how is it non-selfish? I've only ever heard selfish reasons to not get the vaccine, e.g. that there could be side effects to them personally so they selfishly decide to not get the vaccine.
    - BrandonM 5y ago
      You have a bazillion replies sprayed across this whole thread. Many of them are extremely confrontational, baselessly accusatory, and certainly not convincing. What do you think you’re accomplishing? I got the vaccine. Still, I can easily come up with like a dozen good faith, non-selfish reasons to avoid getting it. Are you unwilling to brainstorm a little, or are you just being disingenuous?
    - aqme28 5y ago
      The only non-selfish reason I can think of is that you're misinformed.
- nanis 5y ago
  > German culture is not as feircly selfish Oh, let's please not delve too deeply into "German culture". Update/PS: Maybe the downvoters can explain how the unselfish German culture works when it comes to things like considering Turks to be equally valuable human beings.
- sbakzbsmx 5y ago
  Do we really want to start extolling the virtues of German culture and its obsession with virtues such as orderliness, obedience, hygiene? German culture is all nice and tidy until someone, necessarily a deviant, needs to shout out: “STOP! We’re committing a crime!” Teutons don't tolerate deviants.
jowday 5y ago
I mean ultimately we’re guessing at the rationale of the leadership of each of these countries - but I’d guess based on vaccination rates that Europe generally has less of an antivax problem than the US, so authorities there might be less concerned about vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy in the US is also very regionally concentrated - maybe less so in Germany? “COVID parties” are also a worst case scenario - I think the vast majority of people would just opt to not get vaccinated and live their lives as usual - which would lead to more outbreaks, deaths, mutations, etc.
- nradov 5y ago
  There is a huge variance in vaccination rates of European countries. The US is behind most western European countries but ahead of most eastern European countries. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer
  - jowday 5y ago
    I was talking about Germany specifically in the parent - the least vaccinated state in Germany has a ~10% higher vaccination rates than the least vaccinated state in the US. But it looks like there is a good deal of variance even inside Germany.
    - nickff 5y ago
      There are also only 16 states in Germany; Even a naive statistician would presume that the USA is likely to have larger differences between min and max than Germany. Another post on the HN frontpage is relevant to this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28526966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28526966
  - rendang 5y ago
    Specifcally this part: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations#attitudes-to-covid-19-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations#attitudes-to-c... The US has more skeptics than Germany and France, but it's a pretty slim difference
gtufano 5y ago
Rule in Italy is only one shot after at least 3 months (and no more of 6 months) after the first Covid-negative test.
Koffiepoeder 5y ago
In Belgium there is an organization threatening covid parties right now, because the government wants to introduce covid-safe-passports in Brussels due to the low vaccination rate [0]. [0] https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/184786/la-boum-calls-for-weekly-parties-if-brussels-introduces-covid-safe-ticket/ https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/184786/la-boum-calls-f...

glogla 5y ago

> Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks. Worse, it leads to 1. new COVID variants, some of which will be worse than what we have, 2. more deaths from people who had some other health emergency while unvaccinated idiots are slowly dying in the hospitals taking valuable beds, and 3. to more burned out, dead and PTSD suffering healthcare personal. I would recommend everyone to browse [1] and [2]. Not being vaccinated if you can, is truly disgusting, selfish and stupid choice. [1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/nursing/ https://old.reddit.com/r/nursing/

swader999 5y ago
If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe outcome. Mass vaccinating the entire population for a respiratory virus that mutates so easily creates a whole host of other problems and a never ending pandemic of variants that may actually get more severe.
- jowday 5y ago
  >If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe outcome. But there's a chance of you spreading the infection to someone who's vulnerable in the process of recovering from it. Or someone else who ends up spreading it to someone who's vulnerable. Could just be that you pass by someone in your apartment building on the way to pick up your antibodies. Or exhausting medical care supplies if you do end up needing treatment. I'm not equipped to tell whether your claim about mass vaccinations are true, but if that's correct are yearly flu shots also a bad idea?
  - swader999 5y ago
    If you are naive and not vaccinated then when you get covid you'll likely notice it, isolate and not spread it (if it is particularly severe you may be bed ridden and unable to be social). If vaccinated and getting a less severe infection you may not need to isolate and likely be more social and prone to spread it. Yearly flu shots if they went out to the entire population would most likely create a similar problem. But with only 40% of the uptake and usually to the more vulnerable they haven't had this effect. Mass vaccinations to a virus like polio make perfect sense because this virus is not able to mutate and still successfully infect the host. You can confer long lasting immunity with vacinations on this. The spike protein on Sars can mutate many ways to Sunday and still break through the cell wall. So your constantly reformulating and boosting and trying to keep ahead of a changing target that if left to its own devices would just peter out due to it becoming less and less severe (too severe and it dies due to less transmission, less severe get more transmission and win and the virus becomes more benign over time). With a leaky vacccine you can be a happy chicken with a severe variant and be totally fine until your immunity wanes and the next designed booster is off the mark. See this: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...

isolli 5y ago

While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.

jowday 5y ago
I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true. I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.
- errantmind 5y ago
  Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    > skepticism that resulted from the lies Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      Vaccination rates were equal between democrats and Republicans as late as the end of April.

pasquinelli 5y ago

hasn't it blown up in their face everytime the authorities tried to be strategic with their messaging (a nice way to say play silly games)?

jowday 5y ago
Yeah, I pointed this out in my comment - I wish I could say that I think this would have all gone a lot more smoothly if authorities were just honest about things from the start, but I think a lot of the outrage about, say, Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies early on only provided ammo for people who were already going to disregard COVID. At this point I’m not even sure it matters. The states with the lowest vaccination rates are never going to have vaccine passports anyways. Mentally and culturally the pandemic is over for most people, vaccinated or not.
- epicureanideal 5y ago
  > Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies Right. It provided proof that the authorities were willing to lie “for the greater good”. So at that point their statements cannot be seen as truthful but only “possibly good for us to believe” (they think). And as soon as people accepted that possibility, combine that with their personal estimate of how often “greater good” might conflict with what they personally would consider the actual good of the country or themselves, and you have a situation where many people don’t comply with the recommendations. Lying to the public is a bad long term strategy for achieving cooperation.
  - jowday 5y ago
    I think most people who disregarded COVID had made their choice before these lies came to light - it just provided justification for them later on. The small town my family's in in the South's COVID response consisted of closing Wal-Mart for a couple of days in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before the mask discourse happened. But a lot of these people (perhaps justifiably) already viewed media and public officials as perfectly willing to lie to them or ignore their concerns - this extends beyond the pandemic itself and is part of a broader trend of mutual distrust.

nanis 5y ago

Crying wolf repeatedly to cajole and coerce people is not a good long run strategy.

mike00632 5y ago
4.55 million people dead means that this isn't "crying wolf"

usrusr 5y ago

Deliberate infection (or deliberate infection risk-taking) can be a valid concern, but I believe that validity depends a lot on the spreading characteristics of the virus in question. For SARS-COV-2 ca June 2020 I'd fully support the argument (the virus that was so bad at spreading from human to human that we thought that washing hands would make a meaningful difference). But with "chicken pox fast" delta, I doubt that it would make much difference. Anti-vaxxers will go through their first contact infection pretty soon wether they try or not. Just like the vaccinated. Or rather: in a very different way, rarely but still too often.

throwawayfear 5y ago

Past covid gives antibodies that are superior to two shots of Pfizer. 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... So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating them is illogical here. And don't even get me started on vaccine passports, which are completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely needs proof of vaccination, like the NICU at the hospital or a nursing home or a college dorm, that information can be relayed via existing protocols. We don't need a "papers please" society where paper shufflers and bureaucrats can arbitrarily gate access to society this way.

jowday 5y ago
I'd agree with you that vaccine passports definitely represent a sacrifice of individual liberty for safety - but what makes you say that that they're "completely unnecessary"? If we accept that a vaccinated person has a lowered, but not eliminated, chance of contracting and transmitting COVID, wouldn't it make sense to avoid contact with people that are at a much higher risk of infection? If you feel that the tradeoff between liberty and safety here is too high, that makes sense - but do you really think vaccination passports don't reduce the transmission of the virus?
- throwawayfear 5y ago
  They would reduce transmission of the virus in the same way that locking everyone in temperature-controlled air-corrected 24/7-monitored government housing pods would reduce the transmission. Maybe those pods are better, because they could ship us food and let us out for exercise at times determined by an efficiency algorithm! The question is, is the cost worth it? There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liberty for safety." That's Orwellian talk for going along with tyranny. By this point, the majority of Americans are going to have antibodies before long from a combination of vaccinations and past covid. Over 100 million already had past covid and I already shared links about how those antibodies are superior to two shots of Pfizer. So how is it necessary for those people to have to subject to a "papers please" tyranny? No thanks. Implementing these passports will cause something even worse than some covid spread to happen. A two-tiered society where one segment of society is viewed as unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous. History is replete with examples of this being a bad thing. And philosophy aside, there's also newer evidence showing that for some segments of the population it may be riskier to vaccinate. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-risk-from-pfizer-jab-side-effect-than-covid-suggests-study https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r... So why start enforcing passports? To accidentally find out later on, after creating a two-tiered society, that there may be unintended long-term consequences for the teenagers? Nope. Time for YOU, reader, to say no and realize that these passports are just about control. They don't care about your health. It's about power. Think critically about the system being built. It's about the control.

bigodbiel 5y ago

From the article’s conclusion: ‘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.”’

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rednerrus 5y ago

It seems like the best solution, if you're a healthy adult, is to get vaccinated then expose yourself to a variant better tolerated by the vaccines.

redler 5y ago
Since we will all likely be exposed, I find it hard to fathom the logic that it’s not better, from a risk perspective, to encounter it vaccinated.
- rednerrus 5y ago
  Isn't that what I'm saying?

fridif 5y ago

How can getting the vaccine be the appropriate course of action when 4,000 people have died from it, according to the CDC themselves? I am talking specifically about people who already have been infected with the virus and have survived.

steveywevy 5y ago
Source?
- fridif 5y ago
  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad... "7,653 reports of death" is the string to ctrl-f for
  - BHSPitMonkey 5y ago
    You should probably continue reading at least to the end of a paragraph if it's the basis of an argument you're making: "FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem." This is essentially an unrestricted database containing raw reports. Nothing is done to eliminate or control for the entries where the cause of death is unrelated to the vaccine, and the data isn't a replacement for a controlled study. Deaths that can actually be attributed to reactions to the vaccine are so far much lower than that figure (and even if they weren't, millions of people have been vaccinated; COVID-19 is significantly more likely to kill you or leave you with long-term health problems).
    - fridif 5y ago
      You should probably continue the rest of the page I linked in which over 1,000 events of serious heart conditions occurred in patients. Notice I originally said 4,000 deaths and not 7,000, since I was assuming a certain number of them were not directly vaccine related. Could you explain to me your opinion on all of the children who are going to the emergency room with heart conditions a few days after vaccination?

IAmGraydon 5y ago

As we saw when mask mandates were dropped for the vaccinated, the unvaccinated just lied and said they were. Same here - everyone who has neither been vaccinated nor infected will just claim they’ve had Covid. That is, unless we start testing everyone for antibodies.

kelnos 5y ago
Which we should do! If the medical science can tell us a level of antibodies that confers similar protection to a vaccine, then we should make a "CDC post-infection immunity card", and give it to people who get antibody tests that show sufficient levels.

thomasahle 5y ago

> a huge segment of the population [might just] get infected purposefully This made sense as a fear before vaccines were available. If immunity passports existed, and the only way to get one was to be infected - sure some people would do they. Howver now it would be much easier to get vaccinated than finding an infection and get it registered. The policy would save a bunch of people from a couple of vaccine induced sick days without any reasonable downsides. Seems like an easy decision to make.

wrycoder 5y ago

We can test whether someone has natural immunity.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

Natural immunity isn’t a singular binary consistent thing: it varies greatly in duration and effectiveness. You have some natural immunity for some amount of time after you get COVID, but that is nowhere consistent as can a vaccine will give (and its much easier to track vaccine effectiveness, adjust as needed, then each individual’s natural immunity response). And vaccine are still beneficial to those who have natural immunity. Authorities aren’t trying to “trick people”, they are manage an epidemic with more of a sure thing (vaccines) rather than something that is much less reliable.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I think this is mostly correct but the distrust was partly earned and vaccine mandates don't really help here.

LudvigVanHassen 5y ago

Your first paragraph is correct, but you seem to think it's a problem that people might choose to be naturally infected. That's a valid choice people can make. I believe most people who aren't vaccinated are doing so on purpose. Delta has actually been helpful towards getting herd immunity because is it so contagious but far less lethal than the earlier strains. We can reach herd immunity with a combination of vaccines and natural immunity. You will not be able to vaccinate everyone.