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Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the ri

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.
    - ryan93 5y ago
      Jan 6th affected like .001 percent of the population
      - User23 5y ago
        I have to confess I was never seriously worried that Viking Hat Man was going to overthrow the government and declare himself Shaman-in-Chief, even while I watched that shocking footage live.
        inlined 5y ago
        But I do think it’s quite possible that Pence would have been killed. Or that we would have a (however minor) constitutional crisis if congress certified an election contrary to the states under duress
        mike00632 5y ago
        Or just think of what would have happened if those quick thinking staffers didn't grab the Electoral College ballots as Congress ran for their lives to the shelter.
        jollybean 5y ago
        It only starts as a 'minor' constitutional crisis. Trump can take to the streets and declare himself president for the next term because the election results were not validated. He can challenge the 'never used' legal procedures in court and of course have his lawyers lie about it in public. They could fire up enough people and get enough momentum so that a few Republicans could be pressured to not vote to validate the election results. If he refused to physically leave the White House - who would make him leave? Imagine if he invited his supporters to 'come to Washington to Defend the President' and they set up camp by the thousands around the WH. And they'd be armed. Is the National Guard going to start shooting? The longer Trump stays there, the more entrenched his legitimacy. Especially if there is violence, it'd really flare tensions. If people believe that the election was stolen, they'd also be hard pressed to be told what the actual, legal procedures are for dealing with a failed vote validation, and so it would be a matter of populism as much as legality. That's how coups happen: enough political, populist, physical force to carry the momentum beyond established legal norms.
- trainsplanes 5y ago
  A bunch of hospitals are more strained now than they ever were. Covid's more infectious now and some staff have quit.
  - sreque 5y ago
    There have been chronic nursing staff shortages for years. We were treating patients in tents during the 208 flu epidemic: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... The much larger problem is that our medical system isn't designed to handle any kind of case surge at all, because, for cost efficiency reasons, it purposely wants to operate at 80-90% capacity. Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. People should be skeptical that hospitals almost never provide thorough or accurate information about their true capacity, constraints, and current cases broken down by primary causes. But at the end of the day, one's views on the situation seem to primarily depend on political identity and whether one blindly trusts the chronically dishonest mainstream media.
    - trainsplanes 5y ago
      > Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. Because globally, yes, they are the cause. Even in countries where hospitals don't run close to max capacity at all times in order to maximize profits, hospitals have been filling up with unvaccinated patients. Japanese hospitals in major cities haven't been able to take in new patients, and those waves of patients are unvaccinated. Although in Japan's case, the problem is there simply aren't enough vaccines here to meet demand. America's problem is there's an overabundance of vaccines but people are going out of their way to get sick, choosing to overwhelm hospitals, and then dying as an act of rebellion for facebook political points.
      - throwawayfear 5y ago
        No, they are not the cause. The vaccinated still spread the virus and could cause it to mutate all the same as the unvaccinated. Also, over 100 million Americans have past covid. [0] And we know that past covid gives antibodies which are superior. [1][2] And the hospitalization situation is overblown. [3] [0] - https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news... A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. [1] - 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... The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. [2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-... [3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease. It's entirely possible that media-induced panic is sending people to hospitals over a sniffle, being that half of those hospitalized in 2021 so far may have been admitted for non-covid related reasons or only have mild / asymptomatic covid and still been included in the count. So stop being so interested in finding a scapegoat to blame, because as you can see from other commentary here it'll lead to dehumanization and the creation of a two-tiered society. Which is dangerous.
- wwweston 5y ago
  It never took that large of a percentage of the population to get sick at once to overwhelm hospital capacity. Some tenths of a percent could probably it. 35% of the population vulnerable means there's plenty of room for that. Enough people do OK w/o interventions that "social collapse" probably wasn't ever going to be the outcome (short of more virulent variants), it's just whether more or fewer of the people for whom treatment makes a difference between life and death (or other morbid outcomes) can get the treatment. Also, there's probably an overlap between those who've received the vaccine and those who were taking other (ie distance-focused) related precautions pre-vaccine. And the possibility of burning out medical workers. And in any case, things in some locations are worse now than they've been thus far: "In Florida, a record number of people are dying from COVID-19—a seven-day average of 338 deaths, higher than at any other point in the pandemic." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-tracking-coronavirus-infections-us https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-...
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    Either the vaccine works or it doesn't. So why are the numbers going up if it's working?
    - bialpio 5y ago
      Way more contagious variant that spreads rapidly among people w/o prior immunity? At least that's what is being theorized based on what happened in the UK (very sharp rise in cases, followed by pretty sharp drop-off, although that seemed to stabilize now). As for the effectiveness of vaccinations, I'm optimistic based on the data from King County, WA: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio...
      - dukeofdoom 5y ago
        Switch to proportion on the graph. And the number of cases of the fully vaccinated is now around 30%. Still trying to figure out how the unvaccinated can give covid to the vaccinated, if the vaccine is working.
- jollybean 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." 2020 was the worst economic catastrophe in a century. The US Fed printed money in terms it has never before, it's balance sheet has been massively inflated. Government debt exploded to WW2 levels. 10's of millions were unemployed. Most Healthcare systems had to adjust to delay and defer elective procedures. Millions of restaurants and other businesses closed, never to re-open. All of these measures were taken precisely because there were 0% vaccinated. The US/World basically couldn't handle another year of those restrictions, it would probably break the economy and cause a lot of harm. It's not going to be possible to fully re-open until COVID subsides (esp. Delta), vaccinates will be a primary driver of that.
ixacto 5y ago
To reply as the devils advocate to this comment, what is the tolerance to social costs that society is willing to bear? Also why would one segment of society have to do something that it doesn't want e.g. not bear risk if they want to? Should we tell people to get their BMI under 25 too? Overweight and obesity are going to cost much more in increased healthcare costs than COVID will in the coming decades (pls prove me wrong..). What about drinking and smoking? Maybe we should also ban these because these people will probably go on government health insurance when they come down with chronic health issues from too much alcohol or tobacco. I guess I don't see where your argument about societal costs doesn't become a slippery slope. Also full disclosure I'm 100% vaccinated and will get the booster in Dec.
- refulgentis 5y ago
  The line seems to be drawn at socializing the risks of full hospital ICUs in a region Edit: why the downvote to near-dead? I thought that's what the author emphasized :\
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    ICUs normally run at 80%. This is gaslighting.
    - refulgentis 5y ago
      How so? Latest reports have most of the south from south carolina to Texas at 100% capacity. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/covid-hospital-icu-south.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/covid-hosp... Please avoid this style of interaction on HN — it's been my favorite place for 13 years because of what dang often refers to as the right attitude for discussion, "coming with curiosity." We try to avoid accusatory language, especially accusing others of lying, not by omission, but by commission for the sole purpose of psychological abuse.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        ICU capacity is generally bottlenecked by staffing and not by beds within suitable facilities. Basically there are required minimum ratios both legally and from a "we have to follow our on policy lest we create slam dunk lawsuits" point of view. ICU staffing is less elastic than it's ever been because hospitals have cut staffing in response to people postponing elective care (where all the $$ is). So ICU capacity as a percentage of full is as much a reflection of hospitals being tightwads as it is about Covid.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nostrademons 5y ago
So? If lots of people independently choose to take the risk and they're not harming anyone else, why shouldn't they be allowed to? The impact on the hospital system could be blunted simply by saying "This wing is for COVID patients, when it fills up further COVID patients will be turned away" and leaving the other wings for normal hospital patients. They have to do this for quarantine reasons anyway. Now that COVID is essentially preventable, it's a huge misallocation of resources to let all the hospital fill up with people who chose not to prevent it while leaving other ER patients to their fate.
- kixiQu 5y ago
  Okay, now factor in that breakthrough infections are more common in the elderly, can still kill (though rarely), and are more likely to happen the more COVID is circulating in the community, which is then a function of the vaccination rate. My vaccinated grandmother is being put at risk by unvaccinated folks in her town. There's no "independent" risk.
  - kixiQu 5y ago
    Alternately: any of us could be this guy: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/09/13/1036593269/coronavirus-alabama-43-icus-at-capacity-ray-demonia https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
- mattnewton 5y ago
  > If lots of people independently choose to take the risk and they're not harming anyone else, why shouldn't they be allowed to? There just isn't a way to ensure the "not harming anyone else" with a highly transmissible virus like this, even if we were to somehow convince hospitals to assume the legal and ethical risks of denying treatment to COVID patients when they have room to preserve hospital capacity, and even if that solution didn't expose healthcare workers to unnecessary risks, you would still be exposing other populations to risk who cannot get the vaccine or for whom the vaccine wasn't effective.
  - 5y ago
wrycoder 5y ago
We can test for natural immunity. That then counts as fully vaccinated.
- throwawayfear 5y ago
  It should count. But why test for it and why expect proof? If someone is concerned, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. And wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. Problem solved. What use is there to build systems of control that will turn into more surveillance and eventual enslavement?
  - jonnycomputer 5y ago
    That's a little over the top. Kids get vaccinated to go to schools. We aren't in chains.
    - throwawayfear 5y ago
      Some kids get vaccinated to go to some schools. And none of that is comparable to this pandemic situation where we have politicians blatantly ignoring the science and taking bread off the table by firing people who don't comply, even if they have excellent antibodies from past covid infection. 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... "The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label." Alarm bells should be going off. Take a look at Australia. Are they in chains? Are they the frog in the boiling pot? I think they are the frog in the boiling pot. When do we raise the alarm? When would you raise the alarm? When is it no longer over the top? They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a... They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824 Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source: https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to- https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-... “NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.” They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097 You want this to happen in the USA too? Because that's where we are headed once we allow covid vaccine passports and mandates like in NYC to fester and spread. The slope is slippery. Time to nip it in the bud, and if being "over the top" is what it takes to get that done then so be it. Assuage my fears if you really believe there isn't a risk of tyranny. We just went through a presidency where people were regularly warning about totalitarian regimes emerging in the USA. So I think I'm a bit warranted in raising the alarm when I see it happening in other democracies around the world.
roamerz 5y ago
>Because it's a terrible policy prescription. And the government is ignoring the same science they are asking us to follow. It’s no wonder people are revolting. Although I am vaccinated I did take a antibody test before I did so and wouldn’t have if I had the natural antibodies. It’s almost the same lie they tell when they call this a vaccine- it’s really not. I really understand why people are pissed and I will fully support them in any way I can.
mythrwy 5y ago
It's not only not a terrible policy position, natural immunity will turn out in the end to be the ONLY effective thing which gets us to to herd immunity. At this point I don't understand why this isn't obvious. You make a targeted vaccine, in this case it will be evaded. We see it right now. That will continue. Natural immunity will cast a wider net and be proven much more effective.
- ekidd 5y ago
  > natural immunity will turn out in the end to be the ONLY effective thing which gets us to to herd immunity. There are many illnesses for which humanity never reached natural herd immunity. Smallpox was consistently deadly for millennia, for example. Malaria's still going strong. HIV is kept in check by treatments, not immunity. The COVID delta strain has an R of at least 5. Using naive models, this would mean that we'd need at least 80% immunity. But even if we achieved 100% vaccination, it's not clear that current vaccines (or natural infection) can provide 80% immunity over the longer term. So realistically, I suspect that COVID will simply become one of the risks of life. I fully expect that I will catch it multiple times in the decades to come. But I get an annual flu shot, and I'm willing to get an annual COVID booster if necessary. And there's no guarantee that this will all blow over soon. The worst case historical coronavirus appears to have jumped to humans around 20,000 years ago, and it looks like it exerted heavy selective pressure over many generations. See https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/science/ancient-coronavirus-epidemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/science/ancient-coronavir....
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    That's a really good point and I agree completely. "Herd Immunity" as not the correct term to use because yes, it is with us for the foreseeable future. Some weaker form of "herd immunity" where most people have had exposure and it ceases to become a large scale social threat would have been more correct, but I'm at loss for an exact term.
    - esyir 5y ago
      Herd immunity essentially doesn't exist for many viruses. What you'd get is more akin to an endemic virus such as the flu. Mutation rates and immune escape make herd immunity essentially a dream.
OrvalWintermute 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? What we know : We know that vaccines are of great value for high risk populations. We know that vaccines are contraindicated for a number of patients and have some pretty severe side effects for those with allergies. We know that the vaccines risk ratio (do no harm) skews with younger patients. We know that the vaccine efficacy is greatly reduced with Delta variants, and newer, and these new variants dominate the infection count. We know between ~40M and ~112M people [1] have already had COVID and recovered, and ~178 million have received vaccinations already. Therefore, we know the delta between previous vaccinated (178M) and infected (~40M-~112M), and hesitant, and anti-vaxx may not be a large number (~132M on the high end, and ~60M on the low end). Of these 132M to 60M, only a certain number are event approved for vaccination. We know that previous wide surveys indicate that previous infections and ensuing natural immunity are stronger, and more durable than first generation, and 2nd generation vaccines. We also know that the Covid vaccines are not immunizing, and a large amount of virus can be passed on from vaccinated, to the unvaccinated. What we don't know We know that an undetermined number of patients allegedly around 10k have died from covid vaccine side effects, although we don't know exactly how many due to data quality issues. We don't know the accurate count of COVID deaths because of conflation of dying with COVID, or, from COVID. Some numbers have been seen at roughly ~500k to ~800k although we haven't done the heavy lifting of assuring data quality. We don't know how many of the untested already had minor covid infections, and we don't know how many have a natural immunity to it. We also do not know when 3rd generation vaccines will arrive that may have reduced side effects, and more efficacy against novel variants. Given above, I am not sure a mass push to force hesitant and anti-vaxx to get vaccinated will be successful, or even possible given potential job losses, and constitutionality. For the sake of full disclosure I consider myself vaccine hesitant, but I believe the newest vaccines coming out will improve protection, and reduce side effects. The new novavaxx [2] merged covid/influenza [3] doses seem to be something that I would like to take, more protective, and lower risk than existing vaccines. Unfortunately, I am not eligible for the Novavax ongoing trial that is currently open. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... [2] https://www.novavax.com/our-unique-technology#recombinant-nanoparticle-vaccine-technology https://www.novavax.com/our-unique-technology#recombinant-na... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/novavax-begins-early-stage-trial-combined-flu-covid-vaccine-n1278711 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/novavax-begins-ea...
anonymoushn 5y ago
It seems like a policy of forcing people with natural immunity to be vaccinated could have negative externalities if there are other countries in the world that don't have enough vaccines.
- throwawayfear 5y ago
  Not to mention that there are some 25 million teenage boys who are at higher risk from covid vaccination than simply catching covid. 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... And it's also unethical to force it onto someone who has natural immunity, since their natural immunity is already on par or better than vaccination. So what's the point? 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...
CryptoPunk 5y ago
>>Should those people just be allowed to assume the risk? Not while the costs are predominantly social. Then eliminate socialized healthcare. Your imposition of socialized healthcare is now being used to rationalize imposition of forced injections. Government can have a healthcare system that is entirely opt-in, for both taxation, and coverage. Or how about just deprioritize unvaccinated individuals with COVID when there is a shortage of ICU beds.
throwawayfear 5y ago
If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? That's on them. It's not your job to police their choices, and especially not to impose "papers please" on everyone else. No thanks. 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. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... Quote from article: "In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease." So we have a situation where media-induced fear is causing people to panic until they rush to the hospital. It's certainly possible given that half of the hospitalizations are...not even meaningfully hospitalizations if they were mild or asymptomatic. What does this do to your narrative then, about how dangerous this is and how many millions will "continue to" take the risk? Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs. Nonsense. Over 100 million Americans had covid already.[0] We now know that antibodies from past infection are superior to vaccination.[1] [2] So why would you make this arbitrary demand for vaccination as the proof, when the antibodies are what count? [0] - https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news... "A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020." [1] - 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... "The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. " [2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-... And we know based on the current evidence those antibodies will last for decades. [3] [3] - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 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. The answer is not "probably yes." The answer is a resounding yes, but the answer is also that no proof should be needed unless you work in a hospital where vaccination requirements already existed. We don't need a "papers please" society. If you're concerned for your health, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. Wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. That's how simple this is. There's no need for building systems of control that will turn into systems of enslavement. 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. Meanwhile, you have a situation where healthcare resources are being intentionally fired or are quitting because of the idiotic mandates. [4] [4] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-hospital-pause-delivering-babies-after-staffers-quit-rather-n1279001 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-hospital-pause... "An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to "pause" maternity services this month because some employees' refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has caused staffing shortages." This is entirely a manufactured problem. While risk-takers do pay into the same system, their premiums don't yet reflect the increased expected costs of their personal choice. We've been hearing for YEARS about how bad insurance companies are. How they make record profits each and every year and still pass on higher premiums, higher deductibles, and shittier service to their customers. So why are people feigning concern for health insurance corporation bottom lines already? Wake up. 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. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... "In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease." The media induced panic that causes people to flood the hospitals when they get a sniffle, because of fear. The situation with hospitalizations appears to have been exaggerated.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
WXYZ-TV posted the following question on facebook a few days ago and received 155k responses. "After the vaccines were available to everyone, did you lose an unvaccinated loved one to COVID-19? " https://www.facebook.com/80221381134/posts/10158207967261135/?d=n https://www.facebook.com/80221381134/posts/10158207967261135... The responses are not what you would expect. Certainly not what the media narrative is.
- revax 5y ago
  Cannot access to the comments without an account. Regardless of what it is said, why should we trust those unverifiable comments, full of anecdotes instead of peer-review scientifics works?
  - mewpmewp2 5y ago
    Is there anywhere you could actually access any data that you can completely trust? I too have a relative who regrets taking a vaccine, as she's been having suspicious long term symptoms until now - she took the vaccine in Spring. Nothing in the 43k Pfizer study would indicate that such symptoms could appear, and maybe it is a coincidence that those symptoms started appearing after the vaccine. And of course it is anecdotal, but still it makes me vary at least about the Pfizer study. Symptoms seem to be related to blood flow issues in the legs, and getting this tingling sensation. Since it has happened to a relative I trust and who's otherwise pro vax, I'm slightly inclined to also believe other anecdotal stories, but obviously I can't use that as an evidence.
mr_toad 5y ago
> Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs. That is effectively coercing people to undertake a medical procedure for their own or for society’s good. The ethics of doing that should be concerning, considering the social and ethnic makeup of the vaccine hesitant, and the checkered history of coercive medical intervention. I’d much rather see the carrot used than the stick.
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lvs 5y ago
Additionally, the only plausible way to do it would be to test for seroconversion. That's a blood draw, so it doesn't save anyone from a needle, and overall it's probably more work and more expensive than vaccination.
manwe150 5y ago
I feel like the entire comment thread after yours has gotten lost in hypothetical discussions about some ethical question about interventions that haven’t been shown to work. Not quite the usual dialog I expected here. What the CDC recently said is that vaccination also reduces your chance of reinfection significantly, at near zero risk. So universal vaccination is a strictly dominant strategy for personal health, with or without any other interventions (diet, exercise, etc). Why wouldn’t a non-political organization recommend universal vaccination therefore (above age 12)? It makes for simple, cheap, and effective messaging. If they said not to take a care of your health in some other equally proven way, then it would likely seem to be politically motivated and damage their trustworthiness. That probably has happened too (such as saying to mask outside, until they got more data), but we aren’t blindly trusting them in this, or anything.
yyyk 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? You're making a calculation not regarding health, but regarding public reaction. The problem is that the public health community sucks as far as making these calculations go; I don't think I need to list all the missteps here. IMHO, they know a lot about epidemiology, nothing about the public. So it's best to just make the right policy and not to try 4D chess with the public, that tends to backfire. Just about anyone who has remained unvaccinated so far is already taking the risk you pointed out*. No point in spending resources chasing recovering patients we don't really have to vaccinate right now. Now I don't agree with using antibody test results (these kits aren't standardized, so the relation between immunity and the results isn't clear), but an actual record of recovery should do. As the article notes, that's what many other countries in the world do. * Excluding the very few people who actually have a good reason to not vaccinate due to certain extremely rare immune system ailments.
- kristjansson 5y ago
  I don't disagree with any of that, but I would argue that public is _necessarily_ the intersection of individual health and public opinion. Policy makers can't just ignore public reception of/reaction to their prescriptions, since their goal is improvement the aggregation of outcomes across the entire population. Ignoring those second order effects is just as much a policy choice as trying to account for them, and not IMO a priori more likely to result in a better outcome. Might've in this case? We might've also got COVID parties.
dkdk8283 5y ago
This is absurd. Vaccine efficacy is measured against natural antibodies resulting from a recovery. I cannot get the vaccine and I’m effectively a second class citizen. I was sick and recovered - my immune system is working as designed.
- sbilstein 5y ago
  what is stopping you from getting the vaccine?
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raxxorrax 5y ago
I believe your prediction of behavior to be wrong and careless and it also may highlight why public healthcare never got too far in the US.
stjohnswarts 5y ago
Given how simple the vaccine is there really should be a zero tolerance policy (barring a real medical reason). I think the president had the right idea with his mandate. To be a part of society those people can take one tiny shot (or two) .

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.
  - ryan93 5y ago
    Jan 6th affected like .001 percent of the population
    - User23 5y ago
      I have to confess I was never seriously worried that Viking Hat Man was going to overthrow the government and declare himself Shaman-in-Chief, even while I watched that shocking footage live.
      - inlined 5y ago
        But I do think it’s quite possible that Pence would have been killed. Or that we would have a (however minor) constitutional crisis if congress certified an election contrary to the states under duress
        mike00632 5y ago
        Or just think of what would have happened if those quick thinking staffers didn't grab the Electoral College ballots as Congress ran for their lives to the shelter.
        jollybean 5y ago
        It only starts as a 'minor' constitutional crisis. Trump can take to the streets and declare himself president for the next term because the election results were not validated. He can challenge the 'never used' legal procedures in court and of course have his lawyers lie about it in public. They could fire up enough people and get enough momentum so that a few Republicans could be pressured to not vote to validate the election results. If he refused to physically leave the White House - who would make him leave? Imagine if he invited his supporters to 'come to Washington to Defend the President' and they set up camp by the thousands around the WH. And they'd be armed. Is the National Guard going to start shooting? The longer Trump stays there, the more entrenched his legitimacy. Especially if there is violence, it'd really flare tensions. If people believe that the election was stolen, they'd also be hard pressed to be told what the actual, legal procedures are for dealing with a failed vote validation, and so it would be a matter of populism as much as legality. That's how coups happen: enough political, populist, physical force to carry the momentum beyond established legal norms.
trainsplanes 5y ago
A bunch of hospitals are more strained now than they ever were. Covid's more infectious now and some staff have quit.
- sreque 5y ago
  There have been chronic nursing staff shortages for years. We were treating patients in tents during the 208 flu epidemic: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patients/ https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie... The much larger problem is that our medical system isn't designed to handle any kind of case surge at all, because, for cost efficiency reasons, it purposely wants to operate at 80-90% capacity. Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. People should be skeptical that hospitals almost never provide thorough or accurate information about their true capacity, constraints, and current cases broken down by primary causes. But at the end of the day, one's views on the situation seem to primarily depend on political identity and whether one blindly trusts the chronically dishonest mainstream media.
  - trainsplanes 5y ago
    > Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points. Because globally, yes, they are the cause. Even in countries where hospitals don't run close to max capacity at all times in order to maximize profits, hospitals have been filling up with unvaccinated patients. Japanese hospitals in major cities haven't been able to take in new patients, and those waves of patients are unvaccinated. Although in Japan's case, the problem is there simply aren't enough vaccines here to meet demand. America's problem is there's an overabundance of vaccines but people are going out of their way to get sick, choosing to overwhelm hospitals, and then dying as an act of rebellion for facebook political points.
    - throwawayfear 5y ago
      No, they are not the cause. The vaccinated still spread the virus and could cause it to mutate all the same as the unvaccinated. Also, over 100 million Americans have past covid. [0] And we know that past covid gives antibodies which are superior. [1][2] And the hospitalization situation is overblown. [3] [0] - https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news... A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020. [1] - 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... The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. [2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-... [3] - https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease. It's entirely possible that media-induced panic is sending people to hospitals over a sniffle, being that half of those hospitalized in 2021 so far may have been admitted for non-covid related reasons or only have mild / asymptomatic covid and still been included in the count. So stop being so interested in finding a scapegoat to blame, because as you can see from other commentary here it'll lead to dehumanization and the creation of a two-tiered society. Which is dangerous.
wwweston 5y ago
It never took that large of a percentage of the population to get sick at once to overwhelm hospital capacity. Some tenths of a percent could probably it. 35% of the population vulnerable means there's plenty of room for that. Enough people do OK w/o interventions that "social collapse" probably wasn't ever going to be the outcome (short of more virulent variants), it's just whether more or fewer of the people for whom treatment makes a difference between life and death (or other morbid outcomes) can get the treatment. Also, there's probably an overlap between those who've received the vaccine and those who were taking other (ie distance-focused) related precautions pre-vaccine. And the possibility of burning out medical workers. And in any case, things in some locations are worse now than they've been thus far: "In Florida, a record number of people are dying from COVID-19—a seven-day average of 338 deaths, higher than at any other point in the pandemic." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-tracking-coronavirus-infections-us https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/graphics/graphic-...
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  Either the vaccine works or it doesn't. So why are the numbers going up if it's working?
  - bialpio 5y ago
    Way more contagious variant that spreads rapidly among people w/o prior immunity? At least that's what is being theorized based on what happened in the UK (very sharp rise in cases, followed by pretty sharp drop-off, although that seemed to stabilize now). As for the effectiveness of vaccinations, I'm optimistic based on the data from King County, WA: https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccination-outcomes.aspx https://kingcounty.gov/depts/health/covid-19/data/vaccinatio...
    - dukeofdoom 5y ago
      Switch to proportion on the graph. And the number of cases of the fully vaccinated is now around 30%. Still trying to figure out how the unvaccinated can give covid to the vaccinated, if the vaccine is working.
jollybean 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." 2020 was the worst economic catastrophe in a century. The US Fed printed money in terms it has never before, it's balance sheet has been massively inflated. Government debt exploded to WW2 levels. 10's of millions were unemployed. Most Healthcare systems had to adjust to delay and defer elective procedures. Millions of restaurants and other businesses closed, never to re-open. All of these measures were taken precisely because there were 0% vaccinated. The US/World basically couldn't handle another year of those restrictions, it would probably break the economy and cause a lot of harm. It's not going to be possible to fully re-open until COVID subsides (esp. Delta), vaccinates will be a primary driver of that.

ixacto 5y ago

To reply as the devils advocate to this comment, what is the tolerance to social costs that society is willing to bear? Also why would one segment of society have to do something that it doesn't want e.g. not bear risk if they want to? Should we tell people to get their BMI under 25 too? Overweight and obesity are going to cost much more in increased healthcare costs than COVID will in the coming decades (pls prove me wrong..). What about drinking and smoking? Maybe we should also ban these because these people will probably go on government health insurance when they come down with chronic health issues from too much alcohol or tobacco. I guess I don't see where your argument about societal costs doesn't become a slippery slope. Also full disclosure I'm 100% vaccinated and will get the booster in Dec.

refulgentis 5y ago
The line seems to be drawn at socializing the risks of full hospital ICUs in a region Edit: why the downvote to near-dead? I thought that's what the author emphasized :\
- wrycoder 5y ago
  ICUs normally run at 80%. This is gaslighting.
  - refulgentis 5y ago
    How so? Latest reports have most of the south from south carolina to Texas at 100% capacity. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/covid-hospital-icu-south.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/covid-hosp... Please avoid this style of interaction on HN — it's been my favorite place for 13 years because of what dang often refers to as the right attitude for discussion, "coming with curiosity." We try to avoid accusatory language, especially accusing others of lying, not by omission, but by commission for the sole purpose of psychological abuse.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      ICU capacity is generally bottlenecked by staffing and not by beds within suitable facilities. Basically there are required minimum ratios both legally and from a "we have to follow our on policy lest we create slam dunk lawsuits" point of view. ICU staffing is less elastic than it's ever been because hospitals have cut staffing in response to people postponing elective care (where all the $$ is). So ICU capacity as a percentage of full is as much a reflection of hospitals being tightwads as it is about Covid.

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nostrademons 5y ago

So? If lots of people independently choose to take the risk and they're not harming anyone else, why shouldn't they be allowed to? The impact on the hospital system could be blunted simply by saying "This wing is for COVID patients, when it fills up further COVID patients will be turned away" and leaving the other wings for normal hospital patients. They have to do this for quarantine reasons anyway. Now that COVID is essentially preventable, it's a huge misallocation of resources to let all the hospital fill up with people who chose not to prevent it while leaving other ER patients to their fate.

kixiQu 5y ago
Okay, now factor in that breakthrough infections are more common in the elderly, can still kill (though rarely), and are more likely to happen the more COVID is circulating in the community, which is then a function of the vaccination rate. My vaccinated grandmother is being put at risk by unvaccinated folks in her town. There's no "independent" risk.
- kixiQu 5y ago
  Alternately: any of us could be this guy: https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/09/13/1036593269/coronavirus-alabama-43-icus-at-capacity-ray-demonia https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/0...
mattnewton 5y ago
> If lots of people independently choose to take the risk and they're not harming anyone else, why shouldn't they be allowed to? There just isn't a way to ensure the "not harming anyone else" with a highly transmissible virus like this, even if we were to somehow convince hospitals to assume the legal and ethical risks of denying treatment to COVID patients when they have room to preserve hospital capacity, and even if that solution didn't expose healthcare workers to unnecessary risks, you would still be exposing other populations to risk who cannot get the vaccine or for whom the vaccine wasn't effective.
- 5y ago

wrycoder 5y ago

We can test for natural immunity. That then counts as fully vaccinated.

throwawayfear 5y ago
It should count. But why test for it and why expect proof? If someone is concerned, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. And wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. Problem solved. What use is there to build systems of control that will turn into more surveillance and eventual enslavement?
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  That's a little over the top. Kids get vaccinated to go to schools. We aren't in chains.
  - throwawayfear 5y ago
    Some kids get vaccinated to go to some schools. And none of that is comparable to this pandemic situation where we have politicians blatantly ignoring the science and taking bread off the table by firing people who don't comply, even if they have excellent antibodies from past covid infection. 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... "The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label." Alarm bells should be going off. Take a look at Australia. Are they in chains? Are they the frog in the boiling pot? I think they are the frog in the boiling pot. When do we raise the alarm? When would you raise the alarm? When is it no longer over the top? They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-australia-still-liberal-democracy/619940/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a... They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824 Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source: https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to- https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-... “NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.” They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097 You want this to happen in the USA too? Because that's where we are headed once we allow covid vaccine passports and mandates like in NYC to fester and spread. The slope is slippery. Time to nip it in the bud, and if being "over the top" is what it takes to get that done then so be it. Assuage my fears if you really believe there isn't a risk of tyranny. We just went through a presidency where people were regularly warning about totalitarian regimes emerging in the USA. So I think I'm a bit warranted in raising the alarm when I see it happening in other democracies around the world.

roamerz 5y ago

>Because it's a terrible policy prescription. And the government is ignoring the same science they are asking us to follow. It’s no wonder people are revolting. Although I am vaccinated I did take a antibody test before I did so and wouldn’t have if I had the natural antibodies. It’s almost the same lie they tell when they call this a vaccine- it’s really not. I really understand why people are pissed and I will fully support them in any way I can.

mythrwy 5y ago

It's not only not a terrible policy position, natural immunity will turn out in the end to be the ONLY effective thing which gets us to to herd immunity. At this point I don't understand why this isn't obvious. You make a targeted vaccine, in this case it will be evaded. We see it right now. That will continue. Natural immunity will cast a wider net and be proven much more effective.

ekidd 5y ago
> natural immunity will turn out in the end to be the ONLY effective thing which gets us to to herd immunity. There are many illnesses for which humanity never reached natural herd immunity. Smallpox was consistently deadly for millennia, for example. Malaria's still going strong. HIV is kept in check by treatments, not immunity. The COVID delta strain has an R of at least 5. Using naive models, this would mean that we'd need at least 80% immunity. But even if we achieved 100% vaccination, it's not clear that current vaccines (or natural infection) can provide 80% immunity over the longer term. So realistically, I suspect that COVID will simply become one of the risks of life. I fully expect that I will catch it multiple times in the decades to come. But I get an annual flu shot, and I'm willing to get an annual COVID booster if necessary. And there's no guarantee that this will all blow over soon. The worst case historical coronavirus appears to have jumped to humans around 20,000 years ago, and it looks like it exerted heavy selective pressure over many generations. See https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/science/ancient-coronavirus-epidemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/science/ancient-coronavir....
- mythrwy 5y ago
  That's a really good point and I agree completely. "Herd Immunity" as not the correct term to use because yes, it is with us for the foreseeable future. Some weaker form of "herd immunity" where most people have had exposure and it ceases to become a large scale social threat would have been more correct, but I'm at loss for an exact term.
  - esyir 5y ago
    Herd immunity essentially doesn't exist for many viruses. What you'd get is more akin to an endemic virus such as the flu. Mutation rates and immune escape make herd immunity essentially a dream.

OrvalWintermute 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? What we know : We know that vaccines are of great value for high risk populations. We know that vaccines are contraindicated for a number of patients and have some pretty severe side effects for those with allergies. We know that the vaccines risk ratio (do no harm) skews with younger patients. We know that the vaccine efficacy is greatly reduced with Delta variants, and newer, and these new variants dominate the infection count. We know between ~40M and ~112M people [1] have already had COVID and recovered, and ~178 million have received vaccinations already. Therefore, we know the delta between previous vaccinated (178M) and infected (~40M-~112M), and hesitant, and anti-vaxx may not be a large number (~132M on the high end, and ~60M on the low end). Of these 132M to 60M, only a certain number are event approved for vaccination. We know that previous wide surveys indicate that previous infections and ensuing natural immunity are stronger, and more durable than first generation, and 2nd generation vaccines. We also know that the Covid vaccines are not immunizing, and a large amount of virus can be passed on from vaccinated, to the unvaccinated. What we don't know We know that an undetermined number of patients allegedly around 10k have died from covid vaccine side effects, although we don't know exactly how many due to data quality issues. We don't know the accurate count of COVID deaths because of conflation of dying with COVID, or, from COVID. Some numbers have been seen at roughly ~500k to ~800k although we haven't done the heavy lifting of assuring data quality. We don't know how many of the untested already had minor covid infections, and we don't know how many have a natural immunity to it. We also do not know when 3rd generation vaccines will arrive that may have reduced side effects, and more efficacy against novel variants. Given above, I am not sure a mass push to force hesitant and anti-vaxx to get vaccinated will be successful, or even possible given potential job losses, and constitutionality. For the sake of full disclosure I consider myself vaccine hesitant, but I believe the newest vaccines coming out will improve protection, and reduce side effects. The new novavaxx [2] merged covid/influenza [3] doses seem to be something that I would like to take, more protective, and lower risk than existing vaccines. Unfortunately, I am not eligible for the Novavax ongoing trial that is currently open. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... [2] https://www.novavax.com/our-unique-technology#recombinant-nanoparticle-vaccine-technology https://www.novavax.com/our-unique-technology#recombinant-na... [3] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/novavax-begins-early-stage-trial-combined-flu-covid-vaccine-n1278711 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/novavax-begins-ea...

anonymoushn 5y ago

It seems like a policy of forcing people with natural immunity to be vaccinated could have negative externalities if there are other countries in the world that don't have enough vaccines.

throwawayfear 5y ago
Not to mention that there are some 25 million teenage boys who are at higher risk from covid vaccination than simply catching covid. 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... And it's also unethical to force it onto someone who has natural immunity, since their natural immunity is already on par or better than vaccination. So what's the point? 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...

CryptoPunk 5y ago

>>Should those people just be allowed to assume the risk? Not while the costs are predominantly social. Then eliminate socialized healthcare. Your imposition of socialized healthcare is now being used to rationalize imposition of forced injections. Government can have a healthcare system that is entirely opt-in, for both taxation, and coverage. Or how about just deprioritize unvaccinated individuals with COVID when there is a shortage of ICU beds.

throwawayfear 5y ago

If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? That's on them. It's not your job to police their choices, and especially not to impose "papers please" on everyone else. No thanks. 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. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062 https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... Quote from article: "In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease." So we have a situation where media-induced fear is causing people to panic until they rush to the hospital. It's certainly possible given that half of the hospitalizations are...not even meaningfully hospitalizations if they were mild or asymptomatic. What does this do to your narrative then, about how dangerous this is and how many millions will "continue to" take the risk? Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs. Nonsense. Over 100 million Americans had covid already.[0] We now know that antibodies from past infection are superior to vaccination.[1] [2] So why would you make this arbitrary demand for vaccination as the proof, when the antibodies are what count? [0] - https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news/one-three-americans-already-had-covid-19-end-2020 https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news... "A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020." [1] - 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... "The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label. " [2] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-covid-prevents-delta-infection-better-than-pfizer-shot https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-... And we know based on the current evidence those antibodies will last for decades. [3] [3] - https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01442-9 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. The answer is not "probably yes." The answer is a resounding yes, but the answer is also that no proof should be needed unless you work in a hospital where vaccination requirements already existed. We don't need a "papers please" society. If you're concerned for your health, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. Wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. That's how simple this is. There's no need for building systems of control that will turn into systems of enslavement. 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. Meanwhile, you have a situation where healthcare resources are being intentionally fired or are quitting because of the idiotic mandates. [4] [4] - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-hospital-pause-delivering-babies-after-staffers-quit-rather-n1279001 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-hospital-pause... "An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to "pause" maternity services this month because some employees' refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has caused staffing shortages." This is entirely a manufactured problem. While risk-takers do pay into the same system, their premiums don't yet reflect the increased expected costs of their personal choice. We've been hearing for YEARS about how bad insurance companies are. How they make record profits each and every year and still pass on higher premiums, higher deductibles, and shittier service to their customers. So why are people feigning concern for health insurance corporation bottom lines already? Wake up. 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. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hospitalization-numbers-can-be-misleading/620062/ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos... "In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease." The media induced panic that causes people to flood the hospitals when they get a sniffle, because of fear. The situation with hospitalizations appears to have been exaggerated.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

WXYZ-TV posted the following question on facebook a few days ago and received 155k responses. "After the vaccines were available to everyone, did you lose an unvaccinated loved one to COVID-19? " https://www.facebook.com/80221381134/posts/10158207967261135/?d=n https://www.facebook.com/80221381134/posts/10158207967261135... The responses are not what you would expect. Certainly not what the media narrative is.

revax 5y ago
Cannot access to the comments without an account. Regardless of what it is said, why should we trust those unverifiable comments, full of anecdotes instead of peer-review scientifics works?
- mewpmewp2 5y ago
  Is there anywhere you could actually access any data that you can completely trust? I too have a relative who regrets taking a vaccine, as she's been having suspicious long term symptoms until now - she took the vaccine in Spring. Nothing in the 43k Pfizer study would indicate that such symptoms could appear, and maybe it is a coincidence that those symptoms started appearing after the vaccine. And of course it is anecdotal, but still it makes me vary at least about the Pfizer study. Symptoms seem to be related to blood flow issues in the legs, and getting this tingling sensation. Since it has happened to a relative I trust and who's otherwise pro vax, I'm slightly inclined to also believe other anecdotal stories, but obviously I can't use that as an evidence.

mr_toad 5y ago

> Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs. That is effectively coercing people to undertake a medical procedure for their own or for society’s good. The ethics of doing that should be concerning, considering the social and ethnic makeup of the vaccine hesitant, and the checkered history of coercive medical intervention. I’d much rather see the carrot used than the stick.

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lvs 5y ago

Additionally, the only plausible way to do it would be to test for seroconversion. That's a blood draw, so it doesn't save anyone from a needle, and overall it's probably more work and more expensive than vaccination.

manwe150 5y ago

I feel like the entire comment thread after yours has gotten lost in hypothetical discussions about some ethical question about interventions that haven’t been shown to work. Not quite the usual dialog I expected here. What the CDC recently said is that vaccination also reduces your chance of reinfection significantly, at near zero risk. So universal vaccination is a strictly dominant strategy for personal health, with or without any other interventions (diet, exercise, etc). Why wouldn’t a non-political organization recommend universal vaccination therefore (above age 12)? It makes for simple, cheap, and effective messaging. If they said not to take a care of your health in some other equally proven way, then it would likely seem to be politically motivated and damage their trustworthiness. That probably has happened too (such as saying to mask outside, until they got more data), but we aren’t blindly trusting them in this, or anything.

yyyk 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? You're making a calculation not regarding health, but regarding public reaction. The problem is that the public health community sucks as far as making these calculations go; I don't think I need to list all the missteps here. IMHO, they know a lot about epidemiology, nothing about the public. So it's best to just make the right policy and not to try 4D chess with the public, that tends to backfire. Just about anyone who has remained unvaccinated so far is already taking the risk you pointed out*. No point in spending resources chasing recovering patients we don't really have to vaccinate right now. Now I don't agree with using antibody test results (these kits aren't standardized, so the relation between immunity and the results isn't clear), but an actual record of recovery should do. As the article notes, that's what many other countries in the world do. * Excluding the very few people who actually have a good reason to not vaccinate due to certain extremely rare immune system ailments.

kristjansson 5y ago
I don't disagree with any of that, but I would argue that public is _necessarily_ the intersection of individual health and public opinion. Policy makers can't just ignore public reception of/reaction to their prescriptions, since their goal is improvement the aggregation of outcomes across the entire population. Ignoring those second order effects is just as much a policy choice as trying to account for them, and not IMO a priori more likely to result in a better outcome. Might've in this case? We might've also got COVID parties.

dkdk8283 5y ago

This is absurd. Vaccine efficacy is measured against natural antibodies resulting from a recovery. I cannot get the vaccine and I’m effectively a second class citizen. I was sick and recovered - my immune system is working as designed.

sbilstein 5y ago
what is stopping you from getting the vaccine?
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raxxorrax 5y ago

I believe your prediction of behavior to be wrong and careless and it also may highlight why public healthcare never got too far in the US.

stjohnswarts 5y ago

Given how simple the vaccine is there really should be a zero tolerance policy (barring a real medical reason). I think the president had the right idea with his mandate. To be a part of society those people can take one tiny shot (or two) .