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This response is actually an example of what I'm talking about. The comment that I replied to was explaining how the segment of the population that is a candid

This response is actually an example of what I'm talking about. The comment that I replied to was explaining how the segment of the population that is a candidate for giving themselves covid while being high risk is (and has been) shrinking out of existence. Meanwhile, there is a much larger (and growing) cohort that continues to be harrased if they (fairly) decide they don't need these vaccines, and the harrasment is justified by claims like yours. Even the CDC has finally come around and published data along these lines (despite numerous studies suggesting the same starting from early last year). But after bullshitting people for so long, I guess we just have to expect there will be a ton of inertia behind the idea that every human needs these vaccines, no matter what.

srcreigh 5y ago
Why doesn't someone make the point that 95%+ (or 98%+ etc) of Americans are protected via natural immunity or vaccines and back it up with data? Once that point is made, the discouraging natural immunity argument can stop because hospitals can't overfill anymore. However until that point can be made[0] I think the "don't encourage natural immunity" position will prevent the most deaths. By the way, I also don't condone harassment of unvaccinated people or vaccination as a requirement for employment etc either. Those are separate issues to me. [0]: I tried looking for it but CDC data is only sept 2021 and estimated only 146M infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html#est-infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  I attempted to make an argument like that 2 weeks ago. I was using an estimate of 120m instead of the 146 that you quoted. And I'm just a dummy on the internet, so I'm probably at least a little wrong. But the gist was that if you could jab everyone tomorrow (which you can't), you might get a little bit of a benefit in the stats, but politically you'd be dead https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29914681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29914681 There's no reason hospitals can't still fill up anyway if you have enough volume. EDIT: I should mention that I really appreciate what you said above: > By the way, I also don't condone harassment of unvaccinated people or vaccination as a requirement for employment etc either. Those are separate issues to me.
  - srcreigh 5y ago
    I'm in Canada where the mandates are quite extensive but also change frequently. I'd like to think the govt is hoping that each time restrictions are loosed, some type of immunity has developed and restrictionz can be loosed more. When things seem to get worse and worse again, the restrictions are added to ensure hospitals can work. At the end of the day, a large decrease in severity will be the deciding factor. We can try to model when that will happen, but it will have to actually happen regardless of what the models say.
- MatteoFrigo 5y ago
  https://covidestim.org/us https://covidestim.org/us has estimates on the percentage of people ever infected by state. I looked at MA, NY, and CA, and they all hover around 80% (with error bars). I can't find a cumulative US estimate. I have no idea how they came up with the estimate, but the site is maintained by reputable institutions, so I am inclined to believe these numbers unless proven otherwise.
yibg 5y ago
How about we do this. For people that can and “should be” vaccinated but don’t by choice due to their own risk assessment, if they catch Covid and need hospital treatment they don’t get it. That way they have their freedom and hospital capacity isn’t put at risk. If the people refusing to get vaccinated are willing to shoulder the risk themselves I have no problems with it.
- juiiiced 5y ago
  I agree. This is really the critical point: If you are in a low risk group, but get covid you have no way of knowing whether you will consume hospital resources or not. In that case it's best to get vaccinated if you can to protect others who made need the hospital.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  > If the people refusing to get vaccinated are willing to shoulder the risk themselves I have no problems with it. This is the point: the people who are refusing to be vaccinated that have recovered from a prior infection are not at a higher risk of severe outcomes than the folks who got vaccinated and didn't have a previous infection [0]. So maybe if your definition of "should be vaccinated" is narrow enough, then maybe you can justify some kind of priority order for treatment. That's not a topic I'm going anywhere near though. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
  - yibg 5y ago
    There are going to be gray areas. Some individuals should not or cannot get the vaccine. What qualifies for that exactly is a bit muddy as well. So I agree what is "should" isn't very clear. As an individual, it's really the numbers around the ratio of unvaccinated individuals in hospital / ICU consuming resources unnecessarily and therefore depleting them for the rest of us unnecessarily that's maddening. That plus the regrettable stories about people that are vocally anti-vax that end up dying from covid. So for me it's like fine, freedom is important and you can choose to go against whatever recommendation you want. But at the same time you have to shoulder the consequences for it too. You can't have it both ways. Have the freedom to do whatever you want but also not bear the consequences of those actions.
standardUser 5y ago
Until the people hoarding ICU beds and grinding medical staff into the ground are no longer disproportionately unvaccinated COVID patients, I don't see anyone caring too much about the distinction.
- ifyoubuildit 5y ago
  > ... I don't see anyone caring too much about the distinction. I think you're absolutely right, which is why I'm here banging this drum. People should care about the distinction, because it matters if you want to actually understand the situation. Certain groups are overrepresented in the prison system in the US. Some people think this means that all members of those groups are bad people. The people who think this are poorly informed, and can only get in the way of solving the actual problems. And no, I'm not equating the treatment of unvaccinated people to that of minorities in the US. I am equating the structure of the misunderstanding involved (disadvantaged minority + other problems describes a lot of prisoners, but its the other problems that dominate the equation. Just like unvaccinated + seronaive can describe a hospitalized patient, but the seronaive part is what matters). I tried to explain this better in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096072
  - standardUser 5y ago
    If the distinction is vaccinated people vs people with natural immunity, I don't think that's a scientifically sound distinction. Do you mean people who recovered 20 months ago from a long gone variant? Or people who recovered with no symptoms last week from Omicron? Do we know what it means if a person has antibodies from a recovery a year ago, given the advent of brand new strains that have spread like wildfire and are only just now being studied in depth? What we do know, thanks to a mountain of unambiguous data, is that people who have had vaccine shots go to the hospital way, way, way less often than those who have not. Which means vaccines prevent other people from suffering bad health outcomes due to lack of healthcare resources. It is a win for everyone.
    - ifyoubuildit 5y ago

srcreigh 5y ago

Why doesn't someone make the point that 95%+ (or 98%+ etc) of Americans are protected via natural immunity or vaccines and back it up with data? Once that point is made, the discouraging natural immunity argument can stop because hospitals can't overfill anymore. However until that point can be made[0] I think the "don't encourage natural immunity" position will prevent the most deaths. By the way, I also don't condone harassment of unvaccinated people or vaccination as a requirement for employment etc either. Those are separate issues to me. [0]: I tried looking for it but CDC data is only sept 2021 and estimated only 146M infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html#est-infections https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

ifyoubuildit 5y ago
I attempted to make an argument like that 2 weeks ago. I was using an estimate of 120m instead of the 146 that you quoted. And I'm just a dummy on the internet, so I'm probably at least a little wrong. But the gist was that if you could jab everyone tomorrow (which you can't), you might get a little bit of a benefit in the stats, but politically you'd be dead https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29914681 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29914681 There's no reason hospitals can't still fill up anyway if you have enough volume. EDIT: I should mention that I really appreciate what you said above: > By the way, I also don't condone harassment of unvaccinated people or vaccination as a requirement for employment etc either. Those are separate issues to me.
- srcreigh 5y ago
  I'm in Canada where the mandates are quite extensive but also change frequently. I'd like to think the govt is hoping that each time restrictions are loosed, some type of immunity has developed and restrictionz can be loosed more. When things seem to get worse and worse again, the restrictions are added to ensure hospitals can work. At the end of the day, a large decrease in severity will be the deciding factor. We can try to model when that will happen, but it will have to actually happen regardless of what the models say.
MatteoFrigo 5y ago
https://covidestim.org/us https://covidestim.org/us has estimates on the percentage of people ever infected by state. I looked at MA, NY, and CA, and they all hover around 80% (with error bars). I can't find a cumulative US estimate. I have no idea how they came up with the estimate, but the site is maintained by reputable institutions, so I am inclined to believe these numbers unless proven otherwise.

yibg 5y ago

How about we do this. For people that can and “should be” vaccinated but don’t by choice due to their own risk assessment, if they catch Covid and need hospital treatment they don’t get it. That way they have their freedom and hospital capacity isn’t put at risk. If the people refusing to get vaccinated are willing to shoulder the risk themselves I have no problems with it.

juiiiced 5y ago
I agree. This is really the critical point: If you are in a low risk group, but get covid you have no way of knowing whether you will consume hospital resources or not. In that case it's best to get vaccinated if you can to protect others who made need the hospital.
ifyoubuildit 5y ago
> If the people refusing to get vaccinated are willing to shoulder the risk themselves I have no problems with it. This is the point: the people who are refusing to be vaccinated that have recovered from a prior infection are not at a higher risk of severe outcomes than the folks who got vaccinated and didn't have a previous infection [0]. So maybe if your definition of "should be vaccinated" is narrow enough, then maybe you can justify some kind of priority order for treatment. That's not a topic I'm going anywhere near though. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm7104e1_w https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...
- yibg 5y ago
  There are going to be gray areas. Some individuals should not or cannot get the vaccine. What qualifies for that exactly is a bit muddy as well. So I agree what is "should" isn't very clear. As an individual, it's really the numbers around the ratio of unvaccinated individuals in hospital / ICU consuming resources unnecessarily and therefore depleting them for the rest of us unnecessarily that's maddening. That plus the regrettable stories about people that are vocally anti-vax that end up dying from covid. So for me it's like fine, freedom is important and you can choose to go against whatever recommendation you want. But at the same time you have to shoulder the consequences for it too. You can't have it both ways. Have the freedom to do whatever you want but also not bear the consequences of those actions.

standardUser 5y ago

Until the people hoarding ICU beds and grinding medical staff into the ground are no longer disproportionately unvaccinated COVID patients, I don't see anyone caring too much about the distinction.

ifyoubuildit 5y ago
> ... I don't see anyone caring too much about the distinction. I think you're absolutely right, which is why I'm here banging this drum. People should care about the distinction, because it matters if you want to actually understand the situation. Certain groups are overrepresented in the prison system in the US. Some people think this means that all members of those groups are bad people. The people who think this are poorly informed, and can only get in the way of solving the actual problems. And no, I'm not equating the treatment of unvaccinated people to that of minorities in the US. I am equating the structure of the misunderstanding involved (disadvantaged minority + other problems describes a lot of prisoners, but its the other problems that dominate the equation. Just like unvaccinated + seronaive can describe a hospitalized patient, but the seronaive part is what matters). I tried to explain this better in another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30096072
- standardUser 5y ago
  If the distinction is vaccinated people vs people with natural immunity, I don't think that's a scientifically sound distinction. Do you mean people who recovered 20 months ago from a long gone variant? Or people who recovered with no symptoms last week from Omicron? Do we know what it means if a person has antibodies from a recovery a year ago, given the advent of brand new strains that have spread like wildfire and are only just now being studied in depth? What we do know, thanks to a mountain of unambiguous data, is that people who have had vaccine shots go to the hospital way, way, way less often than those who have not. Which means vaccines prevent other people from suffering bad health outcomes due to lack of healthcare resources. It is a win for everyone.
  - ifyoubuildit 5y ago