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You said: > Given this data the most effective strategy is to just vaccinate everyone without what is effectively a pointless distinction The data clearly sho

by timr 5y ago

You said: > Given this data the most effective strategy is to just vaccinate everyone without what is effectively a pointless distinction The data clearly shows that protection from natural infection is at least as substantial as from vaccination, and that ~half (if not more) of the US population has had it. This fairly obviously impacts the most effective strategy. Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior. Most countries recognize prior infection. We're in a small, small club of scientifically illiterate nations here, and it's rather embarrassing. > It will be once the proportion of unvaccinated people in hospitals starts to resemble the proportion in the general population. If the total number of hospitalizations is a manageable number, the percentage that are vaccinated is irrelevant. It's a metric of punishment, not a realistic policy goal. I have no idea what the future will bring with regard to the ratio of unvaccinated hospitalizations, but I know that hospitalizations in general will fall as the population achieves broad immunity -- and natural infection certainly counts toward that goal.

kevhito 5y ago
> Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior. The idea that a vaccine is a punishment is disturbing. I'm glad to have been able to get it.
- timr 5y ago
  I said the mandate is punitive, not the vaccine. If you feel more comfortable getting an unnecessary vaccination, nobody is stopping you. Other people should not be coerced into doing the same against their will. College kids are currently being expelled for refusing boosters. Children are being refused classroom education. Prior infection is not taken into account, and risk/benefit is not a factor. There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior.
  - lovich 5y ago
    College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. > There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior We coerce people constantly when they have bad behavior that affects society and others. I don’t know why people keep trotting out mandates as having aspects of coercion/authoritarianism is a mic drop moment explaining why they are bad. How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had?
    - nomel 5y ago
      I think their point is that the data shows that previous infection provides good protection. If the goal is protection, then this should count for something, and should be factored in to the risk-benefit ratio. The risk-benefit ratio is not negligible for young, which is why the vaccine still hasn't been approved for the very young (and there's certainly not a step function in the risk-benefit ratio, by age). But, the risk-benefit ratio calculations being used don't seem to be including previous infection. This is not necessarily scientific. For the other-than-COVID vaccines that are required for enrollment, there isn't existing protection in the majority of the population. Nobody has natural, effective, protection against measles. I think the practical problem/reason is that there's infrastructure set up to track and share vaccination/booster status. There's no infrastructure set up to track, or even test, immunity status, which is the real metric of risk. So, for practical reasons, proof of vaccination status will always be favored and, almost certainly, held above the true, yet difficult to measure, immunity status, to drive policies. This is an easy out, that might cause harm, relative to an "ideal" policies that were based on immunity.
    - chronofar 5y ago
      > College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. Saying it's happened in the past isn't an argument that it should continue in the future. I doubt your swine flu nasal spray had as intense of negative side effects as the COVID second shot and booster tend to in the young and healthy. Now that we're in booster territory and Delta is being phased out the shots are almost certainly more painful than the disease for some portion of the population. > How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had? I can't recall any other health based requirement for attending an event or restaurant. I also don't understand why people continue to harp on how a personal COVID vaccination decision "affects society and others" at this point. The vaccine only marginally prevents infection at this stage, and the primary benefit of reduced severity should stop everyone who's vaccinated from worrying about what others around them may be doing. I get the flu shot so I don't get the flu, and I'm not sitting around telling others who haven't that they're putting me in danger.
MatteoFrigo 5y ago
Your ~half estimate is more like 70-80% these days. See https://covidestim.org/us https://covidestim.org/us (This makes your case stronger, of course.)
- timr 5y ago
  Absolutely. I'm being intentionally conservative here.
Zanni 5y ago
Your logic here is flawed. Even if you've already had covid, the vaccine will give you more protection. That's good. We can't do the reverse (give deliberate natural immunity to those who are already infected), but that's no reason to say that natural immunity is "good enough." That goes for the individual as well as society. Would you decline airbags because seatbelts as effective?
- hnfong 5y ago
  I think you're hitting a strawman here. Are any number of vaccine shots "good enough"? Or, should we be getting one every month to get as much protection as possible? There's a line to be drawn somewhere, and I think what's argued here is that natural immunity should count for something, instead of being lumped into the same group as those "unvaccinated and no prior infection".
- timr 5y ago
  > Even if you've already had covid, the vaccine will give you more protection. And more risk. Which is greater?

by timr 5y ago

kevhito 5y ago

> Mandating vaccines (and now boosters) in young, healthy people who were already at small risk, including those who have already had the virus, is so absurd that I can't even characterize it as science. It is simply punitive behavior. The idea that a vaccine is a punishment is disturbing. I'm glad to have been able to get it.

timr 5y ago
I said the mandate is punitive, not the vaccine. If you feel more comfortable getting an unnecessary vaccination, nobody is stopping you. Other people should not be coerced into doing the same against their will. College kids are currently being expelled for refusing boosters. Children are being refused classroom education. Prior infection is not taken into account, and risk/benefit is not a factor. There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior.
- lovich 5y ago
  College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. > There's no other way to frame this than as coercive behavior We coerce people constantly when they have bad behavior that affects society and others. I don’t know why people keep trotting out mandates as having aspects of coercion/authoritarianism is a mic drop moment explaining why they are bad. How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had?
  - nomel 5y ago
    I think their point is that the data shows that previous infection provides good protection. If the goal is protection, then this should count for something, and should be factored in to the risk-benefit ratio. The risk-benefit ratio is not negligible for young, which is why the vaccine still hasn't been approved for the very young (and there's certainly not a step function in the risk-benefit ratio, by age). But, the risk-benefit ratio calculations being used don't seem to be including previous infection. This is not necessarily scientific. For the other-than-COVID vaccines that are required for enrollment, there isn't existing protection in the majority of the population. Nobody has natural, effective, protection against measles. I think the practical problem/reason is that there's infrastructure set up to track and share vaccination/booster status. There's no infrastructure set up to track, or even test, immunity status, which is the real metric of risk. So, for practical reasons, proof of vaccination status will always be favored and, almost certainly, held above the true, yet difficult to measure, immunity status, to drive policies. This is an easy out, that might cause harm, relative to an "ideal" policies that were based on immunity.
  - chronofar 5y ago
    > College kids were already required to get multiple vaccines to attend and I remember being lined up to take the swine flu nasal spray with no say in the matter if I was going to continue education. Saying it's happened in the past isn't an argument that it should continue in the future. I doubt your swine flu nasal spray had as intense of negative side effects as the COVID second shot and booster tend to in the young and healthy. Now that we're in booster territory and Delta is being phased out the shots are almost certainly more painful than the disease for some portion of the population. > How is this worse than all the other health based coercion we’ve had? I can't recall any other health based requirement for attending an event or restaurant. I also don't understand why people continue to harp on how a personal COVID vaccination decision "affects society and others" at this point. The vaccine only marginally prevents infection at this stage, and the primary benefit of reduced severity should stop everyone who's vaccinated from worrying about what others around them may be doing. I get the flu shot so I don't get the flu, and I'm not sitting around telling others who haven't that they're putting me in danger.

MatteoFrigo 5y ago

Your ~half estimate is more like 70-80% these days. See https://covidestim.org/us https://covidestim.org/us (This makes your case stronger, of course.)

timr 5y ago
Absolutely. I'm being intentionally conservative here.

Zanni 5y ago

Your logic here is flawed. Even if you've already had covid, the vaccine will give you more protection. That's good. We can't do the reverse (give deliberate natural immunity to those who are already infected), but that's no reason to say that natural immunity is "good enough." That goes for the individual as well as society. Would you decline airbags because seatbelts as effective?

hnfong 5y ago
I think you're hitting a strawman here. Are any number of vaccine shots "good enough"? Or, should we be getting one every month to get as much protection as possible? There's a line to be drawn somewhere, and I think what's argued here is that natural immunity should count for something, instead of being lumped into the same group as those "unvaccinated and no prior infection".
timr 5y ago
> Even if you've already had covid, the vaccine will give you more protection. And more risk. Which is greater?