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Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

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Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#31
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody knows what dose was delivered to the “natural immunity” group, how many times, or when.

Seems we should be able to test for antibodies though. Why aren't we?

we are testing for antibodies but antibodies aren't the only immune system response and depending on who you ask might not even be the "main" defense against covid.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#32

In US culture this seems like it would potentially set up some perverse incentives among anti-vaxxers, leading to things like the "measles parties" that fueled the the 2019 NYC measles outbreak: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200527181329.h...

We are well past that. It's not that hard to say:

1) If you have natural immunity already, great! Provide evidence of your positive test

2) If you don't have evidence that you've been SARS-COV-19 positive, go get a shot so you don't have a severe hospitalization.

3) No, we don't suggest getting infected on purpose over the shot. Go read #2

Instead, the US federal government is being purposefully ignorant of how effective natural immunity is.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#33
It's a waste of resources to figure out whether someone has natural immunity (its quite hard to do logistically). Much easier to just give them the vaccine, then your bases are covered. These are public health decisions -- they don't occur in a vacuum with unlimited resources.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#34
post #18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody knows what dose was delivered to the “natural immunity” group, how many times, or when.

Seems we should be able to test for antibodies though. Why aren't we?

It's a blood test, and I suspect that it's even harder to motivate everyone to get a blood draw than to get a vaccine.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#35

> US CDC estimates that SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 100 million Americans That's probably why it doesn't count? Would clearly cut into the profit lines of big pharma. If you're extra skeptical, you could also argue Western governments are finding opportunities to accustom their citizens to more top down government intrusions into their lives, e.g. shifting towards a citizen management model that's used today by…

Yes, places like NYC are creating a system of getting entry to many places only if you present government authorization. Then they can start adding more conditions to that authorization. Maybe a red state later adds not being a felon or a blue state adds not being on some red flag list. After all, you can still eat, so it's okay. They represent systems for excluding certain classes of people from society.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#36

A recent study from Israel said that natural immunity is an order of magnitude better than vaccine-induced immunity against delta variant. I don't know who to believe, but if that's the case, then the narrative of "well they should get vaccinated anyway" is really freaking suspicious. We need deeper research on this, and the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary.

>the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary

Can you clarify who you mean by "they"? I don't suspect you mean Israel in that context.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#37
post #8

It's very concerning that the president is saying things like "your refusal has cost all of us" and "our patience is wearing this" when talking to people with natural immunity who have not received the vaccine. As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens. It seems like he's doing the opposite. I'm not really sure why. My best guess is politics has become all about polarization…

The president would not be in the news if they acted reasonably and tried to work across party lines. There’s always going to be someone more extreme, louder, and obnoxious that will sell more ad views along with supporting whatever pet narrative the publication wants.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#38

> US CDC estimates that SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 100 million Americans That's probably why it doesn't count? Would clearly cut into the profit lines of big pharma. If you're extra skeptical, you could also argue Western governments are finding opportunities to accustom their citizens to more top down government intrusions into their lives, e.g. shifting towards a citizen management model that's used today by…

I think you're 100% right on both counts.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#39

It seems much harder to quantify the level of immunity conferred by natural infection. It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection. Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice. Refuses to get vaccinated now because "why bother? I have great immunity now." With no sense of irony, given that he's already been infected twice...

> It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection. How is that different from a vaccine?

The vaccine either contains or triggers the production of a specific protein that is (fairly) stable across variants - so there's only one thing for the immune system to key off. The concern around natural immunity is that your immune system may respond to some aspect of the virus that isn't as stable, ie it ends up recognising part of the virus that's present in your current infection but may not be in a later infection.

In reality it seems that the immune system does tend to end up targeting the same protein that's in the vaccine, but may be targeting different portions of it (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ talks about this). My understanding is that current data suggests the naturally acquired immunity is about as robust as the vaccine acquired one, but this wasn't a given.

Re: Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

#40
post #16

I'd assume that a lot of it is the existing polarization over the issue. It's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so. (Plus a lot of people who don't even know they've already had COVID, because of asymptomatic cases.) The state of medical records in the USA is... not great, so it's easier to show evidence of the vaccination that can at least theoretically be v…

> because it's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so.

It's not actually. They're equivalent. The vaccine proof is PAPER which can be forged. And while evidence of a COVID19 test can be paper too, mine was digital.

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