Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

bmj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 1001 posts

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

#41

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

rajin444 wrote: 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…

At times of national ... tragedy ... we sometimes hear about rallying behind the flag. The government's rhetoric seems like a ham-fisted effort at that.

Unfortunately, national US politics have devolved in some respects to a food fight of attacks on political opponents. Some viewed Trump's tax policies in this light, disfavoring residents of so-called 'Blue' states. It would, unfortunately, be very easy to recharacterize Biden's work-based vaccination requirement as an effort to get his staunchest political opponents fired, nationwide. I personally hope both sides can find a path to a more conciliatory approach to policy.

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

#42

Post by gojomo »

leifg wrote: post #15

The argument seems fine to me. Let people with natural immunity have the same privileges as vaccinated people assuming they have a piece of paper from a federal entity to prove it. The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.

Seeking infection may cure their skepticism faster than any amount of scolding!

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

#43

Post by extheat »

Given the political discussions about “booster shots”, I find this quote pretty interesting:

> Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”

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

#44

Post by yokaze »

toolz wrote: post #4
rootusrootus wrote: post #3

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...

Why is it "harder"? I assume you mean harder to quantify than vaccination immunity and I don't believe that's the case, but I'm curious why you believe that is the case. edit: surprising downvotes so I probably didn't communicate my point well. I can't imagine a reason why natural immunity would be harder to quantify than vaccine induced immunity. It would seem to me the methodology to quantify both would be very sim…

With a vaccine, you get a standardised dosis of an agent resembling the disease or just a part of it. The remaining variability is the response to that standardised input.

With an infection, you have no control over the degree of exposure, so on top of the variability of the response comes the variability of the exposure.

Additionally, in case of exposure of the full pathogen, there is some variability to what part of the pathogen the immune system will respond. That part can actually be a good thing in total.

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

#45

Post by kemayo »

defaulty wrote: post #40
kemayo wrote: 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.

It's why I said "at least theoretically" -- the vaccine cards have a date and vaccine lot number on them. I'm making the assumption that this has been recorded somewhere, such that you could at least check that a certain batch was administered on a certain day to a certain person.

Of course, this could all fail under the "medical records in the USA are garbage" issue.

Still, if nothing else, it's better for proving it than "I took a COVID test at home, trust me".

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

#46

Post by leifg »

gojomo wrote: post #42
leifg wrote: post #15

The argument seems fine to me. Let people with natural immunity have the same privileges as vaccinated people assuming they have a piece of paper from a federal entity to prove it. The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.

Seeking infection may cure their skepticism faster than any amount of scolding!

If catching COVID is only a risk to the people catching it I'd agree.

However by catching COVID you are also a burden to the health care system and possibly take away a hospital bed for someone who actually needs it (already happening). I do have a problem with that.

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

#47

Post by RIMR »

eltondegeneres wrote: post #13

OP keeps posting articles pushing the idea that COVID-19 infection alone is sufficient to protect individuals.

Despite having an account since 2018, they have only posted 5 submissions. 4 of them were posted in the past 3 weeks, and all have to do questioning the viability of the vaccines.

I know we want to have a space here to freely discuss things without being dismissed, but I also think enough of us have managed enough websites to understand that this account shouldn't be taken seriously.

I'm not saying that they are a bot either. Their comments suggest otherwise. But this person has, after nearly three years on this site, decided that now is the time to start submitting articles to the front page, and all of them have been about the same politically controversial thing, so this person clearly has an agenda they are trying to push.

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

#48

Post by blacksqr »

peteradio wrote: post #2

This article also has long form responses. I'd love to see a reasoned contrary response.

The contrary argument is reasonably well-stated within the article, it seems to be mostly a matter of what you assess to be the greatest risks going forward as to which argument you think is more valid.

After glancing at the endnotes, it seems that the bulk of the scientific references examining natural immunity date from before the delta variant established itself.

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

#49

Post by howlong »

leifg wrote: post #46
gojomo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeking infection may cure their skepticism faster than any amount of scolding!

If catching COVID is only a risk to the people catching it I'd agree. However by catching COVID you are also a burden to the health care system and possibly take away a hospital bed for someone who actually needs it (already happening). I do have a problem with that.

A great deal of burden on the health care system -- perhaps even more than completely eliminating COVID -- could be alleviated by people dedicating themselves to better diet and exercise. Why not mandate that?

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

#50

Post by nobody9999 »

rajin444 wrote: 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…

>As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens.

Through the pandemic, there have been ~40,000,000 COVID cases[0] in the US, and ~120,000,000 people are completely unvaccinated[1].

As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.

Given that huge disparity, it's not surprising that the relevant public health authorities (which are mostly state and local, with support from the Federal government) are pushing vaccinations very hard.

I'd also point out that there are actual studies of the efficacy of COVID vaccines, while the data for "natural" immunity is much spottier.

As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection.

What's more, it's not the President's job to be everyone's friend. It's their job (among other things) to promote the general welfare of the population. Getting as many people as possible vaccinated is definitely within that purview.

Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't give me a pony! He's alienating me!"

[0] https://coronavirus.jhu.edu

[1] https://usafacts.org/visualizations/covid-vaccine-tracker-st...

Post reply on HN