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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?

#291

Post by usrusr »

jowday wrote: post #189

The answer is pretty simple - the moment authorities start saying "well, natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination, we'll accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes", a huge segment of the population who's on the fence about getting the vaccine might just opt to wait until they're infected naturally, or, even worse, get infected purposefully (EG, chicken pox parties). Which leads to more…

Deliberate infection (or deliberate infection risk-taking) can be a valid concern, but I believe that validity depends a lot on the spreading characteristics of the virus in question. For SARS-COV-2 ca June 2020 I'd fully support the argument (the virus that was so bad at spreading from human to human that we thought that washing hands would make a meaningful difference). But with "chicken pox fast" delta, I doubt that it would make much difference. Anti-vaxxers will go through their first contact infection pretty soon wether they try or not. Just like the vaccinated. Or rather: in a very different way, rarely but still too often.

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

#292

Post by jowday »

isolli wrote: post #252
jowday wrote: post #189

The answer is pretty simple - the moment authorities start saying "well, natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination, we'll accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes", a huge segment of the population who's on the fence about getting the vaccine might just opt to wait until they're infected naturally, or, even worse, get infected purposefully (EG, chicken pox parties). Which leads to more…

While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.

I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.

I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.

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

#293

Post by wpietri »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #259
Mikealcl wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how accurate that is based on the children’s hospitals in the southern United States being at capacity from COVID. Long symptoms have also become an issue in children.

>Long symptoms have also become an issue in children. Source?

If you'd like to appear serious, I'd recommend doing a little basic googling before asking anybody for a source. Maybe this isn't true for you, but there are plenty of querulous people who ask for information that are not sincerely interested, but just work to wear out their opponents.

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

#294

Post by sdiupIGPWEfh »

sam0x17 wrote: post #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.

We could make individuals pay for it. Heck, we could tax it, make them pay through the nose for it, and reinvest it back into vaccinations. Up the costs even more if they want to be retested. Since it's not medically necessary, their insurance shouldn't have to cover it, meaning the costs won't have to be borne by everyone else.

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

#295

Post by pessimizer »

beaner wrote: post #198
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #155

Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18. On the other hand p…

>I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18 The vaccine is not important for people under 18. Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid. [0] Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19. [1] [0] https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex... […

Good thing people under 18 are never in contact with people over 18.

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

#296

Post by EGreg »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #172
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #155

Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18. On the other hand p…

> Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy. > Vaccines are safe and available yet we…

Do some people simply photoshop their names onto the cards and show them on their phones ? Is it really such a dumb system?

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

#297

Post by throwaway984393 »

As far as I can tell, natural immunity relates to the variant. If you had Alpha, and then you encounter Delta, your natural immunity may help you a little, but possibly not enough to prevent hospitalization, since Delta is 2.5x more likely to cause a serious hospitalization. So natural immunity counts, but maybe not against powerful variants. And we should be doing whatever we can to prevent people from becoming infectious and spreading it further.

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

#298

Post by swader999 »

ttul wrote: post #169
ttul wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not the case. Children should be vaccinated. The Israeli study was useful in establishing that infection results in immunity. That’s it. It does not establish that infection is lower risk than vaccination. Children are at low risk from COVIS

Pushed reply too soon. Children are at low risk, but not no risk. To the extent that kids are running around with infections, they’re transmitting virus to others and providing a reservoir for mutation. That is not productive. Let’s get the kids vaccinated. It’s the cheapest way out of this thing.

Its clearly been established that transmission is happening in vaccinated people. If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't vulnerable. Only the vulnerable should be vaccinated for a virus that shifts rapidly like most respiratory virus do.

Here's the thing - if you are vaccinated and benefiting from less severe infection, you'll be out and about socially and transmitting this. It may be so mild that it would be hard to contact trace and know when to isolate. You may even have a more severe (deadly) variant that your just boosted system doesn't have a problem with. Whereas a naive population would be more prone to be bed-ridden, isolated and not transmitting this more harmful variant.

Then when your immunity wanes from the recent shot (5 months it seems per Israel's experience) this more harmful variant may in fact hurt the vaccinated population if they don't get the next booster in time and the booster isn't formulated for this variant.

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

#299

Post by shockeychap »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #172
KingMachiavelli wrote: post #155

Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18. On the other hand p…

> Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity. Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy. > Vaccines are safe and available yet we…

For decades, we gave young children aspirin, before eventually connecting it to Reye syndrome. Indeed, children are not just small adults.

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

#300

Post by Panther34543 »

nobody9999 wrote: post #50
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…

Your numbers are incorrect. The ~40,000,000 number represents cases confirmed through administered tests. The true number is probably somewhere closer to ~150,000,000[0]. Your comment is based on an incorrect assumption.

[0]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd... (the estimates here do not account for infections before February 2020 or after May 2021, which means all early infections as well as the "delta surge" are unaccounted for).

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