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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?

#341

Post by stepanhruda »

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…

> COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best breakeven in terms of cost effectiveness

Can you share some of those any metrics? Legitimately asking.

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

#342

Post by thebean11 »

wpietri wrote: post #276
throwaway894345 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Serology is a thing, sure. But two points: Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious. Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bou…

> Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied.

The difference is that the serum test is risk free. If I knew I was already immune, I would not have gotten the vaccine to be completely honest, no matter how small the risk is. For the same reason I don't get other safe and effective treatments for diseases I do not have.

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

#343

Post by jowday »

throwawayfear wrote: post #314
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…

Past covid gives antibodies that are superior to two shots of Pfizer. https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating them is illogical here. And don't even get me started on vaccine passports, which are completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely needs proof of v…

I'd agree with you that vaccine passports definitely represent a sacrifice of individual liberty for safety - but what makes you say that that they're "completely unnecessary"? If we accept that a vaccinated person has a lowered, but not eliminated, chance of contracting and transmitting COVID, wouldn't it make sense to avoid contact with people that are at a much higher risk of infection?

If you feel that the tradeoff between liberty and safety here is too high, that makes sense - but do you really think vaccination passports don't reduce the transmission of the virus?

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

#344

Post by tomohawk »

detaro wrote: post #339
tomohawk wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minor correction. That 412 number is "covid involved", not "covid caused". This could be that the death was not at all due to covid, but the cadaver tested positive. They were in a car accident, for example. This could be actually caused by covid primarily. This could be covid tipped someone over the edge who was already very ill. EDIT: also hospitalizations for children are rare https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/CO…

> This could be that the death was not at all due to covid, but the cadaver tested positive. They were in a car accident, for example. That's not how "covid involved" is defined, no.

Source?

EDIT: please post a url or something.

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

#345

Post by outworlder »

oppositelock wrote: post #287
billycorben2 wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am 28. A programmer with a sedentary lifestyle. I was covid positive last October and kicked it fine (verified with a test). I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies, my results were a “76” (I assume percentage?). Why should I get vaccinated?

While I posted above about being on the fence about vaccinating my kid, I was in a similar case as you. I'm in my late 40's, and I came down with covid early in the pandemic, before general availability of PCR tests, but I did manage to get an antibody test, and I was positive. I did get vaccinated because the vaccine reinforces antibodies which are correlated with fewer complications upon subsequent infection. There…

> the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present

Exactly! The point of many COVID vaccines is to teach the immune system to destroy a very specific and very important protein, which is the spike protein. Without that the virus can't enter cells. It's not present in our own body.

We have no idea what kind of immune response any given person might get with an actual infection. Reinfections are a thing.

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

#346

Post by wpietri »

mattparcens wrote: post #307
wpietri wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Serology is a thing, sure. But two points: Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious. Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bou…

Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value. The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be…

Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the benefit of changing things again becomes very large.

And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.

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

#348

Post by sam0x17 »

peteradio wrote: post #88
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.

So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test? How much fucking money has been spent due to this pandemic, amazing vaccine development, government backstops all over the place, but somehow a routine blood draw and test is seen as too absurd an idea?

> So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test

In short, yes, this is called good public health policy. It's not merely a simple blood test and it's not something just any lab could do. Anti-body testing is finicky, expensive, time-consuming, and not as reliable as has_vaccine (boolean). So in other words, we are going to make your medical decision for you because not doing so puts the health of many others at risk and you don't have the right to put countless others at risk. A simple utilitarian analysis yields this as the obvious solution. It is worth sacrificing your personal preference at no risk to yourself to save potentially many lives.

Even the vaccinated are at risk when a large percentage of the population runs around unvaccinated, because each transmission increases the risk of a mutation that gives rise to a vaccine-resistant strain with a higher death rate. Then we'd be back at square one. In the worst case scenario it could kill off the majority of the population.

This situation is exactly analogous to someone in the food industry saying they should have a religious exemption for hand-washing. The bad effects of allowing such an exemption (people dying from food poisoning and catching diseases from food) aren't worth the small sacrifice of simply having to wash your hands before preparing food. With good reason, we ignore people who say "there are microchips in the soap" and still make them wash their hands or seek employment elsewhere.

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

#349

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Izkata wrote: post #271
throwaway894345 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I'd lean towards "probably not safe"; we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/09/09/teenage-boys-ris... https://archive.is/ixG5G

> we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself:

That's not what the study says. They compared all reports of possible cardiac events in the days following vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine myocarditis.

This is the conclusion from the study:

> Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence.

Full text: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.30.21262866v... )

They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs, but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in teenagers.

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

#350

Post by nsxwolf »

Mikealcl wrote: post #227
oppositelock wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a child under 12, and while everyone in my household over 12 is vaccinated, I'm not sure if the vaccine has any point for him. If you look at CDC stats, today there are only 412 reported covid19 deaths in the 0-17 age group, 138 in the 0-4 group, meaning 274 in the 4-17 group out of 670,000. Furthermore, kids rarely need treatment, so most infections go undiagnosed. While I have no objection to a vaccine, an…

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.

I'd like to see a better definition of what "long COVID" is. The minimum definition I see most often is symptoms lasting longer than 3 weeks. I've never had a cold where all symptoms were gone at the 3 week mark.

We have been made to associate the term "long COVID" with debilitating illness lasting many months, talk of people joining online support groups, etc. I'd like a better breakdown of what is common.

Edit: Downvotes why? It isn't reasonable to want to know how many people are having "any symptom at all past 3 weeks" and how many are suffering from debilitating syndromes?

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