Live data from Hacker News

Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

bmj.com

371–380 of 1001 posts

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

#371
post #170

Because it is pretty simple to account for who got the vaccine and who did not. And running entire population through antibody test just to find, in most cases, that you still need to administer the vaccine is just wasteful.

> running entire population through antibody test just to find A red herring if I have ever seen one. Assuming for a moment the premise that one must be forced to establish their immunity to a particular disease before being allowed to leave their homes, all that would be required would be to allow individuals who believe they've had COVID-19 and do not wish to get the vaccine to be able use their test results as pro…

> Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire population take specific tests.

The red herring is replying to someone saying that a lot of tests would have to be done with a denial that people would be forced to take tests.

Also, this would require that some authority would need to have those people take specific tests, monitored and tracked in a specific way. Allowing people to claim to have had it based on their own documentation and choice of tests is like allowing job applicants to supply their own drug test results: not completely dependable.

I'd be all for those people getting a vax pass. I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow, and the rest of us could stay home for a week.

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

#372
post #198

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 the only thing that matters is death, not any other issue.

Good thing children never transmit viruses to adults.

Good thing reservoirs of disease never allow for novel mutations.

Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare projections in one case to actual results in the other.

Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare one rate in the general population to a rate in an already selected group.

Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare self-reported issues to actually verified cases.

Good thing your source[1] didn't make a big deal about the huge multiplier difference between two exceedingly small numbers (0.01622% vs 0.00261%)

Good thing your source[1] didn't falsely imply "hospitalization" and "myocarditis " as equivalently severe, ignoring that the myocarditis responded well and quickly to treatment[2] whereas COVID does not, leading to long hospital stays and/or ventilation and/or death.

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my...

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

#373
post #169
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.

> It’s the cheapest way out of this thing.

I think we should be wary of those "easy way outs", because nothing seems to indicate that vaccines are a panacea. They are of course the best that us adults can do right now to protect ourselves, but if restrictions get too relaxed simultaneously, then we ve just created pressure on the virus to create a variant that will escape completely. This is a marathon and we are not yet done. a combination of vaccines with distancing will be required for a long time. Humans are adaptible, the earlier we start the better.

(Also, we shouldn't argue in absolutes, it s not going to fix anything)

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

#374
post #292
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 agree. For someone whose threshold of 'did the authorities lie about masks' is one cherry-picked example, there was never any hope. They were absolutely going to find someone to confirm their already-existing beliefs.

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

#375
post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.

> skepticism that resulted from the lies

Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.

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

#376
post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amen. We have been so unbelievably myopic with COVID it truly hurts my head. Even today, ask someone who's COVID-obsessed, "What exactly is your longer-term plan here?" and watch as their mind breaks down. Too many people have completely stopped thinking about what they're trying to achieve and how they're going to do it. Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and…

>Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous.

The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools.

No one's really locked down anymore outside of a few holdouts in each state.

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

#377

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.

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: Dow…

Never ending fatigue, random muscle and joint pains, blood pressure fluctuations, constant low-grade headache, numbness of extremities, tinnitus, shortness of breath, chest pain, tachycardia, back pain, anxiety and depression.. and usually its combination of the above that come and go continuously in what seems like waves.

There are probably more symptoms I’m missing, but that is what I experienced for 9 months

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

#378

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.

I mean for someone with natural immunity to get the vaccine is not going to reduce their immunity, and might boost it (or might not). So with fairly little downside, it makes sense to vaccinate them surely?

One might argue that there is also fairly little downside to not getting the vaccination.

And without some hard numbers comparing the two fairly little downsides we shouldn't attempt to compel people's behavior either way.

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

#379
post #347
post #102

Just get the vaccine.

You’re totally ignoring the data from the study (that you probably didn’t even read) because it doesn’t fit your narrative. How beneficial.

What narrative, getting the vaccine is a narrative? Beneficial to who? I don't know how to read.

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

#380

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 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.

No, this is just not correct. Compulsory vaccination has been a thing for hundreds of years.

Post reply on HN