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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?

#601

Post by rolobio »

glangdale wrote: post #575
ixacto wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reply as the devils advocate to this comment, what is the tolerance to social costs that society is willing to bear? Also why would one segment of society have to do something that it doesn't want e.g. not bear risk if they want to? Should we tell people to get their BMI under 25 too? Overweight and obesity are going to cost much more in increased healthcare costs than COVID will in the coming decades (pls prove m…

Aside from DUI risk and passive smoking, most of these risks are specific to the person. I can't catch obesity from being in the same room as a obese person, and while public health costs go up from drinkers/smokers/heavy people, I haven't heard of ambulances being gridlocked outside a hospital due to a spike of lifestyle diseases.

Children can “catch” obesity from their parents. Once you’re sufficiently overweight, it’s hard to turn back, even when you leave your parents house.

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

#602

Post by rendang »

nradov wrote: post #336
jowday wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean ultimately we’re guessing at the rationale of the leadership of each of these countries - but I’d guess based on vaccination rates that Europe generally has less of an antivax problem than the US, so authorities there might be less concerned about vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy in the US is also very regionally concentrated - maybe less so in Germany? “COVID parties” are also a worst case scenario - I th…

There is a huge variance in vaccination rates of European countries. The US is behind most western European countries but ahead of most eastern European countries. https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer

Specifcally this part:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations#attitudes-to-c...

The US has more skeptics than Germany and France, but it's a pretty slim difference

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

#603

Post by trainsplanes »

nsxwolf wrote: post #370
isolli wrote: 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 believe we'd see more people choose to be vaccinated if we'd: * Stop lying * Stop threatening * Stop mocking people when they die

Mocking deaths came about people antivax people have been actively lying (take animal meds and herbal supplements to be immune) and threatening (just look at the endless mounds of videos of people screaming about it being the end of the world because they have to wear a mask, and governors threatening schools that require masks) while mocking people who get vaccinated because "haha you're all going to die from the vax! Just give it two weeks and I'll be right!"

Everyone got fed up with those people and the gaslighting they've attempted.

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

#604

Post by peteradio »

spoonjim wrote: post #160
darthvoldemort wrote: post #21

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 entire administration has set vaccination percentage as their OKR; they're not going to risk that number just because of the facts.

I wish they were that easy, then they'd know to juice the numbers by allowing all kinds of immunity. Talk about an effective administration!

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

#605

Post by djKianoosh »

glangdale wrote: post #575
ixacto wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To reply as the devils advocate to this comment, what is the tolerance to social costs that society is willing to bear? Also why would one segment of society have to do something that it doesn't want e.g. not bear risk if they want to? Should we tell people to get their BMI under 25 too? Overweight and obesity are going to cost much more in increased healthcare costs than COVID will in the coming decades (pls prove m…

Aside from DUI risk and passive smoking, most of these risks are specific to the person. I can't catch obesity from being in the same room as a obese person, and while public health costs go up from drinkers/smokers/heavy people, I haven't heard of ambulances being gridlocked outside a hospital due to a spike of lifestyle diseases.

But doesn't a population's overall poor health contribute to the potential gridlock of the healthcare system? I mean, what is the percentage of non-accident emergencies in the system and has it increased with the overall decline in society's fitness? (assuming it has declined I suppose, I don't have any numbers as I am not in that field)

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

#606

Post by gizmondo »

scythe wrote: post #494
isolli wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that antibodies don’t tell the whole story. They may wane after a while, but the immune system is primed to fight off the virus at the next infection thanks to memory B cells and T cells. Unfortunately, T-cell tests are not available in Europe, and apparently not reliable in the US. Which confirms the original point: there seems to be little interest in detecting previous infections.

From an economic perspective, if the cost of the vaccine is less than the cost of the test, you just use the vaccine. "Natural immunity" makes sense as an objection if the individual had a recorded earlier infection, but administering 300M pre-infection tests and 200M vaccines is likely to be less efficient than just administering 300M vaccines. The more sophisticated of a test you demand, the stronger this argument…

You should at least account for additional sick days, tens of millions of them.

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

#608

Post by sreque »

trainsplanes wrote: post #588
ghiculescu wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination.

A bunch of hospitals are more strained now than they ever were. Covid's more infectious now and some staff have quit.

There have been chronic nursing staff shortages for years. We were treating patients in tents during the 208 flu epidemic: https://time.com/5107984/hospitals-handling-burden-flu-patie...

The much larger problem is that our medical system isn't designed to handle any kind of case surge at all, because, for cost efficiency reasons, it purposely wants to operate at 80-90% capacity. Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points.

People should be skeptical that hospitals almost never provide thorough or accurate information about their true capacity, constraints, and current cases broken down by primary causes. But at the end of the day, one's views on the situation seem to primarily depend on political identity and whether one blindly trusts the chronically dishonest mainstream media.

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

#609

Post by kelnos »

throwawayfear wrote: post #411
jowday wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tradeo…

They would reduce transmission of the virus in the same way that locking everyone in temperature-controlled air-corrected 24/7-monitored government housing pods would reduce the transmission. Maybe those pods are better, because they could ship us food and let us out for exercise at times determined by an efficiency algorithm! The question is, is the cost worth it? There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liber…

It's really hard to take you seriously when you are trying to equate a vaccine passport with locking everyone in monitored, isolated, government-run housing pods.

> There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liberty for safety."

We sacrifice individual liberty for safety every day. People who aren't licensed to drive don't get behind the wheel, and if they do and get caught, the punishments are stiff.

> Implementing these passports will cause something even worse than some covid spread to happen. A two-tiered society where one segment of society is viewed as unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous.

If you are choosing not to get vaccinated[0], then you are dangerous. You are literally a hazard to public health. You are easy incubation grounds for new virus variants that can evade the protection of the vaccines we have now. You are selfishly pushing the consequences of a possible infection on your family and friends, and on the doctors and nurses who may have to treat you. All because you've decided to politicize a vaccine. A vaccine, for crying out loud! It's absurd.

> Time for YOU, reader, to say no and realize that these passports are just about control. They don't care about your health. It's about power. Think critically about the system being built. It's about the control.

I mean, sure, there are a lot of things in this world that are more about control than their stated purpose. Public school curricula, airport security, organized religion. The list goes on. And sure, I bet some people get their rocks off telling people they can or can't go to their favorite bar or restaurant because of their health care choices. But the bottom line is that we're not getting out of this pandemic without mass vaccination or natural immunity. And the time it'll take us to get to natural immunity will involve years of orders of magnitude more deaths, the constant overloading of our heath care system, and doctors and nurses quitting en masse as they cease to be able to deal with it all anymore.

Even if we accept for a moment that no one in power cares about public health, I think it's safe to accept that they do care about the economy, because that's how they continue to line their pockets. The economy doesn't look so good in places where people don't care about trying to beat back the pandemic.

[0] Even though this isn't a thing, I absolutely support the idea of a "post-infection immunity card". We should define what level of antibodies conveys enough immunity, and give people antibody tests and issue them cards if their antibody counts qualify. Those cards should be accepted wherever proof of vaccination is accepted.

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

#610

Post by throwawayfear »

hodgesrm wrote: post #535
jowday wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tradeo…

Does this mean you think vaccine records kids show for school are a sacrifice of individual liberty?

Not necessarily. Like I said in other posts, wherever vaccination requirements existed we have protocols for sharing proof of antibodies. That's all that needs to happen. If you work in a hospital or want to dorm in a college, go ahead and submit your proof of antibodies.

But mandating it across the board and taking away people's opportunity to put bread on the table if they don't comply? That's not a sacrifice of some marginal amout of individual liberty - that is a declaration of war on liberty itself. The reason I say this is because it's not hard to think logically about where systems around vaccine passports will take us. A two-tiered society in which one side of tens of millions is forced out of society, ostracized, and dehumanized.

For no reason, considering we're already looking at the majority of Americans having antibodies one way or another soon. The 100 million who had past covid have superior antibodies already. Time for us to stop allowing this converastion to be framed around someone getting or not getting the vaccination.

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