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

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

Post by roamerz »

kristjansson wrote: post #525

Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? Millions of people will just (continue to) take the risk, get sick, go to hospital, and die (in decreasing proportions), incurring substantial personal and social costs along the way. Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces…

>Because it's a terrible policy prescription.

And the government is ignoring the same science they are asking us to follow. It’s no wonder people are revolting. Although I am vaccinated I did take a antibody test before I did so and wouldn’t have if I had the natural antibodies. It’s almost the same lie they tell when they call this a vaccine- it’s really not. I really understand why people are pissed and I will fully support them in any way I can.

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

#612

Post by [deleted] »

glenda wrote: post #600
bedhead wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Out of curiosity, what is your long term plan? From my perspective people who aren’t concerned about contracting and spreading covid are the short term thinkers - they just want to have things back to how they used to be right now without any thought about mitigating the threat.

[deleted]

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

#614

Post by jackson1442 »

ixacto wrote: post #536
kristjansson wrote: post #525

Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? Millions of people will just (continue to) take the risk, get sick, go to hospital, and die (in decreasing proportions), incurring substantial personal and social costs along the way. Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces…

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…

Generally medical gridlock hasn’t been a problem, but this is a unique case in that ICU beds are filling up in some regions leading to _entirely preventable_ illness and death that is unrelated to covid.

Once that stops happening, I will care significantly less. But if I have the risk of not having an ICU bed if I get into a car crash because people aren’t getting vaccinated, that’s an unacceptable social outcome to me.

My personal take is that insurance should progressively cover less of covid treatment of unvaccinated (by choice- minors and immunocompromised being excluded from this policy) patients until it is having a minimal impact on our healthcare system. If people don’t want to get the vax, that’s fine, but I’m not pooling for your medical bills.

Sure, it could be played into a “forever war” by reducing hospital/ICU capacity, but I don’t really see a benefit to doing that.

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

#615

Post by ineptech »

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.

> Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.

Manipulating populations is what governments do. Subsidizing milk prices, fining people who litter, inspecting the electrical work in new houses, those are all "trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior".

As for the "lying" part, I don't see it. What I assume that the antivax side wants is some sort of rule like, "If you get a test showing some level of antibodies, you can be exempt from vaccine mandates" policy. That might be sound policy or it might not, I dunno, but "the government isn't implementing my preferred policy" is very different from "the government is lying".

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

#616

Post by colpabar »

peteradio wrote: post #77
colpabar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mods are surprisingly responsive on this site, so I say this without a hint of sarcasm - try emailing them about it. I recently had a thread unflagged within an hour.

I've mailed.

I'm glad! Look at all this discussion.

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

#617

Post by TheCoelacanth »

djKianoosh wrote: post #605
glangdale wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It probably adds some load, but it's a predictable amount spread out across decades, not a giant clump right now. It will consume more healthcare resources, but it's not going to overload the healthcare system and prevent other people from using it.

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

#618

Post by mythrwy »

kristjansson wrote: post #525

Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? Millions of people will just (continue to) take the risk, get sick, go to hospital, and die (in decreasing proportions), incurring substantial personal and social costs along the way. Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces…

It's not only not a terrible policy position, natural immunity will turn out in the end to be the ONLY effective thing which gets us to to herd immunity.

At this point I don't understand why this isn't obvious.

You make a targeted vaccine, in this case it will be evaded. We see it right now. That will continue. Natural immunity will cast a wider net and be proven much more effective.

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

#619

Post by joveian »

wrl wrote: post #270
mactitan wrote: post #205

From this article: “When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’…

That article was published on 4th December, 2020. Have the concerns expressed therein borne out in the 10 month interim?

I don't know if any of the failed vaccines had antibody dependent enhancement issues but even if not it is a failure of medical ethics to not disclose the risk sufficiently since it was a risk for trial participants. This paper is not expressing concern over approved vaccines.

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

#620

Post by MSM »

ixacto wrote: post #536
kristjansson wrote: post #525

Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More? Millions of people will just (continue to) take the risk, get sick, go to hospital, and die (in decreasing proportions), incurring substantial personal and social costs along the way. Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces…

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…

>Should we tell people to get their BMI under 25 too? >What about drinking and smoking?

There's a lot of investment in trying to fix these problems already, or at least offset the costs. For example, there are "sin taxes" for things like cigarettes and alcohol, which means smokers and drinkers are paying disproportionately more taxes than those that don't.

You could argue that overweight folks are also paying disproportionately more simply by buying more food than someone who weighs 20% less.

All that aside though- forcing fat people to get skinny isn't a valid comparison to forcing people to take a vaccine. One takes a couple minutes and the other is something requiring an hour or more of dedicated time per day for potentially years (or a whole lifetime!).

Let's say, hypothetically, there existed a free shot which would immediately make its recipient a perfectly lean 20 BMI and grants all the benefits of health and exercise without the work. How many people would choose not to take it, and how would society view those that decided to walk around weighing 400lbs? That's really the apples to apples comparison here, and I think you'd find there would be very few folks walking around at 400lbs in that scenario.

Post reply on HN