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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?

#621

Post by sreque »

mattnewton wrote: post #569
nostrademons wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? If lots of people independently choose to take the risk and they're not harming anyone else, why shouldn't they be allowed to? The impact on the hospital system could be blunted simply by saying "This wing is for COVID patients, when it fills up further COVID patients will be turned away" and leaving the other wings for normal hospital patients. They have to do this for quarantine reasons anyway. Now that COVID i…

> If lots of people independently choose to take the risk and they're not harming anyone else, why shouldn't they be allowed to? There just isn't a way to ensure the "not harming anyone else" with a highly transmissible virus like this, even if we were to somehow convince hospitals to assume the legal and ethical risks of denying treatment to COVID patients when they have room to preserve hospital capacity, and even…

If you're at risk of covid, you can get vaccinated and are protected from covid. That's all the defense you need in order to not worry about anyone else being infected.

If you're in an at-risk category where you feel the vaccine isn't enough of a defense, you can wear n95 masks, get a third booster shot, or do whatever other extra mitigation measures you feel you need.

The reality is that covid isn't dangerous enough, given the tools people have at their disposal, to warrant authoritarian government or societal overreach. That unfortunately hasn't stopped the government, or it's political allies, from trying anyways. I firmly believe this overreach will backfire on the US democrat party and they will feel the backlash in the midterm elections of 2022.

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

#622

Post by OrvalWintermute »

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. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More?

What we know :

We know that vaccines are of great value for high risk populations. We know that vaccines are contraindicated for a number of patients and have some pretty severe side effects for those with allergies. We know that the vaccines risk ratio (do no harm) skews with younger patients. We know that the vaccine efficacy is greatly reduced with Delta variants, and newer, and these new variants dominate the infection count. We know between ~40M and ~112M people [1] have already had COVID and recovered, and ~178 million have received vaccinations already. Therefore, we know the delta between previous vaccinated (178M) and infected (~40M-~112M), and hesitant, and anti-vaxx may not be a large number (~132M on the high end, and ~60M on the low end). Of these 132M to 60M, only a certain number are event approved for vaccination. We know that previous wide surveys indicate that previous infections and ensuing natural immunity are stronger, and more durable than first generation, and 2nd generation vaccines. We also know that the Covid vaccines are not immunizing, and a large amount of virus can be passed on from vaccinated, to the unvaccinated.

What we don't know

We know that an undetermined number of patients allegedly around 10k have died from covid vaccine side effects, although we don't know exactly how many due to data quality issues. We don't know the accurate count of COVID deaths because of conflation of dying with COVID, or, from COVID. Some numbers have been seen at roughly ~500k to ~800k although we haven't done the heavy lifting of assuring data quality. We don't know how many of the untested already had minor covid infections, and we don't know how many have a natural immunity to it.

We also do not know when 3rd generation vaccines will arrive that may have reduced side effects, and more efficacy against novel variants.

Given above, I am not sure a mass push to force hesitant and anti-vaxx to get vaccinated will be successful, or even possible given potential job losses, and constitutionality.

For the sake of full disclosure I consider myself vaccine hesitant, but I believe the newest vaccines coming out will improve protection, and reduce side effects. The new novavaxx [2] merged covid/influenza [3] doses seem to be something that I would like to take, more protective, and lower risk than existing vaccines. Unfortunately, I am not eligible for the Novavax ongoing trial that is currently open.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

[2] https://www.novavax.com/our-unique-technology#recombinant-na...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/novavax-begins-ea...

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

#623

Post by refulgentis »

wrycoder wrote: post #586
refulgentis wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line seems to be drawn at socializing the risks of full hospital ICUs in a region Edit: why the downvote to near-dead? I thought that's what the author emphasized :\

ICUs normally run at 80%. This is gaslighting.

How so? Latest reports have most of the south from south carolina to Texas at 100% capacity. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/09/14/us/covid-hosp...

Please avoid this style of interaction on HN — it's been my favorite place for 13 years because of what dang often refers to as the right attitude for discussion, "coming with curiosity."

We try to avoid accusatory language, especially accusing others of lying, not by omission, but by commission for the sole purpose of psychological abuse.

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

#624

Post by fridif »

steveywevy wrote: post #523
fridif wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can getting the vaccine be the appropriate course of action when 4,000 people have died from it, according to the CDC themselves? I am talking specifically about people who already have been infected with the virus and have survived.

Source?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

"7,653 reports of death" is the string to ctrl-f for

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

#625

Post by bobbytit »

ineptech wrote: post #615
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.

> 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 an…

People like this need to be reminded that they are public servants, not masters. Very severely.

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

#626

Post by OrvalWintermute »

micromacrofoot wrote: post #579
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…

If hospital beds become filled to >50% capacity because of the obese then maybe we can start making this comparison. Because of unvaccinated people many of us face significantly worse hospital care right now.

Many of the COVID severe cases are the obese

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

#627

Post by jamiek88 »

wrycoder wrote: post #586
refulgentis wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line seems to be drawn at socializing the risks of full hospital ICUs in a region Edit: why the downvote to near-dead? I thought that's what the author emphasized :\

ICUs normally run at 80%. This is gaslighting.

Gaslighting?

wtf?

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

#628

Post by trainsplanes »

sreque wrote: post #608
trainsplanes wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

> Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points.

Because globally, yes, they are the cause.

Even in countries where hospitals don't run close to max capacity at all times in order to maximize profits, hospitals have been filling up with unvaccinated patients. Japanese hospitals in major cities haven't been able to take in new patients, and those waves of patients are unvaccinated.

Although in Japan's case, the problem is there simply aren't enough vaccines here to meet demand. America's problem is there's an overabundance of vaccines but people are going out of their way to get sick, choosing to overwhelm hospitals, and then dying as an act of rebellion for facebook political points.

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

#629

Post by iamnotwhoiam »

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…

> What about drinking and smoking?

Literally Whataboutism. Don’t take the irrelevant bait.

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