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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?

#681

Post by kelnos »

fridif wrote: post #489
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…

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.

4000 people out of the ~210M people in the US with at least one shot is 0.002%. You have a greater chance of both contracting and dying of COVID. Hell, I think you have a greater chance of drowning in your bathtub.

Ok, though, let's talk about people who already had COVID. Did they actually have COVID, as in, did they test positive, or did they just feel really sick and think they had it? Have they had recent antibody tests? Did those tests show that they have antibody levels that would give them protection (including against delta) comparable to a vaccine? Have they consulted a medical professional about this? If it's "yes" to those questions, great, probably no need to get vaccinated. I have no problem with that. But the "I got sick so I'm immmune" stuff I hear constantly sounds more like a hope than something the people who say it have actually researched and been tested for.

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

#682

Post by throwawayfear »

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.

How much is "a bunch" of hospitals? How are you measuring "more strained" "than they ever were?" Because the evidence I found suggests the situation was overblown:

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/09/covid-hos...

In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.

And we have staff quitting over the mandates. Which is causing service shortages in NYC now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-hospital-pause...

An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to "pause" maternity services this month because some employees' refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has caused staffing shortages.

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

#683

Post by mthoms »

Auracle wrote: post #260
danaris wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Trying to work across party lines" went out the window when the Republicans decided that "prevent absolutely anything the Democrats want to do, no matter how objectively beneficial it would be or whether it was fully supported by Republicans in the past" was a viable and acceptable method of getting re-elected.

“If the public-health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it — absolutely," the California senator said during the first and only vice-presidential debate. "But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not taking it." -Kamala Harris Let’s not act like both parties don’t do the exact same thing, eh?

Given that Donald Trump has shilled unproven cures (Hydroxychloroquine), I think it's perfectly reasonable to only trust the medical professionals.

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

#684

Post by radley »

wrycoder wrote: post #596
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…

We can test for natural immunity. That then counts as fully vaccinated.

I would imagine there's a trial process that would have to go through, just as we had with vaccinations.

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

#685

Post by dham »

MSM wrote: post #620
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…

>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 disprop…

> 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

I would be very skeptical and wonder what the downside is

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

#686

Post by kelnos »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #508
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…

As we saw when mask mandates were dropped for the vaccinated, the unvaccinated just lied and said they were. Same here - everyone who has neither been vaccinated nor infected will just claim they’ve had Covid. That is, unless we start testing everyone for antibodies.

Which we should do! If the medical science can tell us a level of antibodies that confers similar protection to a vaccine, then we should make a "CDC post-infection immunity card", and give it to people who get antibody tests that show sufficient levels.

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

#687

Post by ihsw »

ryandrake wrote: post #493
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.

OP's statement recognizes that incentives matter. If you remove the incentive to do the right thing, people will simply not do the right thing--If 2020 has taught us anything it has to be that! You can't just rely on everyone being a rational actor and let Nash Equilibrium keep society functioning. It becomes a gigantic Prisoners Dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT. You complain that "not recognizing natural immuni…

> If you remove the incentive to do the right thing, people will simply not do the right thing

Morality based on external pressures alone is never sufficient.

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

#688

Post by erhk »

MSM wrote: post #620
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…

>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 disprop…

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

No one ever likes my proposed tax on slower metabolism

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

#689

Post by throwawayfear »

radley wrote: post #684
wrycoder wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can test for natural immunity. That then counts as fully vaccinated.

I would imagine there's a trial process that would have to go through, just as we had with vaccinations.

Why? There are already tests for antibodies. And we already know over 100 million Americans had covid already.

https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...

A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020.

And we know that those antibodies from past covid are excellent, I call them superior.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-...

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

#690

Post by erhk »

kcplate wrote: post #674
MSM wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 disprop…

> You could argue that overweight folks are also paying disproportionately more simply by buying more food than someone who weighs 20% less. Overweight people pay their tax in a significant decrease in their quality of life. Eating unhealthy is way way cheaper. I can confirm both after 170lbs of weight loss. My food budget quadrupled. Rice, pasta, and white bread are cheap. Meat and veggies, not so much.

Carbohydrates are not inherently unhealthy.
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