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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?

#701

Post by camhart »

erhk wrote: post #690
kcplate wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'd add to this that loosing weight simply requires a calorie deficit. There is no requirement that you must eat large portions of meat to loose weight.

With that being said, eating low carb may be an easier way for some. Don't want to discount that.

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

#702

Post by rpmisms »

rajin444 wrote: post #8

It's very concerning that the president is saying things like "your refusal has cost all of us" and "our patience is wearing this" when talking to people with natural immunity who have not received the vaccine. As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens. It seems like he's doing the opposite. I'm not really sure why. My best guess is politics has become all about polarization…

I'm not against the vaccine, but I already had Covid, have been exposed and tested negative since having it, and haven't gotten the shot. I'm also a little bit of an adversarial person, and this move by Biden has made me seriously lean away from ever getting the jab.

I'm probably one of the more well-to-do people he's trying to target here, and if my first instinct is "Fuck you", this doesn't bode well for getting anyone else on-board.

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

#703

Post by boplicity »

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…

You are assuming that getting vaccinated is a burden, and then comparing it to challenges that many people take years, or longer, to overcome. That makes absolutely no sense.

Getting vaccinated takes just a few minutes, and has no long term consequences for virtually everyone, and does not require ongoing effort of any kind.

In no way is getting vaccinated comparable to struggling with obesity, quitting cigarettes, or alcoholism. Sorry, but your comparisons are, frankly, bizarre.

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

#704

Post by yosame »

throwawayfear wrote: post #689
radley wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But the vaccine is free and safe. Unless you're allergic to the vaccine, or immunocompromised, there's no good reason not to get the vaccine.

Even if you've had covid already, it's not going to do any harm.

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

#705

Post by freeflight »

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 would just be administering a cure, without having an actual diagnosis, which is by definition more wasteful.

Particularly when natural immunity comes for "free" and apparently works better, at that point insisting on vaccines for everybody is just completely nonsensical.

Rather shift resources to testing to get costs for that down, which is more work, but also doesn't come with the risk of later discovering "Oops, this vaccine that made people filthy rich turned out to have some nasty long-term side-effects!".

Which is also a very real possibility, considering they've been developed and approved in record time with the population at large acting as subjects for the first non-clinical trials.

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

#706

Post by ipaddr »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #693
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.

> 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... That's not entirely accurate. Human behavior is effectively viral (per any of the Jonah Berger books among others). What we see becomes the norm, a behavioral norm. Smoking has decreased because it has become "less fashionable." And so on. So while you might not catch obes…

More expensive.. more limited.

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

#707

Post by throwawayfear »

jonnycomputer wrote: post #692
throwawayfear wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should count. But why test for it and why expect proof? If someone is concerned, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. And wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. Problem solved. What use is there to build systems of control that will turn into more surveillance and eventual enslavement?

That's a little over the top. Kids get vaccinated to go to schools. We aren't in chains.

Some kids get vaccinated to go to some schools. And none of that is comparable to this pandemic situation where we have politicians blatantly ignoring the science and taking bread off the table by firing people who don't comply, even if they have excellent antibodies from past covid infection.

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."

Alarm bells should be going off. Take a look at Australia. Are they in chains? Are they the frog in the boiling pot? I think they are the frog in the boiling pot.

When do we raise the alarm? When would you raise the alarm? When is it no longer over the top?

They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824

Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source:

https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...

“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”

They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097

You want this to happen in the USA too? Because that's where we are headed once we allow covid vaccine passports and mandates like in NYC to fester and spread. The slope is slippery. Time to nip it in the bud, and if being "over the top" is what it takes to get that done then so be it. Assuage my fears if you really believe there isn't a risk of tyranny. We just went through a presidency where people were regularly warning about totalitarian regimes emerging in the USA. So I think I'm a bit warranted in raising the alarm when I see it happening in other democracies around the world.

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

#708

Post by rpmisms »

cdolan wrote: post #679
core-utility wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are reported cases of individuals dying reportedly from the vaccine. I can't speak for the accuracy of the reports, but I am concerned with the lack of reporting thereof, and additionally the active censorship of those who speak of any issues. [1]: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/gofundme-de-platforms-dad-...

> I am concerned with the lack of reporting thereof, and additionally the active censorship of those who speak of any issues. Agreed. And unfortunately the last 18-24 months seem to indicate that things labeled conspiracy theories have a habit of becoming at the very least "plausible" or outright "true" (lab leak theory being perhaps the largest example).

There's a Twitter account called "Alex Jones was right", that tallies current events and recent discoveries with things Alex Jones has said.

It's disturbing. All censorship is wrong, unless it's directly protecting someone from harm (e.g. doxxing or CSAM)

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

#709

Post by mythrwy »

ekidd wrote: post #664
mythrwy wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> natural immunity will turn out in the end to be the ONLY effective thing which gets us to to herd immunity. There are many illnesses for which humanity never reached natural herd immunity. Smallpox was consistently deadly for millennia, for example. Malaria's still going strong. HIV is kept in check by treatments, not immunity. The COVID delta strain has an R of at least 5. Using naive models, this would mean that…

That's a really good point and I agree completely.

"Herd Immunity" as not the correct term to use because yes, it is with us for the foreseeable future.

Some weaker form of "herd immunity" where most people have had exposure and it ceases to become a large scale social threat would have been more correct, but I'm at loss for an exact term.

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

#710

Post by walterbell »

cdolan wrote: post #666
walterbell wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU recognizes natural immunity for travel to/in EU and national health pass checks.

Where is this information able to be confirmed?

EU website, "recovered from COVID-19": https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...
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