Given the political discussions about “booster shots”, I find this quote pretty interesting: > Other studies suggest that a two dose regimen may be counterproductive. One found that in people with past infections, the first dose boosted T cells and antibodies but that the second dose seemed to indicate an “exhaustion,” and in some cases even a deletion, of T cells.34 “I’m not here to say that it’s harmful,” says Bert…
i really don't understand why booster shots are a "political discussion" i have normal flu booster shots ever year -- and that's fine. why not for covid?
The political discussion is more about whether booster shots should be mandatory or whether they should be forbidden.
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…
Natural immunity isn’t a singular binary consistent thing: it varies greatly in duration and effectiveness. You have some natural immunity for some amount of time after you get COVID, but that is nowhere consistent as can a vaccine will give (and its much easier to track vaccine effectiveness, adjust as needed, then each individual’s natural immunity response). And vaccine are still beneficial to those who have natural immunity.
Authorities aren’t trying to “trick people”, they are manage an epidemic with more of a sure thing (vaccines) rather than something that is much less reliable.
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.
But it's not lying. If you have had COVID, you should still get the shot. The science is not close on this, the vaccine provides additional immunity in addition to what you get from catching COVID.
> 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…
So the answer is to simply get the vaccine... Though, if it's so simple then the vaccine mandate makes total sense.
>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! Nope. You don't have to dedicate time to exercising to lose weight, you can just eat less.
Nope. Doesn’t work that way. When you eat less, your body goes into starvation mode and burns fewer calories. And some bodies are extremely resistant to losing weight under any circumstances. Try doing the German prisoner of war diet for a year, and accurately track on a daily basis how many calories you eat, and how much weight you lose. Then you can come back and tell us your anecdote of how you personally respond…
Starvation mode is only an issue when you're actually starving, like seriously undernourished for weeks. It's not a real thing for dieters who cut down by a few hundred calories per day.
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.
This pandemic would be a blip if everyone was in shape. >CFR (case fatality ratio) in the large cohort in China was elevated for patients with comorbidities, with 10.5% of those with underlying cardiovascular disease, 7.3% of those with diabetes, 6.3% of those with chronic respiratory disease, and 5.6% of those with cancer dying of COVID-related illness. [1] That looks like a clean 17% reduction for cardiovascular di…
Not to scare this mostly young group of people, but one thing you’ll find is that as you get older, there is no beating these co-morbidities over the long haul. You list them because you figure if people just took care of themselves it would all work out. That’s not how old age works except for a very limited, lucky bunch. The rest of us should think of life more like a game of Dungeons and Dragons: you start with a base set of stats that help you make saving throws against disease and such. Every year, your stats get worse, and they take away your advantage. No matter how much exercise you do, or how well you are off, you will lose on those dice. More importantly, you will lose a lot. The first couple times won’t kill you. But eventually, it catches up with you, and that’s that. Covid is a difficult saving throw without assistance from medicine.
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.
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…
What do you think is the long term plan of "flu-obsessed" people, a.k.a. doctors, when they recommend getting the yearly flu vaccine?
When I drink or smoke or I’m overweight, that doesn’t affect the health of my neighbor. It also doesn’t overcrowd hospitals causing innocent people to die because they can’t find treatment[1]. There also isn’t a vaccine for being overweight. (We should probably mandate seasonal flu vaccines too.) 1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/12/alabama-ray...
It does because you place disproportionate strain on the healthcare system, which limits its accessibility to others. There also is a 100% successful method for losing weight, it's just that people can't or choose not to follow it, but we could mandate it and force them to. For their own good and the good of the healthcare system. (We probably should not mandate that or any other drug or medical treatment)
No it doesn’t. People have been smoking, drinking and being fat for decades now and we haven’t had a crisis or a lack of beds for the rest of the public.
I think the biggest issue is that a lot of people think they had covid previously but didn't get tested so they don't really know. I thought I had covid early in the pandemic. Took a serology test and found out that I had not had it. I suspect a lot of people that think they had it are the same.
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.
Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191.
The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
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.
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…
Obesity tends to kill people before they get old enough to incur real costs in medical care. It's like cigarette smoking, it actually saves the healthcare system money and resources because smoking tends to kill people before they get very old.
Also, I can't catch obesity by simply sharing the same room with someone who is obese like I can with COVID.