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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?

#781

Post by pbourke »

tdfx wrote: post #633
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…

Unrelated, but one thing I've been curious about for a while is: what useful treatments are actually available when you're hospitalized for COVID-19? Is there anything besides intravenous fluids/vitamins and oxygen that is regularly provided? From what I've read, it seems that most people that reach the critical level of needing a ventilator don't recover anyway. Does being hospitalized improve outcomes by a substant…

> Could people just use oxygen at home?

At that point, you need constant supervision and monitoring from the critical care team. You may be on other forms of life support (IV medications for blood pressure, etc). Your condition could rapidly deteriorate to the point where intubation is called for. It’s not like having a chronic illness where the patient has a home oxygen concentrator.

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

#782

Post by pdonis »

gnopgnip wrote: post #748
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…

>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? Vaccines are already required to attend schools, daycare, college, to immigrate to the US, for many existing federal jobs, to join the military, most jobs in the medical field. These requirements have existed for 20+ years, society…

> Requiring vaccination to prevent the spread of infectious disease is analogous.

No, it isn't. Requiring someone to submit to a medical procedure that injects something into their body is very different from restricting the circumstances in which they can do things like smoke or drink.

Also, past vaccination campaigns (such as smallpox, polio, measles) have all been based on the expectation that mass vaccination would eradicate the disease (and that expectation has been realized with several of those diseases). There is no such expectation with the COVID vaccines we currently have; they are not going to eradicate COVID.

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

#783

Post by Johnny555 »

dham wrote: post #685
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…

> 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

I would be very skeptical and wonder what the downside is

I would too, but this is the same thing that anti-vaxxers are saying about the COVID vaccine

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

#784

Post by Johnny555 »

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? Overweight and obesity are going to cost much more in increased healthcare costs than COVID will in the coming decades (pls prove me wrong..).

No matter how obese someone is, I'm not going to catch their obesity by breathing the same air as them.

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

#785

Post by 015a »

jackson1442 wrote: post #614
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…

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…

One of the issues with that argument is: If Biden's workplace vaccine mandate goes through, many of the remaining people who decide not to get vaccinated simply won't have insurance, given they'll also be out of a job.

Instead of paying more into the system, they'll be paying less. They'll still end up in the hospital. Defaulting on the hospital bill doesn't seem unlikely for many in this situation.

This is the biggest reason why this move by Biden is an idiotic gambit, relying on the hope that most of the holdouts are simply on the fence and need a manipulative push. He may be right, but the cost of being wrong could quite literally be large swaths of the US Healthcare System.

What's more, we're seeing concerning numbers of healthcare workers leave the industry. ICUs are not, generally, overfilled because they're out of physical beds; they're overfilled because they're out of people. No one in power is talking about this. Hospitals lose nurses making $70k, then turn around and pay $8000/week for travel nurses. Those nurses that left? You guessed it: many are trying out travel nursing. The rest are burnt-out.

The crisis really is not in the unvaccinated; its in our healthcare system, and it was growing long before the pandemic. A fractionally small part of me actually believes what some in the really, really fringe-right are saying right now: the administration wants the healthcare system to fail, because its another crisis which can be pivoted into single-payer or even nationalized healthcare. Well, its their fear, but its conversely my hope, because at least that would mean the people in charge have a medium term strategy for what seems to be inevitable at this point.

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

#786

Post by elihu »

Someone1234 wrote: post #52

The answers aren't medical, they're pragmatic. - COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose). - We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need. - We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost). The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe. Since i…

> Therefore, I propose that the argument between natural immunity Vs. vaccine is largely a distraction that people who believe the vaccine to unsafe use to obfuscate their goals. Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue, you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.

I don't think this is a distraction, it's a difference in threat models.

Suppose a government official said that everyone should install a particular app on their phones. It's safe, they say. They ran it through antivirus checks and it came up clean. They measured performance of the phone and didn't see any regressions. All the old apps work normally. Major government security agencies are recommending everyone to install the app. Wouldn't it be normal to be suspicious? I mean, that app could do anything.

There are theories about the vaccine that are ridiculous. No, it doesn't have microchips. And so on. But on the other hand, the vaccine has been politicized by Republicans and Democrats alike. Democrats have a lot vested in the vaccine's success; if it turned out it had some serious flaw that was papered over because the benefits were perceived to be greater than the risks, it'd make them looks bad. In the same way that the operators of Fukushima Daiichi looked bad when their reactor failed, or BP looked bad when the blowout preventer didn't work. These are things where the experts said it was fine, but it wasn't. If you believe that government officials will cover up inconvenient facts for political reasons and your main source on the safety of the vaccines is government officials, then a rational choice is not to trust the vaccine.

If microchips aren't a realistic threat, what sort of realistic flaws might the vaccine have? Maybe it elevates risk of cancer or dementia twenty years down the line. Maybe it affects fertility in ways we haven't tested. And so on. Really we have no idea what the long term risks could be, we just know that the short and long term risks of Covid are pretty bad.

All that said, I got my two doses of the vaccine as soon as it was available, and I hope everyone else does the same. I'm just saying that given that some random person has no capacity to evaluate the safety of a vaccine on their own and supposing they have reasons to doubt that the people presented to them as experts regarding the safety of the vaccine would tell them the truth if there were real safety concerns with the vaccine, I can understand why they wouldn't want to get it. And I don't know what argument I could give that would change their minds. For the ones who've already gotten Covid and presumably have at least some reasonable amount of immunity, maybe there isn't really anything to be gained by trying to convince them.

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

#787

Post by XorNot »

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…

Overweight people already have their costs internalized: that's what your insurance rates are.

This is also actually tremendously fair, because if you're fat but don't suffer any lifestyle illnesses, then your insurance rates are low - you are actually able to support your mass. But once those conditions start ticking up, so do your insurance rates.

The US basically leads the way on addressing the social externalities of obesity as they relate to the healthcare system.

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

#788

Post by quantumBerry »

jumpkick wrote: post #749
spaginal wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They haven’t studied these genetic therapies long term to know if what you assert is the case. We already know there are health issues associated now with the mrna shots. We could see a rash of issues show up in the next couple of years.

“We already know there are health issues associated now with the mrna shots.” What issues? This is the first I’m hearing of this. Details and sources please.

Of course not in all cases can we prove that the health issues are 100% the shot, but it looks extremely likely the shot causes health issues in rare cases [1]:

  -Anaphalaxysis in 2-5 per million peoples

  -Thrombosis (2 reported cases from J&J)

  -Myocarditis / Pericarditis : 854 confirmed
The benefits appear to far exceed the risk at the population level. But that's not much consolation at the individual level if you are someone predisposed to anaphylaxis or thrombosis, which are potentially life threatening, in which case at the individual level the vaccine may look to not be worth the risks. Better screening tools could help identify individuals with these risks.

I'm also not sure there are any mRNA vaccines for which we have to compare in humans that have been out few years and FDA approved. It is my understanding the COVID vaccine was the first widely distributed mRNA vaccine in humans. I have no reason to believe they are dangerous, but they are lacking any long term studies in humans on any large scale.

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

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

#789

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#790

Post by phkahler »

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…

>> 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

Well we could just tell the fat people they aren't allowed to eat in restaurants and can't keep their jobs. That way they won't be able afford or get the food that keeps them fat!

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