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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?

#801
post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

German culture is not as feircly selfish as American culture. They also have far lower vaccine hesitancy rates.

“Selfishness” is not how I would characterize the motivations of people who haven’t vaccinated. By the way, I have been vaccinated for months, but I can understand that others may not want to for reasons other than those I would describe as “selfish”.

Wait, how is it non-selfish? I've only ever heard selfish reasons to not get the vaccine, e.g. that there could be side effects to them personally so they selfishly decide to not get the vaccine.

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

#802

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We know that the vaccine efficacy is greatly reduced with Delta variants Even with Delta vaccinated have 5X reduced risk of infection https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7037e1.htm . > undetermined number of patients allegedly around 10k have died from covid vaccine side effects Have you seen a credible source with this information?

The VAERS data extracts have that number. The very last report I did myself, personally, showed 7k deaths, but I think that was US deaths only. Maybe you should crunch the numbers yourself from VAERS, the openvaers site has data on it too, particular to covid19.

VAERS shows more than 15,000 cases of COVID-19 reported after vaccination. Are we to conclude that they got COVID-19 "from" the vaccine?

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

#803
post #281
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…

Crying wolf repeatedly to cajole and coerce people is not a good long run strategy.

4.55 million people dead means that this isn't "crying wolf"

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

#804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I'm flagging this as dubious. Everything I've seen points to smaller viral load and shorter durations for breakthroughs.

There is at least one study claiming the opposite of 'smaller viral load': 'Vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals have similar viral loads in communities with a high prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 delta variant'. Same with duration: lack of symptoms does not necessarily imply smaller viral shedding. But perhaps there are other studies proving the opposite, if so could you please link? > “We don’t yet know how much tr…

I'm guessing most of those look at viral loads in break throughs. But I'm not sure that is quite as relevant as the viral load that typically results upon exposure, i.e. my guess is that viral load in breakthrough cases looks different than in non-breakthrough cases.

I think this study tries to get at this problem.

https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/bitstream/10044/1/90800/2/reac...

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

#805

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the full response better convey's his position: "You know, that's a really good point, Sanjay. I don't have a really firm answer for you on that. That's something that we're going to have to discuss regarding the durability of the response. The one thing that paper from Israel didn't tell you is whether or not as high as the protection is with natural infection, what's the durability compared to the durabilit…

The point is that they STILL haven't considered natural immunity. Why not? That is a bizarre oversight, especially at this point.

What's there to consider? Get vaccinated even if you might have had COVID for assured immunity.

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

#806
post #55

A recent study from Israel said that natural immunity is an order of magnitude better than vaccine-induced immunity against delta variant. I don't know who to believe, but if that's the case, then the narrative of "well they should get vaccinated anyway" is really freaking suspicious. We need deeper research on this, and the fact that they haven't researched this is truly scary.

Do take an antibody test and decide for yourself. How can one make decisions without any metric?

You know what's easier than getting an antibody tests and ensures immunity to COVID?

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

#807
post #654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Plenty of people get into much better shape in their 30s and 40s than they were as teens or twenties because they take it more seriously. There is obviously a yearly cost, but it's highly, highly variable how much that decline has to be, especially when you are younger. Sleep better, exercise more, eat mostly vegetables and your decline rate will stay close to 0 most years and may improve in some years. You will catch fewer diseases and be sick for less time when you do catch one.

Father time always wins, but you can play defense and make it a competitive match.

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

#808

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The reason that it's lying is that natural immunity does provide decent protection. You're so focused on incentives in the small that you forgot about incentives in the large -- this type of bs is exactly why people feel entitled to opt into believing "alternative facts".

Natural immunity and vaccination provide even better protection, though. Plus vaccination can help with Long COVID symptoms. So I don't see that there's anything wrong--or misleading--with encouraging/requiring people to get vaccinated to avoid weekly testing.

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

#809
>> In public health, “the primary objective is to protect as many people as you can,” he says. “It’s called collective insurance, and I think it’s irresponsible from a public health perspective to let people pick and choose what they want to do.”

If it were really about maximizing defenses against the virus, we would also be told to maintain vitamin D sufficiency among other things that can help. So clearly the goal isnt that. It seems the goal is simply to vaccinate as many people as possible.

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

#810
post #240

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…

Safety is not a binary condition. The vaccines have a good safety profile as confirmed through large-scale clinical trials, and have met stringent FDA criteria. However the risk isn't zero. The CDC has acknowledged a small risk of myocarditis for the mRNA vaccines. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/my... This isn't generally a reason to avoid vaccination for most of the population, however the…

More people will die waiting unvaxxed for their antibody results than will die from vaccine side effects. Please use real numbers when you talk about vaccine side effects.
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