Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?

bmj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

841–850 of 1001 posts

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

#841

Post by Aeolun »

fuzxi wrote: post #726
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…

>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.

Eating less is much more mentally intensive than taking a corona shot.

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

#842

Post by logicchains »

mactitan wrote: post #205

From this article: “When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’…

There's actually some limited evidence of ADE for delta: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34384810/

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

#843

Post by worker767424 »

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?

That policy hurts farmers, so it's not viable for a different reason.

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

#844

Post by scoopertrooper »

colpabar wrote: post #637
refulgentis wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The line seems to be drawn at socializing the risks of full hospital ICUs in a region Edit: why the downvote to near-dead? I thought that's what the author emphasized :\

I downvoted you because you complained about being downvoted :)

I downvoted you because you came across as smug :)

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

#845

Post by fridif »

kelnos wrote: post #681
fridif wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 antibod…

Well, considering the CDC is recommending booster shots, it seems that antibodies aren't forever, whether from a vaccine or from a natural infection.

Only 3,000 people between the ages of 19-29 have died from Covid-19 in USA, which is the age group I happen to be in.

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

#846

Post by scoopertrooper »

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…

> 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?

* The risk isn't just on that segment. The vaccine is not 100% effective without herd immunity to back it up.

* The unvaccinated will be the source of new variants, so a substantial of social resources will need to be continually invested in developing and trialing new vaccines.

> 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..).

I believe the jury is still out on whether or not obesity is contagious.

> What about drinking and smoking? Maybe we should also ban these because these people will probably go on government health insurance when they come down with chronic health issues from too much alcohol or tobacco.

Most countries ban smoking in confined spaces where it can impact the health of non-smokers. I suppose you'd support repealing such laws.

> I guess I don't see where your argument about societal costs doesn't become a slippery slope.

Slippery slope to what exactly?

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

#847

Post by wrl »

logicchains wrote: post #842
mactitan wrote: post #205

From this article: “When the vaccine was rolled out the goal should have been to focus on people at risk, and that should still be the focus,” says Memoli. Such risk stratification may have complicated logistics, but it would also require more nuanced messaging. “A lot of public health people have this notion that if the public is told that there’s even the slightest bit of uncertainty about a vaccine, then they won’…

There's actually some limited evidence of ADE for delta: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34384810/

Well, where the evidence is "in vitro, but not in vivo."

Derek Lowe has a response: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-antibody-depen...

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

#848

Post by esyir »

mythrwy wrote: post #709
ekidd wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Herd immunity essentially doesn't exist for many viruses. What you'd get is more akin to an endemic virus such as the flu. Mutation rates and immune escape make herd immunity essentially a dream.

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

#849

Post by kristjansson »

mythrwy wrote: post #680
jonnycomputer wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The vaccine hasn't been evaded. The efficacy has been slightly reduced. - Not all vaccines need be quite so targeted. - Naturally acquired immunity can also be evaded.

If a person is infected, it has been evaded. Period.

Evaded implies, to me, systematic failure of an intervention i.e. the probability of adverse outcome is equal for treated and untreated.

If that probability is still lower than without the intervention, it has been eroded, not evaded.

In the case of the vaccine in particular, some level of breakthrough infection is expected, so one case of such is unsurprising

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

#850

Post by RandallBrown »

freeflight wrote: post #713
cblconfederate wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13 times actually https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... I think this will be more relevant to vaccinating kids: If this result holds for kids as well, and considering that Covid is not dangerous for kids, maybe kids are better off getting covid

I don't understand this whole push to vaccinate kids. In the beginning all the panic was about the "most vulnerable" in the population, while the young ones apparently could deal with it fine enough. A year and a half later and we are rushing to vaccinate the youngest ones, even tho it doesn't prevent them from spreading and they have great chances to get trough the disease without the vaccine already. The ultimate g…

In the beginning it was about the most vulnerable because those were the people dying and we didn't have enough vaccines.

Now we have enough for everyone and it turns out kids are spreading it to each other. It's true the vaccine doesn't totally stop someone from spreading the vaccine, but it does help.

Post reply on HN