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 the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs.
Should there be a third policy option - accepting test-verified infection and recovery as of _now_ as evidence of protection, but discounting future recoveries? Based on the observational studies cited all over this thread , probably yes. Seems like associated costs would be higher though, and the only benefit would be less gnashing of teeth here and elsewhere, so its understandable the CDC isn't rushing to implement it.
Should those people just be allowed to assume the risk? Not while the costs are predominantly social. Insurance (or tax-payers) pay the financial costs, healthcare workers bear the burden of treating a preventable illness, and we all assume the risk that healthcare resources will be stretched to the point of unavailability. While risk-takers do pay into the same system, their premiums don't yet reflect the increased expected costs of their personal choice. While ICUs often run close to or at capacity in one hospital, rarely do they run close at every hospital in a region, as is happening in the south and will happen elsewhere. While it would be nice if there were more doctors, nurses and facilities able to treat patients, we're at war with the army we've got.
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 me wrong..).
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.
I guess I don't see where your argument about societal costs doesn't become a slippery slope.
Also full disclosure I'm 100% vaccinated and will get the booster in Dec.
>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 disproportionately more simply by buying more food than someone who weighs 20% less.
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 (or a whole lifetime!).
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. How many people would choose not to take it, and how would society view those that decided to walk around weighing 400lbs? That's really the apples to apples comparison here, and I think you'd find there would be very few folks walking around at 400lbs in that scenario.
>> 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! </sarcasm>
Well, yeah. For all the complexities of nutritionist meal plans and fad diets, losing weight can be achieved leveraging nothing more than a caloric deficit.
>In an illustrative study of one, Mark Haub a professor of nutrition at Kansas State University, demonstrated to his students that he could lose 27 pounds in just 10 weeks by eating a high-sugar, high-fat, low calorie diet. Professor Haub ate Twinkies, Little Debbie snacks and other sugary fare every three hours, instead of eating meals. To add variety to his dessert regimen, he also chowed-down on Doritos, sugary cereals and Oreos. Despite eating mostly junk food, (plus one protein shake per day), he limited his intake to 1800 calories per day, about 800 calories less than necessary to maintain the body weight of a man his size.
>Interestingly, his body fat and cholesterol dropped after this diet, despite eating tons of fat and sugar. In other words, eating sugar and fat does not raise your cholesterol, provided that you are on a low-calorie diet and that you drop body fat. We see similar findings in people who lose weight on the Atkins’ Diet. Their cholesterol levels improve, even though they eat a diet very high in animal fat. This is because being overweight raises cholesterol.
>Not surprisingly, Haub showed what all doctors and scientists already know: Weight loss really is about the number of calories that you consume, not the composition of those calories.
So why are there so many diets and books about diets if that’s all it takes? Well it’s hard to package and brand the ‘eat less, fatso’ diet. And like everything else in this world, ‘science’ takes a backseat to money.
> Well, yeah. For all the complexities of nutritionist meal plans and fad diets, losing weight can be achieved leveraging nothing more than a caloric deficit.
I can keep going if you want, but these are just some of the diseases that can cause obesity when a person is eating less calories than they use per day.
And given some of these are very serious and life threatening, and you’re reducing a persons problems to an easily resolved issue, kindly keep your mouth shut about obesity until you learn more about it.
For every 100 obese individuals in the United States, you’re likely to find fewer than 1 on average that is caused by an autoimmune disease.
I’m also very familiar with ulcerative colitis. When not counteracted with the correct medication, those suffering from this disease typically lose weight due to their bodies vacating their food more quickly than they can process the nutrients. Add to that the reality that chronic sufferers are so miserably tired of living on the toilet that they simply forego eating as long as possible just to guarantee some measure of bowel relief—you mostly proved my point instead of yours.
Ulcerative colitis can cause both. As can every single one of those. And because you’re clearly a child and need further explanation and seem to hate fat people:
If ulcerative colitis causes wasting disease then this will cause anorexia which is another serious medical problem. Should we force these people to eat more and deal with the toilet life (btw that’s a real cute minor form of ulcerative colitis)?
Yes, overeating is the only reason for obesity. You consume energy and breathe out carbon just by being alive. If you don't replace it with food, you will lose weight, that's physics.
The hard problem is what makes you overeat. It can be a psychological problem, some kind of unbalance with the feeling of satiety, food that is too energy-rich for the amount of nutrients it contains,...
All diets only have one goal: make your effective energy intake lower than what you consume. It can be by simply making you eat less, or by making you eat food that triggers the feeling of satiety before you have eaten too much (ex: lots of energy-poor fiber).
I think there are exceptions, some people seem to store ridiculous amount of water in their body. They are not that fat, but their body is bloated by all that water. I think it is the case for extreme obesity.
> 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
If I was "skeptical" about something like say the covid vaccine - then I'd go and do some research. And do you know what the research (in this case) would turn up? That the covid vaccines are indeed SAFE AND EFFECTIVE. But you know what most of these "vaccine skeptical" people are NOT doing? They're NOT doing any research to resolve their skepticism. So spare me this vaccine skepticism argument.
Oh, I think they are doing what they think is "research", but they don't know the difference between anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence.
They hear about one pop star's cousin [1] in another country that had swollen testicles after his shot and that's someone that not only they can relate to, but even trust more that official sources because, hey, why would that star lie about it. While many are convinced that the government and health care industry in general has an ulterior motive.
It's a combination of disinformation and lack of critical thinking skills. I spent 2 hours on the phone with my brother one night, pointing out why his "sources" were not really authoritative sources - if you can't find the source of their data, don't trust it, "I know a guy who..." is not a "source". Not sure if that's what swayed him, but he got his first vaccination 2 weeks later. And it's a good thing he got it, he and his wife just recovered from COVID which they think their daughter brought home.
When I said, "Listen to the experts and believe the science", I should have stipulated, "Not those experts and not that science"
In fact, strike that. Only listen to the experts and believe in 'the science' when it aligns with my totally altruistic motives. No other incentives or motives exist. I am completely honest and have nothing to hide, but questioning my agenda is strictly out of bounds.
I believe this sarcasm is truly important in understanding this. There is very much an "appeal to authority" conundrum going on. Solid studies that deviate at all from what the US media and the Biden Administration are discredited.
This extends to policies and prescriptions that have been in place for months or a year in other countries and working to positive effect, i.e. Ivermectin use in numerous countries to assist in fighting COVID (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8248252/) or for instance most of Europe not locking down schools and requiring masks.
This information leads some to believe that a bias or, at worst, an agenda is applied to the science, discarding studies that don't fit the narrative of "the science."
There are several deaths formally acknowledged due to Myocarditis to otherwise seemingly healthy people after taking the vaccine. This is not disinformation.
That's the problem with anecdotal evidence, I have no idea how to make a statistically valid comparison of "several deaths" with the risk of death if no one is vaccinated. But I trust that the CDC and FDA did make that comparison and are still measuring and monitoring.
Hm, a thought - in a world where we are only in immediate contact with less than 200 people, an event happening to someone you know about carries meaningful information about the statistical likelihood of that event. We probably developed some heuristics based on that. Now we have a global telecommunications network which means that any strange event gets broadcast everywhere - this must surely break those heuristics, artificially inflating the perceived probability of rare events. There's also "celebrities", who feel like close acquaintances to millions of people. A single rare event happening to a celebrity gets amplified hugely.
To save others a click: CDC says to give ivermectin to kill intestinal parasites (with an exception due to risk to people who might be carrying loa loa). Not horse paste to treat a virus.
Can you tell me what the long term effects of the COVID vaccine are? I’ve done a lot of research on that specifically but the time seems to have not passed yet.
But plenty of bogus COVID treatments and prophylactics - some even promoted by the (former) president himself. I'll admit that I don't fully understand the thought process that leads someone to reject a vaccine that's supported overwhelmingly by doctors and the government, and then take a horse dewormer because they saw some guy on youtube recommend it.
there isn't a history of marketing vaccines for profit
Maybe not vaccines, but plenty of pricing abuse by Pharmaceutical companies that make them seem like they'll do anything, even let people die, if they can earn more money. Insulin and epi-pens are two of the more well known ones.
> then take a horse dewormer because they saw some guy on youtube recommend it.
Sigh. Your "HORSE dewormer" (thank you CNN) is one of the medications recommended by the CDC for refugees btw. I guess refugees are considered working horses, so your statement might not be false.
"All Middle Eastern, Asian, North African, Latin American, and Caribbean refugees should receive presumptive therapy with:
...
Ivermectin, two doses 200 mcg/Kg orally once a day for 2 days before departure to the United States."
There’s a YouTube video called “Ivermectin Horse Paste” that was published in January of this year and now has nearly 160,000 views. In it, a woman who goes by Self Sufficient Momma demonstrates how to portion out horse paste in order to make it a suitable dose for humans, depending on weight.
The fact that medical grade Ivermectin is prescribed for other ailments doesn't make it any less ludicrous that people are going to the feed store and buying tubes of horse Ivermectin to self-medicate for COVID at home.
That rumor got started because a study in mice showed it lessened the severity of infection. The doses were very high, close to lethal. There is no evidence of prophylactic use making a difference. Only early stage of infection use. Some doctors are prescribing it for covid cases. It is not surprising it would work a little, it causes an increased immune response. There are also studies linking it to melanoma shrinkage. There is a large enough parasite burden in even a developed population that a twice yearly dose might make sense for humans.
All that said, buying an oral syringe with enough ivermectin to kill people with low body mass and trying to get your dose right is a horrible idea.
It's YouTube. There is mildly popular garbage everywhere. YouTube regularly recommends videos like 'I Went Back To 1st Grade For A Day' by one Mr. Beast with 107M views, or 'CoComelon Songs For Kids' for 77M views. 160k views appears rather minor in comparison. Most of the views are probably bored teenagers looking for some novel debased spectacle.
Are you claiming peple are too smart to believe a garbage video on Youtube? I'd like to see a reference for that, because I'm not seeing much of it.
Don't forget that this is a country where people died from overdosing on aquarium chemicals because they thought the chloroquine on the label meant it would prevent COVID.
In Maricopa County, Ariz., a couple in their 60s watched politicians and news anchors on TV tout chloroquine, an anti-malaria drug that has shown the ability to disrupt some viruses but that has not yet been proved effective against the novel coronavirus.
That pharmaceutical name matched the label on a bottle of chemicals they used to clean their koi pond, NBC News reported. The fish tank solvent that treats aquatic parasites contains the same active ingredient as the drug, but in a different form that can poison people.
“Within thirty minutes of ingestion, the couple experienced immediate effects” that sent them to the emergency room, a Banner Health spokeswoman said in a statement Monday. They felt dizzy and started vomiting. The husband died at the hospital, and the wife is under critical care, according to the statement.
And states across the country are reporting an uptick in poison control calls for people that ingested Ivermectin, almost all from animal drugs, not prescriptions.
>And states across the country are reporting an uptick in poison control calls for people that ingested Ivermectin, almost all from animal drugs, not prescriptions.
You're spreading FUD man. These "upticks" you speak of are, in the case of one state, from 1 instance per year to 9. I guess its statistically a huge uptick, but, lets keep some perspective ey?
According to the National Poison Data System (NPDS), which collects information from the nation's 55 poison control centers, there was a 245% jump in reported exposure cases from July to August — from 133 to 459.
Ahhh, from the paper linked in your NPR article - 2020 cases = 435, 2021 cases = 1143. It's an even smaller increase than I originally thought - only 163%! Also, looks like 25% were from prescriptions.
What’s the difference between human and horse ivermectin? Dosage.
What you’re actually arguing without knowing is a position the CDC took to keep people from self dosing because the left media pushed the public into a mass panic. People overdosing on any drug, especially during a pandemic, is bad.
Dosage, and probably mixing -- how much do you want to trust that that ingredients are mixed so thoroughly that the little dab that gives you a human dose actually has that dose?
Plus the 98% fillers in horse dewormer of unspecified ingredients.
If you really think you need Ivermectin, get a prescription from a doctor so you'll be getting a known dose and have medical supervision.
Or, you know, just get the vaccine and reduce your risk of a serious case of COVID by 95%+
> Dosage, and probably mixing -- how much do you want to trust that that ingredients are mixed so thoroughly that the little dab that gives you a human dose actually has that dose?
It’s just dosage. Unless you’re getting your horse ivermectin from sketch sources. Who’s going to trust a multiple thousand to multiple millions of dollar animal on questionable ingredients.
> If you really think you need Ivermectin, get a prescription from a doctor so you'll be getting a known dose and have medical supervision.
Hey agreed, so tell your lefty buddies to stop causing mass panic so those without medical insurance or money won’t try treating themselves.
> Or, you know, just get the vaccine and reduce your risk of a serious case of COVID by 95%+
Tell me the long term risks of the vaccine. Also show me some medical credentials since you’re recommending everybody get the vaccine.
It’s just dosage. Unless you’re getting your horse ivermectin from sketch sources. Who’s going to trust a multiple thousand to multiple millions of dollar animal on questionable ingredients.
Since you seem to be expert in this, what human safe ingredients are used in the 98% of this paste that is not Ivermectin?
Hey agreed, so tell your lefty buddies to stop causing mass panic so those without medical insurance or money won’t try treating themselves.
It's not the "lefties" that are telling people to use Ivermectin and other questionable remedies -- the lefties are telling them to get the vaccine. The best bet for someone without medical insurance is to get the free vaccine.
Also show me some medical credentials since you’re recommending everybody get the vaccine
That's the great thing about quoting experts, I don't need credentials myself, I can just repeat the same expert advice:
"Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, pleaded Sunday for Americans to set aside politics and get the coronavirus vaccine"
I'd quote his credentials, but I suspect that you already know who he is.
As for long term side effects, I'm willing to bet my own health on "none":
Tractor supply would be a sketch source, try a vet or someone that specializes. And don’t use the paste. In fact don’t do it at all without a physician guiding you. But the fact remains, ivermectin is ivermectin.
> It's not the "lefties" that are telling people to use Ivermectin and other questionable remedies
Read my statement again, the lefties are causing mass panic. You’re doing it now and telling people not to trust a drug.
> Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, pleaded Sunday for Americans to set aside politics and get the coronavirus vaccine
He lost trust the second he lied to control people. Only the left listens to him now.
> As for long term side effects, I'm willing to bet my own health on "none"
Great, but not everybody is so careless with their life. And what you’re saying is you should have control over theirs for something we think may not happen.
Read my statement again, the lefties are causing mass panic. You’re doing it now and telling people not to trust a drug.
I don't know if you'd bothered to read my posts, but I specifically said Horse Dewormer, but then you and others started defending Ivermectin.
But yeah, if you're trying to prevent or cure COVID, don't use Ivermectin, and there's scant evidence that it helps, and if you're worried about long term effects of something, then be worried about the long term effects of COVID.
Presenting that table without an applicable denominator is misleading. The N on the table is a count of adverse events, not of people or does. The reported events occurred at a rate of between ~5 and ~70 per million doses administered for the highlighted age groups. Higher than background risk? Yes. High risk? No.
The CDC saw roughly 1300 cases of myocarditis or myopericarditis reported in mRNA vaccine recipients under 29 years old, after administering 52 million doses to that same age group, a minuscule risk and one much lower than that presented by COVID-19. [1]
And even then, in those cases, the vast majority resolve on their own with minimal medical intervention. [2]
But hey, have a link to the CDC source of that presentation so you don’t have to go to that .win site anymore to find your sources. They’re pretty bad at sourcing information over there [3]
> Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose
two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two
CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day
COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19
hospitalization incidence.
In short, COVID-19 is not very dangerous for younger people. So much so that the vaccine appears to pose a greater health risk.
I'm not familiar with "patriots.win” but the table image linked above is an accurate excerpt from this CDC presentation. The mRNA vaccines have caused a higher than expected rate of adverse cardiac events in young males. I encourage everyone to read the whole file for context.
You don't believe those sites are making a ton of money on ads? My whole family is anti vaxxers, I've seen the websites and the YouTube channels. All of these places are making tons of money off providing bad takes on statistics.
To be clear, I'm to the point where I think opening everything is okay. The people that wanted to be vaccinated are, and the people that aren't will get sick by their own choice.
Are you suggesting then that the US should adopt something like Japan's "metabo law"? It appears to be at least somewhat effective in coercing people into losing weight.
> 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.
It sounds good but I find this framing uncomfortable because tax is not a penalty. Overweight people pay a penalty in a significant decrease in their quality of life, yes. That is not a tax though - tax is a contribution to society, and a decrease in one persons quality of life is not a contribution.
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.
My understanding is that that is an old way of thinking that sounds good but doesn't work.
You need to put in the right type of calories: high GI foods will make it harder for you to lose weight by stimulating insulin production which in turns stimulates your cells to sequester all the sugar in your blood and turn it into fat (and you get lethargic and hungry as a bonus). You also need to exercise as your diet continues: your body will slowly burn muscle mass if your intake decreases for long enough, and with less muscle you burn less and eventually hit a wall. Exercise replenishes that muscle mass (assuming you eat enough protein). It's complicated.
I'm not a medical doctor, the above is just my understanding, so take it with a grain of salt.
While this is mostly true…there are other factors at play that can make this deficit difficult. I went for 2 months without losing a pound despite a net -1000kcal between diet, exercise, and my “probable” BMR. My suspicion is that my BMR dropped when my body realized it was basically in a famine state and decided to conserve every calorie it could any way it could.
That's almost certainly not what happened. While your body will get more efficient in starvation conditions it takes time and doesn't start instantly. There are certain biases that people have with weight loss and eating that are very common and result in less results than you expect.
There's a good chance your "probable" bmr was overestimating calorie burn. If you were basing calories burned in exercise from what a machine at the gym was telling you, it almost certainly overstated the calorie burn. Unless you meticulously weighed everything you put in your mouth you probably ate more calories than you think you did. Even if you did measure everything carefully and accurately, there's some degree of error in the nutrition data on packaging.
The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months. That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time. Even fairly extreme fluid fluctuations wouldn't cover that weight loss unless you started dehydrated and fairly overweight.
> That kind of deficit should drop your weight by about 15 lbs in that time.
The fact that you think that there is a number like this shows you are using extremely old thinking about how even the CICO model works. There is no way to predict weight/gain loss amount based on calories across individuals.
Also, even if there is some error in BMR, calorie burn rate, calorie intake, I very much doubt it was `-1000 calories +- 1000 calories`. Exercising is at most 2-300 calories per day. If you are making an effort to count calories, you will notice if you're eating an extra 200 calories of food. So let's say from these that they were at 1000 +- 200. Unless they got their BMR extremely wrong, then something else was happening. And after a month, even if they were at a ~200 calorie deficit, they should have still noticed clear fat loss.
I can make any cardio machine at the gym tell me I've burned far, far more than this.
> f you are making an effort to count calories, you will notice if you're eating an extra 200 calories of food.
The person I was replying to mentioned in another reply that they managed to lose 170 lbs which is a huge achievement. Someone with that kind of weight to lose has been overeating for a long time. Dropping calories to the point that they will just maintain there weight may feel very restrictive. I'm not surprised someone in this situation might underestimate their intake. It also doesn't take much to eat an extra 200 calories. Thats less than 2 tbsp of butter or oil. Pour too much salad dressing on your kale and now you're a couple hundred calories over what you thought.
> And after a month, even if they were at a ~200 calorie deficit, they should have still noticed clear fat loss.
The usual numbers you hear for weight loss are 3500 cals per lb of fat. A month at a 200 calorie deficit would give you 6000 calories. To make this easy let's say this leads to a 2 lb loss of fat, muscle, etc. I'd argue that when undertaking a lifestyle change a 2 lb change in weight could be hidden by other factors like hydration, more/less food in your digestive tract, etc.
> The fact that you think that there is a number like this shows you are using extremely old thinking about how even the CICO model works. There is no way to predict weight/gain loss amount based on calories across individuals.
But that's one of the few numbers you can predict with pretty good accuracy.
Figuring out diet, exercise, and BMR is the hard part. Expecting a pound of fat to go away per 3000 calories is the easy part.
> Figuring out diet, exercise, and BMR is the hard part. Expecting a pound of fat to go away per 3000 calories is the easy part.
Well, here you've moved from "estimated deficit per day" to "exact total deficit". Sure, thermodynamics tells you with absolute certainty that if you've lost 1 pound of fat in 1 week, you've overall had 3000 Cal deficit in that month.
But that doesn't mean you can say "if you know your BMR at time t, eat exactly this much and exercise exactly this much, you will definitely have a 3000 Cal deficit over 1 week". This would assume already that BMR doesn't vary with exercise and diet. It also assumes that food digestion doesn't vary with exercise and diet. Both of these are assumptions that we don't really know. And even if they are true for 1 week, they are almost certainly not true for 1 year.
You're getting downvoted because, I assume, you didn't include the possibility of magic as a an explanation in your analysis.
Rookie mistake in these threads. While it may superficially seem like yours was the best explanation for lack of weight loss -- that OP made a simple error and over-estimated his caloric deficit (and further didn't adjust the deficit when receiving data to the contrary)-- what you need to account for are the "other factors" which currently exceeds our understanding of biology and physics.
Using these 'other factors' it's possible to do everything right, and still not lose weight (through no fault of your own).
There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO. Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues. It's not at all improbable that BMR can be affected significantly by dieting in some individuals, a priori. It could also be affected by other lifestyle changes that happened together with the dieting, such as medication.
> There are all sorts of things that control weight gain/loss outside CICO.
Not really, but that doesn't mean CICO is actionable.
> Most notably, BMR can vary wildly with hormonal and endocrine issues.
That's not outside of CICO, since BMR is a central element of “calories out”. Of course, it is a reason CICO is not as simple as advocates make it out to be (and there are more problems like that on both the CI and CO sides.)
> at's not outside of CICO, since BMR is a central element of “calories out”. Of course, it is a reason CICO is not as simple as advocates make it out to be (and there are more problems like that on both the CI and CO sides.)
That was basically my point. BMR can fluctuate making CICO a piss poor oversimplified explanation for weight loss. My example was real, it did happen to me. My calories in was meticulously recorded. Calories out is less accurate, but the calories burned in exercise were not dramatically inaccurate enough to explain the lack of progress. The only other factor outside my conscious control was BMR.
> CICO a piss poor oversimplified explanation for weight loss
Kinda reads like an embarrassing cope, tbh. Blaming mystical 'other factors' is stepping over dollars to pick up pennies. At the end of the day, CICO is all that matters. To deny this is to say that you have a metabolism not based on consuming external matter.
Your lack of progress can entirely be explained by just making a plain, good old fashion error with your in/out expenditure. Something we all literally do. We don't need magic involved to explain it. Your body gave you data that you were wrong, but you ignored it, threw up your hands, and now blame "other factors."
Want to lose weight? Use this One Weird Trick those dummy gym bros with no understanding of science have been using since forever.
1. Reduce your calories
2. monitor your weight
3. adjust 1. based on 2.
Hardly. I did adjust…I added calories, and my weight loss resumed. And like I said, if my BMR was not normative for my age, weight, and activity level, it was the culprit.
What you folks on here are referring as “mystical” and “magical” is not either. In fact the opposite. It’s evolution. Your body’s sympathetic nervous system evolved to react and adjust to help keep you alive during periods of stress. Starvation is a stressor, it’s ridiculous to think that our bodies simply shrug it off and keep operating business as usual. Once the stressor was removed the body decided to “resume normal processing” it became easier to lose weight.
FWIW, I am not saying that a prolonged period of starvation would not result in weight loss, but I am saying your body on limited fuel will conserve the fuel it gets any way IT can.
> The truth is that you probably didn't have a 1000 cal daily deficit for 2 months.
Uh yes, this is pretty much exactly what I said. But left out from my original post was how my weight loss began again when my caloric intake increased.
This was about at a 125lbs in to a ultimate 170lb loss. CICO doesn’t have a good explanation for plateaus in a long weight loss journey. It also doesn’t factor weight gain due to muscle build.
My ultimate point being it’s not a simple math equation.
The 'ill or obese' analogy isn't very good because it doesn't capture the contagious effects, which is the artifact of COVID that makes it different than other health and safety issues.
We don't stop people from going to the theatre because they have diabetes or cancer.
COVID is a highly contagious disease, that's what makes it a community problem, not an individual problem.
It's a more akin to having proper winter tires while driving: while it's mostly an issue of personal safety, there are other cars on the road who will mostly likely end up in an accident with you, and so there's an externalization there.
Now imagine if you got someone in an accident because you didn't have winter tires, and they also had some material degree of getting someone in an accident (i.e. if there is an R0 > 1, they will likely also crash with someone). Then the whole highways is jammed up, and everyone is affected.
Except the food you eat to get fat is often much cheaper than the food to stay healthy. Produce is expensive per calorie, lean meat is expensive per calorie, cooking takes time and effort, and a gym membership is expensive. This is one of the reasons why obesity is so prevalent, it's much easier than staying healthy. It's not just 20% more of what healthy people eat.
Thats kind of the point of eating fresh food, your filled with less calories. you eat less, your at a healthy weight.
That not the stuff getting people fat. Look how many calories are in mcdonals burgers. People are getting fat becasue they're uneducated. They drink sodas, sweet teas, eat candy and excessive alcohol
The point is that it's much cheaper to fill your belly with a McDonald's burger than artisanal bread, fresh tomato, minced lean meat. Much, much cheaper. If you are aiming to eat 2000 calories per day, you will do eat much more cheaply with a pizza and a burger than with good food.
> If you eat 2000 calories your not going to be obese, no matter what your eating
BMRs are estimated between typical ranges 1200-2400 across the population (with 1200 being short people with no muscle, and 2400 being tall toned people; body builders and athletes can be significantly above this). If you're 1.6m tall and are not working out at all, eating 2000 calories per day will quickly get you overweight.
> There's nothing really bad about a fast food burger. No one is getting obese eating a cheese burger.
> The problem is the fries, juice, milk shakes, sodas
Well, the burger bread, especially if its sweetened + sauces + the cheese are more than half the calories in the burger, and just as empty as the soda, fries, juice, milk shake. The tomato and pickles are fine, the meat is ok.
Even then, your deeper point, which I assume is that 2000 Cal is 2000 Cal, whether you get it from lettuce or burgers, is almost certainly wrong in practice. While in the short term it's true (i.e. someone with a generally healthy diet will not get any more fat by eating an extra burger than by eating an equivalent amount of extra apples), it's very clear that in the long term there is a significant difference in CI (appetite) or CO (BMR, sedentariness) for people on junk diets vs better food.
The reasons for this are unknown, and candidate explanations range from "delicious food" addiction, gut microbiome impact, sugar addiction, metabolism-impacting contaminant (with various candidates such as PFAS, trace mineral oils from industrial cooking equipment, etc).
2000 is pretty average, you dont need to make the post confusing by pointing out edgecases. yeah we all know if your short or workout you need slighty different needs
so the whole point in the last two paragraphs is based off of how much you eat. its education about food and eating in excess thats needed. not saying a fast food burger it self is bad. the problem is every other poor decision made at a drive through window
> 2000 is pretty average, you dont need to make the post confusing by pointing out edgecases.
It's not "slightly different needs", it's 2000 +- 50%, just in the average population. For example, most women eating 2000 Cal/day are overweight (since women tend to have less lean body mass than men at the same height and exercise level).
> so the whole point in the last two paragraphs is based off of how much you eat.
No, the whole point is that appetite and digestion and lifestyle may well be affected by what you eat. So what you eat almost certainly influences how much you eat. The fast food burger could be the cause of you also craving the milkshake.
are you just replying to argue with some one? Im using your comment talking about 2000 calories.
Were also smart humans that can learn how to control our selves, thats education about food. How to eat filling food and not over eat. that all goes into education about nutrition
Education and willpower only work to some extent. People have a natural lipostat that "tells" them how much they should eat, and it's very hard to eat significantly differently - either more or less. What exactly changes this lipostat is not well understood, though there are well-known cases: lithium and other psychoactive medications, thyroid hormones. It is extremely likely that specific diets (in the broad sense) can also affect this lipostat mechanism - either directly, or through effects on the gut microbiome.
> One takes a couple minutes and the other is something requiring an hour or more of dedicated time per day
1. No it doesn't. It only requires eating less.
2. One of these is invasive, the other is not.
> There's a lot of investment in trying to fix these problems already
Not really. We have culturally embraced "health at any size", we don't clamp down on unhealthy food advertisers, we install vending machines in schools. We are now FIRING people for noncompliance with vaccine mandates, but shrugging impotently when childhood obesity rises 9% in 18 months of pandemic lockdowns.
Further, the obesity issue isn't just a baseline problem: it's also the #2 comorbidity of COVID itself. If these tinpot tyrant vaccine mandate people were even remotely serious about actual harm reduction from the pandemic, we've had approximately 72 weeks since we knew of the obesity-COVID severity link to include weight loss as a preventative protocol along with masks and vaccines.
The fact that we've heard no significant public messaging on this front during a period of time that high-risk obese populations have had the chance to dramatically reduce their risk profile tells you everything you need to know about how serious "public health officials" are about actually reducing deaths. Hint: they're not.
You could even have mandates. Exclude them from eating at restaurants or fast food places and ensure they don't purchase too much or unhealthy food.
Not only would it be for Their Own Good™, but if it saved just one innocent life due to reducing the load on the healthcare system, it would have been worth it.
>Not only would it be for Their Own Good™, but if it saved just one innocent life due to reducing the load on the healthcare system, it would have been worth it.
There's so many people who seem to draw a completely arbitrary line between authoritarianism and paternalism despite them being exactly the same thing with different justifications. I don't care if it's "for my own good" or "because I said so", I oppose authoritarianism in general on principle rather than justifying authoritarianism towards things I happen to like with a different name.
Naturally the ruling class would be allowed to eat meat and desserts though. Their palates are sophisticated in ways you would fail to appreciate, pleb. And besides, you're just jealous that they're better than you.
Ask some of my friends that are otherwise healthy and they'll say quite the opposite.
(Full disclosure: I'm vaccinated and disagree wildly with them, but they are still my friends and these are very capable engineers/programmers, they just don't trust authorities in this case.)
Yeah, I don’t want to say bad things about people but…
I’ve very recently found that a lot of very smart people are still quite capable of doubling down on stupid.
It’s not even really wrong. They just weigh the risk disproportionately against the benefits (for the person themselves and society). I just cannot understand how a rational person can do that.
> I’ve very recently found that a lot of very smart people are still quite capable of doubling down on stupid
Being consistently the smartest person in the room can lull some to believe they are smarter than everyone, everywhere, every time.
Sometimes the lack of intellectual humility is an independent personality trait, but I've encountered a number of very smart people that held really weird beliefs which bordered on conspiracy thinking, but was self-reinforcing because they thought everyone else was not smart enough to cotton-on to "the man" (one believed in over-unity energy,the other one is basically synthesizing a new religion(/cult?) by gaining "insights" into "correct" aspects of multiple existing ones, whose current practitioner's "get it wrong" in one way or the other.)
Firstly, I hope you accept and understand that we are all fucking idiots. Every last one of us, yourself and myself included.
I'm not sure what specific nuanced position you believe equals "doubling down on stupid". I honestly can't tell from the previous handful of posts in this thread, what specific arguments yall are making.
It would seem, COVID is not a problem for 99% of humans (according to CDC Data Tracker numbers). The humans it is a potential serious problem for, are already stricken with obesity, hypertension, and diabetes (at the least), and likely have systemic chronic issues due to these diseases. With this in mind (very low risk of serious illness for most people), and seeing how studies show natural immunity is more robust (not just reactive to the spike protein, but "surprisingly" all 4 major proteins in the virus) and longer lasting than the vaccines we have available, it would seem counter productive for me and my family to get vaccinated.
I found when losing weight that the first 20 pounds was easy. After that every half pound was a major mental challenge to keep going. Then COVID-19 hit, I stress ate, my activity level fell to virtually 0, and yeah. Back to -0 from where I started. Time to start over.
I think there are pretty rational cases to forego a vaccination, especially young people under 20. And that there is advertising for them getting a vaccination might even be borderline irresponsible.
Add some political urge to stand out and make disproportionate regulations and I cannot call many of them irrational. I am vaccinated but surely that is irrelevant for the argument.
We will get the invoice for Covid in a few years in any case.
I have lost a lot of faith in people and their ability to argue and this doesn't really stem from the anti-vaccination camp, far more this comes from people asking for restrictions.
All of these are reasonable arguments. I personally agree with them. I am vaccinated (J&J), and was vaccine hesitant for 6 months prior to making my decision. I still stand far more in unity with the anti-vaccination camp than those asking for restrictions.
Many in the "people asking for restrictions" camp will not see these arguments as reasonable because they don't comply with "the science" (which is actually a crafted narrative).
Part of the problem is that we aren't just dealing just with a morphing dataset being communicated very imperfectly across digital mediums to the entire globe. We have all of that, and then that already fantastically complicated scenario is being ham-fisted into a narrative, and the narrative trumps all the data.
Yes, what's troubling to me in this imperfect communication, is the media reporting "COVID deaths", as if they were "deaths of COVID", instead of "deaths with COVID". The spin is palpable, and completely unnecessary.
Also not trivial, given the legitimate hunger and compulsion someone with an overeating problem may have after suffering with it for years.
So yes, not an explicit time dedication, but you’re being pedantic at that point and the practical reality that a vaccine is a minimal inconvenience is reasonably unavoidable.
Obviously exceptions exist, which is what medical exceptions are for etc etc.
> Also not trivial, given the legitimate hunger and compulsion someone with an overeating problem may have after suffering with it for years.
Yeah but you could just mandate it. Force them to eat small amounts. Fire them from their jobs, prevent them from traveling, and lock them out of civil society if they do not comply. Make them submit to weekly weigh-ins.
They wouldn't like it of course, but neither do the people being coerced into taking vaccines. Point is it's for the greater good, and if reducing their load on the healthcare system saves just one life, it all will have been worth it. Right? I mean while we're just here completely making up values and cost/benefit out of thin air, we can mandate pretty much anything.
Being fat isn't contagious. While it does increase medical load, it doesn't cause the people you meet at the restaurant to also increase medical load.
We aren't stopping restaurant and party access as some kind of punishment for the unvaxxed. It's because this is one of the major vectors for disease transmission.
But it does tend to result in worse outcomes when you catch covid, which you can when you go eat at a restaurant. From the vaccinated patrons who can still transmit it.
> it doesn't cause the people you meet at the restaurant to also increase medical load.
The vaccinated can contract covid and can transmit it to other vaccinated though. So this can't be the reason to ban unvaccinated, because allowing the vaccinated to restaurants will also increase medical load.
> We aren't stopping restaurant and party access as some kind of punishment for the unvaxxed.
Oh? It sort of seemed like it was since the science on natural immunity was being ignored.
> It's because this is one of the major vectors for disease transmission.
The probabilities are very different, and that compounds when infections are exponential.
Your argument could equally apply to DUIs:"Driving sober doesn't mean you won't be involved in an accident" - sure, but the likelihood is lowered by a measurable amount.
> The probabilities are very different, and that compounds when infections are exponential.
So? What are the numbers? You seem to have it all figured out, so all I'm asking is how the situations are different, and how exactly you arrived at the conclusion that one merited forced medical procedures and the other did not, based on those numbers.
Handwaving about more or different doesn't really cut it because I want clear, unambiguous hard criteria and step by step reasoning for why one particular set of numbers justifies this serious step and another does not.
The probability being very different argument above is based in massaged data; data fit to a narrative.
The narrative wants you to trust it and set aside such petty questioning! "The science" will prevail! The elites no better! How dare you ask for specifics, a practical dataset and explanations. You might be labeled a anti-vaxxer over such things! /sarcasm
> Being vaccinated doesn't mean you are not contagious.
Being vaccinated reduces contagion (with known variants other than Delta, it reduces probability of contagious infection, intensity (viral load) of contagious infection, and duration of contagious infection; with Delta it does the first and third.
You're again misrepresenting the situation. Taking the vaccine is a 2 x 30 minute process (maybe adding 3-4 sick days with mild fever and soreness, to be fair). Losing weight after being overweight/obese is something that you need to do every second of every day for the rest of your life.
Also, people who chose not to get vaccinated chose to expose others to their disease. People who chose not to lose weight hurt no one but themselves.
The amount of burden you put on someone when you make them take the vaccine is nothing like the amount of burden you put on someone when you make them lose weight. The risks for you if I don't get vaccinated is high, the risk for you if I remain overweight/obese is 0. So, one is an acceptable compulsion, the other is not. How is this so hard to understand?
You can also view it the other way around: there is no compulsion or punishment for those who don't get vaccinated. The government can and must mandate a quarantine for everyone. However, since some people are immune, they are exempted from this quarantine.
I think you're just doing everything you can to avoid acknowledging any similarities in the situations. The two situations are not exactly identical in every way of course. But getting bogged down in this minutiae with these construction of rules is missing the point, and such precise rules have never been a feature of covid policies.
Mandating overweight people lose weight would benefit their own health and it would take pressure of the healthcare system. Pretty straightforward analogy.
No, I am pointing out the 2 most relevant differences. You are doing your best to ignore those and look at the similarities.
The government, in practice, can only issue mandates and bans that are relatively easy to follow, and extremely urgent. That's why banning radioactive material is easy and has wide support, but banning alcohol or tobacco is not.
While the government is extremely corrupt and oligarchic, it's still not a dictatorship that can actually up and decide to ban dancing on some idiot's whim.
They aren't really relevant to the issue though. The matter at hand is that mandating overweight people lose weight would improve their health outcomes and take pressure of the medical system, improving helath outcomes for others as well. This is the justification for vaccine mandates and coercion.
I've never seen that weighing or justified anywhere. Do you have any sources on that?
Mandating overweight people lose weight is not more invasive than mandating people undergo unwanted medical procedures. Forced medical procedures are actually an incredibly serious and problematic issue with a long and dark history.
The problem I have is not any one particular procedure, it is the idea of coercion, and the bullying and excluding of people (disproportionately disadvantaged, non-white, etc too, I might add).
> I've never seen that weighing or justified anywhere. Do you have any sources on that?
You have to be kidding. The difficulty and invasiveness of different interventions for covid alone has been constantly under discussion.
> Mandating overweight people lose weight is not more invasive than mandating people undergo unwanted medical procedures. Forced medical procedures are actually an incredibly serious and problematic issue with a long and dark history.
You're being vague on purpose.
When you replace "unwanted medical procedure" with a much more specific "approved vaccine shot" that stops being true.
> The problem I have is not any one particular procedure, it is the idea of coercion, and the bullying and excluding of people (disproportionately disadvantaged, non-white, etc too, I might add).
You can't take a hard-line stance against coercion unless you're asking to abolish government. Any reasonable analysis takes the particular coercion into account.
> You have to be kidding. The difficulty and invasiveness of different interventions for covid alone has been constantly under discussion.
I'm not kidding. Who has weighed it? Where was it decided that coercion and forced medical procedures was the right balance? Because it wasn't long ago they were off the table. Where did this most recent re-weighing occur, can you give me a link.
> You're being vague on purpose.
No I'm not, that's what it is. You're minimizing the seriousness of it because "it's just a jab".
> When you replace "unwanted medical procedure" with a much more specific "approved vaccine shot" that stops being true.
What does "approved" have to do with anything. Medical experimentation, forced sterilizations, and things of that sort were all "approved" somewhere, and many were "just routine procedures". And it's not a slippery slope, these are things which all have happened within living memory, likely even with some of the same people still in positions of power in governments and institutions responsible.
> You can't take a hard-line stance against coercion unless you're asking to abolish government.
I certainly can and am.
> Any reasonable analysis takes the particular coercion into account.
And forced medical procedure of any kind whatsoever is a gravely serious issue to me.
How? Because I don't let implausible and unfounded claims go unchallenged?
I get the feeling that you wouldn't be quite so irritated with me (or at least less inclined to contribute nothing but namecalling) if you were capable of forming a coherent argument against what I wrote.
If you find yourself getting upset by something you disagree with, and are unable to explain why it is wrong, it might be helpful to have a more open mind. Or at least be more tolerant of different opinions. Just a suggestion. In any case I hope you feel better soon.
it's a logical fallacy to argue that because we don't do X already, we don't need to do Y because it's similar.
The reasons for not doing X (treating obesity as an epidemic and with the same harshness and forcefulness as covid) is that X is an existing, slow moving beast.
The covid situation is much more urgent. Making forceful vaccination would have immediate effects and begin a recovery of sorts.
> it's a logical fallacy to argue that because we don't do X already, we don't need to do Y because it's similar.
Sure, but it's reasonable to use to ask people who think we should do Y but not X to explain their justification and reasoning.
> The reasons for not doing X (treating obesity as an epidemic and with the same harshness and forcefulness as covid) is that X is an existing, slow moving beast.
> The covid situation is much more urgent. Making forceful vaccination would have immediate effects and begin a recovery of sorts.
I don't accept that as answering, I know they are not exactly 100% identical in every way, but there are enough similarities that I think it is reasonable to ask the question and I don't think I have seen any satisfactory answer other than this kind of thing which just points out where they are different.
Yes, there are some differences. No, just listing differences is not actually a reasoning for why they must be treated differently. I want to know why those differences matter, or at least what the criteria is.
It's much more urgent? How much? What are the numbers? Are you claiming the benefits to social health and the healthcare system from mandating overweight people to lose weight is less than covid, and what are your numbers? Under your criteria, after covid is under better control or endemic would we then move on to weight loss mandates? How about drug tobacco alcohol mandates? Ban extreme sports? Ban driving of cars made before 2011? Cut speed limits in half everywhere? Ban poor people from having babies?
What's the criteria and where does it end? These aren't extreme examples, you're looking to justify forced medical procedures here so I don't think it's even slightly unreasonable to ask for some pretty rigorous parameters and justification for this step. Not just handwaving about urgency (which is of course one of the staple justifications for all atrocities, e.g., Iraq).
> Under your criteria, after covid is under better control or endemic would we then move on to weight loss mandates? How about drug tobacco alcohol mandates? Ban extreme sports?
well, instead of relying on another fallacy (that of the slippery slope and whataboutism), why not judge an action by it's own merits?
I have no opinions on the obesity epidemic, but i'm sure that it's a good idea to try solve it. No one is arguing that they shouldn't, but for the costs involved.
At the moment, the pressing issue is covid. And the solution, which may seem "drastic" and "invasive", is deemed necessary by a majority of medical professionals - and indeed, looks to be fairly safe so far. A reasonable person would agree that taking the vaccine is both good for themselves personally, and good for the general health of society.
Mandating that vaccines be taken, or be excluded from certain public activities, is an incentive that can be used to push people over the fence, and i would agree that it's not an overreach of the state to implement such an incentive.
What merits? You haven't explained them. That's the whole problem.
The concern is just seeing a problem and thinking forced medical procedures are the right solution. Handwaving about urgency doens't cut it. If it can't be explained exactly why this is needed, why it can't be achieved without that coercion, what criteria need to be met, etc. then there has not been enough work done to justify it.
You say covid is urgent, so what if we find rates going down in future and therefore urgency reducing? Under what circumstances would forced vaccinations no longer be necessary?
I mean... I created a wearable device[0] that can detect when you're eating and deliver an electric shock. Why not just mandate every obese person to wear it?[1]
I'd seriously use something like that if it was stronger, tamper proof and would shock me whenever I'm browsing Reddit (and a blacklist of other garbage just in case).
Where did this "quick fix" clause ever come into it? It feels to me like it's something that you have retroactively made up to suit one particular argument but which has never been an important point before.
The point was always to save lives. I don't remember quick ever factoring into any calculations when people were forced to stay home, their workplaces shut, their education disrupted, their jobs lost, for indeterminate periods of weeks, months, years. Over this past two years we could have collectively lost many tons if only we had some mandates.
So I reject your assertion that quick is a material difference between these two scenarios, and my analogy stands.
But that has never actually been a thing in the public policy debate about it which is the wider context we're talking about. I think it was just made up now to exclude certain other inconvenient analogous situations like this.
How was that tradeoff decided, who decided it and where is the justification? And you can start losing weight in your own home, on day 1. That's faster than even a single shot of vaccine, let alone two shots with a delay, plus boosters etc. So that's not a very satisfactory answer as to why some mandates for the greater good are acceptable and yet others are not.
In this hypothetical scenario, the assumption is being made that the collection good is more important than individual liberty.
Another issue at play here in the US is that Americans are divided on where the line should be drawn between what can be allowed in the name of the collective good. I think it's quite obviously that the nation is very split on this. There isn't a constructive debate going on about the interplay between these two positions or a compromise.
One side (people mandating restrictions) are trying to brute force mandates without interacting, constructively discussing and persuading the other side.
By the way, sometimes I wish comments would not be deleted because I would have liked to reply to your reply to my reply, and ask what problem you have with what I said?
I hope it is obvious I don't actually feel this way toward overweight people -- it's hateful, discriminatory, divisive, bullying, and it goes against everything I believe about freedom people should have to live their lives.
And yet being overweight is a detriment to health. And it places additional burden on the healthcare system. So I think it is a good analogy to use, if there was an equally effective one that was less shocking, I would gladly use that instead.
See, I can see the "perfect" society where everything is done for "the greater good". Where the ruling class and their alleged experts hand down edicts by which we much live. Everything is mandated accordingly. Nobody may question the mandates or the rulers, lest they be bullied and branded grandma killers / fascists / baby killers / etc. And I can see how yes you might micro optimize this society by forcing people to take vaccines. And by forcing overweight people to lose weight. I don't deny that maybe some people could be "saved" if we had all these mandates. That is not the society I value or want to live in though.
And I think that's a very underhanded bullying argument to coerce people into giving up their freedom or having medical treatment they don't want, to suggest that they are responsible for killing others because of choices like this. Because there are hundreds of ways we could all change our choices and indirectly save people,it does not always mean we are responsible for them if we don't.
I mean, you take it to the limit and you might well say elderly have passed their used by date, no longer contribute to the greater good, and are increasingly a burden on the healthcare system, so let's turf them out. Every hospital bed they selfishly take up is stealing the life of a sick child who could not be admitted due to the shortage. Or that you are personally responsible for the death of anyone around the world who dies of hunger so long as you have not donated every last penny of your income beyond what you require to barely survive on in a tent.
My position is that actually the most dangerous thing facing our society and our children and their children is authoritarianism and the unaccountable and unchecked expansion of power of the ruling class over our lives. Unimaginably more dangerous than covid-19. And I think mine is quite a reasonable position to take.
So if someone can be bullied and told they are responsible for killing grandparents and responsible for continuing lockdowns for not wanting to take the vaccine then fine, and we can say with similar intellectual honesty that those bullies calling for mandates are responsible for the next Stalin.
EDIT: And one last thing, it's not "those hateful others", aka your fellow citizens, who are responsible for the breakdown of trust in authority and their "experts". It is entirely the fault of the ruling class. Their greed, lies, lust for power and willingness to divide has caused this. You really wonder why people might not have complete blind trust in the politicians, journalists and other self-proclaimed experts who told them we had to invade Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, we had to destroy Syria and Libya, etc.? That it was for their best interest? Remember that? And then they stole their money and sent their sons and daughters away to die? And then they laughed all the way to the bank and did it again.
Do you believe people are responsible for spreading STDs? If you had sex with a partner that was suffering from an STD but they either didn't get tested themselves or did not inform you of their STD, would you consider them irresponsible?
If you would, then why not consider the same about the vaccine?
By any reasonable standard, just like you're not allowed to smoke indoors because it hurts others, you're not allowed to be indoors with a potentially lethal disease that can kill others. It's that simple. You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk. But it's not your right to choose to risk anyone else's life by being around them in a closed environment while potentially infected.
> Do you believe people are responsible for spreading STDs? If you had sex with a partner that was suffering from an STD but they either didn't get tested themselves or did not inform you of their STD, would you consider them irresponsible?
I'm a big believer in personal responsibility. Yes I think they would be responsible and even should be criminally liable in some circumstances (e.g., if they knew they had HIV). I would also bear responsibility for my own actions of course.
> If you would, then why not consider the same about the vaccine?
Consider the same what?
> By any reasonable standard, just like you're not allowed to smoke indoors because it hurts others, you're not allowed to be indoors with a potentially lethal disease that can kill others. It's that simple. You can choose to not be indoors with others, or you can choose to take a vaccine to eliminate that risk. But it's not your right to choose to risk anyone else's life by being around them in a closed environment while potentially infected.
First of all, we aren't talking about going somewhere if you are sick or not, we are talking about going somewhere without being vaccinated. And I don't think that's a reasonable standard. Before 2020, people weren't banned from society if they didn't have a flu vaccine for example. Nobody thought this was unreasonable despite the seasonal fl being potentially lethal disease that can kill others.
Some places, e.g., where certain vulnerable or compromised people were (nursing homes), would mandate vaccines presumably based on reasonable evidence.
Now covid may be worse than the regular flu, but I think the numbers involved matter and so I don't just blindly agree it's reasonable that people should be banned from their work or public places if they haven't had it. Fear mongering aside, I don't think the evidence is there.
Doing reasonable measures to avoid that. Driving can result at death, but we allow people to drive under some speed limit, with a lot of rules on how to do it. You're not supposed to break them, and if you do, then you're at least fined.
> And I think that's a very underhanded bullying argument to coerce people into giving up their freedom or having medical treatment they don't want, to suggest that they are responsible for killing others because of choices like this. Because there are hundreds of ways we could all change our choices and indirectly save people,it does not always mean we are responsible for them if we don't.
That is a frankly ridiculous and immoral attitude. If you refuse to make minor accomodations when presented with choices that can reduce the amount of risk you cause others, you ARE responsible.
If you choose to dive drunk, you are responsible. If you choose to lie about the the status of your STD testing, you are responsible. If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible. If you choose to go un-masked and unvaccinated when there is significant local spread, you are responsible. I don't beleive the best response to this is vilification or shamming, but that doesn't change the moral truth here.
If you have "hundreds of ways" we can make minor changes to save the lives of others lives, please share them because that sounds likr really useful information.
I think communication is best done with honesty and politeness and without censorship. That does not mean we absolve people of the responsibility of theor choices
The descent into authoritarianism is also a significant risk, but vaccine mandates are NOT that start of a slippery slope. They have been around for many decades and they haven't resulted in any slipping. If anything, getting people riled up about vaccines is a way to justify censorship and distract from the ever growing power of the surveillance state.
> That is a frankly ridiculous and immoral attitude. If you refuse to make minor accomodations when presented with choices that can reduce the amount of risk you cause others, you ARE responsible.
I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe. I believe it is ridiculous and immoral to coerce and force people into medical treatment for a relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against. To be sure it is worse than the flu, but this is not smallpox, the bullies and fearmongers making comparisons like that were simply lying and spreading misinformation. And if it was similar to smallpox, I think it would be quite clear and people would be far more inclined to get vaccinated.
And I disagree with your idea of blame, as I said above the same argument can be made about overweight people and others. Maybe you are responsible for the death of starving children right now because you were browsing the internet instead of donating your time or money?
And it absolutely is authoritarianism because it is not about the virus or even the vaccine itself really. It is a totally politicized tool that authorities are using. That should have been clear when people were flip flopping between being skeptical of the "Trump" vaccine and calling border closures racist and refusing to acknowledge natural immunity and all that other nonsense. It's not the slippery slope because this is already authoritarianism. Telling people they can not go about their lives, they can't work or go to school, tracking and controlling where they go, who they meet, what business they do. It's already here.
If mandates were such a non-issue, why was it just a few months ago the experts and politicians were all lying and denying there would be mandates? Are they just pathological liars who will lie about trivial things that don't matter? Or did they know the seriousness of the issue and decide to lie and mislead until the opinion polls looked better for them? Neither option inspires a lot of trust in them.
Edit: my 10% number below is definitely wrong, even for CFR. I messed up some numbers.
> I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe. I believe it is ridiculous and immoral to coerce and force people into medical treatment for a relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against.
A minor illness??? This is the worse illness that has affected the world since the Spanish flu. It's worse than AIDS, malaria, it even beat tuberculosis in terms of raw people killed in 2020. Calling COVID19 a "minor illness" is simply delusional at this point.
And this death toll was only kept somewhat in check because of the biggest social disruption and curbing of liberties since WW2. If social isolation weren't forced, we would have seen situations like we did in Lombardia in the early days - not 1% death rates, but 10% or more because of overwhelmed hospitals.
Covid19 killed 1.89 million people worldwide by Jan 1st 2021, according to Our World in Data. HIV killed the most people per annum in ~2004, at 1.7 million worldwide, ~23 years after the first outbreak (1981).
If we can stop Covid19 with vaccinations, lockdwons, contact tracing, then hopefully it will not reach HIV levels of cumulative historical deaths. But otherwise, it would reach the same death toll as HIV did in 40 years in about 12 years like 2020.
And note, HIV was enough to completely change human sexual interactions maybe forever - at least for ~30 years.
I said relatively minor, comparison being to something like smallpox. And certainly compared with the unfounded fearmongering you've written here. There would absolutely not have been 10% death rates! Have unvaccinated hospitalization rates ever gone above even 1%?
Edit: my 10% is definitely wrong, even for CFR. I messed up some numbers.
> There would absolutely not have been 10% death rates.
But that's exactly what the death rates looked like in all regions that didn't impose lockdowns soon enough. The case of Lombardia is perfect - it's one of the richest regions on Earth, and while local hospitals were overwhelmed, it was surrounded by other rich regions that could accept patients. And even so, it had ~10% death rates in the early days of the pandemic, before lockdowns.
A lot of places around the world have had little or no lockdowns or vaccinations and have not seen anything like 10% fatality rate over the population. This is fear mongering.
Sure, because Covid has a vaccine that can actually be afforded by most of the population suffering from it. Malaria has been completely eliminated from all rich regions of the world, and it only festers in places that can't afford the vaccine.
> I know that's what you believe, it's not what I believe.
You honestly don't believe you are responsible for the knowable results of your own actions?
> a relatively minor illness
I don't see how you can honestly use this phrase to describe the worst pandemic since HIV.
> others have freely available access to effective vaccines against.
The vaccines both reduce spread and reduce the risknof serious illnessm. They do not eliminate that risk so choosing to remain unvaccinated bis choocing to increase the risk for both the vaccinated and the other unvaccinated people around you. This is risk that you ARE RESPONSIBLE for so you better make sure it is worth it.
As for the rest, please try reading what I actually wrote rather than making assumptions and arguing against partisan strawmen.
Where did I advocate for vaccine mandates?
Where did I advocate for continued lockdowns?
Where did I call border closures racist?
Where did I compare covid to smallpox?
Natural Immunity does seem superior to vacination alone, but having both is even better.
You seem to be projecting partisan talking points onto me to divert from the serious flaws in your moral philosophy and grasp of reality.
I don't see how you can conceivably believe that covid vacinations should be a choice but that the people making that choice are not responsible for the effects of that choice. Being responsible for the results is part of having choices.
>I don't see how you can honestly use this phrase to describe the worst pandemic since HIV.
I mean, according to CDC's data, it is a very minor illness. Affects very few seriously, and kills even fewer: CDC believes (they obviously don't know for sure) only about 5% of their "total COVID deaths (deaths with COVID), are actually attributed specifically to COVID. As of right now, that would put total deaths from COVID at around 33K, that's over 18 months that we've started tracking. Total deaths from car accidents, yearly, around 36K and rising quickly over the last two years.
I've had it twice, 18 months apart. Yes, it was not nearly as bad as the flu, and definitely not as bad as the antibiotic resistant strep I had picked up at a hospital.
I wasn't accusing you of those things, if that wasn't clear. And I used relatively minor in context (which you deleted). Hopefully that was clear, I'm not denying it may be on the order of 1% death rate among the unvaccinated which is not to be taken lightly.
And I know many people find it inconceivable that I have an anti authoritarian aversion to forced medical treatment, and that worries me for the future far more than covid. I'm not expecting to change any minds, but I'll put forward my position now and again.
I completely understand the other point of view, even if I believe a lot of people have arrived at it due to a campaign of fearmongering and politicization.
I see no part of the context makes that would make your statement accurate.
> And I know many people find it inconceivable that I have an anti authoritarian aversion to forced medical treatment,
That isn't what I find inconceivable. I entirely understand why people are opposed to this. What I find inconceivable is that you believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice.
You seem fixed on thinking I am arguing something I am not.
> I see no part of the context makes that would make your statement accurate.
And yet you managed to cut it neatly away, what are the odds?
relatively minor illness that others have freely available access to effective vaccines against. To be sure it is worse than the flu, but this is not smallpox
> That isn't what I find inconceivable. I entirely understand why people are opposed to this. What I find inconceivable is that you believe that people who choose not to get vaccinated don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice.
I don't say they don't bear a moral responsibility for the effects of that choice. I said that choice does not make a person responsible for the death of another who might have died because they couldn't get a bed (for example). And accusing them of it is dishonest bullying.
Countles choices we make every day directly and indirectly affect the world around us including others.
Choosing to go to the beach and drive your car, increasing traffic on the road and contributing to the chance of someone else being in a wreck and dying does not make you responsible for that. You could quite easily have chosen not to go to the beach though. You had no compelling need to go. It was a selfish choice to go. And that's all fine.
> And yet you managed to cut it neatly away, what are the odds?
I cut away the rest of the sentence because it didn't provide any modifier or qualifier that change the meaning or strength of your highly inaccurate claim.
Take a look at how the sentence would read if you removed "relatively minor" from it? Your overall point would remain intact.
Point in fact, you haven't even tried to justify the "relatively minor" claim and instead complain about being taken out of context when that context is easily available to the reader.
> I said that choice does not make a person responsible for the death of another who might have died because they couldn't get a bed (for example)
If you choose to not get vaccinated and your area runs out of ICU beds to such a degree that people start dying due to lakc of care, then yes, you are partially responsible for their deaths.
> Choosing to go to the beach and drive your car, increasing traffic on the road and contributing to the chance of someone else being in a wreck
The choices you make affect your culpability. Were you tailgating, driving through residential streets, driving an unnecessarily large vehicle, did you let your elderly parent drive or were you texting while driving? Somehow your moral theory seems to end up excusing every possible contributory choice that increases the risks for others.
It is fine to make selfish choices, but you should make them with an attitude that minimizes the risks you place on others. If you don't want to get vaccinated, you should find ways to avoid indoor public spaces, maskless social gatherings and anything else you can do to manage those risks.
Personally, I find ways to minimize driving and when I do drive, I drive carefully and slowly. I think driving is an activity we tend to be unreasonably callous about the risks of. I think society at large should place more responsibility on drivers for the risks they create.
>If you choose to dive drunk, you are responsible. If you choose to lie about the the status of your STD testing, you are responsible. If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible. If you choose to go un-masked and unvaccinated when there is significant local spread, you are responsible. I don't beleive the best response to this is vilification or shamming, but that doesn't change the moral truth here.
without trying to talk about vaccination and politics, a recent personal mandate, i'd like to bring something up.
there is a weird change in scope within your example.
You choose to drive drunk and are responsible. Sure, got it.
You personally lie about an STD and are responsible. Sure, got it.
You convince someone else to not take a vaccine and you are responsible.
Well.. wait a minute. Why does that responsibility fall one actor back?
Why isn't the actor who refuses the vaccine the guilty party?
If we can continue this line of thinking, when does it become OK to blame parents for the birth of murderers?
It occurs to me that liquor companies convince people to drink via advertisement, same as car companies woo potential customers over. And while not as legal as the under endeavors, the STD laden sexual partner certainly convinced their victims to continue.
Why not mention the role of the 'convincers' here, too?
In other words : I think 'moral truth' is kind of bullshit. More like "social truth".
> If you actively discourage people from taking a safe vaccine, you are responsible.
Just jumping in here to reply to this statement... if you're talking about someone expressing their opinion to others that they shouldn't get the vaccine, the person expressing that opinion isn't responsible if the other person decides not to get the vaccine; the other person is the one who is responsible for their own actions and decisions. It's on them to weigh that advice with whatever other advice they are hearing.
I do agree that people are responsible for consequences of driving drunk, or lying about the status of their STD testing.
Food prep takes time. Even if we abandon looking at it as as a strictly energy in energy out situation, we probably still recognize that healthier foods take more time than unhealthy foods.
>Even if we abandon looking at it as as a strictly energy in energy out situation
There is no reason to abandon looking at it that way. Eating healthier will not result in you losing weight if your caloric intake remains the same. Feel free to continue eating $1 burgers, just eat fewer of them.
Read an interesting piece here on HN that suggested weight had other, perhaps more important elements, and that consuming fewer calories while using fewer of them was the symptom of something else. Sort of rocked my world because I had always sort of accepted/repeated the argument from thermodynamics and it really upended that world view.
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 to reduction of calories in your diet. And we can put that drop into the ocean of knowledge.
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.
The more I read about all the excuses obese throw out the more I realize they have so much in common with the anti vaxx do my research in on Facebook crowd.
The simple fact is they both put strain on hospital systems and with their ignorance are putting others in danger and risk of not getting the much needed hospital bed.
What in the world is that website? Why in the world would I read a website with zero credentials trying to push new ideas in science? There's not a single person or credentialed organization associated with the blog.
> You could argue that overweight folks are also paying disproportionately more simply by buying more food than someone who weighs 20% less.
You have a real incorrect view of obesity. Being obese does not mean excessive eating. There’s a whole slew of digestive and hormone issues that someone can have and be obese while eating less than 2000 calories a day.
> 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
The issue with being overweight is not so much the extra weight itself, but the fact that it is correlated with metabolic dysfunction. "TOFI" (thin-outside fat-inside) are just as unhealthy.
Metabolic dysfunction can be resolved in a matter of days to weeks by abstaining from high glycemic index foods and in general fixing modern-day malnutrition. This is with a more aggressive regimen often described as a "ketogenic" diet, although the term is abused by people who don't understand that ketosis is more of a side-effect of a species-appropriate diet that allows for healthy fat burning, and not simply hitting macros.
Again I stress that if public health officials had a clue the pandemic would have never happened, it was evident early on that this disease disproportionately affects the malnourished, people with poor blood glucose control, sedentary, and immune compromised. These all go together, although oftentimes the immune dysfunction is deliberately induced by pharmaceutical treatments to mitigate autoimmune disease.
Yes it is, it just spreads memetically rather than a virally.
"the researchers found that obesity spreads through social ties. When an individual gains weight, it dramatically increases the chances that their friends, siblings, and spouses will likewise gain weight. The closer two people are in a social network, the stronger the effect."
Children in families with obese parents are more likely to be obese, which ought to be obvious because they live on the same diets and same behavioural patterns. Overweight friends tend to have other overweight friends, and are naturally more tolerant of it. Pay close attention to social circles and try to figure out what the tolerance towards obesity is within groups of say, thin girls compared overweight ones and how that modulates their behavior.
This is not limited to obesity of course, drug use, smoking in particular behaviour that is addictive essentially spreads through social circles like a disease. Try to model the opioid epidemic (the word is chosen for a reason) like one and you would surely find the exact same patterns. These are not geographically or demographically random processes, they're transmitted within communities.
I'm not sure how the rate of spread makes it a bad comparison. the dynamics of contagion are what matters because it determines what interventions make sense.
you can use this pandemic frame to say, eliminate a drug 'super-spreader' cluster and it will have positive effects on a community at large. Likewise, changing the behavior of parents in regards to their diet will have real downstream effects on the health of the entire family.
No it doesn't. Israel and Singapore both have over 80% eligible vaxed, and the proportion of infectees who are vaxed is similar to the proportion of vaxed in the general population, suggesting vaxed are no less likely to get it. Moreover infection rates are greater after mass vaccination than before.
Actually no, we don’t even need a shot to lose weight you just eat less.
Also the government is actively promoting obesity by subsidizing cheap unhealthy food via agriculture subsidies like hfcs and soybeans.
So while there are some who have actually spoken out against obesity like Michelle Obama, most are silent as the issue is kinda politically inconvenient for both parties on a macro scale.
It’s disgusting and why I don’t support either major political party in this country.
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 disease and diabetes. So yes, hospitals are getting gridlocked during this pandemic because of lifestyle diseases.
>The NCHS statement broke down the death certificates mentioning COVID-19. For 94% of people who had COVID-19 also had other conditions listed. COVID-19 alone was cause of death for 6%.
>Dr. Maja Artandi ( here ), medical director of the Stanford CROWN Clinic for COVID-19 patients ( here ), told Reuters via email that the CDC’s numbers “are really not a big surprise,” as “patients who have a comorbidity such as diabetes, hypertension or obesity have a higher risk of getting seriously ill and dying from COVID-19.” [2]
Without COVID they would still be alive, but no doubt lifestyle disease has been a serious contributing factor to deaths during this pandemic.
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.
> 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.
> >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 disease and diabetes.
Sorry for not writing a complete reply but you can't add those numbers like that.
But doesn't a population's overall poor health contribute to the potential gridlock of the healthcare system? I mean, what is the percentage of non-accident emergencies in the system and has it increased with the overall decline in society's fitness? (assuming it has declined I suppose, I don't have any numbers as I am not in that field)
It probably adds some load, but it's a predictable amount spread out across decades, not a giant clump right now. It will consume more healthcare resources, but it's not going to overload the healthcare system and prevent other people from using it.
> 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 obesity in the strict virus sense, if you're exposed enough, that exposure can and often does influence your behavior.
Even though a large percentage of us adults are obese I don't consider it normalized since it'd a target of ridicule, there's a massive industry around losing weight, and I'm assuming if you ask most fat people if they want to be thin they would say yes.
For fitness I do want to be fair and point out general health and muscle building are parts of that health industry
What you're missing is...how did they get there? It wasn't overnight.
When you can be 20 to 30 lbs overweight...look around the room...and think "oh, I've nothing to worry about, I'm not as bad as most ppl here..." that has influence. When everyone sitting around your dinner table (i.e., family) is unhealthy...that has influence.
Yes, consciously they'd answer as you said. Of course. However, we're wired different subconsciously, and those signals and nudges are far more influential than most ppl realize.
And again I'll default to Jonah Berger. He's the scientist. I'm only the messenger.
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 me.
My personal take is that insurance should progressively cover less of covid treatment of unvaccinated (by choice- minors and immunocompromised being excluded from this policy) patients until it is having a minimal impact on our healthcare system. If people don’t want to get the vax, that’s fine, but I’m not pooling for your medical bills.
Sure, it could be played into a “forever war” by reducing hospital/ICU capacity, but I don’t really see a benefit to doing that.
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.
A very large component of the "anti-vaxxer" crowd are medical staff who are now quitting in large numbers thanks to the mandate. Your beds are now going to be lowered.
This is an important point. While the media love to paint all "anti-vaxxers" are rural republicans or Trump supports, this simply isn't true. There are many racial minority groups (African Americans in particular) who are vaccine hesitant. There are healthcare workers in both rural and big cities of both political parties who are hesitant on the vaccines.
Also the phrase "anti-vaxxers" is an intentional conflagration of two separate groups: the original pre-covid19 anti-vaxxers and anti-COVID19-vaxxers.
>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 has tolerated these costs and benefited greatly.
I could see OSHA having a vaccine mandate that covers TDAP, MMR, polio and Hep B similar to the proposed covid mandate for large employers. But all of these are required to attend school and in other situations, so it isn't needed.
>What about drinking and smoking?
Drunk driving is a crime. Society doesn't tolerate it. We generally limit second hand smoke, banning smoking in restaurants and many other indoor buildings. Requiring vaccination to prevent the spread of infectious disease is analogous.
> 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.
In someplace like Texas drunk driving is only a crime in limited circumstances, like driving in public. You could go to somewhere private, like an employer's private gated parking lot that is accessible to 100 employees but not the public, and you could not get a DUI. By the same token that it would be tyrannical for drunk driving to be a crime on private area of private property, it is quite tyrannical to enforce covid vaccines on facilities with 100 employees voluntarily engaging in employment on private property.
Sure, you should be able to take the risk (if an adult and mentally competent, and maybe also fully informed). It's a free country (or so they claim).
But when your choices rack up huge medical bills that the rest of us have to pay, then your freedom to do what you want collides with our freedom to not have to pay for it. If you're free to spend my money, then I'm less free.
But that isn't absolute, either. We let people drive, and emit carbon dioxide, and play loud music, all of which impose negative externalities on others. We even let people be obese and smoke, which impose financial costs on the rest of us. (And yet, there's been a massive anti-smoking campaign over the last 10 or so years...)
Societal costs is a slippery slope, or something like it. As a society, we're trying to find a place to stand on it that isn't "no healthcare for you because you make stupid choices", and also isn't "here's the public's checkbook for you to make full use of to try to undo the consequences of your bad choices". There are no simple answers. (And it's not just Covid.)
There are societal costs for obesity as well, but they aren’t socialized early enough in the USA, and their increased cost burden on Medicare is paired with a decrease cost burden on social security.
Not that it’s an excuse (we should mandate vaccines and also deal with obesity on a societal level, both are good, one is more urgent than the other).
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.
> teenagers are more likely to be hospitalised for a side effect of the vax than they are to be hospitalised for covid
You're omitting a very important fact. The risk of hospitaliztion listed in the article is not based on the percentage of teenagers who had COVID; it is based on the percentage who might get COVID over the next 120 days. That's a very different number.
If things continue as they are, then almost everyone will either get COVID or get vaccinated (or both). It only makes sense to compare the risks based on actually getting COVID, vs. getting vaccinated.
I‘m not anti-vax, got vaccinated twice but I also have a health condition that was made worse by the second round and it took me 3 months to get back where I was. At times I was thinking checking myself into hospital to get support dealing with the fallout. Talking to a specialist who sees lots of people like me (with not so standard immune systems) she confirmed that my experience was not uncommon at all.
Here in Germany we have digitally signed vax certificates & photo ids but still count a PCR positive proven infection confirmed by a doctor as equivalent.
I struggle to understand any concerns in the US - considering the general state of IDs and certificates - about treating one infection like one shot. It makes no medical and no proof sense. And however good and generally safe a shot is it is still a medical procedure and medical ethics apply.
The argument that one shot is enough sends the wrong message should be dwarfed by concerns what message is sent by ignoring globally recognized insights and medical ethics.
We could choose to not sell pure sugar as food in grocery stores, cigarettes, alcohol, or firearms for that matter in the first place...
Funny enough, during the initial/strictest lockdowns in Ontario Canada, the liquor stores were one of the only stores allowed to be open to the public.
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.
We are also lacking evidence for what happens after booster shots are given repeatedly. (Or even in the cohort that has been infected and double vaccinated.) We are participating in an open trial to find out. It's only rational to consider that there may be yet-unobserved risks.
Wasn’t that the whole point of Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch drive? And the conservatives who are largely against mandated vaccines today also declared that initiative as government going too far. People living in conservative states are also far more obese than liberal ones (California vs Texas, for example). Conservatives, at least, are being consistent.
The social costs of forgoing the vaccine are unique in that they arrive all at once. Smoking, drinking, obesity, etc. increase lifetime healthcare costs, but realize those costs over a long period of time. Hospitals are sized appropriately, more can be built if projections indicate more need, doctors can be trained, etc.
A policy that accepts infection-recovery as equivalent to vaccination unconditionally and removes most/all other restrictions could result in lots of those social costs over a very short period of time, much shorter than the timescale on which resources can adjust. So much so that resources become exhausted, and the costs compound from merely high to truly awful. Personal choice resulting in an impaired standard of care for unrelated people in need for unrelated reasons should probably be discouraged or proscribed.
Once the risk of resource exhaustion is eliminated, a policy that's less than a full-court press for vaccination might be reasonable. But that risk is primarily determined by the size of the covid-naive population, which can only be reduced by vaccination or infection...
> 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?
It has been debated to death and one of the thing we can't negotiate with is time so at some points some actions have to been taken, some things conceded. We can keep on debating the benefits of smoking and individual freedom but we as a society (our institutions) have decided that smoking or not wearing shoes inside restaurants is not allowed.
At some points our society decided that it wants everyone (let's put aside the special immunodeficient, babies, etc. cases) to be vaccinated.
Now why should I be obliged to risk my health by going to restaurants, social events or work where I am taking the risk to get covid because other people are fine with the risk (or are not fine but refuse to get the vaccines on the ground that it's not a health matter but a compliance to law matter for them. I know one) ? It's like smoking, don't blow it in my direction. Vaccines/pass/etc. are a necessity for the vast majority to enjoy life as it was, to get some freedom back.
People willing to participate in society without following the rules that society put in place to participate safely should not be allowed to join in without restrictions. It's my opinion, not a logical conclusion to any reasoning about our laws and how we behave as as specie/culture.
It's fine if they don't get the vaccines but it's not fine to put others at risk.
We can debate the fairness aspect of this decision or the framework in which freedom and liberties are defined and understood but at some points reality force us to take a stance.
There'll never be a perfect solution that reconcile everyone's visions of freedom.
With all that being said I strongly believe that keeping on debating publicly these aspects of the situation 24/7 is harming our recovery or transition to a better situation. These `debates` are just maintaining the illusion that options are still on the table, that we have the luxury to debate them, that somehow the longer we beat the same old dead horse maybe covid problems will magically disappear, that debating and coming to the same set of possible conclusions is somehow useful.
From risk management perspective obesity and pandemics have completely different risk characteristics. Pandemics are contagious and deaths can grow exponentially, leading to catastrophic outcomes. Obesity is constraint to individuals.
On the other hand. A vaccine that is not as rigorously tested as normal and is used on 80% of the population can also lead to catastrophic results. No one really knows the long term effects for sure. So I understand the paranoia on two sides.
You actually want to use as many different vaccines as possible so no single vaccine can exterminate your population. That’s why I belief natural immunity should be counted as a valid ‘vaccine’, if the science shows it offers similar protection.
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.)
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)
Do you really believe that mandating people do a difficult, time consuming task for years is reasonably equivalent to mandating them to get two shots, which take about 5 minutes each?
If no, then whatever the merits of your conclusion it certainly doesn't follow from the comparison made.
No, it takes no time to eat less (it takes less time in fact), or stand on a scale once a week. In the weeks between the two shots (are we ruling out boosters?), a person could easily have lost several pounds and didn't even have to step out of the house into the risky possibly covid-filled environment -- already a significant improvement and reduction on the stress of the healthcare system. So losing weight is actually much easier, less time consuming task than to get vaccinated.
If it’s as easy as you say to lose weight (and it must be very easy if, as you say, it’s easier than receiving a vaccine that a majority of US adults have received). Then tell me, why are so many people still obese?
I didn't say it was psychologically any easier than it is psychologically easy for someone who does not want to get a vaccine to be forced to take one.
But the mechanism is perfectly simple and easy, easier than going out to get vaccines.
So just mandate and force them not to eat as much, and ban them from civil society if they fail their weigh ins.
> I didn't say it was psychologically any easier than it is psychologically easy for someone who does not want to get a vaccine to be forced to take one.
You just blanket said it was 'easier'. You pick one definition when it suits you - it's textbook bad faith argumentation.
It was a response to the insinuation that the vaccine is blanket easier.
Mechanically, losing weight is strictly easier. Psychologically you really can't say one way or the other and thinking you know people's mindset to say one is easier than the other is bad faith argumentation.
So, whether or not one is easy. That's what it all hinges on? Very flimsy.
So it hinges on how different the psychological difficulties of accepting vaccination vs. "just eating less for years" are. Given how many vaccinations people already accept vs. other diseases, and the fact that any such irrational fears need to be surmounted just twice, as opposed to resisting (irrational) urges to eat every waking hour for years, it strikes me as being unlikely that even a serious fear of needles is even remotely as high a hurdle.
The thing is: people that are overweight but try to lose weight will nevertheless struggle. But certainly from how they talk people resisting vaccination are not trying to overcome their own limitations; i.e. the problems are not really comparable.
While there's a hypothetical world imaginable where the two would be equally difficult, it seems hell of a lot more plausible that the issue isn't a psychological hangup, it's conscious intent.
But if this is about people choosing to impose costs on others, then it's totally reasonable to force the issue or otherwise ensure that those making those choices bear the burden of the consequences - rather than innocent bystanders.
Insofar as people have real hangups, rather than making poor (but conscious) choices - sure, it sounds reasonable to help them - and that actually happens! People with fears of needles and the like can get extra help to get through the difficult (for them) ordeal, and perfectly fair.
Yes, this is entirely about people choosing to impinge on others, and I don't see how it's been established that a weight loss mandate is fundamentally different than a vaccine mandate, except in the handwaving around details that really don't seem to be central to the issue. And I think people are taking the idea of forced medical treatments far too lightly.
Any argumentation amounts to handwaving if you squint just right.
The argument brought forth by various people is clear: it's more difficult because it involves effort much more consistently, for a much longer period of time. You don't have to appreciate the argument; of course.
As to objecting to forced medical treatments: while that discussion is relevant to the appropriateness of an (almost) mandated vaccination campaign; it's not related to how difficult it is to diet vs. be vaccinated. The fact that you bring it up makes it look like you've made up your mind on vaccine mandates and aren't considering various arguments on their merits to support a conclusion on mandates but rather the reverse: that you're picking and choosing arguments based on whether or not they support your pre-conceived notion.
Now, that doesn't really bother me, but it does make me curious: why do you oppose vaccine mandates? And why this mandate but not others we've had for decades?
I oppose forced medical procedures as a default position because it represents the ultimate violation of a person by the state, and has had a long and dark history of abuse and atrocities.
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.
That's ridiculous. Hospitals fill up on a regular basis, now and before Covid. They like to keep as close to capacity as they can - $$. If we have more need for beds, we build more beds. We don't take away personal freedom.
It’s a fact that before Covid we didn’t have a crisis for lack of beds (where I live) and after Covid we do. What hospitals like to do is irrelevant, I’m talking about reality
Where I live (Portugal) there is an ICU/beds crisis every single year due to respiratory diseases such as flu, pneumonia, etc. It even makes the news with patients in lying in corridors and such. This year it wasn't different at all.
If you care about healthcare costs, think about all those antivaxx idiots who end up on oxygen and ventilator before finally kicking the bucket. Way more money than obesity!
It is a slippery slope fallacy. You only have to look back through the history of vaccines and see. We have had vaccine mandates before and guess what? No dictatorship installed. It's easy to point at democracies all over the world. Mandated vaccinations never led to "okay now do this ______ to improve your health or else" . Also no one says bring in the police, just make it so that if you want a job then get the vax or bring in a reason from your doctor that says you can't take it because of some medical condition. Simple.
> Should we tell people to get their BMI under 25 too?
Overweight people can't transmit their overweightness to me through a virus or bacterium that they breathe into the air.
If they could, then yeah, we'd probably have some kind of legal mandate on it. Just like we have a bunch of restrictions on smoking now, because indeed, that's something that you push into the air.
The general rule is that your rights stop where others begin. Most issues of health are purely personal, but infectious diseases are not. Because they're infectious.
That's true, and certainly I'm in favor of national policies to encourage people to be healthy and fit.
That said, getting vaccinated is about a thousand times easier than staying in shape. It's free and quick to get over with, whereas fitness requires sustained effort indefinitely. It's reasonable to treat people's choice to refuse something easy different from people either refusing or struggling with something difficult.
The other important distinction is that we're not gonna suddenly have a shock of people coming down with obesity and flash flooding the hospitals. The country getting bigger is not a good thing, but as a gradual thing it can be managed much more easily.
I don't think it's whether the beds are filled up, I sure many injuries are carelessness, it's how easy is it to avoid it.
Losing weight is insanely hard getting a shot or two is easy. In fact if you had some kid who was speeding, got into a crash, and is now taking up a bed I'd argue that self control for young adults in related to reckless behavior is much more difficult to stop than not getting a vaccine.
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.
it's not clear that people who smoke, eat, and/or overeat actually consume more healthcare over a lifetime. most people incur the majority of their healthcare expenses as they slowly die over the last several years of their life. the last few years just come sooner for unhealthy people.
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.
And your chance of catching COVID from an unvaccinated person is, apparently (no real studies to prove or disprove yet that I know of) not very different from a vaccinated person.
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.
Your drinking is regulated. When you step into a car drunk, you are putting others at risk and it stops being your problem and starts being society's problem.
The same is true here. You are stepping into society on a state of health that presents risks to everyone around you.
> 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..).
You are the one making this claim. Back it up with some evidence.
From the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report[1], March 12, 2021 (though I don't know if the CDC counts as a politically slanted source for you or not):
> Obesity increases the risk for severe COVID-19–associated illness.
> What is added by this report?
> Among 148,494 U.S. adults with COVID-19, a nonlinear relationship was found between body mass index (BMI) and COVID-19 severity, with lowest risks at BMIs near the threshold between healthy weight and overweight in most instances, then increasing with higher BMI. Overweight and obesity were risk factors for invasive mechanical ventilation. Obesity was a risk factor for hospitalization and death, particularly among adults aged <65 years.
That's just from the summary, there are many more details based on publicly available data and I'd suggest you read the full report. It's not the only one out there on this subject, not by a long chalk.
---
In the U.S. Almost 3 in 4 U.S. adults is overweight or obese. Nearly half of people have prediabetes or diabetes.
---
So basically, it's easy to say that COVID would be prevented IF those people didn't have those conditions... but those people are there, they are actually majority of your adult population. So we have to deal with that.
From the foreword to the World Obesity report, COVID-19 and Obesity: The 2021 Atlas [1]:
> As we show in this report, increased bodyweight is the second greatest predictor of hospitalisation and a high risk of death for people suffering from COVID-19. Only old age rates as a higher risk factor.
> Reducing one major risk factor, overweight, would have resulted in far less stress on health services and reduced the need to protect those services from being overwhelmed.
> We show that in those countries where overweight affects only a minority of the adult population, the rates of death from COVID-19 are typically less than one tenth the levels found in countries where overweight affects the majority of adults.
> We also show that the drivers of overweight – especially high levels of consumption of processed foods – are associated with mortality from COVID-19.
The report itself goes into much greater detail, is very readable and interesting, and I highly recommend it.
Well if you look at smoking, we did quite similar things. We let people smoke, it's not forbidden, but don't try to smoke within a restaurant, an indoor space, a flight, etc. Why? Because that's where your secondary smoke can start impacting other people. But smoke at home as much as you want!
The argument is that we're not saving those other lives because we don't think we, as a society, have the right to make those people's choices for them. If your argument is that we do and we'll get to the overweight after we get to the antivaxxers just say it.
What country do you live in? Can you criticize the leader without going to jail? Do union representatives get murdered? Are police there to help you or to extort you?
I live in an actually authoritarian country. Only the most privileged people here don't get vaccinated, and among them it's a very small group, and mostly foreigners. No one is forced to, and no one is being forced to do anything else with their body.
I find this jump to tyranny argument disgusting. How on Earth would that work? In a country where one man can order the military to kill its own citizens there is no logical connection between vaccinations and smoking or obesity.
Americans (and a lot of other nationalities in the West, but mostly Americans) need to gain some perspective on the difference between tyranny and responsibility. I got vaccinated (with a Chinese vaccine, the horror!) because I consider it my duty to my family, my adopted country, and the world.
And guess what? Vaccination has been stupendously effective and our country is almost back to normal. And still the government is not locking up smokers or fat people.
>Americans (and a lot of other nationalities in the West, but mostly Americans) need to gain some perspective on the difference between tyranny and responsibility.
You're right, we do. I for one am happy to take an experimental RNA therapy in hopes a new and better cure can be developed from the results. But it has to be my choice. If the government has the right to shoot me with a novel serum for the sake of public health, what's to stop them from forcing me to expose myself to the virus itself in the next pandemic? Or shooting me with something more permanent if they decide my thought harbours the next dangerous viral pandemic?
You've my sympathies for the state of your country, but I honestly believe if more of your fellow citizens had drawn a bright line around abstract concepts like bodily autonomy, the authoritarians who took it over would have, at the very least, had a much harder time when they were starting out. That's its own kind of responsibility for those of us who don't live in a genuinely authoritarian country yet
I live in the US. Here the police do extort, union representatives have been murdered, and Ben Franklin's own grandson was jailed for criticizing our president adams. However we are certainly pretty low on the authoritarian spectrum, compared to many other countries.
Our own military has done quite horrible things to US citizens, including killing and jailing them in foreign detention centers.
Having spent time in "authoritarian countries", I can tell you even in those countries the common man can often criticize leaders in private, and as I foreigner I have had them confide in me about problems in their country. So it isn't some defense to say that because the common man can complain, it isn't authoritarian.
>And guess what? Vaccination has been stupendously effective and our country is almost back to normal. And still the government is not locking up smokers or fat people.
Despite the dooms-dayers on the internet and media, virtually the same has happened in the US. Nowadays almost all the deaths are the unvaccinated, which for the vast vast majority of them that was their own voluntary decision.
Do strikebreakers get murdered in your country? Because they did, regularly, in the West, and the rhetorical victory of the mafia/socialist-infused labor union movement was so complete, that the murdered were dehumanized as "scabs", and those who protected them, villainized as "union busters".
In the US, you cannot be anti-union and not be under threat of violence, whether it's Larry Elder's staff being assaulted (with hardly any media outcry):
People here love decrying "tyranny" in America and I will either laugh or cry when they their principles come up against the slightest of inconveniences. "Oh I can't go to the closest movie theater unless I get vaccinated and I have to go to the one in another town? Fine I guess I'll get tread on just this one time".
Unfortunately I can't delete my account so I'm just going to change my password without looking.
The government forcibly causing you to be fired from your job because you do not want your body forcefully penetrated against your will, is far from an inconvenience -- it's being shoved into poverty. There are individuals who could die of anaphylaxis or thrombosis from the vaccine if they are predisposed, and issuing mandates that fail to adequately screen for these predispositions is tyrannical.
It would be tyrannical even if the vaccine posed virtually zero health risks, and massively reduced the danger posed by the coronavirus (both of which are true).
Freedom of Association is not some fucking luxury that only spoiled AmeriDumb brats feel entitled to. It's a basic human right, and no government, anywhere, should ever violate the people's to it, as you advocate so naively, and that applies even if it's Joe Biden and the Holy Church of the Democratic Party that is endorsing it. That something so basic to a free world has become associated with being a Republican, and ridiculed, is tragic.
Saving lives cannot be the only consideration. There has to be limits on the power of the state to restrict and compel human behavior. We shouldn't live under medical tyranny.
How about the tyranny of being forced to pay taxes to blow up little kids in Afghanistan at $40k+ a bomb, or the tyranny of being forced under penalty of prison to pay for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons for the Taliban?
You don't think it's a little tyrannical that the tax man can say give us the money to blow up innocent little kids or I'm going to put you in a cage and take your own kids?
The market. I want to be free from it a la Freedom from the Market: America’s Fight to Liberate Itself from the Grip of the Invisible Hand by Mike Konczal[1]. As much as small government-types don't want to experience government in their everyday lives, I wish not not experience the market and its influence in my everyday life. As much as small government-types feel like they cannot escape government control, I feel like I cannot escape from market control.
>>The market. I want to be free from it a la Freedom from the Market:
So you want to be free from the state of others having the right to engage in mutually voluntary economic interactions? Their right to free assocation, is a tyrannical infringement of your right to dictate how they live? You can't just leave other people and form your own socialist commune somewhere?
I hear the term "gaslighting" used a lot nowadays. Its textbook definition is a specific form of interpersonal manipulation that occurred in a movie.
But I've never been able to connect the dots between the term's textbook definition, and the way that people actually use it. The effective definition seems to be: "expressing a different perspective."
The more general meaning is "making a person question their own sense of reality", without any specification on who is causing it.
It may or may not apply here, it depends on if the person being argued against already knows the larger context of 80% being normal. Everyone around them pretending that was never the case would be gaslighting. If they didn't know the larger context, it wouldn't be gaslighting, they're just ignorant of the context.
I find this interesting too, wondering what we called it 5+ years ago when I never heard anyone use the term. My wife is a few years younger and uses it. I think the only time I've used it in 40+ years is asking my wife what it means.
If an argument involves differing opinions, and participating in an argument is an attempt to persuade, is that manipulation?
Please avoid this style of interaction on HN — it's been my favorite place for 13 years because of what dang often refers to as the right attitude for discussion, "coming with curiosity."
We try to avoid accusatory language, especially accusing others of lying, not by omission, but by commission for the sole purpose of psychological abuse.
ICU capacity is generally bottlenecked by staffing and not by beds within suitable facilities. Basically there are required minimum ratios both legally and from a "we have to follow our on policy lest we create slam dunk lawsuits" point of view.
ICU staffing is less elastic than it's ever been because hospitals have cut staffing in response to people postponing elective care (where all the $$ is).
So ICU capacity as a percentage of full is as much a reflection of hospitals being tightwads as it is about Covid.
So the hospitals _are_ full but they're actually not full, their capacity is lower than last year?
Do you have any sources that can back that claim? It seems like a first order, simple, cause and effect thought, but it's unclear if this is anecdotal or there was a mass firing of nurses that's got under the radar. Let's signal boost it, if so.
He isn't serious about this. Guarantee he has a tweet or liked a tweet from 2020 raging about Cheeto Mussolini's White Supremacy Vax. It's just politics, and has been, since early 2020.
Let us put the gays to the camps, they impose external costs to the healthcare system too (but we won't, because they are a holy symbol for these people).
The thing that makes COVID dangerous is it's contagion not so much it's direct effects.
If COVID were not highly transmissible, then the relatively low risk of death would make it spooky, but it's not likely we'd even see it on the news.
It spreads to others quickly, and many people get very sick even if they don't die, hospitals fill up and it makes it very difficult to operate a healthcare facility.
Consider the 'no policy' effect: if we did nothing in response to COVID, it would spread like a fire, and without 'flattening the curve' - which we mostly have done, it would badly degrade our ability to function. People not able to tend for the older population because they themselves are sick, hospital staff going down, people in hospitals with other ailments going down etc..
So because of that it's a community problem.
If you want to think about it from an 'individual choice' perspective, consider what it would mean if you didn't take proper precautions while doing an activity, and ended up killing someone even by accident, that's manslaughter.
Given a rational population with some reasonable, conscientious objectors, we should be at about 95% vaccination, which is plenty. There's room for the serious objectors, the problem is there's way too much arbitrary and misinformed skepticism.
So it's not like wearing a seatbelt or eating too much carbs, which is mostly a personal issue.
> 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.
>Because it's a terrible policy prescription. If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk?
You're making a calculation not regarding health, but regarding public reaction. The problem is that the public health community sucks as far as making these calculations go; I don't think I need to list all the missteps here. IMHO, they know a lot about epidemiology, nothing about the public. So it's best to just make the right policy and not to try 4D chess with the public, that tends to backfire.
Just about anyone who has remained unvaccinated so far is already taking the risk you pointed out*. No point in spending resources chasing recovering patients we don't really have to vaccinate right now.
Now I don't agree with using antibody test results (these kits aren't standardized, so the relation between immunity and the results isn't clear), but an actual record of recovery should do. As the article notes, that's what many other countries in the world do.
* Excluding the very few people who actually have a good reason to not vaccinate due to certain extremely rare immune system ailments.
I don't disagree with any of that, but I would argue that public is _necessarily_ the intersection of individual health and public opinion. Policy makers can't just ignore public reception of/reaction to their prescriptions, since their goal is improvement the aggregation of outcomes across the entire population. Ignoring those second order effects is just as much a policy choice as trying to account for them, and not IMO a priori more likely to result in a better outcome. Might've in this case? We might've also got COVID parties.
> Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs.
That is effectively coercing people to undertake a medical procedure for their own or for society’s good. The ethics of doing that should be concerning, considering the social and ethnic makeup of the vaccine hesitant, and the checkered history of coercive medical intervention.
I’d much rather see the carrot used than the stick.
If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination.
It never took that large of a percentage of the population to get sick at once to overwhelm hospital capacity. Some tenths of a percent could probably it. 35% of the population vulnerable means there's plenty of room for that.
Enough people do OK w/o interventions that "social collapse" probably wasn't ever going to be the outcome (short of more virulent variants), it's just whether more or fewer of the people for whom treatment makes a difference between life and death (or other morbid outcomes) can get the treatment.
Also, there's probably an overlap between those who've received the vaccine and those who were taking other (ie distance-focused) related precautions pre-vaccine. And the possibility of burning out medical workers.
And in any case, things in some locations are worse now than they've been thus far:
"In Florida, a record number of people are dying from COVID-19—a seven-day average of 338 deaths, higher than at any other point in the pandemic."
Way more contagious variant that spreads rapidly among people w/o prior immunity? At least that's what is being theorized based on what happened in the UK (very sharp rise in cases, followed by pretty sharp drop-off, although that seemed to stabilize now).
Vaccines have several effects. Frequently they prevent you from getting serious symptoms (or any symptoms at all) after contact with the virus. Often they reduce the time span during which you are infectious, sometimes they mean you aren’t infectious at all after contact with the virus. Sometimes (very rarely) they have no effect at all.
Only that last point can reasonably be framed as the vaccine not being perfect.
Other than that the vaccines work astonishingly well, even with delta. Them still making it possible for you to be infectious after contact with the virus doesn’t really change that.
Switching to proportion is actually the wrong thing to do. If you look at the data from a place with high vaccination rates (such as King County), even low probability of a break through case among the vaccinated will translate to high proportion.
Edge case that demonstrates the fallacy of looking at the proportion is: let's say you have 100 people, 90 of them vaccinated, 10 not vaccinated. Let's then say that vaccinated have 10% of getting infected, and the unvaccinated have 50% of getting infected. You'll then get 9 vaccinated people that got sick, + 5 unvaccinated people that got sick, for an almost 66% proportion! But that doesn't change the fact that as a vaccinated person, your chances of getting infected are 5x smaller compared to the unvaccinated.
In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
I can't speak for Texas but I had a case of appendicitis in the family last year and the main reason for delays wasn't the number of people in the hospital but the new procedures in place.
The hospital was nearly empty except for COVID patients and life threatning emergencies. We cancelled 1 million doctor appointments and 300k surgeries in 2020 (in a 10 million population).
That figure alone is mind-bending and it's odd so many people have difficulty ingesting it.
When you have a 'highly contagious disease that kills people with compromised immune systems' (aka the sick and recovering, aka most people in hospitals) - the healthcare system is going to be materially degraded.
Each one of those 300 000 surgeries has an impact on someone's life that's not accounted for in the cost of COVID. And that's only for 10M people, it'd be almost 12M surgeries for the US overall if that ratio held.
And that's only one of the many disruptions.
After all of this has happened, it's really odd to see so many who can't seem to internalize the scope of all of this.
Arguably society is in the process of crumbling now. Jan 6th was part of that, as were the BLM protests, the anti-vax protests, the contentious school-board meetings, the constant tug-of-war between Federal/state/local/individual authorities, high inflation, supply shortages, people refusing to go back to work, etc.
The tug-of-war between different levels of government is healthy. We should be worried when people stop tugging because they are afraid.
The Federal Reserve System and the US Government can bring inflation down to acceptable levels. They will do it after the pandemic. Supply shortages are to be expected given the ongoing disruption to workforces around the world.
Some protests produce important progress for society. I think that most of the BLM protests did that.
USA is handling the pandemic quite well. Given the country's diversity and massive economic inequality, things worked out better than I expected. Most at-risk folks got vaccinated before the Delta variant hit.
The only troubling development is that a large portion of the U.S. population (including some of my family members) showed that they believe that democracy is not important for our country. Specifically, they continue to support politicians who acted against U.S. democracy. I think that most of these people are simply gullible. Many of them are recently-retired and increased their consumption of media. The media companies deftly manipulate them by triggering fear and turning it to anger. Fortunately, these folks still believe that courts are important and they trust the military. They vote, but don't fight. Things will calm down over the next 10 years as the population-age curve flattens.
Therefore, society is not crumbling. Laws can and will be changed. Society will progress. USA and our entire species have a bright future.
The only troubling development is that a large portion of the U.S. population (including some of my family members) showed that they believe that democracy is not important for our country.
Can you clarify who and what? My most recent memory of tyranny-esque statements was the President of "the free world" dismissing freedom.
Note: I'm not taking political sides. I don't trust either color. But this idea that it's the Reds who are naive is, in the context of the current admin, biased and unfair.
147 US Senators and Representatives voted to throw out votes for US President from two states [0, 1]. 8 senators and 59 representatives lied to congress in writing [2]. The outgoing president lied to everyone saying that the election was stolen.
> I don't trust either color. But this idea that it's the Reds who are naive is, in the context of the current admin, biased and unfair.
My idea is based on my experiences with some of my "red" relatives. Examples:
1. One elderly relative refused the covid vaccine. The reasons they told me include: fear of side-effects, anger about "they're requiring vaccination for everything", and an intention to take hydroxycholorquine and ivermectin as treatments if they become infected. They also claimed that their doctor told them to wait on getting the vaccine "until we have more data on its safety". (Their doctor did not tell them this.)
2. Another elderly relative watches Fox News every day. Half a year after the election, they believed that the outgoing President won re-election and will take office soon.
3. A middle-aged relative believed that masks do not reduce covid transmission. I anticipated the December wave [3] and sent them masks to use during their Thanksgiving holiday travel. They did not use the masks. A few weeks later, their entire family got covid. They all recovered.
Again. You're only showing half the story. For example, where is the link to the Snowden revelations?
The red v blue paradigm is bogus. It's dated. It's a ruse. The Powerful v the powerless is far more accurate.
Just days ago - well timed just prior to 9/11 - the Leader of The Free World announced that freedom was irrelevant. And all the watchers of CNN and MSNBC were silent.
Please don't confuse megalomaniac with tyrant. They are not synonyms. We are every closer to The State being even more powerful. Politeness and narrative doesn't make actions any less acceptable.
I have to confess I was never seriously worried that Viking Hat Man was going to overthrow the government and declare himself Shaman-in-Chief, even while I watched that shocking footage live.
But I do think it’s quite possible that Pence would have been killed. Or that we would have a (however minor) constitutional crisis if congress certified an election contrary to the states under duress
Or just think of what would have happened if those quick thinking staffers didn't grab the Electoral College ballots as Congress ran for their lives to the shelter.
It only starts as a 'minor' constitutional crisis.
Trump can take to the streets and declare himself president for the next term because the election results were not validated.
He can challenge the 'never used' legal procedures in court and of course have his lawyers lie about it in public.
They could fire up enough people and get enough momentum so that a few Republicans could be pressured to not vote to validate the election results.
If he refused to physically leave the White House - who would make him leave? Imagine if he invited his supporters to 'come to Washington to Defend the President' and they set up camp by the thousands around the WH. And they'd be armed. Is the National Guard going to start shooting? The longer Trump stays there, the more entrenched his legitimacy.
Especially if there is violence, it'd really flare tensions.
If people believe that the election was stolen, they'd also be hard pressed to be told what the actual, legal procedures are for dealing with a failed vote validation, and so it would be a matter of populism as much as legality.
That's how coups happen: enough political, populist, physical force to carry the momentum beyond established legal norms.
There's no nice way to say this, but you watch too much TV. If you want to know how coup d'etat actually works Luttwak wrote a nice handbook[1]. Needless to say none of those conditions held on January 6th 2021.
There's no nice way to say this, but the implied definition of a coup from the reference you gave (i.e. generals take over the capitol) is only a very specific form of a coup, and to suggest that political manoeuvring and populist tactics don't form the basis of a coup, is completely wrong.
Mussolini's coup, 'March On Rome' [1] is a good reference, but there are plenty of historical examples.
Needless to say, the conditions on Jan 6. parallel key elements many historical coups.
" The highest-ranking U.S. officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, and other top military leaders made informal plans to stop a coup by former President Donald Trump and his allies in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election," [2]
(there are many sources for this).
So first, you're at odds with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who likely has an inkling of what was a 'coup' is.
Fabricating a constitutional crisis and fomenting mass populist furor is definitely a path to a coup, which he was obviously pursuing.
The reason that the VP et. al. reconvened immediately after the Jan 6 riots, directly in the 'still dangerous' aftermath - was because they wanted to make sure that the proceedings were as legitimate as possible, with little deviation from historic and traditional norms thereby minimizing the ability of the former President to create false narrative about it, and reducing his ability to sneak procedural and legal barbs into the process, which is defined by some really vague old laws and is established by tradition and precedent as much as anything.
Here are some good historical references, they make for good comparisons [3][4].
I think the chances of him fully taking over were small, but the chances of him mangling up processes and creating a kind of an oddball legal situation which would take many months to resolve while his supporters increased their level of agitation (we saw millions in the streets for BLM, no reason to believe his supporters mightn't have done the same) as a very real possibility.
"If hospitals didn’t overflow and society didn’t crumble for most of 2020 (when there was 0% vaccination), it’s odd to argue that it will now that there is 65% vaccination."
2020 was the worst economic catastrophe in a century.
The US Fed printed money in terms it has never before, it's balance sheet has been massively inflated.
Government debt exploded to WW2 levels.
10's of millions were unemployed.
Most Healthcare systems had to adjust to delay and defer elective procedures.
Millions of restaurants and other businesses closed, never to re-open.
All of these measures were taken precisely because there were 0% vaccinated.
The US/World basically couldn't handle another year of those restrictions, it would probably break the economy and cause a lot of harm.
It's not going to be possible to fully re-open until COVID subsides (esp. Delta), vaccinates will be a primary driver of that.
The much larger problem is that our medical system isn't designed to handle any kind of case surge at all, because, for cost efficiency reasons, it purposely wants to operate at 80-90% capacity. Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points.
People should be skeptical that hospitals almost never provide thorough or accurate information about their true capacity, constraints, and current cases broken down by primary causes. But at the end of the day, one's views on the situation seem to primarily depend on political identity and whether one blindly trusts the chronically dishonest mainstream media.
> Instead of us focusing on how we can improve our hospital systems for future pandemics, we vilify the unvaccinated for political points.
Because globally, yes, they are the cause.
Even in countries where hospitals don't run close to max capacity at all times in order to maximize profits, hospitals have been filling up with unvaccinated patients. Japanese hospitals in major cities haven't been able to take in new patients, and those waves of patients are unvaccinated.
Although in Japan's case, the problem is there simply aren't enough vaccines here to meet demand. America's problem is there's an overabundance of vaccines but people are going out of their way to get sick, choosing to overwhelm hospitals, and then dying as an act of rebellion for facebook political points.
No, they are not the cause. The vaccinated still spread the virus and could cause it to mutate all the same as the unvaccinated.
Also, over 100 million Americans have past covid. [0] And we know that past covid gives antibodies which are superior. [1][2] And the hospitalization situation is overblown. [3]
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.
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.
In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
It's entirely possible that media-induced panic is sending people to hospitals over a sniffle, being that half of those hospitalized in 2021 so far may have been admitted for non-covid related reasons or only have mild / asymptomatic covid and still been included in the count.
So stop being so interested in finding a scapegoat to blame, because as you can see from other commentary here it'll lead to dehumanization and the creation of a two-tiered society. Which is dangerous.
Your just-so story does not match the facts [0] and your tendency here and below to spray-and-pray with external links does not support your position as the other commenters have already shown. People showing up at the ER with the sniffles due to media hysteria (as you suggest) do not, in fact, translate into full ICUs. ERs have triage procedures and examination protocols which keep the trivial cases out of the ICU beds.
People are already unable to get emergency care in a timely manner due to the problem of unvaccinated people developing symptoms they statistically would not experience if they were vaccinated. [1] This is really happening. Meanwhile, you are arguing in the realm of hypotheticals, using phrases such as "could cause" and "may have been".
Your goal to prevent a two-tiered society is admirable, but "the ends do not justify the means" of spreading misinformation by summarizing only bias-affirming portions of the articles & studies you cite. The simplest of natural search phrases on the topic such as "ICU COVID-19 unvaccinated" returns results which directly contradict your position (without the hypothetical contingencies) such as this one. [2]
Yes, the vaccinated still get covid. But they're not being hospitalized in significant numbers. The issue is hospitalization. Hospitals have indeed been overwhelmed[1] and considerable numbers of people have been dying at home, many in their 20s and 30s, with covid because hospitals simply can't take them in. Natural immunity comes as a result of being infected, which brings a huge risk of hospitalization and death.
As mentioned elsewhere, pushing natural immunity as the solution is as dumb as chicken pox parties that misinformed people of previous decades used to have. It was unnecessarily dangerous. Yes, people who push that should be pushed out of the discussion. Give them an inch and they'll eat away your country from the inside out. There's a reason the US is such a massive disaster with tremendous deaths and growing (but primarily in select states, and primarily states that have opposition to vaccines for political reasons), while other countries that embraced vaccines are finally getting things under control.
Just a few weeks ago, Japan was approaching national collapse of its medical system. Vaccines have thankfully managed to catch up to and exceed the US vaccination rate and things are starting to get back under control.
The reason things are getting better is because nobody is waiting for 100 million people to get infected. Everyone, even past infectees, is getting vaccinated as a community effort.
> while other countries that embraced vaccines are finally getting things under control.
Are you sure? UK is 89% single dose and more than 80% double dosed but things don't look under control there. Maybe you consider 1,000 hospital admissions per day and rising "under control"?
Given the fact that we have effectively eliminated all other forms of controlling the spread so that BoJo can go around an pat himself on the back, yes this is about as 'under control' as is possible in these circumstances. While the rate of hospitalization is up, deaths are rising quite slowly; we currently have 50% of the case rate from Jan 2021 but only 10% of the death rate.
Fair enough. To be clear, I agree with what UK is doing by opening up and removing vaccine passports, regardless of how much is considered in control or not.
Here in Australia, the lockdowns have gone too far and doing more harm than good. Children and teenagers stuck at home, not learning or socialising properly, is just the beginning of a long list of negative consequences.
The unknown degree to which long-term lockdown spawns further harm, is a politicised gamble. Every day that gamble becomes less worth it.
Yes, the vaccinated still get covid. But they're not being hospitalized in significant numbers. The issue is hospitalization. Hospitals have indeed been overwhelmed[1] and considerable numbers of people have been dying at home, many in their 20s and 30s, with covid because hospitals simply can't take them in. Natural immunity comes as a result of being infected, which brings a huge risk of hospitalization and death.
I can't speak for Japan. But I did read your link. It calls out that the private hospitals in Japan have always been very small, not prepared for infectious diseases. It also mentions that they're not required to take in patients, which could definitely cause a backlog in other parts of the system. Whereas in the USA, hospitals have to treat you. They'll definitely send you a massive bill, but they have to treat you if they have resources to do so.
So that may be the difference between why Japan got so slammed and why we, despite the commentary in the news, have not experienced actual collapse like we feared at first. Allow me to point you to this:
"In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease."
So it seems we have an overblown narrative in the media, at least as far as the nature and extent of the hospitalizations in America as a whole. Since we also have over 100 million Americans with past covid (and consequently excellent antibodies against covid including against delta), the narrative about healthcare system collapse seems to have been proven untrue. Source for how many people had covid here once again:
"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."
As mentioned elsewhere, pushing natural immunity as the solution is as dumb as chicken pox parties that misinformed people of previous decades used to have. It was unnecessarily dangerous. Yes, people who push that should be pushed out of the discussion. Give them an inch and they'll eat away your country from the inside out. There's a reason the US is such a massive disaster with tremendous deaths and growing (but primarily in select states, and primarily states that have opposition to vaccines for political reasons), while other countries that embraced vaccines are finally getting things under control.
This is nonsense. We already have over 100 million Americans with natural immunity regardless of whether someone likes it or not. It has already happened. And therefore, that solves the debate as far as how we should proceed with covid. It's a false dilemma to keep presenting it as vax or no vax. There is the third reality for a huge chunk of Americans, and that is the fact that for their own bodies, covid is no longer relevant.
We embraced vaccines here plenty. We simply have less of a culture of mandating things, and thankfully we haven't gone the way of Australia yet. You can see my comment history for examples of what's going on there, but I'll paste them here for your convenience. I don't consider this anywhere under control regardless of covid numbers, because the cost will be too high:
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:
“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:
"We already have over 100 million Americans with natural immunity"
This is rubbish, which you have repeated here several times now.
You cited one study, which is a modelling estimate, and ignore the much better studies which actually test for seropositivity and antibodies which show much lower rates of infection.
Your comments about Japan make no sense at all, as they have experienced COVID in a fundamentally different way than the US, initially with considerably lower rates of infection etc, like Australia, Taiwan and New Zealand, these 'Island States' have had better means for containment.
You've completely misrepresented the Atlantic article to suggest that somehow we didn't already know most cases of COVID are not severe - but worse that somehow they don't have COVID when we can and do provide fairly accurate testing for it.
There is no ambiguity about who was in 'all those hospital beds'. We were not guesstimating.
In a pandemic, there's a 100% chance that some people will show up at hospitals and have 'illness' but not the contagious infection causing the pandemic. This is not part of any kind of argument.
Hospitals in many regions are filling up with people who have COVID, that is the material fact here.
This is bad faith, misleading information and rhetoric.
The evidence you sited is a model/estimation and there are much better ways to estimate the prevalence of COVID, namely, literally doing antibody tests.
In Jan 20201, 18% of dialysis patients had COVID at some point - as established by actual testing, not predictive modelling - and they are a population much more directly vulnerable to it, so the actual rate in the healthy population will be considerably lower than that.n it's
The credibility of your thesis falls flat by first offering bad data, when you could have offered something better.
Second, we already know most of those presenting themselves at hospitals have a mild case of COVID. It's normal for people to be concerned, they are not taking up hospital beds. Your 'fact' is a 'non-fact' in this context.
Stop cherry-picking and misrepresenting facts, leaving out important details because it will lead to the 'literal dehumanizing' of people, i.e. their deaths.
For reference, there are no antibody studies which conclude that serpositivity for COVID natural infection is anywhere near 30% in 2020.
It was 3.5% in July 2020, and 20% in May 2021, from testing ~1.5 blood donations, which is roughly consistent with other studies, and parallels sensitivity in the UK.
They're filling up with unvaccinated people because people aren't sure how to be sick anymore. Stay at home and check your oxygen. If it dips to 95 or 94 then start thinking about going to Urgent Care. Not really ER. It's like when you have a baby they drill it in your head not to come to the hospital too soon. People still don't listen but yea. Where is that messaging for Covid?
The hospital morgues are filling up too. What is your advice for the over-capacity morgues? What conspiracy is creating the need for hasty mass graves? Can you think of how that's as common as something like pregnancy?
Literally just have a step back and look at yourself debating this. COVID deniers are literally quibbling over what is written on death certificates as people are dying en masse.
How much is "a bunch" of hospitals? How are you measuring "more strained" "than they ever were?" Because the evidence I found suggests the situation was overblown:
In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
And we have staff quitting over the mandates. Which is causing service shortages in NYC now.
An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to "pause" maternity services this month because some employees' refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has caused staffing shortages.
Alabama: "On Wednesday [Sept 8], Alabama's hospitals had 2,724 people with COVID-19, according to the Alabama Hospital Association. There were 68 more patients than available ICU beds in the state that day." [2]
Illinois: "Herrmann told the radio station that the majority of those critical COVID-19 patients are unvaccinated, and said the effect on staffed ICU beds is negatively impacting other patients who need critical care." [4]
In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease.
I remember 2020. It was a brutal and frightening year for everyone because we had never experienced this before. Hospitals that were not equipped for any serious wave of a more infectious respiratory virus got slammed. I think they did the right thing to send refrigerator trucks as temporary morgues and scale up tent operations and even send in the USNS Comfort just in case. Hospitals got slammed for a variety of reason. Part of it was part poor planning, part new situation straining existing supply chains (which we're still reeling from), and part covid.
The evidence now, as of 2021 like in the article in the parent comment, suggests that half of the hospitalizations in 2021 were overblown though. I wonder what the media narrative about covid would be like if this information propagated throughout.
I had a friend deployed on the Comfort at the time and your understanding is completely wrong. The ship wasn't there to treat COVID cases (remember that it's an enclosed space with poor air ventilation).
And why bring it up? Do you really expect us to forget that hospitals were overrun with COVID and so many people are dying that morgues are overrun?
You're trying to make a completely dishonest argument in saying that hospitals aren't overrun when they most certainly are. We can't even handle all the dead bodies. IT'S A CALAMITY IN AND OF ITSELF THAT WE CAN'T HANDLE ALL THE DEAD BODIES.
It seems like a policy of forcing people with natural immunity to be vaccinated could have negative externalities if there are other countries in the world that don't have enough vaccines.
And it's also unethical to force it onto someone who has natural immunity, since their natural immunity is already on par or better than vaccination. So what's the point?
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 is essentially preventable, it's a huge misallocation of resources to let all the hospital fill up with people who chose not to prevent it while leaving other ER patients to their fate.
> 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 that solution didn't expose healthcare workers to unnecessary risks, you would still be exposing other populations to risk who cannot get the vaccine or for whom the vaccine wasn't effective.
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, given the tools people have at their disposal, to warrant authoritarian government or societal overreach. That unfortunately hasn't stopped the government, or it's political allies, from trying anyways. I firmly believe this overreach will backfire on the US democrat party and they will feel the backlash in the midterm elections of 2022.
I think I would much rather mildly inconvenience people and have my favorite political team’s score go down than the alternative of Italy-style medical system collapse with massive death totals.
> 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.
Vaccinated people can still get coronavirus variants, albeit with seemingly milder symptoms and at a lower rate. There is some evidence that they can still be transmissible as well.
More importantly, there are also whole categories of people who cannot get vaccinated or who are not allowed to get the second vaccine dose due to an allergic reaction to the first. My mother is in the second category.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/who-cant-have-covid-19-vac...
> 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.
Masks work in part by catching and redirecting particles that come out of your own mouth. I am not an epidemiologist and have limited understanding of the effect, but my limited understanding is that models that epidemiologist have used suggest that effect might be more important than the filtering effect of the mask itself given the other mucus membranes like the eyes or gaps in most masks. So your mask helps protect others as much as yourself if you are carrying the virus asymptomatically.
https://science.thewire.in/the-sciences/covid-19-pandemic-ma...
> I think I would much rather mildly inconvenience people and have my favorite political team’s score go down than the alternative of Italy-style medical system collapse with massive death totals.
That's a nice false dichotomy you have there. Florida's average death rates in the US despite having a highly vulnerable elderly population prove that.
Of course vaccinated people can still get COVID. Everyone knows that. Why repeat it? The point is that covid becomes a very low risk to the vaccinated. Once vaccinated, you are more likely to die of the flu than of covid.
Most theoretical mask studies were done when we thought COVID was primarily spread by droplets, not aerosols. To this day I haven't seen any study plausibly show that others' masks protect you as much as your own mask. I'd be happy to be proven wrong if there's any real scientific evidence out there.
I'm not sure I understand the Florida example. Deaths per Capita are currently spiking in Florida again and not in places with strong vaccination rates.
The reason I repeat the point about "breakthrough" infections is that vaccinations are not a cure all and we can't just leave everyone to personal responsibility on vaccination/no vaccinations.
Also, importantly, not everyone can get vaccinated, they are more likely to be infected by those unvaccinated and are affected by the unvaccinated's use of our scarce hospital resources.
Mask mandates and higher vaccination rates seem to result in lower infection rates in pretty much every empirical study I've seen. And in places where they are fought tooth and nail like Florida, people disproportionately tend to die.
I was literally in the military and we would train to meet body standards that were based on minimizing the long-term statistical risk of death. We also got vaccined for the same reason. I'm not sympathetic to your argument that a bunch of people should pointlessly die in your wasteland of misinformation so you might feel "free". We didn't say "comrade" so much too.
Okay, now factor in that breakthrough infections are more common in the elderly, can still kill (though rarely), and are more likely to happen the more COVID is circulating in the community, which is then a function of the vaccination rate. My vaccinated grandmother is being put at risk by unvaccinated folks in her town. There's no "independent" risk.
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 substantial margin? 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.
The various therapeutic treatments (monoclonal antibodies, convalescent plasma, remdesivir, etc.) are helpful, and need to be administered in a hospital setting (IVs, complications, etc.)
It's hard to isolate the personal risks (illness, long-term complication, death, cost) from the social risks (healthcare resource exhaustion, healthcare worker burden, socialized costs, increased transmission).
But assuming we could, how many people that choose to take the risk are _really_ prepared to accept the downside costs if their number comes up? How many would accept a reduced standard of care (or no care at all) as a risk they assumed? Or would there be much anger, regret, and gnashing of teeth?
Assuming the risk requires a degree of rationality that, while perhaps more common on this site, probably does not characterize the population that would choose to assume the risk...
It’s needs to be a step further though. This wing is for COVID patients who couldn’t be vaccinated for legitimate health risks or for the vaccinated who still get COVID. Anyone who willingly skips the vaccination should not be eligible for COVID ER beds.
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?
>What use is there to build systems of control that will turn into more surveillance and eventual enslavement?
After the seatbelt laws came in, I didn't wear my seat belt. Before I new it, I was arrested. They sent me to a prison work camp. I had to work 14 hours a day. I nearly died of starvation. (The food was crap, I couldn't keep it down.) Fortunately, a guard took pity on me, and I managed to escape. I'm safe now, with a new ID, good internet access, etc, which is how I'm able to share my story.
If only we hadn't put up with those darn seatbelt laws, maybe things wouldn't have turned out so badly.
Cute analogy but it's not an honest or accurate one. Look at what's happening in Australia as an example.
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:
“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:
Do you really want similar systems built everywhere? Do you really want to have to show a covid vaccine passport to go to the theater or the gym or the bar? What about those 100+ million Americans who have antibodies from past covid infection already?
Do you believe that there is a point at which we should raise the alarm about impending tyranny? Do you believe that there was ever a point in the last 4 years where we had a President who may have had ties to supremacist movements? Do you believe that there was ever in the last 4 years a legitimate risk of tyranny taking over the land when he was in office? When would you personally depart from your cute but ineffectual seatbelt example and take a good hard long objective look at the system being built? I don't trust these people. They want power and control.
Taking a medication as a condition of maintaining basic human rights, or merely existing is a long bridge to cross. This bears no equivalency to a seat belt.
We know the shots don’t prevent spread, nor prevent you from getting it, the only argument is it lessens severity of symptoms, yet many are dying after the shots anyways and being hospitalized.
So you are basically arguing they I need to take a medicine that supposedly reduces symptoms, although in practice it isn’t showing that effect, but carries other potential negative health effects unique to the shot itself.
A more analogous car argument is that I would be required by law to pick up random hitch hikers everyday and drive them to their destination as a condition of owning and driving a vehicle, especially if we are working off the public good argument. If I refuse, I lose the car. Most likely 98% of those hitch hikers won’t chop me up into little pieces in the middle of the desert, but there is always that one...
> We know the shots don’t prevent spread, nor prevent you from getting it, the only argument is it lessens severity of symptoms
That's just not true. The shots significantly decrease the chance that you'll get COVID. They also significantly decrease the chance that you'll spread COVID. This is most clear via the lower likelihood of infection. (You can't spread it if you don't have it.)
Sure, the shots are not 100% effective. They were never claimed to be. That doesn't mean they are not very effective. They are.
Pretty much all of public health is cost-benefit analysis.
Vaccines dramatically reduce the incidence and severity of disease, and therefore the spread. It would be nice if I could say ‘prevent’ instead of ‘reduce’ there, but this is the vaccine we have for the pandemic we’re facing. Vaccine complications are about 1e-5, COVID complications (conditional on infection) are like 1e-2. Excepting non-falsifiable mRNA concerns the balance seems firmly in favor of vaccines if we’re all going to be exposed eventually.
It’s fair to argue that individuals should be able to chose to forgo that benefit based on their own views; it’s not fair to argue that there’s no benefit.
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.
"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:
“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:
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.
Every time there is a pandemic, governments take extraordinary measures that people complain about. Many of them quite a bit harsher than any of the things you've described. Because pandemics are serious things that disrupt our normal ultra-social lives.
Let me say this. All of your spamming has not convinced me of your position. So, if you really wanted to, then perhaps you should reconsider your approach.
The upvotes I am getting tell me all I need to know, even if you yourself are not convinced. Nothing will convince some people even if it's staring them in the face, because they are uncomfortable. And we have been taught to be too comfortable.
It's the frog in the pot. We have never had the capabilities for mass surveillance and complete control over who participates in society, to the extent that we do now because of technology. Stalin would be salivating if he was still alive right now.
The data is on my side. The pandemic, while very serious, has touched over 100 million Americans directly (in the form of past covid) and I would still bet that the majority of those people would recoil in horror at what's going on in Australia or move away from NYC's "papers please" model if they had a choice.
Paranoid alarmism, as far as I am concerned. The real threat to our freedoms right now are demagogues trying to undermine our democracies.
Look, I can't speak for Australia. I just know Midnight Oil, and they had plenty of beef with Australia's government.
But the US can hardly even keep track of who has been vaccinated and who hasn't, who has had covid and who has not, who has died from covid, who has not. We are not on the cusp of some covid surveillance state. And requiring vaccination, even among those who have had the disease, is a defensible policy, not least because the extent of immunity to the virus depends on a number of factors (like how sick you got, how old you are, how long it has been since).
In my experience, most arguments about slippery-slopes to hell are just wrong. Probably because the slopes aren't that slippery, or the slope is so shallow you don't really know which way is down, or because predicting the future is actually really really hard.
In Australia the authoritarians are manufacturing consent using the usual suspect pollsters. They claim most Australians support this tyranny by quoting bullshit polls. Beware as your polls are just as rigged.
I know a lot of Australians and absolutely none of them are against the lockdowns. Many of them think the government should have gone further. And these are people who absolutely hate the current government and want labor in charge again.
Retrospective averages are used by guys like Nate to memory hole the fact that all the big name polls had Biden ahead by 10 points.
It is only the big name polls that are quoted by the media during the actual campaign.
Yeah, he won by 5% not 10% points. But if you look at what happened, is that they were pretty accurate about Biden's percent, and underestimated Trump's (e.g. undecideds or shy voters broke for Trump). And again, if your margin of error is 3 points, then a 55-45 could be a 52-48, a 10 pt difference shrinks to a 4 pt difference.
In any case, even if the polls were systematically off, and they may have been, that doesn't justify calling them all propaganda, or bs. It isn't even evidence of it. Because, as it happens, polling people is effing hard.
The fact that ALL the 'major' polls were heavily biased towards Biden, and Clinton before him, is clear evidence of corruption.
They are not all bullshit.
In 2016 the LA Times/usc poll was honest and accurate, so it was shut down for the 2020 election.
No, it is not "clear evidence of corruption". Not even close. It's evidence of being wrong. And no, not all the major polls overly favored Biden. At this point, you're just making crap up.
Look, there clearly are some "bullshit polls", and there are partisan polls paid for by candidates which tend to be favorable to them, and there a good polls with consistent bias, a kind of "house" effect as a consequence of their sampling methodology, etc.
That's why Nate Silver does averages of polls, btw, and weights polls in the average by their accuracy in previous elections.
It wasn't retrospective. It was a prediction, available on the day of the election, and before. Basically, you are talking nonsense, rationalizing your priors.
Oh come on. Silver's polling averages, and his election predictions, were up a year before the election, and are still up for everyone to see. "Retrospective now" doesn't even make sense. Keeping up his model and his averages on the web isn't "memory holing" anything, it's being radically honest. You can still see his 2016 predictions too!
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 them superior.
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.
> 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...
Overall, 246 case-patients met eligibility requirements and were successfully matched by age, sex, and date of initial infection with 492 controls.
The Israeli study I linked:
Overall, 673,676 MHS members 16 years and older were eligible for the study group of fully vaccinated SARS-CoV-2-naïve individuals; 62,883 were eligible for the study group of unvaccinated previously infected individuals and 42,099 individuals were eligible for the study group of previously infected and single-dose vaccinees.
I'm going to go ahead and trust the more recent Israeli study which has much more data to go off of. Also note that in either case, the narrative is still that past infection provides protection. If it's much better, almost as good, or as good as the vaccines is all fine by me. It's still excellent protection and on par with what people were rolling with maskless just a few weeks ago.
Time to evolve the narrative in the media about "vax vs unvax"
This is a case of the CDC either lying or at least being deliberately misleading with their headline: the study in question shows that amongst people previously infected with COVID those who were also vaccinated were less likely to be hospitalized.
“In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus.”
If you read it carefully, that CDC study compares vaccinated vs unvaccinated in the population of people that recovered from covid.
It does not compare vaccinated (and not recovered) vs recovered (but not vaccinated), but I have seen many people misinterpret it in this way including journalists.
I think this sort of misdirection is by design with how often I see it happening, the right does not have a monopoly on spreading misinformation.
The "we are figuring this out as we go" factor for this is massive, something that's rarely acknowledged yet a big factor for the more rational opposition to "just vaccinate everybody all the time".
What if this was worse? That's some 25 million people in the USA alone. What if it was much worse and what if we don't know the full story?
We must be allowed to figure everything out as we go, but for some reason the Democrats in power want to divide us along vaxed vs unvaxed lines. Why? That's a false dilemma considering the 100+ million who have excellent antibodies from natural immunity already.
It's weird how under-reported any findings on side-effects are, another one to watch out for is hepatitis infections [0]
I also don't think it's particularly useful to frame this into a US domestic "the democrats in power!" narrative.
The issue is extremely polarized all over the world, rarely any place allows for any nuance outside of the imagined "anybody who doesn't want to get vaccinated fears Bill Gates 5G" two camps.
Trying to make this into a "Them Democrats are to blame!" is just more of that partisan kindergarten in a different flavor.
I agree that it is weird how under-reported findings on side effects are. The narrative has been such that it's not considered okay or safe to discuss those or to report on those as openly. And treating the established narrative as sacrosanct.
I hear you and accept your point about mentioning a political party. If you are sensitive to that type of thing, it is my hope that you will also be sensitive to the "vax vs unvax" and "pandemic of the unvaccinated" false dilemmas being painted in the media.
That's a fallacious appeal to authority and also an appeal to the volume of supposed authorities. It doesn't matter how smart they are. That doesn't change that we do see tyranny emerging, notably in places like Australia. And even NYC where they are now piloting "papers please" as a model. I've shared these before, but here is what is happening in Australia:
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:
“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:
Do you want things like these being built everywhere? Does Australia not have "many, very smart people working on this" and taking it seriously? Is this a debate to entertain, or an existential threat to your and my free way of life? I'm not here to debate anything. I have lots of work to do. I'm here to raise the alarm far outside my comfort zone because barely anyone else is. This is a blatant power grab. Wake up.
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.
Over 100 million Americans already fall into this bucket of having these antibodies. Why should they care about something that doesn't matter? Reinfection is very rare - so these people are not a risk to anyone.
If natural immunity is acceptable, what proportion of the unvaccinated-uninfected population will just take the risk? Half? More?
That's on them. It's not your job to police their choices, and especially not to impose "papers please" on everyone else. No thanks.
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.
Quote from article: "In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease."
So we have a situation where media-induced fear is causing people to panic until they rush to the hospital. It's certainly possible given that half of the hospitalizations are...not even meaningfully hospitalizations if they were mild or asymptomatic. What does this do to your narrative then, about how dangerous this is and how many millions will "continue to" take the risk?
Accepting only vaccination as evidence of protection reduces the size of that risk-taking population, and the concomitant social costs.
Nonsense. Over 100 million Americans had covid already.[0] We now know that antibodies from past infection are superior to vaccination.[1] [2] So why would you make this arbitrary demand for vaccination as the proof, when the antibodies are what count?
"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."
"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. "
Should there be a third policy option - accepting test-verified infection and recovery as of _now_ as evidence of protection, but discounting future recoveries? Based on the observational studies cited all over this thread , probably yes. Seems like associated costs would be higher though, and the only benefit would be less gnashing of teeth here and elsewhere, so its understandable the CDC isn't rushing to implement it.
The answer is not "probably yes." The answer is a resounding yes, but the answer is also that no proof should be needed unless you work in a hospital where vaccination requirements already existed. We don't need a "papers please" society. If you're concerned for your health, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. Wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. That's how simple this is. There's no need for building systems of control that will turn into systems of enslavement.
Should those people just be allowed to assume the risk? Not while the costs are predominantly social. Insurance (or tax-payers) pay the financial costs, healthcare workers bear the burden of treating a preventable illness, and we all assume the risk that healthcare resources will be stretched to the point of unavailability.
Meanwhile, you have a situation where healthcare resources are being intentionally fired or are quitting because of the idiotic mandates. [4]
"An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to "pause" maternity services this month because some employees' refusal to get vaccinated against Covid-19 has caused staffing shortages."
This is entirely a manufactured problem.
While risk-takers do pay into the same system, their premiums don't yet reflect the increased expected costs of their personal choice.
We've been hearing for YEARS about how bad insurance companies are. How they make record profits each and every year and still pass on higher premiums, higher deductibles, and shittier service to their customers. So why are people feigning concern for health insurance corporation bottom lines already? Wake up.
While ICUs often run close to or at capacity in one hospital, rarely do they run close at every hospital in a region, as is happening in the south and will happen elsewhere. While it would be nice if there were more doctors, nurses and facilities able to treat patients, we're at war with the army we've got.
"In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease."
The media induced panic that causes people to flood the hospitals when they get a sniffle, because of fear. The situation with hospitalizations appears to have been exaggerated.
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 we'd need at least 80% immunity. But even if we achieved 100% vaccination, it's not clear that current vaccines (or natural infection) can provide 80% immunity over the longer term.
So realistically, I suspect that COVID will simply become one of the risks of life. I fully expect that I will catch it multiple times in the decades to come. But I get an annual flu shot, and I'm willing to get an annual COVID booster if necessary.
And there's no guarantee that this will all blow over soon. The worst case historical coronavirus appears to have jumped to humans around 20,000 years ago, and it looks like it exerted heavy selective pressure over many generations. See https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/science/ancient-coronavir....
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.
Is there anywhere you could actually access any data that you can completely trust?
I too have a relative who regrets taking a vaccine, as she's been having suspicious long term symptoms until now - she took the vaccine in Spring. Nothing in the 43k Pfizer study would indicate that such symptoms could appear, and maybe it is a coincidence that those symptoms started appearing after the vaccine. And of course it is anecdotal, but still it makes me vary at least about the Pfizer study. Symptoms seem to be related to blood flow issues in the legs, and getting this tingling sensation. Since it has happened to a relative I trust and who's otherwise pro vax, I'm slightly inclined to also believe other anecdotal stories, but obviously I can't use that as an evidence.
>>Should those people just be allowed to assume the risk? Not while the costs are predominantly social.
Then eliminate socialized healthcare. Your imposition of socialized healthcare is now being used to rationalize imposition of forced injections. Government can have a healthcare system that is entirely opt-in, for both taxation, and coverage.
Or how about just deprioritize unvaccinated individuals with COVID when there is a shortage of ICU beds.
I actually looked in VAERS and did an export of the accessible data. Most of the numbers touted are generally around 10k, although VAERS underreporting is a well-known issue, and, VAERS data quality is suspect in the first place, by design.
That person is writing in a way that looks fact based but is not. As you noticed, some statements of what is supposed to be accepted as true are false.
For example, all the vaccines still protect extremely well against hospitalization and death EVEN with Delta. Which is what this whole discussion is about, why vaccines help to keep our hospitals open. So the fact that they would say that the vaccine isn't really helpful anymore because of delta is just purely false.
I think this whole “rah rah do it for the community” is the wrong message to send to the final group of the unvaccinated. The government needs to message on the benefit to the individual.
I can tell you that the ONLY reason I am vaccinated is because I want to maximize my chances of the negative consequences of Covid impact TO ME. I honestly don’t give two shits about anyone else outside my family. As some of you do gooders read this in horror, realize that among the general populace, most people’s motivation behind their decision to vaccinate is not that far from mine.
No one likes to admit it, but objectivism and what’s in it for me are a lot more prevalent than folks like to admit. If our government was smart, they’d realize that and shift the message accordingly.
Going to suggest that rather than mudslinging, you do the work of looking at VAERS [1] yourself
Alternatively, you could use VAERSanalysis [2], or Openvaers [3]
In this spirit of openness, here is also an NPR article [4] on VAERS data quality/verification issues, and how the data may not be considered high quality, that anti-vaxxers use it to spread disinformation. I'm adding that specifically because it is the contrary opinion about the quality of the data and I believe in an open debate. I am not an anti-vaxxer, being up on all my vaccines, and then some due to overseas work, along with one experimental vaccine, but not covid vaccinated yet.
The main point is "legitimate source for what?". A reporting system like VAERS errs widely on the side of overreporting and explicitly doesn't require any causality, so that its data can be mined for surprising patterns to investigate that might uncover a causal link we didn't know about.
Any "There's X VAERS reports of the vaccine causing Y" claims thus heavily misuse the data source, because that's not what it is capturing.
There is spurious data in VAERS, but the CDC has methods in place to filter those out in their research into adverse cardiac effects. Their numbers are in no way exaggerated.
... yes, as I said, the purpose is to inform further research based on it, because the reports showed a suspicious pattern. How is that relevant to the thread here with the "the vaccine killed 15000 people, because there is 15000 reports in VAERS" claim?
> I'm flagging this as dubious. Everything I've seen points to smaller viral load and shorter durations for breakthroughs.
You can flag something as dubious all you want, but you are missing the point, and seeking to redefine something to meet your objectives, rather than having a science based approach.
There are immunizing/sterilizing vaccines, and non-immunizing/non-sterilizing vaccines.
Covid vaccines, in their present 1st and 2nd generation versions are non-immunizing/non-sterilizing. You can still get covid, just your symptoms are likely to be less.
Here is an article on it, since you claimed my data was dubious. Therefore, I say your attack on my data is actually dubious.
Some researchers have already proposed that the evidence of human natural immunity provides data for future vaccines in future generations to target the Covid virii in other ways beyond the mere spike protein.
> Virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells are polyfunctional and maintained with an estimated half-life of 200 days. Interestingly, CD4+ T cell responses equally target several SARS-CoV-2 proteins, whereas the CD8+ T cell responses preferentially target the nucleoprotein, highlighting the potential importance of including the nucleoprotein in future vaccines. Taken together, these results suggest that broad and effective immunity may persist long-term in recovered COVID-19 patients.
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 transmission can happen from people who get COVID-19 after being vaccinated — for example, they may have high levels of virus for shorter periods of time,” says Prof. Walker.
In the big scheme of things, the issue is not point-in-time Sept 2021. The issue is the long term evolution of the virus. We know as a fact that the rise of Delta caught the vaccine program flatfooted and was the last nail in the coffin of the ZeroCovid idea. We have an unusual Summer-time epidemic spike. We've never deployed single-protein mRNA vaccines at scale, neither in animal nor in human populations. There are legitimate concerns (voiced even by Pfizer CEO) that the virus is likely (his word, not mine) to evade vaccine protection. At which point all the 'viral load is smaller / shorter for breakthroughs' logic goes out the window.
It gives me no pleasure to write the above. I secretly hope I'm wrong / under-informed. I wish that mRNA vaccines were a magic wand to wave covid away. But no amount of wishful thinking will make it so. I find the certitude of '(force) vaccinate everybody, is an absolute positive good in all possible scenarios' hard to square with the actual fragile situation we find ourselves in.
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.
Additionally, the only plausible way to do it would be to test for seroconversion. That's a blood draw, so it doesn't save anyone from a needle, and overall it's probably more work and more expensive than vaccination.
Given how simple the vaccine is there really should be a zero tolerance policy (barring a real medical reason). I think the president had the right idea with his mandate. To be a part of society those people can take one tiny shot (or two) .
And the government is ignoring the same science they are asking us to follow. It’s no wonder people are revolting. Although I am vaccinated I did take a antibody test before I did so and wouldn’t have if I had the natural antibodies. It’s almost the same lie they tell when they call this a vaccine- it’s really not. I really understand why people are pissed and I will fully support them in any way I can.
I feel like the entire comment thread after yours has gotten lost in hypothetical discussions about some ethical question about interventions that haven’t been shown to work. Not quite the usual dialog I expected here.
What the CDC recently said is that vaccination also reduces your chance of reinfection significantly, at near zero risk. So universal vaccination is a strictly dominant strategy for personal health, with or without any other interventions (diet, exercise, etc). Why wouldn’t a non-political organization recommend universal vaccination therefore (above age 12)? It makes for simple, cheap, and effective messaging.
If they said not to take a care of your health in some other equally proven way, then it would likely seem to be politically motivated and damage their trustworthiness. That probably has happened too (such as saying to mask outside, until they got more data), but we aren’t blindly trusting them in this, or anything.
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 deaths and outbreaks.
In a perfect world, everyone would understand that getting the vaccine is the appropriate choice of action and we could accept natural immunity from people who were infected before vaccines were available - but unfortunately we're forced into playing these weird games where authorities have to try to incentivize people who aren't behaving rationally - which in turn leads to further distrust from people on the fence.
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 it's freakin disastrous.
Long term plan in my mind was to get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing. We were almost there in late spring prior to delta variant showing up, but now the situation has changed and the percentage of the population that has to be immune to stop the virus has gotten a lot higher.
So now the long term plan is for the holdouts to either change their minds and get vaccinated (and many of them have), or for natural herd immunity to take over when there aren't enough people who have neither been infected or vaccinated for the virus to spread to. It seems like the current wave has probably hit a peak. No idea what happens next. New infections could dwindle away to almost nothing, or we might have another big wave. At this point anyone in the U.S. who wants the vaccine can get it. It's sad that over a thousand people a day are still dying of this, but those are the risks that people have for some reason chosen to take.
If we continue to have waves of new infections, I don't know what the long term strategy is. We could drop all restrictions and "let nature run its course". A substantial portion of vaccinated people are probably going to be on board with that as long as we don't have a new variant that the vaccines are ineffective against. We could keep rigid restrictions on masking, social distancing, and large gatherings. That's really disruptive though to schools and churches and a lot of businesses, not to mention taking a long term toll on mental health.
I do wish those in wealthier countries like the U.S. were more invested in getting vaccines to everyone that wants it, anywhere in the world. New variants can come from anywhere.
> Long term plan in my mind was to get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing. We were almost there in late spring prior to delta variant showing up
Was this your plan back in March 2020 or did it become your plan somewhere down the line? What I remember from March 2020 is that the plan was to "flatten the curve" with temporary restrictions. The possibility of a vaccine was theorized to be between 18 months away to possibly never.
My plan in March 2020 was to wait it out and do whatever I could not to get infected myself. I think at the time I said something to the effect of "I can't imagine this lockdown lasting less than six months." At first I think I expected most people to get it eventually, and the main concern was to keep the hospitals from being overwhelmed all at once. Then after awhile it became apparent that it could be kept under control or not depending on how well people adhered to social distancing and masking. The vaccines arrived, which were supposed to be the thing to end the pandemic. It almost worked.
Now we have Delta variant which is far more contagious. Looks like we may be over the hump in the current wave (speaking from a U.S. centric point of view). What happens next depends on whether we can achieve a level of immunity that prevents the virus from spreading.
> What happens next depends on whether we can achieve a level of immunity that prevents the virus from spreading.
Sir Andrew Pollard, the head of the Oxford Vaccine Group that developed the AZ vaccine, does not think this is possible because vaccinated people can still get and spread the virus.
> “The problem with this virus is [it is] not measles. If 95% of people were vaccinated against measles, the virus cannot transmit in the population,” he told the U.K.’s All-Party Parliamentary Group on the coronavirus.
> Pollard said that while Covid vaccines might slow the spread of the virus — because fully vaccinated but infected people appeared, in studies, to shed less virus, giving the virus less opportunity to spread — new variants were likely to emerge that would also spread.
> “I suspect that what the virus will throw up next is a variant which is perhaps even better at transmitting among vaccinated populations and so that’s even more of a reason not to be making a vaccine program around herd immunity.”
It is increasingly obvious that we are going to have to find ways to live with this virus. It will be (and basically already is) endemic. Hopefully over time it will become more and more like a cold but until then, aiming for the impossible is only going to make the situation worse because more and more people are seeing that the narrative and claims presented by politicians and technocrats don't add up.
Living with the virus means people getting vaccinated. We will continue to have mass death so long as there are segments of the population that are unvaccinated. Vaccines are still the answer.
people say that delta is more contagious but they don't provide hard data to support that. any calculation of r naught is synthetic and there has been little effort to share such models. also, the idea that every new infection is delta isnt based on any randomized testing of samples, but some outdated surveys in the past.
The virus is now endemic and can never be eradicated. The Delta variant is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect unvaccinated people. All of us can expect to be exposed occasionally no matter what we do.
In the US, adults who want to be vaccinated have been vaccinated. Children aren't at significant risk. So the best approach is to drop all restrictions and accept the risk.
1. Many diseases have been considered endemic but were eradicated. Don't be a doomer.
2. The whole schtick about anyone who wants to get the vaccine can get it, so it should be a personal choice makes this common but very much mistaken assumption that a vaccinated individual is safe from harm. It just isn't so. Your personal risk is not affected only by your acquired immunity, but the acquired immunity of everyone around you. Vaccines fundamentally require a communal, cooperative endeavor to succeed.
We eradicated smallpox and (almost) polio because we had highly sterilizing vaccines and no animal hosts. That situation doesn't obtain with SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccines are highly effective at preventing deaths and I do encourage vaccination, but vaccinated people can still catch and spread the virus. They are probably less contagious on average, but unfortunately that isn't enough to control community spread.
Delta variant has an R0 of about 7-8. Measles 12-18. And yet, measles is nearly eradicated in the US.
You are overstating the extent to which vaccinated individuals are likely to be infectious. But more importantly, you are ignoring the importance of the network effects involved.
For x to get to z through y, x has to infect y, and y has to infect z. If probability of infectious breaktrhough and a contact event is 20%, the probability of it getting to z from x, is .2^3 = 0.008. And yet, a 20% is really high-end estimate of that likelihood. You need to both have a breakthrough infection and be in the vicinity of others for potential transmission.
Two doses of the measles vaccine (MMR or MMRV) are highly sterilizing and 97% effective. That's far better than any COVID-19 vaccine, so measles isn't a valid comparison.
The thing about these results is that its mostly in people who show symptoms, and it isn't clear to me that symptomatic covid infections in vaccinated people are associated with similar viral loads as when asymptomatic.
I think this study tries to address this. But haven't had time to read through
> Eradication is the reduction of an infectious disease's prevalence in the global host population to zero.[1]
> Two infectious diseases have successfully been eradicated: smallpox in humans and rinderpest in ruminants.
There is exactly one disease that has been eradicated in humans: smallpox, which took somewhere between 19 years and 27 years depending on when you consider the eradication effort to have started in earnest. We've gotten close with polio (after 40 years) and guinea worm (37 years). There are also a bunch of other diseases on that list where elimination efforts are in progress, but have not yet been completed.
Regardless, "eliminate COVID", should we decide to go down that path, is going to be a multi-decade project at best. It's also likely to be much harder than eradicating smallpox given the asymptomatic transmission and animal reservoirs. It might still be worth doing, in the same way that our eradication effort for measles is worth doing, but it's not worth holding up anything important until the effort completes considering that "until the effort completes" is likely to be a couple generations at the earliest.
You're arguing semantics now. Measles is effectively eradicated. Sure, if we all stopped getting the vaccine, there would be outbreaks. The important thing is that it can be controlled to an extent that it no longer poses a substantial burden on people's lives --- and the reason it isn't eradicated is less than full vaccination.
The point I was responding to was this idea that we should just settle for covid being endemic. So I'm really not sure why you are going on at about semantics.
My understanding is that you are advocating for continuing to wear masks, restrict gatherings, and push for vaccination until COVID is eradicated or close to it, and are also under the impression that "until COVID is eradicated or close to it" could be a matter of just a few months if everyone would just work together.
My point is it will not be just a few months. It will be decades. Even in the case of measles, it took almost 10 years to get from 250,000 cases / year in the Americas to 100, and we're starting from a lot more than 250,000 cases a year in the Americas this time.
If the alternative is 10 or 20 more years of restrictions, I think "settle for covid being endemic for now, with vaccines available for anyone who wants them, and maybe push eradication at a later date when most everyone has either natural or vaccine immunity and that job is easier" is in fact a better solution.
Are you ready for another 5 years of partial restrictions over a virus that's as deadly as the flu (after vaccination) for the chance we develop a vaccine that's even more effective than what we have today?
Bingo. It's wild to me that with these simple and undisputed facts, so many people are still unwilling to operate within that reality.
We have these "rules" to play by: Vaccines don't stop transmission, vaccines majorly help prevent major complications, kids at zero risk, overwhelming majority of adults at zero risk, unvaccinated people are unlikely to convert for whatever reason (political, fear, friends won't, etc), and natural immunity after infection is very helpful.
If given these "rules" - aka reality - what would you do? The dumb people are like, "Durrr, we need more vaccinated people, those evil bastards they are" even though it blatantly ignores reality and will therefore accomplish nothing, besides being an illogical fear since they're protected anyhow. But if you just accept this is how reality is, there's no other logical option but to drop restrictions and move on. It's a relief that at least a couple countries in Scandinavia are normal enough to recognize this. We're too stupid, too broken with fear.
> get enough people vaccinated that community spread stops being a thing
The problem with this plan is that vaccinated people still catch and spread the virus. The available vaccines do not create "herd immunity" in the traditional sense.
I think the best argument for getting a vaccine now is you will be much less likely to get hospitalized (and/or die) if you catch COVID after being vaccinated. But that argument may not apply to people who already caught it, recovered and now have some natural immunity.
That's a good point. I suspect that being vaccinated reduces the likelihood of spreading it to other people somewhat, but I don't know if the data supports that.
I'd assume that new variants arise roughly in proportion to the number of people who are infected at a given point in time. Each infection is like a lottery ticket for developing a new variant. Covid might be around for a very long time, but if we can keep the pandemic under control to the point where we have thousands rather than millions of people getting infected every day, then I'd expect the risk of variants to go way down. (Maybe this is completely right, and the mutations accumulate over time, but either way fewer infections would mean lower risk, even if it isn't exactly a linear relationship.)
The question then is can we get new infection under control all around the world? Maybe it'll happen naturally due to herd immunity in places where vaccination is rare, but I'd rather we exported more vaccines to those places. We're all in this together.
Interesting thing from that article you link is that just over 99 percent of Covid cases in the U.S. are delta variant.
I'm inclined to be skeptical of claims that any variant is bypassing vaccine protections unless we have pretty solid evidence. It's just the nature of news to speculate about worst-case scenarios.
The seasonal influenza vaccine that is mass distributed every year isn't very sterilizing. But it has a good safety profile and some protection is better than nothing.
> The Mu variant isn't competing very well against the Delta variant.
I think this logic only works if a Delta variant infection provides strong protections against Mu, and a large part of the unvaccinated and vaccinated population first gets exposed to delta variant (assuming it can spread easily...can't find R estimates for some reason, which seems crazy). After all, the same was said about delta before it was prolific, and this whole thing started with one person. "It's not very present, so it won't be present" doesn't make sense, only R numbers do.
I doubt Mu is especially resistant. It was first detected in Colombia in January. The strains that will surface in 6 months will actually be resistant.
No, I question if the vaccines that are currently being produced will remain effective through later strains, requiring new vaccines to be developed, produced, and then redistributed to the populations of the world, in a global game of cat and mouse. Vaccinated people getting and spreading delta show a crack in the armor [1]. More than that, it goes against what was communicated to the public, about these vaccines:
> People infected with the Delta variant, including fully vaccinated people with symptomatic breakthrough infections, can transmit the virus to others.
Republicans who support party more than Trump: 62%
Republicans who support Trump more than party: 46%
Biden voters in 2020 general election: 91%
Trump voters in 2020 general election: 50%
Let's not "both sides" this issue. It should be obvious who is to blame for the US's less than stellar vaccination rates and it isn't well-intentioned but manipulative messaging coming from health officials.
My response is the same as to your sibling comment, what are you trying to say here?
This doesn't disprove my initial point. Remember that Black people and Hispanics only make up roughly 30% of the population. They can be vaccinated at much lower rates than whites and still by only a minority of the overall unvaccinated population. Looking at all these numbers together, who someone voted for in the last presidential election is a much stronger indicator of their vaccination status than their race.
You can't just drop percentages without saying what they are. Those are not vaccination rates. Those are proportion of vaccination percentage to case percentage. What exactly are you trying to argue here?
Can you explain what you think your link is showing? I honestly can't tell. First off there is this disclaimer:
>These demographic data represent the geographic areas that contributed data and might differ by populations prioritized within each jurisdiction’s vaccination phase. Therefore, these data may not be generalizable to the entire US population.
That page also shows the overall percentage of the population with at least one shot is 75.7% and yet no demographic group reaches that number except those over 50 years old. It seems clear that the CDC data is incomplete enough to not be fully trusted, but even if we do trust it, it doesn't do anything to disprove that the highest contributor to a person's vaccination status (besides potentially age) is their personal politics.
The page explains this with a small note: "Race/Ethnicity data were available for 64% receiving at least one dose and 69.1% of people fully vaccinated". So increasing the numbers by about 50% to account for that makes it look more reasonable.
Regardless, if we're nitpicking data quality surely a random nbc news poll doesn't exactly pass muster either.
The NBC News poll is designed to be representative of national numbers and the CDC page specifically calls out that it isn't designed to be representative of national numbers. Therefore the CDC numbers aren't necessarily more accurate just because the sample size is bigger.
And like I said, even if we take the CDC numbers as the objective truth, they do not contradict my original point.
the pandemic is not a philosophical problem, it has nothing to do with liberty or freedom. it is purely a scientific problem with a scientific solution - the fucking vaccine
Science is a process we employ to learn more about the world.
It is not a solution to all the world's ills. Science informs, then people make decisions on that information.
Denying that controversial decisions are being made by people which impact our freedoms and insisting that science prescribes any given policy at all - much less only a single one! - is the type of thinking which terrifies those on the sidelines.
why is it an incredible claim? there are only two diseases that mankind managed to clear out completely from earth ~ smallpox and polio. both were wiped out with a vaccine. dozens of other diseases are kept in check with vaccines. nothing incredible about it
just curious: Why are you so confident that the vaccine is the solution? There are countries or populations with very high rate of vaccination that still see community spread (Israel, that UK ship, etc).
Are you mentally prepared for the possibility that this is not true? What evidence would convince you that the vaccine won't 'solve' the pandemic?
Singapore has an 81% full vaccination rate but is still experiencing a rapid rise in symptomatic cases. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but it's not a complete solution.
Israel only has a 61% fully vaccinated rate. It is having to deal with widespread vaccine skepticism just like the US.
Since the Delta variant is so much more infectious than the original covid, you'd have to get to 90% vaccination rates to count as "herd immunity" against this disease.
Your numbers are misleading and deceptive. 78% of the eligible population and 90% of the most vulnerable have been vaccinated in Israel. Children under 12, who are ineligible for the vaccine, are at insanely low risk from covid and at insanely low risk of spreading it. Pretending they have to be vaccinated to achieve "herd immunity" is a lie and is fear mongering. Data show that unvaccinated children are safer than vaccinated adults.
COVID will become endemic. Everyone knows this. All that's left is for politicians to vilify political opponents for potential votes and try to consolidate more power in the meantime.
It will be endemic longer the more people (i.e. you) imply that there is nothing to be done. Edit: I don't mean to say that is what you meant, I just mean to say that the spread can be contained and the virus can be pushed out of whole regions before new variants arrive. It appears like you are saying that is impossible or not worth trying to attain.
Unfortunately that's simply wrong. There's no scientific basis for claiming that the virus can be pushed out of whole regions. It's impossible. Or at least no one has proposed a plausible plan.
It is not possible to eradicate SARS-CoV-2. We eradicated smallpox and (almost) polio because we had highly sterilizing vaccines and no animal hosts. That situation doesn't obtain with SARS-CoV-2.
Vaccines are highly effective at preventing deaths and I do encourage vaccination, but vaccinated people can still catch and spread the virus. They are probably less contagious on average, but unfortunately that isn't enough to control community spread.
there is a too many unknowns for anyone to be able to say its not possible to eradicate covid. whats known for sure is that ~40% vaccination rates would have not been able to eradicate either smallpox or polio...
That is true. But would you also agree that it will be endemic longer if we put false hope in solutions that aren't going to fully work? We need to be honest with ourselves, and be open ideas like therapeutics or UV lights in public spaces or other new ideas to reduce the spread of the virus.
Wouldn't the scientific solution be total lock down with martial law and anyone not absolutely needed outside being shot on spot. And keep those measures in place for a few months just to be sure?
The problem is that we tried to allow people to be "personally responsible" and we ended up with a worse wave of the pandemic than the original one. People were not responsible, and they were definitely not "personally responsible" seeing how they've tied up our medical system, burnt out medical workers and kept people with normal medical emergencies or conditions from getting the care they require. Liberty is freedom+responsibility. All I hear about is freedom without responsibility though.
So your rebuttable is "we gave you a choice, and you choose wrong"
That is not really a choice. Does the mugger give me a "choice" when he holds a gun to my head and threatens me with violence if do not do as he desire.
>Half the country is just stuck, focused on short-term and no attention paid to anything else and it's freakin disastrous.
The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools.
No one's really locked down anymore outside of a few holdouts in each state.
> The pandemic is largely over culturally and mentally for pretty much all of the country - I'm in the middle of San Francisco and the only real remaining enforced anti-COVID measures are flashing your vaccine card before going into bars, masks inside of gyms, and masking and demasking when you enter restaurants - although I remember a friend with kids telling me there's still some strangeness at schools.
That's a real understatement. Here in Maryland, my 8 year old is still in a mask at school both inside and outside. She's been a trooper with all the precautions over the last year and a half, but started crying when she heard her school was going to do masking again in the fall, because it means probably another year of social distancing in schools (not being able to play with all your friends, etc). The masks really interfere with her gymnastics class, because of O2 restrictions as well as difficulty hearing/understanding what instructors are saying.
My 3 year old is masked all day in preschool, as well as at his extracurriculars. He does a "toddler crossfit" type class where all the kids and instructors are masked, and it's a disaster. At this age their ability to comprehend instructions is marginal to begin with. Add the muffled speech and inability to see facial expressions and it means the kids have a lot of trouble understanding what's going on. I've done A/B testing helping my kid with the activities. With a mask on, he has a much harder time understanding me, and also mistakes my mood--e.g. he can't see me smiling so he interprets my giving him directions as yelling (it's loud in the gym obviously).
Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my face. We are not going to even try to send him to daycare with masked caregivers. I hate to sound like a nutter--I'm a STEM major, I know how to "science"--but I don't trust that they actually have considered the developmental effects on infants not being able to see faces for 8 hours a day at daycare.
> I hate to sound like a nutter--I'm a STEM major, I know how to "science"--but I don't trust that they actually have considered the developmental effects on infants not being able to see faces for 8 hours a day at daycare.
It's a shame that you have to defend not being crazy to say that a child not seeing faces won't have some kind of psychological impact when for all of human history (the biological perspective) we have seen the faces of our elders, peers and parents.
We’re going on two years. My three year old has never experienced normal school (or a real birthday party) and my eight year old doesn’t remember much about life before masks in schools.
I’m not going to experiment on my youngest to see what happens when an infant spends all day surrounded by masked people at daycare. I’m just not. If things don’t normalize here in Maryland by the time my wife’s done with maternity leave I’m moving to Florida or Texas.
This comment really hit me hard, Rayiner. I'm sending good thoughts and prayers to you and your family and every family with small children.
Reading another massive thread on HN about covid and vaccines. We are all drawn to it like a moth to the flame, trying to hash all of these differences out. I hope some good can come out of all of this.
I have a son in first grade and he's been really down about masking since last year. We've been kind of sad about it it too and worry about him, but honestly this makes me feel a little better. I'm not being sarcastic.
Absent any scientific evidence, it's a rather extraordinary claim. There had been no human flight throughout human history until ~100 years ago, yet GP did not have any fear about flying with his family.
I suspect we will never run this through a controlled scientific experiment and thus will never 'know' what could be the long-term effects of partially hiding human faces from children, because very few people would sign up their children for such an experiment.
(And I would urge any intellectually curious people who are also laser-focused on empiricism as the only valid way to acquire knowledge, to instead apply rational thought to the question. Why don't we have any scientific evidence on the matter?)
We also have no good scientific evidence on whether parachutes are effective. You can't knowingly run an experiment that could cause harm to the participants.
You can’t, in the “not allowed to” sense of the word. However, you sure are able to run such experiments, and for many of them, you will find plenty of volunteers too. However, the modern science establishment still won’t allow you to run such experiment, because it is “””unethical”””. Of course, governments are not bound by any of that stuff, and will mandate all kinds of shit that would be unethical to do in the course of experimental science. As a result, because scientists are not allowed to experiment on fully informed and consenting volunteers, governments run their own experiments on their subjects that they never asked for opinion or offered right to refuse.
RCTs, by definition, can cause harm to either arm of the trial (depending on whether the intervention is harmful or beneficial). We routinely accept that as the cost of advancing knowledge and avoiding interventions that would do more harm than good.
Okay, I'll give that a try: the benefits of wearing masks in public during a pandemic are known, whereas any harm that might be caused by occasionally exposing children to the sight of partially covered human faces is unknown. Therefore, to minimize harm, we should favour masking.
This does not follow - your previous statements do not provide any evidence that masking is the choice that minimizes harm, unknown harm definitely does not mean no harm, it may be smaller or larger than the benefit. In order to make any statement whatsoever about whether the benefit outweighs the (unknown) harm, there needs to be at least some attempt to make a reasonable estimation on how large (or small) that harm is.
Ignoring it essentially means making a strong assumption that the harm is absolutely insignificant, but is that really the best informed guess specialists can make?
We are fairly certain that the real-world use of cloth masks and face coverings can only supply limited benefit, so the threshold for harm to make them not worth it may not be that high [0]. You can support wearing masks for adults in motor vehicle agencies (limited harm, limited benefit) and still realize that young children in daycare should not be required to be masked all day (potentially high developmental harm, limited benefit).
"In summary, though we support mask wearing by the general public, we continue to conclude that cloth masks and face coverings are likely to have limited impact on lowering COVID-19 transmission, because they have minimal ability to prevent the emission of small particles, offer limited personal protection with respect to small particle inhalation, and should not be recommended as a replacement for physical distancing or reducing time in enclosed spaces with many potentially infectious people."
My original comment suggested simply that the claim that wearing masks around children would harm them requires evidence. But the comment I was responding to here made the claim that the harm caused by masking in front of children is unknowable. I submit that if a harm is truly unknowable then we may as well treat it as no harm, since in this case common sense tells us that children are adaptable and resilient. But please, if you have a reasonable estimation, do share.
Yeah, I don't have kids so I'm sort of out of the loop on what's still in place at schools, like I said. Stuff like "social distancing" when they already have the kids sitting in rooms for hours at a time seems silly, just like masking and unmasking only to enter and leave bars.
> Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my face.
I never quite understood why clear face masks haven't caught on more, especially in these kinds of environments. Some of the air may escape, since it certainly won't be like an N95, but if we can increase ventilation, keep distance a little bit, and wear see-through masks to convey emotions and meaning better, that seems like a pretty reasonable tradeoff.
It looks weird but my doctor's office gives out masks with large clear centers to help some of the hard of hearing staff lip read, and they seems to work just as well for the duration of my visits.
N95 have a warning they aren't meant for asbestos which is fifty times larger than corona virus. Cloth masks? As effective as stopping flies with a chain link fence. The studies that purport masks work use mannequins with sealed surgical masks. It doesn't work irl that way unfortunately.
The "95" in "N95" refers to their 95% efficiency at filtering particles of the size they are least efficient at (.3 microns IIRC). They are more effective at sizes larger and smaller. The smaller particles get stuck to the mask via static electricity.
The point of the masks isn't that they're 100% effective, but that they reduce the probability of spreading a virus-laden droplet to someone else. The difference between having a pandemic and not having a pandemic is the question of whether the average infected person infects more than one other person or less than one. N95s or basic cloth masks are a relatively straightforward way to get a population on the other side of that threshold, even if some people wear them incorrectly were just unlucky.
If there are better masks than N95s for dealing with carcinogens like asbestos, you should use those for that application. Maybe they would work better for Covid too, but providing super high-quality fancy masks to hundreds of millions of people in a pandemic isn't really practical, though. You use the tools you have on hand. Even distributing N95s was challenging.
> N95s or basic cloth masks are a relatively straightforward way to get a population on the other side of that threshold, even if some people wear them incorrectly were just unlucky.
Controlled tests (with correct fitting) show cloth masks at around 10% efficiency and surgical masks at around 12% efficiency, vs up to 60% for correctly fitted R95/KN95 masks. The difference is huge. The measures that most people are taking with their loosely-fitting cloth masks are having negligible impact on coronavirus transmission.
The droplet narrative is a year expired. Sure it happens but recent studies with infected chimps and masks shows full room dispersion after a relative short time.
"A study from the National Academy of Sciences Press establish that most of the COVID-19 particles emitted from those infected are aerosols, or consisting of 0.3 to 0.5 microns. “Droplets” consist of particles much greater in size than aerosols. The science shows however, that most COVID-19 particles are aerosols, not droplets. As such, they are less than 1 micron in size."
> Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my face.
At the risk of adding some global diversity to this conversation:
In a bunch of countries with a significant Muslim population, many women cover their face/head far more than your face is covered by a mask when they go out. Their kids grow up fine.
Isn't it general practice in Muslim communities that face coverings are only in public, and that the kids' environments, both at family and at schooling (often gender segregated) would be free of face coverings?
The kids obviously grow up fine, but IMHO they do see the faces of their peers and parents pretty much always.
My overall point, though, is that it is easy to imagine a horrible, negative effect on a child's psyche, but it is more likely not a problem. Humans, and kids in particular, are fairly robust and adaptable creatures.
In my experience, for most fears about X people have, X alone usually is not damaging. However, being surrounded by people who are convinced X is bad will make it more likely that the person will believe it. This tends to cause more issues than X does.
If a kid has parents and other close people around him/her who believe wearing a mask and not seeing people's faces often is bad for the kid - then it will be.
I feel like the better takeaway from your example is that even in cultures that go to extremes with face coverings, they don’t have masked people caring for young children. :-/
I’m from a Muslim country. Even in the most conservative Muslim countries, women do not wear face coverings around children they’re carrying for. Most children grow up around female family members who are not wearing face coverings at home. In school education is gender segregated, and in a single gender setting face coverings are not required.
> Wearing a mask, as we did for 4-5 hours on a flight recently, weirds out my 2 month old since he can't see my face.
How can a two month old possibly express that he's "weirded out" by a mask. As you said, you were on a plane, which was surely a novel situation for him, so even if he was behaving strangely you can't know that it was because of the mask. I think it's much more likely you're projecting your own fears onto him.
Do you claim that a two month old can unambiguously express being distressed by the sight of a parent wearing a mask? We're talking about a child who is too young to even smile. Their only way of expressing themselves is by crying, and they cry for many, many reasons. Parents are not mind readers.
Edit: I've been clear about my reasoning; you have just resorted to ad hominem attacks on my understanding or emotional intelligence. If you don't have any actual counterargument, I'll consider the debate to be over.
How does a baby express being upset? They can smile on purpose at 2 months: https://www.uofmhealth.org/health-library/ue5463. So the lack of a smile is a detectable sign. After just a few weeks, they have a range of reactions short of crying. They change their facial expressions based on what they're feeling. They make grunting noises to express minor discomfort. You can even tell when they're bored.
> It's not an "ad hominem attack" to point out someone's apparent lack of experience with the subject of their comment.
It is if, as the other comment did, you just claim I don't know what I'm talking about without providing evidence of that.
But congratulations to you on using sources and arguments. I still think you're projecting. In my experience babies have no trouble recognizing human faces with masks on because they are drawn to eyes. In fact, they even recognize and will respond to a smile behind a mask, again because the muscles around the eyes contract. Probably masks are harder for slightly older children who are learning language, because they can't associate mouth movements with sounds.
Then you know that a mask is the least we can ask of parents.
Children are germ factories. What compounds the problem is they can't be vaccinated.
In CA, we opened the schools.
In two weeks, I have a feeling we will be in trouble.
Kids get virus. Some people show no symptoms, but are little viruse spreaders.
It's a pretty simple equation. Kids spread viruses very easily.
So put a mask on it.
Not for your kids sake, but for grandma's sake, and others.
(Personally, I would have kept the kids out of school for another year. Every kid would be able to stay in school two extra years, if needed. So instead of graduating at 18, some kids would be applying to college, or Amazon, at 20.)
It is not even remotely close to being over in the US. After visiting SF for a week this month, I don't even know how someone in that bubble could think that, since it's clearly not over there either. It's much different and less problematic in SF than many other parts of the country, but absolutely not over there or anywhere else.
What's the most onerous restriction you saw in SF while you were here, I'm curious - maybe I'm biased from living here, but like I said for me it's been limited to masking and flashing my vaccine card at bars. Unless you consider indoor masking a big deal, in which case sure, it's nowhere near over in SF.
It's being downvoted because it's silly to equate the pandemic with wearing a mask indoors. There's so much more to it than that and if nothing in your life reminds you of that, you're incredibly lucky.
California is ahead of the rest of the country on Delta. Rates have fallen considerably there. They are only just starting to fall elsewhere; in some places they are still rising.
Their long term plan seemed to be to not worry too much about what proportion of people get the flu vaccine (and certainly not about documenting who has or hasn't had one), and live a normal life (travel, party, etc.) even while flu is spreading.
From my perspective people who aren’t concerned about contracting and spreading covid are the short term thinkers - they just want to have things back to how they used to be right now without any thought about mitigating the threat.
My long term plan is to accept that covid will be endemic and will kill a certain number of people each year, just as we already do with regular flu. (I'm all for more anti-death measures in the long term, but in QALY terms there are much higher priorities e.g. tougher licensing and stricter penalties for drivers who kill people). I believe that that's the inevitable endgame, and the only remaining question is how long we prolong the economic damage and human suffering of the restrictions out of some hair-shirt sense of virtue in doing so.
I think there's a big difference between lying and saying "most people want very simple answers, so let's boil all of this down to something that fits in a 30-second PSA". And honestly, 30-seconds is pretty long these days in terms of attention span.
I agree they should also have more information at various levels so people who want to know more can dig in. But people don't make most choices on anything like a purely rational basis. Asking doctors and public health experts to pretend otherwise when designing their general-audience comms guarantees a higher death toll for no appreciable gain.
As an example, take a look at how we've tackled drunk driving over the last 40 years. Groups like MADD definitely can make rational, data driven appeals. But the reason they were so successful is that they were extremely good at making emotional appeals. Take MADD itself, Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The founder, Cindi Lightner lost her 13-year-old daughter to drunk driving. The driver, who drove off and left her body behind, recently had been arrested for DUI. Lightner's personal story, which is heartbreaking, is central to their effectiveness. The result: drunk driving, which was laughed off previously, is now taken very seriously, and deaths are down 40% despite VMT doubling.
I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.
I've got family in a small town in the south - the countermeasures they took against COVID basically amounted to Wal-Mart closing for a weekend in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before any lies or omissions by authorities came to light. Unless you're saying these lies and omissions are part of a broader pattern from authorities that extends past COVID, in which case I might agree with you.
Lying and partisanship got us to where we are now. The skepticism that resulted from the lies has been re-targetted to the vaccine itself. I'm not sure how the policy makers didn't see this coming beforehand.
Let's be honest, please. The skepticism preceded the lies. The lies, in as much as they actually exist, are just being used as post-hoc rationalization.
I think you'd have a better point if you blamed skepticism on something Fauci said (though I'd like to see context on that, too). I've not once relied on a politician of any kind for medical advice. If the only person telling me to get the vaccine was Joe Biden, I'd be very skeptical indeed.
But again, this is cherry picking. The consensus opinion amongst medical experts is heavily in favor of the vaccine, and they have data to back up their judgement. The contrarian advice from skeptics is decidedly lacking in evidence and relies almost entirely on hearsay and non-scientific anecdotes.
Harris: If doctors say I should take it I'll be the first in line but if Donald Trumps says I should take it I won't take it.
What she wanted is what everyone should want is for the vaccine to be vetted. When it was she took it. She expressed doubt not in medical science, not in the vaccine, but in the claims of Donald Trump.
That would maybe be a passing defense if you legitimately thought Donald Trump created the vaccines by himself and they weren't a product from Pfizer etc.
With the history that Trump had for firing people who did follow unreasonable orders (e.g. Rod Rosenstein), it becomes entirely plausible that he would fire any FDA head who did not support a vaccine, regardless of the science behind them. As things turned out, the studies did support the vaccine, but it was not unreasonable to draw a distinction between unbiased experts and experts under threat of firing.
The vaccines didn't exist at that point; We didn't know how effective or safe they would turn out to be (at least in their first iteration), so obviously it would have been ridiculous to commit blindly to taking them.
Once trial results were released, we learned that they're highly effective and that risks of bad reactions are exceedingly rare (especially when compared to the effects of the virus itself).
As of April 22, the vaccination rates between the parties was almost identical.
The differential in vaccination rates is largely about people under 65. If you look at over 65 rates red states and blue states are much closer. 88.4% of people over 65 in Kansas are fully vaccinated. That’s higher than California, Illinois, and New York.
I've noticed that as the risk becomes too high to ignore, people do finally put their politics aside when they have a reasonable expectation that their life actually does ride on the decision.
I would probably frame that the opposite way. People under 65 have a pretty low risk of COVID. Less than 20% of COVID deaths are for people under 65, and only 3% are people under 45. Liberal politics might convince a young, healthy 35 year old to get vaccinated out of concern for others. Geography also matters. There is a visceral awareness of being exposed to others’ germs in a place like NYC that’s simply absent in Iowa or Utah. A guy who takes a bus to work every day is going to be acutely aware of transmission risks in a way that a guy who drives to work every day won’t.
The 65-115 year old category is too big to compare with other age deciles.
For representative comparison deaths in 65-75 age group is 144K and 50-65 age group is 106K, they are a comparable risk group[1]. In my urban county of 2M whites in 50-64 have the lowest vaccination rate in the 60s. Asians have a 95% vaccination rate in the same age group.
The simple fact that Republican dominated counties have their beds and ICUs overflowing[2] after wide vaccine availability while congested New York does not paints a very clear picture that it is not liberal politics that is causing pandemic issues, but conservative politics.
> I wish I could say that if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff with natural immunity, things would gone a lot better and people would have behaved much more rationally about COVID, but I don't think that's true.
I agree. For someone whose threshold of 'did the authorities lie about masks' is one cherry-picked example, there was never any hope. They were absolutely going to find someone to confirm their already-existing beliefs.
Nonsense. There's such a thing as people on the margin. On any binary issue most pieces of evidence "won't matter" to most people, in that that one piece of evidence is unlikely to be the one that "flips" the person, but that doesn't mean people are ignoring the evidence - it's just that most of the time any given piece of evidence is the difference between 99% believing and 98% believing rather than the difference between 50% believing and 49% believing.
> if authorities hadn't lied about, say, masks or this stuff
When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.
But I think ascribing a malicious intent to that learning process is disingenuous.
The only people that have made literally malicious claims have been people on the far-right, which unfortunately are some authorities so I guess you're right about Trump and his bootlicks who intentionally lied for personal gain. And continue to do so.
The CDC literally cited mask scarcity for medical workers as a reason the public shouldn't get masks. The whole "CDC lied about masks being necessary" is bullshit. The difference between the CDC and the anti-vaxx crowd is the CDC makes decisions in the public interest and explains the rational behind their decision making.
>The CDC literally cited mask scarcity for medical workers as a reason the public shouldn't get masks.
As one of the reasons. They also (according to Time) gave the reason that they don't prevent you from getting Covid:
>The science, according to the CDC, says that surgical masks won’t stop the wearer from inhaling small airborne particles, which can cause infection.
>Doctors and health experts keep spreading the word. “Seriously people- STOP BUYING MASKS!” tweeted Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General, on Feb. 29. “They are NOT effective in preventing general public from catching #Coronavirus, but if healthcare providers can’t get them to care for sick patients, it puts them and our communities at risk!”
You're still being dishonest when you leave out that THE CDC SAID AT THE TIME THAT THEIR CURRENT RECOMMENDATIONS WERE BASED ON THE A AVAILABILITY OF MASKS TO MEDICAL WORKERS.
The CDC states what their rational is, they update their recommendations with new information, and they act in the public interest. Anti-vaxxers do none of those.
Sibling commenter pointed out why this is wrong, but on a broader level, I don't understand the need to retcon the CDC's incompetence to score points against the anti-vaxxers. The anti-vaxx position is wrong whether or not the CDC is good at its job. The two questions are completely orthogonal.
> Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.
Were they? I imagine federal government has the power to expropriate and ration masks, if necessary. This is way better than lying and then making a surprised pikachu face "why don't they trust us?", no?
> When did authorities lie? The position on masks changed over time as data was acquired. Unless you mean when the FDA/CDC was worried about a run on masks, which they were right about.
The fact that they say it was intended to prevent a run on masks proves that it was a lie and they knew it was a lie, which is inherently malicious in my book.
They were usually very careful in the wording, saying no evidence outside of a medical setting for this type of virus. And mentioned it usually insane breath as conserving masks for medical workers.
It was manipulative and steering behavior, but in most cases I've seen not lying.
I'd put the whole censorship of debate and deplatforming dissenters in the left leaning media and tech companies. That made compliance very difficult for me personally as all trust was gone after that.
No, but we had to put off a lot of medical procedures my grandparents needed done because the hospital beds were so full that they were airlifting people to other states. We also had to move them out of the assisted living facility they were in and provide 24/7 care because the facility started allowing visitors without any screenings.
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 immunity" is lying, but you did not address the fact that doing so incentivizes behavior leading to better long-term results for society.
Think of all the untrue things that are said every day in order to not induce panic in our financial system, to discourage bank runs, to discourage hoarding/scalping, to generally promote a functional society. This isn't lying, it's results-driven communication.
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.
"Lying" implies malicious intent. It is not lying to communicate via the channels of public health the strategies that would optimize our utilization of public health resources.
As we are literally seeing in many states, obtaining natural immunity en-mass means that ICUs fill, doctors and nurses burn out, and morgues have waiting lists.
That "natural immunity provides decent protection" is itself a lie. Decent protection for whom exactly? It doesn't protect your community to act as a vector for this virus while you are obtaining said immunity. It doesn't even protect you from the risk of long-lasting post-infection disability. It is deliberately malicious and puts its believers at an objectively higher risk.
Are you really sure you want to go down that road? Are you really saying you're fine with someone telling you falsehoods so long as it's in what they believe to be your best interest?
It is not lying to communicate via the channels of public health the strategies that would optimize our utilization of public health resources.
Is the strategy actually working? It sure doesn't seem like it. In fact, it seems to be eroding trust in public institutions on a massive scale with very little other benefit.
"natural immunity provides decent protection" is a falsehood that exposes your intentionally limited definitions of "decent" and "protection." Again it is anything but decent behavior to expose your community to a contagious virus and it doesn't protect the person desiring immunity via infection from potential disability. Natural is even in question as the mechanism by which the body produces antibodies against the virus is the same. The RNA vaccine encodes a specific antigen, this antigen is presented to your natural immune system and it produces defenses like it would to any other antigen.
So many people are criticizing you for your comment about 'lying'. Realistically, the statements presented are so under-specified that is pretty difficult to determine what 'the lie' is. Which is the entire point.
Let's take OP's statement: "natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination, we'll accept that as equal for passport purposes". Presumably, the negation of that statement i.e. "natural immunity is probably not just as good as vaccination, we won't accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes" would be considered 'lying'. This statement is ridiculously under specified, even if you take out the "probably".
Define natural immunity? Perhaps someone has to take a blood test to show they have the right anti-bodies. Define "just as good". Define "equal to vaccination for passport purposes". Equal how? Why not for other purposes?
All of these questions and lack of clarity are exactly what the parent is talking about. No truth is absolute. There are statements that are less true, but are more effective as communication methods. Politics should prove that to you, and the fact that you don't like it doesn't make it less true.
There are a lot of people criticizing, and that's OK. The voting on this one was the biggest roller coaster I've ever seen here--at one point is was my highest-upvoted recent comment. Obviously hit a nerve both ways.
I'm not condoning lying. I am condoning public policy (including communication to support that policy) that has the end result of saving lives and getting us back to normal. I think a lot of people here are young and rationalists and full of idealism. They have this pure idea that every human being is uniformly spherical and acts 100% rationally, so given all the facts, self-interest will surely steer us into a rationalist utopia, but that's just not the case. Idealists don't account for people working against their own self-interest because of religious fervor. They don't recognize widespread and rapidly spreading ignorance. Rationalists can't explain "doing it for the lulz".
I don't have a lot of love for politicians, but I don't envy their job: They're elected to steer a ship with close to half of the passengers drilling as many holes in the hull as fast as they can. If you have to tell them that drills are dangerous and should be avoided, then that's what you have to do.
You fail to recognize that 30% plus genuinely did have covid. Why focus on a handful of potential bad actors when largely you should give the benefit of the doubt.
We shouldn't give the benefit of the doubt. We should define what an acceptable post-infection antibody level is, have people get blood tests, and issue something similar to the CDC vaccination card that attests that the bearer has natural immunity. Those should be accepted as equivalent to a CDC vax card where one is needed.
I do agree that doing this would likely further slow down vaccination rates, even among unvaccinated people who have not yet gotten COVID. Many will just accept the risk of getting the virus, and then some will end up in the hospital, and some will die.
So while I'm uncomfortable with the lack of acceptance around post-infection immunity when appropriate, I do think it's understandable.
We're so far down the lying/threatening/mocking road that it's going to take years, maybe decades, to recover that trust -- and that's if we stopped now.
People have already largely made up their minds, and nothing is going to change them. This is fully a political-religious divide now, and you can't reason people out of a decision they didn't reason themselves into. The ones who pretend they are on the fence and their minds can be changed by some goal being hit or some facts changing, always seem to move the goal posts instead of actually changing their minds.
In areas where the vaccines are free and widely/immediately available, for someone who has not gotten it already, I can't think of anything that would convince them to get it other than tightened restrictions (employers requiring, etc.) and enforcement. I'd love to hear otherwise from someone who is legitimately on the fence, because I don't think those people really exist.
> People have already largely made up their minds, and nothing is going to change them. This is fully a political-religious divide now, and you can't reason people out of a decision they didn't reason themselves into. The ones who pretend they are on the fence and their minds can be changed by some goal being hit or some facts changing, always seem to move the goal posts instead of actually changing their minds.
Despite the anecdote that the first person I know getting vaccinated experienced a life-threatening case of severe anaphylaxis with the first dose, I thought getting the vaccine made some sense. I caught a bug around March/April of 2020 that had very similar symptoms to COVID, kind of like a sore throat with a flu, but I never got tested to see if it was just a bug or Covid that I got. Actually decided I was going to get the J&J vaccine after weighing pros & cons. I know that I am at a very low risk with no comorbidities, but my logic was that despite my low risk, the main benefit would be that it would minimize symptoms if I actually did catch it.
I started talking with the Dr. in the family to decide where/when. This was when the pause on the J&J came out, and I realized continuing my masking, social distancing, and other isolating activities were the best path. That, by delaying, the science would be better known, more vaccines would be used, and information about which vaccines were safest would come out. I felt that some of the politicization issues around what to do seemed to be frankly strange, if not outright authoritarian propaganda on one side, and wacky hodgepodge on the other.
The more I read on it, the more I became concerned because data on spike protein pathogenicity came out [1]. This called into question the big 3 vaccine approaches long term safety in my mind, because if the vaccines cause your body to produce a huge amount of spike protein, well, that on its own is allegedly toxic.
Additionally, I have been hoping for the Novavax vaccine to come out, which appears to be safer and more efficacious, but that appears to be a long waiting game.
I continue to isolate, wear an N95, and socially distance.
> People have already largely made up their minds, and nothing is going to change them.
In that case, it doesn't matter what we do. The lies and threats and mocking can continue, and it doesn't matter either way.
So since it doesn't matter, we should just figure out a protocol for a "CDC post-infection immunity card", issue it to people whose antibody levels have been tested and judged to be sufficient, and then bar everyone without a vax or immunity card from any kind of indoor gathering (including for employment)[0].
I'm just sick of all this. For a while I was sympathetic toward the vaccine-hesitant -- some of the reasoning, while misinformed, was understandable -- but my patience is gone. The longer this goes on, the greater the risk of a new variant that the vaccines don't protect us against.
[0] Yes, the usual exceptions apply for people who can't be vaccinated for a legitimate medical reason, but they should be subject to weekly or biweekly testing.
>You think not mocking people when they die will increase vaccination rates? I honestly don't really know, but I'm skeptical.
Sure, say you had a parent or close family member die, then someone mocked that. How would you feel about that person? Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just want to punch them in the face?
>Adding social pressure to vaccinate is useful I think tho.
I don't know the answer, but shaming people and mocking them hasn't worked in the last 20 years; in fact it's made us even more partisan, divided and hateful towards each other. Why do you think it would work now?
> Would you listen to anything they had to say, or just want to punch them in the face?
They're not listening now. We've passed the point where persuadable people in good faith are holding out (for what? The full FDA approval was two weeks ago.) It's time to go the other way and mandate the vaccine -or- frequent testing (I think 1/week is too infrequent) -or- they can preemptively isolate themselves from society.
So you are making a common mistake, you are considering a huge swath of people from a wide range of demographics and political persuasions as a single cognitive entity. They are not. Let's say you don't shame, you get an additional 15% uptake. Let's say you do shame, you only get 5%. Shaming is part of the problem for reasons I stated above. It certainly makes the people shaming feel better about themselves, but it's a net negative to the outcome of which those people are purporting solve.
Bottom line, shitting on people is never effective.
No, my question was actually about whether persuadable people still exist. People for whom politeness and reason will work. Because I think those people have gotten the vaccine. Do you think that subpopulation exists, what motivates them and what will make them change their mind?
Because you seem to think shaming is about me feeling better at a huge cost: "you get an additional 15% uptake. Let's say you do shame, you only get 5%." I just don't think those numbers are at all accurate. I don't even think that the causation "shaming -> less vaccination" is true.
>I don't even think that the causation "shaming -> less vaccination" is true.
You don't understand human nature or yourself. Shame on you. Did that make you change your mind? Didn't think so.
I'm sure persuadable people exist, just what percent, I don't know. There are millions unvaccinated in the US and it will change over time. Many people are taking the "wait and see approach." If you don't understand why, see the Tuskegee Experiment. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Syphilis_Study) All I know is shaming will have the opposite effect, assuming the intention is to get people to vaccinate. Shaming people is a very selfish and self centered action. The news does it all the time so you get that little hit of dopamine to watch more. Fat shaming is counter productive, lazy shaming counter productive, poor shaming counter productive, homeless shaming counter productive. Drug shaming is counter productive. Why on earth do you think it would it work now?
Do you have any data to show that laughing at anti-vaxxers dying of COVID decreases the amount of people willing to get vaccinated? Common sense suggests to me that it's the other way around.
I'd rather persuade - it's better long term if people get the shot voluntarily. We've just hit a point where it seems more more persuasion is possible.
Or am I wrong? What could possibly persuade the current holdouts?
The news needs to show more videos of sick people and bodies stacking in freezers. That will do it for most. They're incentivized to draw it out though. They would love 3 years of COVID, at least profit wise.
Nobody authoritative ever said they prevented transmission. Ever. They reduce transmission.
Even if you choose to ignore that, consider: Vaccinated people have shorter recovery times and are less likely to require hospitalization.
That results in a shorter time window for spreading the virus. Furthermore, if you can recover at home you are less likely to spread it to health care workers or other patients.
Vaccines help prevent transmission. They are not 100% effective - the effectiveness depends on the vaccine and variant and study but quite high. That's a long way of saying that they "don't prevent transmission"
In the UK's vaccine surveillance report released today it showed the rate of infection in vaccinated individuals ages 40-79 was significantly higher than unvaccinated.
The same report says that early results indicate that a single dose of the mRNA vaccines provides a 35-50% reduction in transmissions. Given that the second shot dramatically improves the results, we can assume that number will improve. Those are fuzzy numbers whoever, as it is difficult to measure. The prevention of infections is 55-70%
Mocking deaths came about people antivax people have been actively lying (take animal meds and herbal supplements to be immune) and threatening (just look at the endless mounds of videos of people screaming about it being the end of the world because they have to wear a mask, and governors threatening schools that require masks) while mocking people who get vaccinated because "haha you're all going to die from the vax! Just give it two weeks and I'll be right!"
Everyone got fed up with those people and the gaslighting they've attempted.
I couldn't agree more. I get that it's tempting short-term, but lies aren't free and the interest on that debt is extremely expensive. If you're a public authority, the price of lies is an inevitable corrosion of your abilty to govern even if you're successful in the short term. Everything about our public health response has been fairly short-termist without any kind of consideration for the enormous long-term collateral damage that has been done to public institutions and people's faith in them.
History will particularly condemn the lying and the abuse of behavioural psychology I think, even if people think it's justified now because of the pandemic. May the record for future generations be be accurate, because that's the bleak legacy our leaders deserve.
> Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.
Manipulating populations is what governments do. Subsidizing milk prices, fining people who litter, inspecting the electrical work in new houses, those are all "trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior".
As for the "lying" part, I don't see it. What I assume that the antivax side wants is some sort of rule like, "If you get a test showing some level of antibodies, you can be exempt from vaccine mandates" policy. That might be sound policy or it might not, I dunno, but "the government isn't implementing my preferred policy" is very different from "the government is lying".
But where's the lie? If it's true that public health would be better if nearly everyone got the vaccine, then it isn't a lie to say that nearly everyone should get the vaccine in order to improve public health.
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.
The science is actually far from settled on this. There is no randomized controlled trial of vaccinating the previously infected.
And while this pre-print [0] establishes that natural immunity is far stronger than vaccine-only immunity, the result is not conclusive for natural immunity + vaccine:
“Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in our cohort.”
If you are talking about significance, you are taking that quote completely out of context. There's a reason we give people two doses, but this study only looked at one dose and still found an effect. It didn't reach the technical level of "significance," but that does not mean it is not there. If your saying it supports me, that's not enough evidence. Here's a different study that looked at both doses and found you were twice as likely to be reinfected if you didn't get the vaccine. [0]
So, what did we learn? The science seems confident that getting the full regimen of the vaccine is a good idea because it lowers you chance of getting reinfected and the likelihood of side effects are extremely small.
So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating them is illogical here.
And don't even get me started on vaccine passports, which are completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely needs proof of vaccination, like the NICU at the hospital or a nursing home or a college dorm, that information can be relayed via existing protocols. We don't need a "papers please" society where paper shufflers and bureaucrats can arbitrarily gate access to society this way.
I would hesitate to take one study as definitive either way. Also, I've seen data pointing to important variables of possible interest moderating the potential effectiveness, including age, and severity of first infection.
Pfizer reduced rates by 82% whereas a Covid infection reduced rates by 73%.
>Fourteen days after a second dose of Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech, rates had dropped by 67% and 82% respectively. In comparison, people who had not been vaccinated but had had COVID-19 before had rates which were 73% lower than unvaccinated individuals
Even while supporting the notion that the source is valid and the statement is generally true, it is still NOT the same as the mountain of clinical evidence generated to show efficacy of the vaccines. So no, you can't make that claim unless you actually go through the same kind of proof to show efficacy the way FDA would require for the vaccines.
I'd agree with you that vaccine passports definitely represent a sacrifice of individual liberty for safety - but what makes you say that that they're "completely unnecessary"? If we accept that a vaccinated person has a lowered, but not eliminated, chance of contracting and transmitting COVID, wouldn't it make sense to avoid contact with people that are at a much higher risk of infection?
If you feel that the tradeoff between liberty and safety here is too high, that makes sense - but do you really think vaccination passports don't reduce the transmission of the virus?
They would reduce transmission of the virus in the same way that locking everyone in temperature-controlled air-corrected 24/7-monitored government housing pods would reduce the transmission. Maybe those pods are better, because they could ship us food and let us out for exercise at times determined by an efficiency algorithm!
The question is, is the cost worth it?
There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liberty for safety." That's Orwellian talk for going along with tyranny. By this point, the majority of Americans are going to have antibodies before long from a combination of vaccinations and past covid. Over 100 million already had past covid and I already shared links about how those antibodies are superior to two shots of Pfizer. So how is it necessary for those people to have to subject to a "papers please" tyranny? No thanks.
Implementing these passports will cause something even worse than some covid spread to happen. A two-tiered society where one segment of society is viewed as unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous. History is replete with examples of this being a bad thing.
And philosophy aside, there's also newer evidence showing that for some segments of the population it may be riskier to vaccinate.
So why start enforcing passports? To accidentally find out later on, after creating a two-tiered society, that there may be unintended long-term consequences for the teenagers? Nope. Time for YOU, reader, to say no and realize that these passports are just about control. They don't care about your health. It's about power. Think critically about the system being built. It's about the control.
It sounds like you just disagree with the tradeoff between liberty and safety, then. But it does lower transmission, and flashing a card before you go into a bar the same way you flash your driver's license isn't as onerous as the weird government pod scenario you outlined above.
>unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous.
This is probably how I'd describe wilfully unvaccinated people, yeah.
Also curious where you got the 100 million number from - AFAICT there have been 40 million covid infections in the US.
Over 100 million Americans have superior antibodies from past covid. Why would you WILLINGLY describe those like that who refuse the vaccination as unhealthy, unclean, and even dangerous? Unless you're naive and don't know history? Or perhaps you simply keep ignoring the links being provided because you've been tricked by the narrative and it feels good to be tribal/partisan about it as if it's a matter of politics? It won't be long now until everyone has antibodies one way or another, yet people falling for the "vax vs unvax" narrative are going to create a problem much worse than covid if they insist on drawing battle lines and inching closer and closer to full-on dehumanization of tens of millions.
Anew 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
The number you mentioned is the number verified, but based on the modeling of infection rates and spread they've come up with the bigger number. It will keep getting bigger.
In any case, "flashing a card" to go into a bar is the precipice of the slippery slope. And yes, it's slippery. It doesn't take much effort to see the writing on the wall and observe the tyranny emerging in other places. If you're not simply ignorant to history and being tricked by the narrative, at least be honest about what you actually want - which is to control others. Don't try to pass it off as being concerned about health though, I wasn't born yesterday.
> Over 100 million Americans have superior antibodies from past covid.
Then they should get antibody tests, and if their level of antibodies is high enough, we should let them do all the same things that vaccinated people can do.
But that's not what I hear. I just hear people ignorantly claiming they are immune because they got COVID (some even never confirmed, just they "think" they had it), without any idea as to what kind of antibodies they have in their blood. While some of them probably are just as immune as vaccinated people, I expect that a significant number of them (especially those who caught COVID earlier in the pandemic) don't have a level of immunity approaching that of a vaccinated individual. So... go get antibody tests, and lobby health authorities to recognize post-infection immunity as valid, assuming it's been tested by a lab.
Then they should get antibody tests, and if their level of antibodies is high enough, we should let them do all the same things that vaccinated people can do.
Nope. The default position is for people to all be able to do everything the same. I'm okay with mask mandates when case numbers are above N. Since we already have 100 million Americans with superior antibodies from natural immunity, and vaccines freely available, why mandate and build systems around that? To give someone control?
But that's not what I hear. I just hear people ignorantly claiming they are immune because they got COVID (some even never confirmed, just they "think" they had it),
That's not your problem. See about your own vaccination and wear a mask. It's on them to be straight forward with their health. If they work in a NICU or want to dorm in a college that requires vaccinations already, then by all means use existing protocols to expect a report proving they have antibodies. That's fine. But it's not your problem or my problem whether or not smoeone just "thinks" they had it.
Here's an example of how you can see why I have a problem with your approach. You know how we're going to spend federal dollars to make take-home test kits available at-cost at retailers? Are you okay with people getting those test kits and seeing the results entirely privately in their own home, with no one knowing? If not, then the problem is on you. If you are, then what's the need for anyone to gate-keep access to society by demanding proof at the door? If you can't trust your fellow citizens when you're shopping, why trust them to build and run a system of enslavement like one where you have to use a covid passport to go to school or the bar or a theater or the gym or anywhere else?
So... go get antibody tests, and lobby health authorities to recognize post-infection immunity as valid, assuming it's been tested by a lab.
This is progress, but yeah, still a no. Limit the scope of these authorities now before they decide everything for you.
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.
People who recover from mild COVID-19 have bone-marrow cells that can churn out antibodies for decades, although viral variants could dampen some of the protection they offer.
Note that on this last link from Nature, we now know that past covid is effective at preventing known variants including Delta, per the first two links.
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
Your first article states that the risk of a breakthrough case for someone with natural immunity is 13 times higher if the infection took place 6 months ago. It also states that vaccinating improves protection for those people.
This would seem to contradict your original claim (and validate my reply), since your statement was predicated on the assumption that someone who was naturally infected in 2020 has as much protection today as someone infected a month ago (or someone who was vaccinated a month ago).
Those 103 million Americans infected last year (well, the survivors anyway) would absolutely benefit from taking a vaccine now if they haven't already.
I missed your link in the parent - if there's plenty of evidence that getting the vaccine is actually more risky for a certain group than not getting it, sure, let's avoid giving them the vaccine. It should be obvious that when I say "willingly unvaccinated" I mean people who aren't at risk or have a condition that prevents them from getting vaccinated who refuse it.
>If you're not simply ignorant to history and being tricked by the narrative, at least be honest about what you actually want - which is to control others.
I want to keep myself and my loved ones safe - I've got 3 different family members who are both vulnerable to COVID and require in-home care. It's not feasible for them to self-isolate.
That's 25 million people in the USA alone, and that's just based on the data we have right now. Virtually no one? And you ignore that the people with antibodies from natural immunity don't need it. See the links in the parent comments I posted.
Natural Immunity might confer more protection to the individual against covid, but it's a terrible public health policy position if your goal is protect as many people as possible while you have perfectly good vaccines available.
For those 100m Americans to get that immunity, you had to have a lot of deaths and externalities pushed onto your hospital systems along the way. Healthcare staffing costs are shooting up, health insurance costs will likely rise across the board. Pressure from the delta waves are going to leave a lot of residual costs in the system, and it largely preventable.
Vax passports/documentatio is a whole separate issue, but I'll never understand why Americans are so adamantly against preventative healthcare measures.
Natural Immunity might confer more protection to the individual against covid, but it's a terrible public health policy position if your goal is protect as many people as possible while you have perfectly good vaccines available.
We don't formulate public health policy based on 0 cases of flu or cold or covid. Otherwise we'd all be living in temperature-controlled air-corrected 24/7-monitored government housing pods would reduce the transmission to 0. Maybe those pods are the best public health policy? Because they could ship us food contact-free and let us out for exercise at times determined by an efficiency algorithm?
For those 100m Americans to get that immunity, you had to have a lot of deaths and externalities pushed onto your hospital systems along the way.
This is exaggerated. Here is how I know: roughly half of the hospitalizations that have occurred were mild or asymptomatic cases.
Quote from article: "In other words, the study suggests that roughly half of all the hospitalized patients showing up on COVID-data dashboards in 2021 may have been admitted for another reason entirely, or had only a mild presentation of disease."
So you have fear induced by media relentlessly spamming our brains via feeds and doom-scrolling, and people then see the # of hospitalizations and assume that means a doomsday scenario like the film Contagion. If the reality is that our numbers have been misleading or incomplete, then it is impossible for you to accurately measure those externalities you mention. Therefore some rumored externalities should not be the basis for policy that strips people of their rights and livelihood. And it CERTAINLY should never be the basis for fabricating a false dilemma like vaxed vs unvaxed.
How many people got scared about their symptoms and rushed to the hospital because the media caused a panic? Per that source I mentioned, it's entirely possible this happened.
Healthcare staffing costs are shooting up,
Because hospitals are imposing those costs on themselves by firing nurses that are not complying. To the point where some hospitals in NYC are now unable to deliver children.
health insurance costs will likely rise across the board.
For years before covid, the common narrative online was always that health insurance companies are bad. It's been known for YEARS that they make record profits and always pass on costs to the customers anyway. In the form of higher premiums, higher deductibles, and shittier services. So why are some on HN now peddling sympathy for them? Those costs are exaggerated and their bottom line is still fat from years of gouging the customers.
Vax passports/documentatio is a whole separate issue, but I'll never understand why Americans are so adamantly against preventative healthcare measures.
Get rid of the mandates tomorrow and say "masking when cases are above N in your area" and I'm sure everyone will be okay with that. No need to impose vaccination mandates anymore - people who want the protection can get the protection voluntarily.
And the small subset of people who cannot, could be taken care of through other creative means like giving them funds to stay at home until the pandemic is officially over. A cost that is a much smaller drop in the bucket compared to this tyranny that is poised to emerge.
>Because hospitals are imposing those costs on themselves by firing nurses that are not complying. To the point where some hospitals in NYC are now unable to deliver children.
I believe record numbers of health care workers are dropping out of the profession from stress & over work, from the pressure of treating those 100m cases. I doubt the number being let go for vaccine refusal is significant in this sense. Nurses in particular already have other vaccine requirements as a part of their job, this shouldn't be a suprise to them.
>For years before covid, the common narrative online was always that health insurance companies are bad. It's been known for YEARS that they make record profits and always pass on costs to the customers anyway. In the form of higher premiums, higher deductibles, and shittier services. So why are some on HN now peddling sympathy for them?
I am not peddling sympathy for insurance companies, I should have written that as premiums will rise - everyone paying for healthcare will shoulder the burden of higher costs.
Are you also against the FDA mandating the fortification of foods with folate and vitamin D as a public health initiative? Is that tyranny against your rights to drink unadulterated milk?
I believe record numbers of health care workers are dropping out of the profession from stress & over work, from the pressure of treating those 100m cases. I doubt the number being let go for vaccine refusal is significant in this sense. Nurses in particular already have other vaccine requirements as a part of their job, this shouldn't be a suprise to them.
I gave quality sources for everything I said. Whereas what you said is "I believe" and "I doubt" and "Nurses should." That's...not evidence and it's not arguments. It doesn't matter what you believe. Or what you doubt if it's not backed by the evidence. The evidence I provided explicitly says that some hospitals are suspending services due to nurses quitting because of the covid mandate. And here's another source where a union in another state is saying that 30% of their staff may quit over mandates.
No doubt some are going to leave because of exhaustion as well, but it's not rocket science to see what's happening because of the mandates themselves.
Regardless of existing vaccine requirements, one would have to bury their head in the sand to not see the difference between what is happening now and what is the norm otherwise. Everyone for the most part is expected to take this vaccine or get fired, regardless of superior natural immunity. Not just nurses. Everyone including the 100+ million people who already had covid and don't technicaly need it. It's a power grab trying to ride the coattails of "nurses already have to get vaccinated."
I am not peddling sympathy for insurance companies, I should have written that as premiums will rise - everyone paying for healthcare will shoulder the burden of higher costs.
Are you also against the FDA mandating the fortification of foods with folate and vitamin D as a public health initiative? Is that tyranny against your rights to drink unadulterated milk?
I don't care about milk. I don't drink milk. What does milk have to do with people being banned from putting food on the table if they don't submit to tyranny? Particularly those 100+ million people who had covid already and thus have better antibodies already? What does milk have to do with people having to live in a "papers please" society in NYC if they want to go to the bar or watch a movie or do anything? You can buy milk fresh from the farm if that's what you want. Make friends with farmers and they'll take care of it. Buy the fortified stuff if that's what you want. You're not mandated one way or the other or threatened with your livelihood if you choose "wrong" on which milk you purchase for yourself, are you?
You seem more interested in a debate. Otherwise why bring up fortified milk as if it's actually a worthwhile comparison? I'm not here to debate, my friend. I'm here to ring the alarm bells because something is wildly wrong and it doesn't take a genius to see it. Go peruse those links in my comments on Australia, and let me know if you think the frog is in the pot yet. Here, I'll paste them for your convenience:
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:
“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:
I share legitimate concerns about the Australian federal government's moves in recent years which show a lurch towards the surveillance state and authoritarianism. The points you raise which are related to regulations surrounding the response to COVID are needless fear-mongering however.
Yes, the rights of the individual with respect to movement and to assembly are important. But, so are the rights of citizens to not be infected and be put at risk of hospitalisation and even death.
So, a (temporary) regulation to limit the spread of COVID by reducing the number of people you can have in your home is acceptable in the same way that drivers are forced to drive at 40km/h around schools and playgrounds.
The great majority of Australia's citizenry understands this trade-off, thus supports the (predominantly) state government efforts during this time of COVID. And this support has been shown to provide health dividends; which, astonishingly, even the anti-lockdown Murdoch press seems to be grudgingly accepting:
Being in the middle of an epidemic changes the norms as far as regulations go, in much the same way that such norms are altered during times of war. Citizens know these changes are unpalatable, but also know the alternatives are worse.
> The great majority of Australia's citizenry understands this trade-off, thus supports the (predominantly) state government efforts during this time of COVID.
Wow. Where to begin. Firstly I'm in Australian Lockdown Hell and I do not support the state government's efforts. Not one bit.
Victoria, day 226 of lockdown. It's 8pm and I need to visit supermarket before it closes due to curfew. Actually, it's too late.
Masks are required outside. Check-ins everywhere. Angry state authorities appear on the screen on my wall blaming and condemning the public for "visiting their families" or "watching the sunset" or other unforgivable immoral acts.
The faces on the screen threaten to restrict freedoms and enforce new rules that go beyond simple contact tracing. Vaccinated or not, I will not support proving I'm vaccinated every day. There's an assumption that everyone is "sick until proven healthy", or "untrustworthy until trusted", or a "dirty virus spreading threat until proven vaccinated which is a sterilizing bullet-proof shield".
The Australian capital ACT, just announced a 4 week lockdown because of 32 reported cases yesterday. The ACT has seen 3 deaths since the start of the pandemic. Three deaths.
Meanwhile, day 226 of lockdown in Victoria, and I can't drive more than 5 km. I could be fined $5,000 for visiting my family. My family can appear on my screen, however, and the conversation is not listened to by the authorities, only logged for now. The warrant-less monitoring comes later, the frequency of which depends on my use of phrases like "I feel like protesting against lockdowns" and so on.
This is Australia, 2021. It matters not that the masses are submissive to coercive control. They're being blackmailed. The "rewards" promised are only the things we already had, now taken away.
> ...acceptable in the same way that drivers are forced to drive at 40km/h around schools and playgrounds
The glaring flaw with analogies involving speeding drivers, is the speeding driver is always speeding by definition. The drunk driver is always drunk by definition. An unvaccinated person is not always infected or spreading the virus. And vaccinated people can still be infected and spread the virus too, which further derails the analogy: A sober driver cannot suddenly become unwillingly intoxicated in the way a vaccinated person can become infected. So please find a better analogy.
40 million REPORTED COVID infections... Two family members had positive tests REPORTED (they got tested). Three others got symptoms (it WAS COVID) while quarantining but never got tested (therefore never got REPORTED). Only 40% (of those in this household) got REPORTED.
It's really hard to take you seriously when you are trying to equate a vaccine passport with locking everyone in monitored, isolated, government-run housing pods.
> There's no need for a "sacrifice of individual liberty for safety."
We sacrifice individual liberty for safety every day. People who aren't licensed to drive don't get behind the wheel, and if they do and get caught, the punishments are stiff.
> Implementing these passports will cause something even worse than some covid spread to happen. A two-tiered society where one segment of society is viewed as unhealthy, unclean, even dangerous.
If you are choosing not to get vaccinated[0], then you are dangerous. You are literally a hazard to public health. You are easy incubation grounds for new virus variants that can evade the protection of the vaccines we have now. You are selfishly pushing the consequences of a possible infection on your family and friends, and on the doctors and nurses who may have to treat you. All because you've decided to politicize a vaccine. A vaccine, for crying out loud! It's absurd.
> Time for YOU, reader, to say no and realize that these passports are just about control. They don't care about your health. It's about power. Think critically about the system being built. It's about the control.
I mean, sure, there are a lot of things in this world that are more about control than their stated purpose. Public school curricula, airport security, organized religion. The list goes on. And sure, I bet some people get their rocks off telling people they can or can't go to their favorite bar or restaurant because of their health care choices. But the bottom line is that we're not getting out of this pandemic without mass vaccination or natural immunity. And the time it'll take us to get to natural immunity will involve years of orders of magnitude more deaths, the constant overloading of our heath care system, and doctors and nurses quitting en masse as they cease to be able to deal with it all anymore.
Even if we accept for a moment that no one in power cares about public health, I think it's safe to accept that they do care about the economy, because that's how they continue to line their pockets. The economy doesn't look so good in places where people don't care about trying to beat back the pandemic.
[0] Even though this isn't a thing, I absolutely support the idea of a "post-infection immunity card". We should define what level of antibodies conveys enough immunity, and give people antibody tests and issue them cards if their antibody counts qualify. Those cards should be accepted wherever proof of vaccination is accepted.
It's really hard to take you seriously when you are trying to equate a vaccine passport with locking everyone in monitored, isolated, government-run housing pods.
The comparison is the only way to shake awake some people who are too afraid to speak up. Because that's effectively where we're headed. Just look at Australia's new app that they're going to demand people use for self quaranting. Facial recognition and GPS tracking in your own home, and random pings that send the police officers to your house if you don't respond in 15 minutes. See my comment history for links if you're interested in that.
We sacrifice individual liberty for safety every day. People who aren't licensed to drive don't get behind the wheel, and if they do and get caught, the punishments are stiff.
That's not the same as false dilemmas around vaxed vs unvaxed that conveniently ignore the 100+ million who have superior antibodies from natural immunity. That's not the same as being fired from employment because you don't need the vaccine but your HR department wants to exercise ownership over your body. It's not a sacrifice of personal liberty to get in trouble if you drive before you're old enough or before you pass a road test, because you're driving two tons of steel that could hurt someone else.
Whereas here, it's only under the false dilemma of vax vs unvax where one could construe an illusory situation where vaccination is a function of responsibility. Because once we see that the vaccinated spread the virus, and those with past covid have superior antibodies...the entire analogy collapses.
And sure, I bet some people get their rocks off telling people they can or can't go to their favorite bar or restaurant because of their health care choices
And those people are more powerful than you think, and they will take a mile if you give them an inch.
But the bottom line is that we're not getting out of this pandemic without mass vaccination or natural immunity. And the time it'll take us to get to natural immunity will involve years of orders of magnitude more deaths
We already have a third of Americans with natural immunity.
So it's already the case that we do not need to keep framing the conversation in terms of vax vs unvax.
the constant overloading of our heath care system, and doctors and nurses quitting en masse as they cease to be able to deal with it all anymore.
You mean like how the numerous nurses and doctors who say they don't want the vaccine, end up getting fired or quitting to avoid it? And consequently some services like child-delivery in NYC are being suspended?
This is entirely a manufactured problem. Manufactured by the people who supposedly care about public health, who love those mandates and the power they feel when they sign those papers.
Even though this isn't a thing, I absolutely support the idea of a "post-infection immunity card". We should define what level of antibodies conveys enough immunity, and give people antibody tests and issue them cards if their antibody counts qualify. Those cards should be accepted wherever proof of vaccination is accepted.
Yes, except no to "proof of vaccination." That's not necessary. If someone feels at risk, the vaccination is available if they don't have antibodies. Wear masks if you have to. Implement mask wearing when case #s go above N. Anyone still demanding passports is naive. Why on earth would you expect 100+ million Americans with superior natural immunity to live in a "papers please" society?
It's not an accidentally two tiered society it's an entirely conscious effort to exclude those who won't protect their fellows and it's unlikely to be limited to the present crisis. When this crisis is gone someday there will be another and we will want to be prepared to handle it better than we have this one.
Incidentally boys have an outsized share of the risk of complications but still less than the risk of covid. The correct thing to do is take the minimum effort to protect yourself and others and stop complaining.
It's not an accidentally two tiered society it's an entirely conscious effort to exclude those who
You're right, it's an intentional effort by Democrats in power to create divisions in the United States when the reality is not vax vs unvax at all. Natural immunity is relevant to over 100 million Americans by now yet that's not making it into the narrative.
won't protect their fellows and it's unlikely to be limited to the present crisis. When this crisis is gone someday there will be another and we will want to be prepared to handle it better than we have this one.
The extent of this crisis is overblown. The best way to protect each other is to wear a mask when case numbers go above N, and to offer free vaccines as an option for anyone who doesn't have natural immunity. This is not the approach being taken. Why not? It can't be said to be about protecting people if we're ignoring the 100 million+ who have antibodies from past covid. Those antibodies are superior to two shots of Pfizer.
Incidentally boys have an outsized share of the risk of complications but still less than the risk of covid
Incorrect. The guidance mentioned in the link above is that they are at lower risk if they just get covid, versus getting vaccination.
The correct thing to do is take the minimum effort to protect yourself and others and stop complaining.
And the minimum effort is masking when cases numbers are above N. And stop complaining? I'll shout it from the rooftops until people wake up to the tyrannical systems being built.
You keep claiming that 100M+ people in the US already have "superior" antibodies from a past infection, but you've provided no evidence of this.
Just because someone suffered an infection, it doesn't mean they're now naturally immune. That immunity might have worn off, or their illness may not have been severe enough to provoke an immune response that confers as much protection as one of the vaccines do.
I would love to read a study that shows natural, extended immunity in everyone (or even just many or most people) who has been previously infected, but I don't think that study exists, and it's telling that you haven't linked to one.
From article: "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"
Over 100 million! Past covid and therefore natural immunity.
Just because someone suffered an infection, it doesn't mean they're now naturally immune. That immunity might have worn off, or their illness may not have been severe enough to provoke an immune response that confers as much protection as one of the vaccines do.
I would love to read a study that shows natural, extended immunity in everyone (or even just many or most people) who has been previously infected, but I don't think that study exists, and it's telling that you haven't linked to one.
From science.org article: "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."
Also, the evidence says that the antibodies are slated to last a lifetime.
Some of the costs of your choice to forgo vaccination are pushed onto the community, and so the community is entitled to set rules to minimise those costs.
We accept this sort of risk management in many other domains, where your individual choices impose may introduce external damages(Pet bonds for renters?) but Americans don't seem to think it fair in this situation for some reason.
This is a false dilemma. It is a dishonest position to take. I can only hope you're doing it with well intentions. But the reality of the matter is that 100 million Americans had covid by now, which means they have antibodies that are superior to those derived from vaccination. See the sources above.
The "community" is not entitled to set rules to "minimize those costs." That's some Orwellian dictatorial nonsense. It would justify all kinds of evil. And it has justified all kinds of evil throughout history when sides were drawn this way and one side dehumanized the other.
We don't think this way in America because we remember history, our own and the rest of the world's. We have experience. And there are those of us who are still old enough to remember.
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.
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.
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.
It's impossible for you to have counted the # of times I made this claim in my comment history without noticing the links. Please be sure you're trying to see the sources when I provide them in parent comments.
The study you cited sounds very promising but is far from definitive evidence. It hasn't been published. Nor peer-reviewed, nor have its findings been collaborated by other studies.
In fact, the very article we are commenting on has quotes from medical experts which contradict its findings.
I think it would be more honest to add a qualifier to your repeated claims. As in, "it hasn't been collaborated yet, but there is a promising study suggesting that....."
Stating it as fact, so vehemently, so frequently, is very misleading. What if that one study is found to be faulty?
>It's impossible for you to have counted the # of times I made this claim in my comment history without noticing the links.
I searched the (first page) comments for this story using the phrase "superior immunity". You mentioned this "fact" 7 times without providing the source (or any sort of qualifier as mentioned above). I do see now (after searching your name) that you have indeed provided a link to the source numerous times under other comments so it seems obvious that this wasn't intentional or malicious. Apologies for that.
FWIW, I do hope this study ends up being proven correct. But in the mean time, I highly encourage you to be more honest in how you cite it.
this is an impossible standard to hold. we might as well punish fat people because they have highest costs of everyone to the healthcare system. they have more complications with other diseases (including covid) and take up the most resources. the community is entitled to set rules to minimize those costs right?
Not necessarily. Like I said in other posts, wherever vaccination requirements existed we have protocols for sharing proof of antibodies. That's all that needs to happen. If you work in a hospital or want to dorm in a college, go ahead and submit your proof of antibodies.
But mandating it across the board and taking away people's opportunity to put bread on the table if they don't comply? That's not a sacrifice of some marginal amout of individual liberty - that is a declaration of war on liberty itself. The reason I say this is because it's not hard to think logically about where systems around vaccine passports will take us. A two-tiered society in which one side of tens of millions is forced out of society, ostracized, and dehumanized.
For no reason, considering we're already looking at the majority of Americans having antibodies one way or another soon. The 100 million who had past covid have superior antibodies already. Time for us to stop allowing this converastion to be framed around someone getting or not getting the vaccination.
Europe (or Germany at least) accepts natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. As far as I've heard, no one has been getting covid on purpose as a result.
I mean ultimately we’re guessing at the rationale of the leadership of each of these countries - but I’d guess based on vaccination rates that Europe generally has less of an antivax problem than the US, so authorities there might be less concerned about vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy in the US is also very regionally concentrated - maybe less so in Germany?
“COVID parties” are also a worst case scenario - I think the vast majority of people would just opt to not get vaccinated and live their lives as usual - which would lead to more outbreaks, deaths, mutations, etc.
There is a huge variance in vaccination rates of European countries. The US is behind most western European countries but ahead of most eastern European countries.
I was talking about Germany specifically in the parent - the least vaccinated state in Germany has a ~10% higher vaccination rates than the least vaccinated state in the US. But it looks like there is a good deal of variance even inside Germany.
There are also only 16 states in Germany; Even a naive statistician would presume that the USA is likely to have larger differences between min and max than Germany.
In Belgium there is an organization threatening covid parties right now, because the government wants to introduce covid-safe-passports in Brussels due to the low vaccination rate [0].
“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.
You have a bazillion replies sprayed across this whole thread. Many of them are extremely confrontational, baselessly accusatory, and certainly not convincing. What do you think you’re accomplishing?
I got the vaccine. Still, I can easily come up with like a dozen good faith, non-selfish reasons to avoid getting it. Are you unwilling to brainstorm a little, or are you just being disingenuous?
Oh, let's please not delve too deeply into "German culture".
Update/PS: Maybe the downvoters can explain how the unselfish German culture works when it comes to things like considering Turks to be equally valuable human beings.
‘For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”’
Yeah, I pointed this out in my comment - I wish I could say that I think this would have all gone a lot more smoothly if authorities were just honest about things from the start, but I think a lot of the outrage about, say, Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies early on only provided ammo for people who were already going to disregard COVID.
At this point I’m not even sure it matters. The states with the lowest vaccination rates are never going to have vaccine passports anyways. Mentally and culturally the pandemic is over for most people, vaccinated or not.
> Fauci lying about masks to try and conserve PPE supplies
Right. It provided proof that the authorities were willing to lie “for the greater good”. So at that point their statements cannot be seen as truthful but only “possibly good for us to believe” (they think).
And as soon as people accepted that possibility, combine that with their personal estimate of how often “greater good” might conflict with what they personally would consider the actual good of the country or themselves, and you have a situation where many people don’t comply with the recommendations.
Lying to the public is a bad long term strategy for achieving cooperation.
I think most people who disregarded COVID had made their choice before these lies came to light - it just provided justification for them later on. The small town my family's in in the South's COVID response consisted of closing Wal-Mart for a couple of days in March. Most of the people there had made their choice about how they were going to respond to COVID before the mask discourse happened.
But a lot of these people (perhaps justifiably) already viewed media and public officials as perfectly willing to lie to them or ignore their concerns - this extends beyond the pandemic itself and is part of a broader trend of mutual distrust.
I don't know, has it really "blown up in their face," or do people just use supposed examples of "strategic messaging" to support their preexisting commitments? In other words, are people actually changing their decisions based on specific examples where public health officials allegedly lied or used strategic messaging, or are they simply using those examples to justify their own actions?
People's opinion of the trustworthiness of authorities wasn't a blank slate when COVID began. Some people already believed (based on their life experience) that authorities are untrustworthy, and therefore chose to be skeptical of their claims during early COVID. Then examples of authorities lying about COVID/masks came out, which convinced those people that they were right all along. They'll be even more skeptical of the authorities next time.
That doesn't seem to explain how the "controversy" seemed to form almost perfectly along existing partisan lines in the United States, unless you're claiming that the baseline "trusthworthiness of authorities" was already divided as cleanly along those lines (which is not at all my impression). Moreover, I feel like preexisting "trusthworthiness of authorities" is very unlikely to be a good explanation for differences in views on vaccines, because I strongly suspect that people on all sides of these disagreements point to people they claim to be authorities in order to corroborate their views.
> a huge segment of the population [might just] get infected purposefully
This made sense as a fear before vaccines were available. If immunity passports existed, and the only way to get one was to be infected - sure some people would do they.
Howver now it would be much easier to get vaccinated than finding an infection and get it registered. The policy would save a bunch of people from a couple of vaccine induced sick days without any reasonable downsides. Seems like an easy decision to make.
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.
Your first paragraph is correct, but you seem to think it's a problem that people might choose to be naturally infected. That's a valid choice people can make. I believe most people who aren't vaccinated are doing so on purpose. Delta has actually been helpful towards getting herd immunity because is it so contagious but far less lethal than the earlier strains.
We can reach herd immunity with a combination of vaccines and natural immunity. You will not be able to vaccinate everyone.
Deliberate infection (or deliberate infection risk-taking) can be a valid concern, but I believe that validity depends a lot on the spreading characteristics of the virus in question. For SARS-COV-2 ca June 2020 I'd fully support the argument (the virus that was so bad at spreading from human to human that we thought that washing hands would make a meaningful difference). But with "chicken pox fast" delta, I doubt that it would make much difference. Anti-vaxxers will go through their first contact infection pretty soon wether they try or not. Just like the vaccinated. Or rather: in a very different way, rarely but still too often.
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 antibody tests? Did those tests show that they have antibody levels that would give them protection (including against delta) comparable to a vaccine? Have they consulted a medical professional about this? If it's "yes" to those questions, great, probably no need to get vaccinated. I have no problem with that. But the "I got sick so I'm immmune" stuff I hear constantly sounds more like a hope than something the people who say it have actually researched and been tested for.
You should probably continue reading at least to the end of a paragraph if it's the basis of an argument you're making:
"FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it’s unclear whether the vaccine was the cause. Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem."
This is essentially an unrestricted database containing raw reports. Nothing is done to eliminate or control for the entries where the cause of death is unrelated to the vaccine, and the data isn't a replacement for a controlled study.
Deaths that can actually be attributed to reactions to the vaccine are so far much lower than that figure (and even if they weren't, millions of people have been vaccinated; COVID-19 is significantly more likely to kill you or leave you with long-term health problems).
As we saw when mask mandates were dropped for the vaccinated, the unvaccinated just lied and said they were. Same here - everyone who has neither been vaccinated nor infected will just claim they’ve had Covid. That is, unless we start testing everyone for antibodies.
Which we should do! If the medical science can tell us a level of antibodies that confers similar protection to a vaccine, then we should make a "CDC post-infection immunity card", and give it to people who get antibody tests that show sufficient levels.
If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe outcome.
Mass vaccinating the entire population for a respiratory virus that mutates so easily creates a whole host of other problems and a never ending pandemic of variants that may actually get more severe.
Most existing variants came about prior to vaccination and we can absolutely adapt vaccines to subsequent variants just like we do the flu. We absolutely can end mass deaths to covid.
It's false that people without risk factors don't die of covid and monoclonal antibodies often don't work. You aren't safe if you aren't vaccinated or otherwise immune.
It's the variants that get selected that is the long term concern. Not how or from which cohort they emerge.
With leaky vaccines applied to an entire population the tendency is for more severe variants to prevail. How many times does the flu vax miss the target? Flu has is also leaky but we don't get more than 40% coverage so not likely to see more harmful strains selected. And then we whore ourselves out to big pharma hoping they stay ahead of it all.
And the backing study:
Imperfect Vaccination Can Enhance the Transmission of Highly Virulent Pathogens
"Our data show that anti-disease vaccines that do not prevent transmission can create conditions that promote the emergence of pathogen strains that cause more severe disease in unvaccinated hosts."
>If you are previously infected or not in a vulnerable group its not selfish or stupid to avoid this vaccine. You can manage it with monoclonal antibodies if you do get a severe outcome.
But there's a chance of you spreading the infection to someone who's vulnerable in the process of recovering from it. Or someone else who ends up spreading it to someone who's vulnerable. Could just be that you pass by someone in your apartment building on the way to pick up your antibodies. Or exhausting medical care supplies if you do end up needing treatment.
I'm not equipped to tell whether your claim about mass vaccinations are true, but if that's correct are yearly flu shots also a bad idea?
If you are naive and not vaccinated then when you get covid you'll likely notice it, isolate and not spread it (if it is particularly severe you may be bed ridden and unable to be social). If vaccinated and getting a less severe infection you may not need to isolate and likely be more social and prone to spread it.
Yearly flu shots if they went out to the entire population would most likely create a similar problem. But with only 40% of the uptake and usually to the more vulnerable they haven't had this effect.
Mass vaccinations to a virus like polio make perfect sense because this virus is not able to mutate and still successfully infect the host. You can confer long lasting immunity with vacinations on this. The spike protein on Sars can mutate many ways to Sunday and still break through the cell wall. So your constantly reformulating and boosting and trying to keep ahead of a changing target that if left to its own devices would just peter out due to it becoming less and less severe (too severe and it dies due to less transmission, less severe get more transmission and win and the virus becomes more benign over time).
No, I agree, but it's very similar though in terms of how easily it mutates and because of that impossible to snuff out with vaccines. We should only vaccinate the vulnerable like we do with the flu.
The old and immunocompromised get the least direct benefit from the vaccination because their immune systems are weak and a large portion of the actual decrease in mortality among these groups isn't directly from the vaccination but from having fewer vectors running around spreading disease.
Furthermore Covid is believed to mutate substantially slower than the flu
> Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Alphainfluenzavirus are RNA viruses that cause coronavirus disease-19 and influenza, respectively. Both viruses infect the respiratory tract, show similar symptoms, and use surface proteins to infect the host. Influenza requires hemagglutinin and neuraminidase to infect, whereas SARS-CoV-2 uses protein S. Both viruses depend on a viral RNA polymerase to express their proteins, but only SARS-CoV-2 has a proofreading mechanism, which results in a low mutation rate compared to influenza.
On the topic of mutations letting it spread through those who aren't AS vulnerable would give it billions of new patients and trillions of new chances to mutate while killing millions of people whose lives could have been saved by a vaccine that is safer than many people's weekly commute to work.
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.
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.
Which means that testing is really undependable. Probably better to vaccinate everyone, because our prediction of the immunity of people who have been vaccinated is a lot more reliable.
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 becomes.
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.
A vaccine is an innoculation and prophylactic, not a cure.
The prophylactic costs less than the diagnostic. It has negligible risk of harm. It's a determinable and unambiguous event, unlike trying to verify a possible infection and sustained immune response.
The obvious rational policy decision for public health is to mandate the vaccine for everyone.
Those not previously infected gain immunity. Those previously infected ... either get a not-strictly-necessary injection, or far more likely, a useful booster.
And the administration, diagnostic, and monitoring costs are far lower.
I think Canada accepts positive covid tests as proof of prior infection, and many people already have those tests done and just sitting in their email.
Canada doesn't have a national health care system, this is managed by each provinces.
Quebec is the only province that will let you get only 1 dose of the vaccine, instead of 2, if you were previously infected. With that 1 dose, that's enough to have access to the vaccine passport.
But there are absolutely no places in Canada that accepts prior infection as being fully vaccinated.
I mean, that's fine, but it's not what the parent was asking for. It seemed that they were implying we needed to catch every pre-infection, and the lack of development of highly sensitive tests for pre-infection was evidence of some negligence. I was arguing against developing "T-cell tests" for prior COVID infection.
My comment was not intended to be an argument against any testing for pre-infection; I think the rationale for that is pretty solid, but I think that the regulatory establishment needs to be prepared to inform people that they might not be able to prove their previous infection and in that case they should get vaccinated.
Can you be sure the temporary side effects (caused by the engagement of the immune system) wouldn't be diminished for people with existing immunity? It might not be as much of a concern.
I believe one of the major studies that found that natural immunity was better than the Pfizer shot alone also found that natural immunity plus the shot was better still.
I had a friend think he had it 3 times (and the third time was probably legitimate). The symptoms the first two times? Typical cold symptoms. No fever. No major cough. No real loss of taste. I had another friend do the same thing.
This was back before tests were widely available. I have genuinely had it twice myself, but people largely have though for the past two years that if they were sick it was COVID.
This is a reasonable concern. My wife had it and got the test to prove it, I also had it and did not get tested, but considering that she was asymptomatic, and we continued all normal activities, as well as quarantining together, it would be silly to question if I had it.
Any serious policy which brings natural immunity into the fold would include the need for an actual medical diagnosis. I don't see the issue to raise to be a valid one because there are easy solutions.
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've seen this cited several times in this thread, but I've seen no one mention that (according their own FAQ):
> medRxiv (pronounced "med-archive") is a free online archive and distribution server for complete but unpublished manuscripts (preprints) in the medical, clinical, and related health sciences. Preprints are preliminary reports of work that have not been certified by peer review. They should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The context is important, even if it turns out to be true.
For teens, UK [edit:] Chief Medical Officer recommends but not mandates first dose, and does not recommend second dose at least until spring. The benefits are marginal.
2 ICU prevented admissions / million first doses
87 hospital prevented admissions / million first doses
0.16 ICU prevented admissions / million second doses
6 hospital prevented admissions / million second doses
> Having the vaccine is not compulsory.
> Prof Whitty said an "offer" of vaccination will be made to all children aged 12-15.
> But he said young people and their parents needed to be supported and there should be no stigma attached to their choice.
On the other hand, the UK vaccination advisory board does not recommend vaccinating under-16s because they consider there to be inadequate evidence the risks outweigh the benefits. (Despite considerable and very public political pressure to come to a different conclusion, and if I remember correctly even some of the members who were most sceptical about it resigning and being replaced.)
Quoting from the recent BBC article: "The UK's chief medical officers recommended a single Pfizer dose for all children aged 12 to 15." Perhaps there is a difference of position between 'advisory board' and 'chief medical officer', I am not that familiar with the UK scene.
From the article: "They made their recommendation after the JCVI - the scientific body advising the government on vaccines - said it did not recommend vaccinating healthy children on health grounds alone." The JCVI are the body that normally makes these decisions and has for the pandemic so far, but they kept on repeatedly refusing to recommend vaccination for under-16s unless they had a pre-existing condition no matter how many times the government asked or how unsubtle their hints - so there was a kind of weird political fudge where the government found another body that'd approve of them, largely based on the potential to reduce disruption to kids' education. (However, that disruption was itself mostly a result of government policy decisions, and the main reason the UK actually seems to be vaccinating under-16s is because other countries have been doing it which makde it politically untenable not to do the same.)
Absolutely not the case. Children should be vaccinated. The Israeli study was useful in establishing that infection results in immunity. That’s it. It does not establish that infection is lower risk than vaccination.
Pushed reply too soon. Children are at low risk, but not no risk. To the extent that kids are running around with infections, they’re transmitting virus to others and providing a reservoir for mutation. That is not productive.
Let’s get the kids vaccinated. It’s the cheapest way out of this thing.
I don’t buy the “unvaccinated as a reservoir for mutation” line of thinking. For one, there are many, many countries with a low vaccination rate and it’s going to be like that for a long time.
Also, I haven’t see data on what the R0 is from vaccinated person to vaccinated person with Delta. If it’s above 1 then all we’re doing is creating immense selective pressure for vaccine escape.
The latter seems likely to me. I don’t understand how anyone thinks the blame for mutations lies solely or even mostly with the unvaccinated. Vaccines, distributed in a pandemic, are likely to cause immense selective pressure, and that is one of the reasons that the WHO originally planned on non-vaccine herd immunity when they wrote their respiratory pandemic game-plan prior to 2020.
I’m fully vaccinated, not anti-vax, and not an expert. This is just my understanding based on what I’ve read.
Has there ever been a vaccination program that was so successful, so fast, that we reached nearly 100% vaccination in less than what, a year or so? Why wouldn't every other virus simply mutate in these "reservoirs" and make vaccines a failed idea?
Not all viruses are created equal; some are much more prone to mutation than others. And indeed, vaccines for highly mutation-prone ones do "fail" in some sense -- that's why we need flu shots every year but one or two doses of the chickenpox vaccine are preventative for a lifetime: the flu is an RNA virus and also has a mechanism for swapping genes between different strains infecting an individual organism (including animals), so it changes a lot, and vaccines only last until the in-the-wild flu changes out from under them, whereas chickenpox/varicella is a DNA virus that's much more genetically stable.
* Flu, which has a particularly high mutation rate, does exactly that: in some years the flu vaccine is only 10% effective.
* Most viruses are less infectious than covid, especially delta covid.
* The covid vaccines are novel, targeting a specific protein. Natural immunity targets more than one protein, I've heard up to 28 in case of covid. This should make vaccine escape much harder, as it is significantly more difficult to mutate around 28 proteins at the same time. By 'natural immunity' I mean immunity gained by exposure to the natural pathogen, either through live infection or an inactivated pathogen vaccine.
> To the extent that kids are running around with infections, they’re transmitting virus to others and providing a reservoir for mutation
Can make the same argument for the vaccinated people. Vaccines don’t prevent infection, they reduce symptoms. So by same logic they run around with the infection spreading it to everyone.
Vaccines don't 100% prevent infections, but there's strong evidence that they both significantly reduce the rate at which people become infected and, should they become infected, the rate at which they can retransmit the virus to others, and we have no reason to believe they wouldn't do the same in children. It's not an all-or-nothing affair.
I think we should be wary of those "easy way outs", because nothing seems to indicate that vaccines are a panacea. They are of course the best that us adults can do right now to protect ourselves, but if restrictions get too relaxed simultaneously, then we ve just created pressure on the virus to create a variant that will escape completely. This is a marathon and we are not yet done. a combination of vaccines with distancing will be required for a long time. Humans are adaptible, the earlier we start the better.
(Also, we shouldn't argue in absolutes, it s not going to fix anything)
Some children are at greater risk from the vaccine than covid so it seems reckless to just push vaccines. You will quite possibility kill more kids by pushing the vaccine on them.
> If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't vulnerable.
Is that actually true, though? I'm vaccinated - am I not better off having that vaccine, being less likely to be hospitalized or die even if I get a breakthrough case?
Even if natural immunity via infection is better in every way (no idea if this is true, but suppose it is for the sake of this question), am I not better off having that occur while vaccinated and therefore less likely to die?
It seems as though natural immunity is great if it doesn't kill you. And even if the death rate is low, 1% of a large number is still a lot of dead people. We could reduce that number and just deal with the less severe breakthrough cases.
> If the R Naught is more than 1 then you don't get any benefit to vaccinating a population that isn't vulnerable.
That's not how R values work at all. Firstly, an R value of 1.5 and an R value of 5 have wildly different outcomes in terms of controlling spread, and vaccines that can reduce R values can reduce spread even if the R value remains above 1. More to the point, though, "transmission is happening in vaccinated people" doesn't imply that the R value is above 1, and it doesn't look like you've provided any evidence that that's the case, nor does the fact that infections sometimes occur, in and of itself, suggest it.
Only lockdowns brought it back down which creates other problems around immune health in the population. (see NZ for example, RSV is clogging up the hospitals now with young kids who had degraded their immune systems the last year or so with all the hardcore lockdowns there)
That suggests that lockdowns and vaccination together work better than vaccination alone, which is not particularly surprising. It seems, though, like you're suggesting that that means the vaccinations did nothing, which doesn't follow. It might well be that the case counts would have been twice as high if nobody had been vaccinated (or, who knows, ten times), and maybe some percentage of those additionally infected people would have died, or suffered long-term health outcomes. There's no way to know what the appropriate counterfactual is from this data alone.
Gibraltar isn't an island in the middle of the ocean. It's a tiny peninsula attached to the Spanish city of La Linea de la Concepcion. Many Gibraltarians interact with Spaniards on a daily basis. And indeed, the spike in Gibraltar cases coincides exactly with a much larger spike in cases in Spain:
Fair point but the fact remains that transmission is occurring between vaccinated persons. Nobody is disputing this. Israel is one of the higher vaccinated populations and they're at R1.1 as of today.
>I have listened to scared people trying to blame people that are not vaccinated for the fact that vaccines are not that effective at preventing infection and that mild breakthrough infections are common.
A. I reject on principle the reasoning that X must undergo unnecessary medical procedure to lower hypothetical odds of Y being afflicted by some negative outcome. STOP SCAPEGOATING.
B. Consider that the 'cases ratio' is tainted because of faulty CDC guidance. If you test more aggressively conditioned on vaccination status, you are going to get biased ratios. At this point anything but sampling studies is pretty much worthless in assessing how prevalent breakthrough infections are. We've got to thank CDC for that.
> Five days earlier, I had gone to a house party in Montgomery County. There were 15 adults there, all of us fully vaccinated. The next day, our host started to feel sick. The day after that, she tested positive for COVID-19. [...] At this point, 11 of the 15 have tested positive for COVID."
If the vaccines reduce breakthrough infections at 1 : 7 rate, an outbreak incident where 11 : 15 get infected has a probability of about 1 : 1,000,000,000. Rather unlikely, perhaps something else is at play:
> The official Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guideline stated that, since I was fully vaccinated, I didn’t need to do anything different unless I started developing symptoms. I’m an epidemiologist at a major medical research university, which has a dedicated COVID exposure hotline for staff. I called it, and workers said I didn’t need to do anything.
> The CDC announced in May that it was only going to collect data on breakthrough infections that led to hospitalization or death, which are fortunately rare. But that means that outbreaks like ours will fly under the radar.
> I reject on principle the reasoning that X must undergo unnecessary medical procedure to lower hypothetical odds of Y being afflicted by some negative outcome.
It sounds like you reject the entire concept of public health. That is going to be a bit of a problem when you are engaging in a debate about public health policy.
Indeed, I do reject scapegoat-driven 'public health'.
The burden of proof is on the health authorities to quantify win/win scenarios. Not fly by the seat of their pants, sometimes based on faulty/incomplete data and guesswork. 'First, do no harm'. If you are unsure, then don't do it.
You want to make an R-based argument? What is the contribution of children in the past 4 weeks? Do you have evidence that children shed more covid compared with vaccinated adults? Do you have evidence that R is a constant, will your calculations hold 6 months from now? Are you accounting for the selection effect of leaky vaccines on virus evolutionary trajectory? What is the cumulative 20 year ADE risk?
For worst case scenario, do you have a 20 year study of leaky mRNA vaccines against infectious disease in some animal population? No, we're experimenting on humans in a world's first. There have been vaccine disasters. Fortunately not in humans. Warning: NSFL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-m...
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 goal here seems to be to just get everybody vaccinated, possibly even yearly.
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.
Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Instead, please make your substantive points thoughtfully. If someone else is wrong, for example, one good option is to patiently provide correct information.
The silver lining of the covid pandemic is that kids have at a minuscule risk of covid complications. Smaller than flu, both hospitalizations and fatalities.
Nowhere does it say they don’t recommend it. Just that they aren’t going to universally mandate it.
“For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The JCVI’s view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms.
Taking a precautionary approach, this margin of benefit is considered too small to support universal COVID-19 vaccination for this age group at this time. The committee will continue to review safety data as they emerge.”
Look, i don't care about back-and forth arguments, it 's better that i had listed the relevant evidence, and people can make up their minds on case-by-case, because it is possible that blind recommendations for vaccinations may end up being harmful. The phrase "universal vaccination" doesnt mean mandatory, it means that the benefit is so small that they don't recommend it to everyone, but only to kids in higher risk. The evidence seems to agree with them, despite governments' push for more vaccinations for their own reasons, which might be ineffective in the end. (There are countries that are pushing hard to vaccinate schoolchildren)
Same study came to the result that getting a shot after surviving an infection (unvaccinated) gives even better protection. The real interesting comparison would be immunity after getting a breakthrough infection compared to other kinds of acquired immunity. I'm sure we'll get that study eventually.
This second result is a lot weaker than the first, however:
“Individuals who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 seem to gain additional protection from a subsequent single-dose vaccine regimen. Though this finding corresponds to previous reports, we could not demonstrate significance in our cohort.”
At the moment, this does not justify mandating the vaccine for those previously infected.
I mean for someone with natural immunity to get the vaccine is not going to reduce their immunity, and might boost it (or might not). So with fairly little downside, it makes sense to vaccinate them surely?
The same Israeli study found that among previously infected people, those who received a single dose of the vaccine were half as likely to be reinfected, compared to those who received zero doses.
The downside is that if you already have a strong immune response you will have a much harsher reaction to the vaccine, basically four days out of commission. A reaction that’s rather comparable to breakthrough COVID.
I had Covid Original Flavor(tm). My case was considered "mild"--I "only" had a 103 fever for 2 1/2 weeks and my stamina was shot.
I also got vaccinated later. I had about a 24 hour reaction each time.
I wanted to make sure my body latched onto the spike protein. Immune systems latch onto all manner of things--sometimes relevant, sometimes not relevant, sometimes actively harmful.
This is an important point. Your body's reaction to natural Covid is far more unpredictable than to the vaccine. That may give you a more robust immune response--or that may give you something related to an autoimmune disorder.
As a comparison, I had a much worse reaction to Shingrix (the shingles vaccine) which hit me hard for about 4 days and I could barely move the arm that got the shot.
>Side effects can affect your ability to do daily activities, but they should go away in a few days.
> Common side effects: [Tiredness, Headache, Muscle pain, Chills, Fever, Nausea]
>Side effects after your second shot may be more intense than the ones you experienced after your first shot. These side effects are normal signs that your body is building protection and should go away within a few days.
I don't have a specific study for prior immunity vs. second shot, but neither COVID nor the vaccine are magic - both behave in a more or less standard manner. I've seen references to studies though:
>Dr. Erin Morcomb, a family medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic Health System in La Crosse, Wis., and head of its COVID-19 vaccination team, confirms that the reactions can vary based on your health history. "What we've seen in studies is that the second dose does tend to have a little bit more potential to cause side effects than the first dose, but for people who have had COVID-19 infection previously and then recovered, they are at higher risk of having those same side effects after their first dose," she says.
I still think everybody should be vaccinated as far as it is possible, BUT it seems that what you said might not be true. The second vaccine dose can make your natural type immunity weaker.
I got vaxxed as soon as I reasonably could and I never want to get COVID, but if that's true it really does seem insulting to require vaccination for people who can prove they already had COVID. It's like they did get vaccinated but picked a much more difficult/risky and much more effective way to do so -- if that were their intention (and they avoided spreading it once they got it), one could say it was a heroic choice...
At the same time though, I can imagine it would be really difficult/expensive to verify the proof of previous infection vs. verifying vaccination, and there could be the appearance of incentivizing anti-vaxxers to go infect themselves with COVID.
I was sick earlier this year. A few weeks later I paid a pharmacy $20 or $25 to test my blood for antibodies. Strongly positive. Dr. agreed and wrote a letter with my facts.
I thought the process was straightforward, convenient, and cheap.
I had it before the vaccine. It was an absolute joke of an illness, and I'd rather not be referred to as "heroic" for getting a sneeze and a poor sense of smell for a while.
I suspect the marginal utility is better in having a larger % vaccinated. If those on the fence about it hear that there are circumstances where it’s better to only take one dose, or none, many won’t vaccinate at all because it seems less important.
It's deeply unfortunate but not really surprising, these kinds of large scale experiments on humans are rather difficult to organize (for good reason) and outside of a naturally occurring disaster may not have happened at all.
I assume the proposal is that the vaccine card would be a de-facto immunity card, where a test showing a high antibody count would still be logged on your card as an alternative to the vaccine.
But the devil's in the details anyways. How long would that be considered good for, since we'll probably be looking at regular annual boosters? Would extremist anti-vaxxers have a perverse incentive to get infected so as to rejoin society while avoiding the vaccine?
Could you please stop posting this sort of inflammatory dross to HN? It's getting downvoted for the obvious reason that it breaks the site guidelines and is not what this site is for.
Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this a ton lately. Moreover, we've asked you repeatedly in the past to stop. If you continue this way we're going to have to ban you, so really, would you please review the guidelines and use HN as intended?
Maybe you should question that conclusion when as you said people you respect are questioning what’s going on? I don’t know how to better put it but if the science requires unquestioning obedience to an already decided conclusion then maybe it isn’t science. I’m European and I’m outside that republican thing for the record, just in case that matters to you.
ITYM political projection. Fomenting hysteria is a well-documented tool of science deniers. Not so much the scientists, as their spoken words typically mirror reality.
Please do not take HN threads further into political flamewar and please follow the site guidelines regardless of how bad another commenter's posts are, or you feel they are. Doing this only makes the thread even worse.
There is finally a relevant flu analogy for those people to use, but they completely miss it in favor of some other non sequitur:
Exposure to this years seasonal flu will give better immunity to this year’s seasonal flu, than the vaccine for last year’s seasonal flu will give to this year’s seasonal fly. One day we’ll be able to say “Duh” in response to annual COVID flavors.
There will be vaccines specifically made for the delta variant and others.
- 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 if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
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.
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.
This isn't generally a reason to avoid vaccination for most of the population, however the risk / benefit ratio may be different for some sub-populations. In particular there has been a higher than expected rate of adverse cardiac events for adolescent males.
So particularly for those adolescents who have already recovered from infection and have no other risk factors we should have a scientific discussion about whether vaccination makes sense from an evidence-based medicine perspective. Unfortunately the issue has been so politicized that any suggestion of caution often gets misinterpreted as being anti-vaccination.
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.
This is precisely correct, especially wrt the cost/benefit. The antibody tests won't tell you when you were infected, with which variant, or how much viral dose, on top of their imperfect accuracy. And if you're going to bother going to a hospital to get your blood drawn, why not just... get the shot and remove all doubt?
Does the calculus change in the countries where vaccines are basically nonexistant? Yes, of course. But vaccines in the US are as nearly easy to get as Gatorade now, and have been for several months. We spent many billions making it that way - we don't need to turn around and start spending even more money on pox party incentives.
On top of that, early on when the vaccine supply was constrained we didn't have enough data to know whether natural immunity was as effective as vaccination, and now vaccine supply in the US is in surplus[1], so there is no reason to be selective in who receives it.
So natural immunity didn't make sense to consider in the vaccination plan. It might make sense to consider in the booster plan though - if you've had a positive Covid test before or after being vaccinated, consider the later of those two actions to be a booster, and don't get another one. That would free up more doses for the rest of the world.
[1]We have a large amount of vaccine that has/is expiring shortly but there isn't enough time before the expiration date to redirect them overseas.
> COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose).
That's not a valid reason at all.
> We lack the quantity of Antibody Tests we'd need.
We also lacked vaccine quantity, and many people still do.
> We'd need to set up additional systems and processes to accommodate the testing and proof (which, again, is a cost).
Meh, that's a very weak reason considering it's a small incremental cost to vaccine passports and covid testing.
> The implicit assumption that often go along with these natural immunity proponents is that the vaccine is unsafe.
That's just your 'implicit assumption'.
> Since if the vaccine was safe, the logistical and cost arguments win the day, the only way to make the argument otherwise is to start with the assumption that the vaccine is unsafe and work backwards.
Except vaccine efficacy is much lower than natural immunity and vaccine efficacy wears off over time. We literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
> 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.
Your comment here is a distraction. You literally haven't brought up a single fact or data point on vaccine vs natural immunity efficacy.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
How is it a settled issue when there is literally zero data on long-term effects?
> you're really just discussing if the US should waste money on multiple redundant workflows so that vaccine hesitant people can feel better.
- If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logistically).
- If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense. You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
> Furthermore we literally have ZERO data on the long-term effects of the mrna vaccines. Plenty of drugs have been found to cause harm 5, 10, 15 years after being approved.
The "but efficacy" response is confusing at best. If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people, it can still be the logical course of action at population scales for the other stated benefits (logistical, tracking, and cost).
Something you don't know. If you want a sincere discussion you might want to at least admit the obvious.
> If the vaccine is cheaper (directly and logically).
First of all you don't know if it's cheaper. Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is. I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
> If tracking the vaccine is easier.
Why do you keep with the 'if, if , if'? I did not make any assertions or assumptions that intersect with your ifs whatsoever. All of your 'ifs' are completely irrelevant, and I'm guessing by the fact that you start explaining every supposed hole with an 'if', that you understand that you can't even verify the validity of these supposed holes you found.
> Why add the natural immunity workflow? It doesn't make sense.
Because natural immunity is more effective and some people do not want to get the vaccine?
> You've just added a bunch of complexity for no stated payoff. Again, this entire argument hinges on the first question being answered "no" or "maybe not."
I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
- We do not know the long-term side effects of mrna vaccines.
- MRNA vaccine efficacy is lower than natural immunity, and all data points to MRNA vaccines wearing off significantly after 6 months.
- Some people may not want to get the vaccine for other reasons, the actual reasons are completely irrelevant - in a free society people get to choose what biologically active substances they inject into their own bodies.
> You yourself admit that that is your actual reason:
So looks like you did notice one of the reasons I gave you? Interesting that you quoted it, yet completely ignored the substance and failed to challenge or respond to the actual point.
> If the vaccine does literally nothing for natural immune people,
Stop with the 'ifs'. If you don't know the validity of your own point, don't make the point.
> for the other stated benefits (logical, tracking, and cost).
These other stated benefits coming directly from your imagination right? Or are these the 'if' kind of benefits?
'IF the vaccines are a perfect solution, we should forcibly vaccinate everyone.' - cool story bud
Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine costs $16/dose in the US today.
> Second, people are free to pay for anything they want regardless of how cheap it is.
Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these. The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
> I'm sure the vast majority of vaccine-sceptical people would readily pay for their own tests.
Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
> I've stated multiple payoffs multiple times already:
But they don't add up. Your "list" boils down to:
- It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
- The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
- It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
You've made zero arguments for why a cheaper and simpler safe vaccine is inferior to a more expensive and complex antibody test regime. That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
> Yes I do. The Antibody Test costs $42 and the vaccine costs $16/dose in the US today.
You're ignoring economies of scale, ignoring basic economics (increase supply - price goes down), ignoring the fact that vaccines require 2 dozes - and potentially more, as well as ignoring the additional costs of administering vaccines multiple times. Also, I would like to see where you're getting those numbers from, since a quick google search directly contradicts your numbers:
> The U.S. government will pay Pfizer Inc nearly $2 billion for 100 million additional doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to bolster its supply as the country grapples with a nationwide spike in infections.
> Nobody was proposing that individuals pay for either one of these.
I literally just proposed it to your face 2 times in a row.
> The US Government should pay for it using taxes so that even the poorest citizen has access.
Oh, look at you, so concerned about the poorest citizen that you want to explicitly deny them the possibility to pay for their own tests and force them to get vaccinated against their will. What a champion of the poor.
> Letting people self-certify as a public health strategy has been problematic in the past and would be problematic here too.
Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ? Do you want to respond to my actual statement or just continue with these weak strawmen?
> It is unsafe (which is factually inaccurate).
For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
> The vaccine may not add to natural immunity (which as I said, being cheaper and simpler than the alternative testing makes it still worthwhile).
Another strawman completely unrelated to anything I've said.
> - It is unsafe, and we live in a free society (which is factually inaccurate and irrelevant).
Do you see the words 'safe' or 'unsafe' anywhere in my 3rd point? No? Are you going to continue making these fallacious, insincere strawmen, or are you secure enough with your beliefs to actually defend them honestly?
> That's because your entire argument hinges on "the vaccine is unsafe" and little else.
I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
No, my entire argument is built on economies of scale. Which favor a vaccine for every person, rather than an antibody test for a subset of a subset.
> Did I say anything about 'self-certify' ?
You argued that people should be able to pay for and provide their own tests. That's self-certification. If you're arguing for the state to do it instead, then we're back to square one (i.e. that the logistics don't favor it).
> For the fourth time - show me the data on long term effects. Which part of 'long-term effects' don't you understand?
You cannot argue these two thing together in good faith:
- Natural immunity provides long term immunity, without long term data.
- We cannot know on the vaccine because we lack long term data.
Pick one or the other. Not both.
> I've never made a single assertion about the safety of the vaccines other than that we don't know the long term side effects.
So you didn't make any except that same one in every single one of your comments?
Attaching vindictive clapbacks to every other sentence from OP is really not a way to help your argument, especially on HN. OP’s argument is clear; we have surplus vaccines, it’s statistically safer than getting COVID regardless of your infection status and cheaper than getting tested for natural immunity, not to mention the cost society needs to bear if your failed die roll lands you in an ICU. I’m not sure what yours is, something vague about a govt-backed immunity testing program that doesn't exist yet. But I’m sure you’ll find a way to call me a turd for not getting it rather than supply details. Surprise me, please.
>No, my entire argument is built on economies of scale. Which favor a vaccine for every person, rather than an antibody test for a subset of a subset.
"Take this medical treatment you don't want because I believe in economies of scale"
"My body my choice, and you can put your economy of scale wherever you want but not in my bloodstream - I'd rather not since I've already had covid"
"bbbut I believe in economies of scale!"
the end
Forcing people to take medical procedures they don't want might be last step in a long chain of things, which include a test for natural immunity due to presence of antibodies.
you're not arguing in good faith and much of your argument is just illogical. There's no reason to do this, it won't convince anybody , in fact it will make most people just ignore you.
right? These word by word break down responses don't ever get anywhere
the whole argument he's making has operates on the presumtion that the vacccine is unsafe, contrary to mainstream scientific opinion. Then the only evidence he has to back that up is lack of evidence on long term effects.
But...the type of which would potentially appease him is only possible with a time machine, so it's literally impossible to appease him
> COVID-19 Antibody Tests cost more than the vaccine (roughly $40 Vs. $16/dose).
So a marginal cost of $24. Folks with natural immunity will have a stronger reaction to the vaccine, but let’s be conservative. Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time?
Full disclosure: happily vaccinated. The vaccine is safe, but it’s dammed inconvenient.
> Let’s say 12 hours of symptoms - headache, fatigue, light fever. Very standard with a shot. At around the minimum wage of $8/hour that’s a cost of $96. How much do you value your time?
Other rich countries solve that problem by letting you take time off if you're sick.
I generally agree with this analysis, but people who are looking for some sort of 'smoking gun' that our government is colluding with pharma to help them make money by forcing unnecessary vaccinations, are more interested in hearing sexy, exciting narratives about how Fauci is working for the devil.
In Slovenia antigen test (which is acceptable across EU for 48 hours) priced at 10 EUR in a walk-in center and 12 EUR in drive-in lab. I don't know about the first, but the second is definetely a commercial venture with people employed and a place rented and software written and supported, so it should be even less in wholesale.
> 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.
I don't believe the science is settled no matter how much the already vaccinated wish to turn the page. What do you have to say that studies of vaccine efficacy and risk conducted by drug companies exclude those with prior immunity. How could the science be settled for a cohort purposefully excluded?
You're asking me about something that I didn't say. Here is what I did say:
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
My post was about the logistical and cost problems associated with certifying people with natural immunity, and why that doesn't make sense unless you believe the vaccine is unsafe.
> Since the data on vaccine safety is a settled issue
I'm arguing against this particular point not the others.
I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who have already been infected the drug companies excluded those people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying here? When have we ever taken the position of prove its dangerous before you try to stop me from putting this in your body. Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
> I can't say whether the vaccine is safe for those who have already been infected the drug companies excluded those people from trials. Do you see what I'm saying here?
Except we now have data from the population itself, including people previously infected with COVID-19. We therefore do know it is safe. I think what you're saying is that you want to ignore inconvenient data and use outdated arguments.
> Its always been "no you prove to me that it is safe".
You could have made that argument at one point, but you cannot now. We have enough population level data to call it safe beyond the studies that also showed that it was safe. It is baseless.
DR. GUPTA: "I get calls all the time, people say, 'I've already had COVID, I'm protected.' And now the study says maybe even more protected than the vaccine alone. Should they also get the vaccine?"
DR. FAUCI: "I don't have a really firm answer for you on that."
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 durability of a vaccine? So it is conceivable that you got infected, you're protected, but you may not be protected for an indefinite period of time.
So, I think that is something that we need to sit down and discuss seriously, because you very appropriately pointed out, it is an issue, and there could be an argument for saying what you said."
What Fauci doesn't mention is that there isn't just one paper from Israel.
There are 15 large-scale studies.
Every single one demonstrates that natural immunity is at least as protective as the jab.
And depending on when the study was done protection is shown for over 10 months (basically however long as whatever data was available). Many of the papers logically extend the protection to lifetime in their conclusions.
> David Rubenstein: And the best way for me to prevent getting an infectious disease and having to have you as my doctor is, what, um, wearing a mask?
> Anthony Fauci: [smiling] No, no, no.
> David Rubenstein: Somebody — I can see they're ready to sneeze or cough — walk away?
> Anthony Fauci: You avoid all the paranoid aspects and do something positive. A: good diet. B: you don't smoke, I know. I know you don't drink, at least not very much, so that's pretty good. Get some exercise; I know that you don't get as much exercise as you should...
> David Rubenstein: That's correct.
> Anthony Fauci: ...get good sleep. I think that the normal, low-tech, healthy things are the best thing you can do, David, to stay healthy.
They have some data on durability and natural immunity seems more durable. As seen in the recent Israeli study for example over time pfizer fades more.
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 Bertoletti, who coauthored the study, “but at the moment all the data are telling us that it doesn’t make any sense to give a second vaccination dose in the very short term to someone who was already infected. Their immune response is already very high.”
> flu vaccines are based on weakened viral particles, not mRNA transcriptions of key viral proteins
Thankfully this is changing. Moderna is entering trials for an mRNA vaccine for seasonal flu. The faster development time for mRNA vaccines will mean more time to study the emerging flu strains before committing to which to include in the booster.
That sounds more like an argument for the Canadian model where we went several months between shots (on the assumption that a high percentage of the populace partially-protected was more useful than a small percentage fully protected). I'm assuming semiannual or quarterly shots will be where we land until Covid is no longer a major threat.
To be fair, that model wouldn't be as ideal with the greater proportion of the US population unwilling to get vaccinated, as well as the higher vaccine availability in the US. It seems like Canada would make a better case given the lower vaccine skepticism and vaccine supply.
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 lately.
>As president, he should be looking for every reason to not alienate his own citizens.
Through the pandemic, there have been ~40,000,000 COVID cases[0] in the US, and ~120,000,000 people are completely unvaccinated[1].
As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
Given that huge disparity, it's not surprising that the relevant public health authorities (which are mostly state and local, with support from the Federal government) are pushing vaccinations very hard.
I'd also point out that there are actual studies of the efficacy of COVID vaccines, while the data for "natural" immunity is much spottier.
As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection.
What's more, it's not the President's job to be everyone's friend. It's their job (among other things) to promote the general welfare of the population. Getting as many people as possible vaccinated is definitely within that purview.
Your statement seems to be along the lines of "Biden won't give me a pony! He's alienating me!"
Your numbers are incorrect. The ~40,000,000 number represents cases confirmed through administered tests. The true number is probably somewhere closer to ~150,000,000[0]. Your comment is based on an incorrect assumption.
Pretty sure you numbers are not factoring in children under the age they legally allowed to get the vaccine, because those numbers are way high if you exclude the ineligible
"All Persons" is not a valid statistic
>As such, we know much more about how well vaccinations protect people than we do about how well the immune systems of those who have recovered from COVID will protect from reinfection
We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a big unknown right now
>Pretty sure you numbers are not factoring in children under the age they legally allowed to get the vaccine, because those numbers are way high if you exclude the ineligible
A fair point. There were approximately 45,000,000 children under the age of 12 in the US in 2019[0].
I'd guess that's probably still relatively accurate.
Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
>We actually do not, given that the effects of the vaccine seems to diminish with time, we currently have no idea how much or for how long. We do not have long term data. This is why there is sooooo much confusion on if you need a booster and when, because the efficacy at 6mo, 1 year, 18mo etc is a big unknown right now
Another good point. I'd point out that while ongoing immunity is a big (and unanswered) question, bringing R0[1] down in high infection areas right now can significantly reduce the impact on our health care systems and economy.
What the situation will look like in 12-18 months is important, but given the high transmissibility and case rates in some areas of the US, increasing the ability of folks to avoid serious health consequences right now is, arguably, even more so.
> Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible, that leaves 35 million, less than the number of people who are immune from having contracted the virus.
That of course also doesn't take into account other people who cannot take it, and the number of unconfirmed cases of immunity from having contracted the virus. I don't have any estimates for those numbers so I won't speculate on what they are besides saying that the number of unvaccinated Americans that can and need to be vaccinated is probably a lot less than 35 million.
>Your calculation is wrong. 120 million that are unvaccinated, out of which 40 million are immune from past contraction and another 45 million are ineligible, that leaves 35 million, less than the number of people who are immune from having contracted the virus.
Note that I did not mention immunity. I mentioned vaccinated vs. unvaccinated.
Contracted/recovered from the virus != vaccinated.
As to levels of immunity from previous infection, I made no statement whatsoever.
Edit: clarified my initial statement vis a vis vaccination vs. immunity.
Well you're talking about 45 million ineligible children and then not taking that number into account, I see no reason why you've talked about them then.
> Removing those children from my calculation, there are still almost twice as many people unvaccinated as are estimated to have contracted the virus.
This is what I'm responding to. It is incorrect. 120-40-45=35. 35 is far and away from almost twice as much as 40.
> As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40 million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other? Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're just going to disregard them?
> Removing those children from my calculation...
You're not removing them from a calculation, you're removing them from the 120 number and then ignoring the fact that you've also already removed 40 from that number, which was the calculation you're referring to.
Why even have this conversation if you're just going to arbitrarily decide to not consider a factor you've already considered prior? What are you trying to accomplish with this discussion?
>> As such, there are more (perhaps much more) than twice as many folks who have not had COVID who are unvaccinated than there are those who have had COVID.
>So this statement you made doesn't apply anymore? It is irrelevant now all of a sudden? We aren't taking the 40 million into account anymore? Why? Only one or the other? Then why even bring any of these numbers up if you're just going to disregard them?
Who says it doesn't apply? I said:
...there are more (perhaps much more) than twice
as many folks who have not had COVID who are
unvaccinated than there are those who have had
COVID.
The fact that there are ~45 million children who are unvaccinated because those under 12 haven't been approved for the vaccine(s) doesn't invalidate my point at all. In fact, it strengthens it.
The ~75 million folks who could get vaccinated but have not done so is still almost twice the number of recorded cases.
I'm trying really hard to assume good faith, so I'll make the leap and consider that perhaps English isn't your first language.
>I won't be bullied into getting an unnecessary procedure just because the burden of proof has not been met (re: spotty studies).
Bullied? Where I live (NYC), they will pay you $100[0] to get vaccinated. I wish more folks would "bully" me that way.
I'd add, that at least in the US, no one is forcing anyone to have an unwanted procedure. Every single "vaccine mandate" has come with the caveat that you can avoid being vaccinated by getting tested regularly.
As to whether or not a COVID vaccination is necessary or not is, for some strange reason, a controversial question.
Have you been vaccinated against Polio? If so, why is that different than COVID? Not being snarky here, just genuinely curious as to how you see those as different.
Given a 100 bucks if you do, denied admission everywhere and job threatened if you don't.
I did not make the decision to vaccinate against polio, that was made for me. I trust my parents made an educated decision and its beside the point now, I am vaccinated. Does polio vaccine manufacturer have readily available risk/benefit data for people who've already had polio? Covid vaccines don't provide this data so burden of proof is not met. I'd judge polio vaccine the same way under the same circumstances.
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.
I honestly think this is a reasonable stance because, while I'm not an expert—to my current understanding, the immunity you acquired from having the virus is probably comparable to the immunity I got from my Pfizer shots, if not better in some respects.
As an American, I wish we could all just have an honest conversation about this. Yes, the mRNA vaccines are new technology and I don't begrudge anyone who feels hesitant about them; but I also think there's strong evidence for their safety, and I waited hours in line to get my shot as soon as it was available.
But this business of public health officials trying to shape people's behavior instead of giving them plain facts... I don't think we collectively appreciate how much damage this has done. It necessarily breeds mistrust. It works against the actual goal of ending this pandemic.
If the only reason you aren't getting the vaccine is because the government wants you to it doesn't sound like you're actually exhibiting any control over your body. You're just putting a NOT gate in front of the government's choice.
I'd be back where I started if the government told me not to get it. Curious, debating it, but also completely unsure if it's any better than what I already have—natural immunity.
So..you're not getting a vaccine because of that? That's the reason? That?
That just sounds like being against the vaccine with extra steps. Because otherwise you wouldn't let what the government was trying to get you to do to affect your decision.
You are correct. This is the largest overreach I have ever seen: if you work for any company we can control by sniffing around government agencies to find a regulation we can leverage, we will make sure you can't even have a job unless you take a particular vaccine. When you overreach in this way, you would at least want to carve out every reasonable exception you could, to not unnecessarily hurt lives, right? For instance
- If you have a positive antibody test, you're exempt.
- If you work from home, you're exempt.
etc.
But they don't. I won't make your conclusions for you, but they are obvious.
At times of national ... tragedy ... we sometimes hear about rallying behind the flag. The government's rhetoric seems like a ham-fisted effort at that.
Unfortunately, national US politics have devolved in some respects to a food fight of attacks on political opponents. Some viewed Trump's tax policies in this light, disfavoring residents of so-called 'Blue' states. It would, unfortunately, be very easy to recharacterize Biden's work-based vaccination requirement as an effort to get his staunchest political opponents fired, nationwide. I personally hope both sides can find a path to a more conciliatory approach to policy.
The article clearly states that one of the reasons for shrugging natural immunity is politics, there are prominent GOP figures supporting natural immunity in lieu of vaccines. So being against natural immunity becomes not only a public health policy but a political attack on one’s opponents and applauded by the base. This is what Biden is doing.
"Trying to work across party lines" went out the window when the Republicans decided that "prevent absolutely anything the Democrats want to do, no matter how objectively beneficial it would be or whether it was fully supported by Republicans in the past" was a viable and acceptable method of getting re-elected.
“If the public-health professionals, if Dr. Fauci, if the doctors tell us that we should take it, I'll be the first in line to take it — absolutely," the California senator said during the first and only vice-presidential debate.
"But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I'm not taking it." -Kamala Harris
Let’s not act like both parties don’t do the exact same thing, eh?
What does this quote mean to you? It is saying that if immunologists and epidemiologists do not recommend a vaccine but Donald Trump does then she wouldn't take it. As far as I know Donald Trump is not a scientist, that seems reasonable?
I'm not politically minded so I'm confused as to how you're interpreting that.
I take it as nothing more than it was, a political jab...if not a bit of a dangerous one from a public health perspective. It is, however, a perfectly illustrated point of "other side = bad."
She didn't say that if the FDA didn't approve it and Trump somehow magically bypassed the process and put it out there for people to take that she wouldn't take it. She implied that if the FDA approved it and Trump said people should take it that she wouldn't.
Debates are debates and people say stupid things, but that was far from the only moment of vaccine hesitancy to happen on the left just because Trump was president. Now, of course, it's flipped - and both show just how tribal America has become.
The moderator's question was "If the Trump administration approves a vaccine, before or after the election, should Americans take it and would you take it?"
Harris's answer was the right one, and the same one I would have given. An unqualified "yes" would be saying you'd take a vaccine approved by the administration even if the medical community wasn't confident in it, and the phrasing of the question was designed to elicit that clarification.
And let's not pretend it's surprising that her qualification was even needed; We're talking about the same president who used the presidential soap box to urge people to try curing and preventing COVID using Hydroxychloroquine despite no such recommendation from health officials or the medical community at large.
Unification in the eyes of many is "Do what we say, we gave you a choice, you choose wrong so now we have have to use force"
That is not unification or pluralism. They (including democrats and republicans but today right now mainly democrats) want a political mono-culture and are willing to use force to get it.
Yesterday in England, they published statistics that showed (among other things) the rate of non-covid deaths among vaccinated people greatly increased from March to August. By a factor that dwarfs the improvement in covid-related deaths. For some reason they didn't feel it was necessary to comment on or explain this surprising pattern. I can think of a number of explanations, but it makes me wonder if they are really on the ball, and would really make sound judgements on other matters such as natural immunity.
There are lots of experts who regularly interpret this data.
Your comment is pretty vague, so I looked at the excel sheet myself - I assume you’re referring to table 5, “Second dose”? The highest death rate in that table is 14.6 per 100k on 2-Jul-21. Meanwhile, looking at the unvaccinated population in that same table, the death rate per 100k starts out at 22 per 100k, goes as high as 66 per 100k in February, and then comes back down and is in the 30s and 20s per 100k.
A naive interpretation of this data would suggest that being vaccinated is protecting people from murder and other non-COVID causes of death. Obviously this isn’t right (I’m not immediately sure why though), but I’d suggest that your suggestion that the NHS and other experts are unaware of patterns in the data may just be the result of you being unaware of how patterns in this type of mortality data typically work.
I had a look and have a job figuring which bit you are looking at - I assume its from "Deaths occurring between 2 January and 2 July 2021 edition of this dataset"? Though that isn't really "March to August."
Have you considered that at the start of the year few people would have died 21 days after vaccination because that had only just happened. 6 months later more would have died as they would have had 6 months to get dying of various stuff.
Yes it starts in January but I mentioned March because it took some time for a large number of people to actually get the vaccine, and also there was probably flu going around in Jan/Feb. I should have said July not August.
The numbers reflect weekly, age standardised death rates. Therefore once you have a decent population size in each cohort, the timing shouldn’t matter. These are non-covid deaths so rates shouldn’t change except for normal seasonal patterns.
However it could be something like what JoshuaDavid mentions below - that healthy people are disproportionately being moved from the 21 days cohort to the second dose cohort by some selection mechanism.
If the vaccine was dangerous and resulting in “non covid” deaths, why would the mortality be lower for people who had a second dose than for people who just had 1 dose?
Commented separately but it’s pretty clear there’s some sort of selection effect going on with the people who are not getting a 2nd dose that makes them more likely to die of non-covid causes.
The 2nd dose cohort at that point had quite a different age profile (they were rolling out doses oldest to youngest). Over 50 age bands were 90%+ double dosed but 60% or less for under 50 age bands. It’s possible that older cohorts were out-performing typical mortality because of something like lack of flu due to lockdown.
Another possibility is that the first dose is an absorbing barrier if it causes so much illness and death that victims do not get a second dose. The two-dosed cohort are the “survivors” with the vulnerable already removed from the population.
Without looking extensively, it seems that it's usually between 1000 and 1500 per 100k per annum, so between 20 to 30 per week as a direct comparison. This seems steady over recent history. This compared to a rate for the vaccinated that went from 20 to 100 over spring and summer. The only thing that springs to mind is that maybe the treatment of with-covid/from-covid deaths became less significant through the year and previously understated alternative causes start showing up in non-covid deaths. Still strange that it has risen so high in absolute terms though.
The “100” is specifically for the population of 21 days after first dose, i.e. those who didn’t get their second dose of vaccine. You can see the population who fall into the “21 days after” shrinks the whole time the “Second dose” population grows. Probably there’s something specific to those people who didn’t get or were unable to get the second dose of the vaccine that elevates their risk of mortality, like poverty, low education, or poor health.
It would need to be a heck of a big effect to drive that sort of elevation in mortality.
I suppose conceivably there is a strong adverse selection/sorting effect happening, but I’m not sure that fits with the pattern. Need to think about it. (Note also the upward trend of the second-dosed.) I think it’s more likely an issue with the way the data is collected.
I would not be surprised if there _was_ a heck of a big effect -- something along the lines of "how bad the vaccine side effects hit you is strongly correlated with general health such that people who are less healthy tend to have worse side effects, and people who have particularly bad side effects from their first dose are less likely to get a second dose".
I don't have time to look into it right now, but if that were the case we should expect the mortality rate for single-dosers to go up two weeks after their first dose in countries with a two week gap between doses and twelve weeks after their first dose in countries with a twelve week gap (i.e. people in the 12 week gap countries who are 6 weeks after dose 1 should have much lower mortality than people in the 2 week gap countries who are 6 weeks after dose 1 and have not gotten a dose 2, even after controlling for age and comorbidities).
I took a look at the data, and it looks like deaths after 1 dose go up by ~3x vs unvaccinated, while deaths after 2 doses go down ~3x vs unvaccinated. Am I reading that right? Any idea why that might be?
Are you referring to table 5, non-covid deaths? 2-dosed people have a lower absolute rate, but it still trends steadily upwards while unvaccinated trend steadily downwards.
Articles like this is exactly why I can't take the US covid response seriously.
- "You're protected if you get antibodies... except if from natural infection"
- "Masks don't help... oops they actually they do... nah they don't... hmmm they might"
- "Can't fly into the country.... unless you come through the southern border"
- "Covid is scary for kids... even though the flu kills an order of magnitude more kids"
So much cognitive dissonance I don't think I'll ever be able to trust public health ever again... they're either dishonest or completely incompetent at this point.
I'm in favor of vaccine mandates but if there was a better way of quantifying immunity I'd be all in favor of letting people with natural immunity get a waiver.
As everything with COVID, the lack of hard data and the poor communication of federal and state agencies has enabled politicians, con men and sectarians to exploit the confusion to their benefit.
There is, actually, antibody test. They are quite costly however.
Im my country, getting infected count as the 1rst dose (yes, i know, natural immunity is better with "real" infections, but rememeber that Covid sometime start an auto-immune disease, it's hard to test for this, so its less costly to just vaccinate people (the jab cost 12E)).
No scientific response. This is mostly pragmatic, and probably politic too. Its easier to just jab everyone you can while you can.
I know it's a bit hearthless, and i can't ask doctors to start triaging, but i'd really like that once everyone have had the possibility to get the double dose, we just stop everything covid related (maybe not the reduced maximum capacity and mask in public transport for the adults during peak hours: those restrictions should have been implemented way before covid).
Well, yes, $42 * 10M is expensive. Not that $15210M is not. And i'm pretty sure half the people who said "i got covid" last year did not have it (and i'm kind). So let's say we had tested half the population, and that half of this half have to get vaccinated anyway, since the test was negative. For France, that's one billion euros used for nothing.
I'm to tired to make sense, but you understand my point (if not, i'll have to explain the reasoning better).
Imagine half the uk population wanted to get tested before getting the vaccine, the cost for the NIH would be way higher than just vaccinating everybody. You can't tell people `if the antibody test is positive, you don't have to get vaccinated`, at least not until the vast majority is already vaccinated. And even then, it's mostly lost money.
You could have told people "pay for your own test", but in this case, the fabrication and distribution of those test would slow down the vaccination. And you have to make sure that the test are not faked, so a doctor should verify that the test was yours. I know some doctors who faked smallpox vaccine, so you can imagine how much of a good idea this is.
Also, even if the individual cost is not that high, telling people to `pay not to get vaccinated` (because it would've been spin like this, I've read UK newspapers) is not the best idea want the biggest issues for most western government is lack of trust.
So: it is more pragmatic to jab everybody. Easier to orchestrate, you don't expose your leadership too much. Overall, best solution for the governments. Is it the best solution for the population? Debatable. I'd say its the most cost-effective, the one with the less headaches, so yes?
You've been posting a ton of flamebait and unsubstantive comments. That's destructive of what this site is for and we ban accounts that do it. In fact - you've done almost nothing but post like that. I had to scroll back a long way in your comment history to see something that wasn't unsubstantive.
If you keep doing it, we will ban you. If you don't want to be banned on HN, please stop all of that now and review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and start using the site as intended. Here's the basic idea: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
Its probably not worth your time, but I'd like to know which of my comments you consider unsubstantive. I'd say most my comments are terse and I don't care to provide references unless requested. My terseness has a point and I try to rely on big picture details that we can all agree on and are readily available to be provided if someone was curious to ask or look themselves (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...). When so many people are vocally willing to set a dangerous new precedent in a state of emergency I think a biting tone may become appropriate. Although I understand that this isn't necessarily a forum meant for discussing such politically charged happenings and you have precedents to worry about yourselves as moderators of this forum.
Comments like that aren't worth it to have on HN because the negative effect they have on the threads, and on the culture of the site, dominates any value they're adding.
It seems obvious, reading through your comment history, that you have an agenda about this topic. There's nothing wrong with having a view, of course, but an agenda is something different—that's when you're using the site to wage a battle in favor of your view. At that point curiosity has left the building, and curiosity is supposed to be the animating value here.
Definitely I've behaved selfishly and with an agenda. However it is not with a particular outcome in mind except to see a discussion happen among an excellent group of people under excellent moderation. I'm deeply concerned that I have wrong information and am begging to be skewered with the truth. I do think others wanted to see the discussion had as well, so while its selfish on my part its not without broader appeal. This forum is amazing and I thank you so much for your patient moderation.
My mother-in-law works in Healthcare as N auxiliary nurse and caught COVID-19 at the beginning of the pandemic. She was officially recorded as positive by the govt (through a periodic PCR test at work, and received a quarantine order). She received one dose since. But even though they're saying an infection is protecting as much as one vaccine dose, they aren't acknowledging it in the vaccine passport as "adequately protected".
She'll get the second dose, but she was under the impression she was already covered, it's a bit frustrating.
> For people who have had COVID-19 confirmed by a nucleic acid amplification test (NAAT), a single dose of the vaccine is required. The infection triggers the immune system's response the same way a 1st dose of the vaccine does. The dose of vaccine given to someone who has had COVID-19 has a booster effect the same way a 2nd dose of the vaccine does.
But the vaccine passport doesn't seem to reflect that, it's frustrating when the communication is ambiguous.
Why do we still not have data on the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths from COVID breaking all three down by groups that are unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, fully vaccinated, and previously infected?
It seems like we have some data — hospitalizations and deaths of vaccinated — but even that isn’t clearly and consistently reported anywhere that I’ve seen (e.g. try finding a chart in [1]).
We need to do better at tracking and reporting on this data, so that we can finally have answers to a lot of questions around effectiveness of vaccines and natural immunity from prior infection.
> running entire population through antibody test just to find
A red herring if I have ever seen one. Assuming for a moment the premise that one must be forced to establish their immunity to a particular disease before being allowed to leave their homes, all that would be required would be to allow individuals who believe they've had COVID-19 and do not wish to get the vaccine to be able use their test results as proof instead of having to show a vaccine card.
Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire population take specific tests.
But, the point of these vax passes is for all the authoritarian OCD afflicted Munchausen-by-proxy patients to demonstrate that they can force their preferences on everyone else just like it was the case with masks, distancing, no school, lockdown, etc.
> Note, this does NOT require some authority forcing the entire population take specific tests.
The red herring is replying to someone saying that a lot of tests would have to be done with a denial that people would be forced to take tests.
Also, this would require that some authority would need to have those people take specific tests, monitored and tracked in a specific way. Allowing people to claim to have had it based on their own documentation and choice of tests is like allowing job applicants to supply their own drug test results: not completely dependable.
I'd be all for those people getting a vax pass. I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow, and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
> I wish all of the willfully unvaccinated would get covid tomorrow
Nice.
> and the rest of us could stay home for a week.
Feel free to isolate yourself as long as you wish, but it sounds like you are feeling a little envious that other people were able to have fuller lives during this period.
> Because it is pretty simple to account for who got the vaccine and who did not.
So it's about tracking people so the government can more easily keep the public safe. Let's give them all the power in the world to keep us safer!
We should be demanding OPTIONS. Even from a pragmatic standpoint, this would convince more people. When they mandate only one thing, it's as if they are pushing towards a dictatorship just for our own safety. How convenient.
I'm sorry, but people are a bit too eager to go there just because of fear. We were in this situation with the Patriot Act and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Governments have a track record of doing this!
i don’t see how it’d be wasteful to know how many people have natural immunity. seems quite useful actually even if we determine they should still get vaccine
Unfortunately that never really happened in the US. There were a few small seroprevalence studies in limited areas at specific times but nothing consistent on a nationwide basis.
Also note that there is more to immunity than antibodies, so assaying antibody levels alone will underestimate the level of immunity in the population. We should also be testing memory cell activity now that a test is approved.
I think you severely underestimate how hard it would be to organise every single person in the country having a blood test, and then sending out invites etc based on the results of those tests.
I can guarantee there was more waste in the form of billions of money lost and human productivity and lives lost from locking down the world than if we just told scared people to stay at home at the beginning of the pandemic.
If you remember, nobody wanted to be first (except China) to tell their population to stay at home.
And then they did not wait until we got rid of the virus but were quick to tell people to get out and enjoy as soon as the infection rates fell a little bit.
If you look at this algorithm, it works like a thermostat. A dumb regulator designed TO REGULATE TEMPERATURE AT A CONSTANT LEVEL. Yes, that's what the policy ensured -- that we are keeping infection rates.
Not that this is important now. We are living with consequences of these decisions and the best we could do would be to vaccinate as many people as possible as fast as possible to prevent as many unnecessary tragedies.
Well, that is my point. I don't think there should have ever been regulations on what you could and couldn't do. Like I mentioned, scared people can stay home and others can go out and take precautions and manage their own risk. Saying the pandemic can only end when everyone gets their shots is basically denying science especially given articles like the one posted by OP. Remember, they could end the pandemic right now if they wanted to. The pandemic designation is a human-made one.
and more so, its extremely hard to track peoples blood test. Adobe Acrobat can easily change anyones name on a piece of paper with a blood test result, there wouldn't be a way to confirm this person has antibodies
In Israel a high antibody blood test gives you a "vaccine passport" for 6 months.
...to get that, you sign up for the blood test using your government ID # (SSN for the US), the government gets your results before you do, and the government issues you an encrypted barcode that can only be decrypted by a government built mobile app that restaurants or stadiums have. They scan it and compare to your own ID
Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government database?
We could only wish
Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
> Adobe Acrobat can easily change anyones name on a piece of paper with a blood test result
It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten - and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you fill in your own name at home.
> Now, does anyone think the US can pull off getting peoples SSN , connect it to a blood test, send the SSN+result to the federal government and have them issue you a federal "antibody ID" which is directly connected to your SSN in a government database?
> We could only wish
No we don't. Americans are VERY against that kind of thing. Plus Social Security numbers are not supposed to be used as a national ID - that's not what they are for.
Not to mention how would you even do that? A Social Security card is not ID - you can say whatever number you want when getting vaccinated, no one would know.
> Americans are just really bad at these kinds of things. This is why we can't have nice things etc. etc. etc.
No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want that. Don't confuse the two.
> It's even easier to fake vaccination status. Blank COVID cards are widely available. Most of them are handwritten - and even when vaccinated, they give them to you blank, you fill in your own name at home.
That's absolutely true, because the government response has been disorganized and bullshit. It's also why vax passes won't work; because the records are probably trash.
> No, Americans are not bad at that - rather they don't want that. Don't confuse the two.
No, we're really shit at it. Everybody who has been vaccinated would love for the government to have kept track of it, and would love to be able to ask for or give an easy proof of it. In my personal experience, the unvaccinated are also liars. They would, of course, not want it to be tracked, because they would like to continue to lie.
It's not the book-keeping that's the issue, it's the physical determination of status.
For antibody status, you have to do an antibody test, which is strictly more complex/expensive than a COVID vaccine (it took 3 days when I got it done), so it's not viable at population scale.
It's similar to the reason that monoclonal antibody therapy is not a scalable treatment for COVID infection - better to minimize the chance of needing such treatment by just getting vaccinated.
Are these people asleep? The vaccines are demonstrably better at producing immunity against strains other than the one you were infected with, particularly against Delta for people who were infected with vanilla or Alpha.
Right. The article is arguing against vaccinating people who already had covid. I'm saying the data shows there's significant benefit to vaccination even if you were already infected.
The one thing missing from the article is the thing the vaccines needed to have prior to approval: rigorous controlled double-blinded studies on infection rates. My guess would be that, to people interested in data-driven epidemiological decisions, this is considered pretty important. What the article provides instead is direct measurement of biological indicators of immune response, which while useful is not remotely the same thing.
This is, however, slightly unfair. You can't ethically have a rigorous controlled double-blinded study on infection rates of people who have already had SARS-CoV-2. This would require infecting some people with SARS-CoV-2, making others incorrectly think they had been infected, and then letting all of them go about their lives post-"recovery". The ethical problems are obvious.
That said, I'd frankly be fine with letting people with (state-)government-verified past COVID cases act as though they have been vaccinated for a period after recovery (not sure what the period should be). It would be one way to get the next best kind of data (an observational study of vaccinated and recovered patients). It would also incentivize people to get tested (so they get that government-verified past case). I'm not sure it's worth building that bureaucracy, but if that compromise were proposed I'd happily accept.
>> 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.
The way I understand the science is that we can say with some certainty that…
- we know vaccines work and they’re safe
- we know natural immunity works
- we have a good estimate on how well/long the vaccines work over time (probably 9-12 months with potential boosters) given a plethora of studies
- we don’t know how long natural immunity lasts, but we can (safely) assume it’s going to be 6+ months? Maybe 12, maybe 18, who knows. Does it matter?
- everyone wants to be safe, but the goal cannot be 100% safety/certainty, but severely reducing the spread and impact of covid without giving up our freedom, liberties as well as our economy
Rather than calling it a vaccine passport, call it something else that is less controversial, such as a covid protection status
- if you have been vaccinated/ bolstered using authorized vaccines in the last x months, you’re protected
- if you have an authorized lab based positive results in the last y months, you’re protected
- if you have neither, but can show antibodies from an authorized lab, you’re protected for z months
Let’s set best guesstimates on x, y and z and then call it a day? E.g. Make it 12 months for x and y, 3 or 6 months for z.
I feel like 90% of people could work within this framework. The other 10% is probably too far gone…
I'd assume that a lot of it is the existing polarization over the issue. It's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so. (Plus a lot of people who don't even know they've already had COVID, because of asymptomatic cases.)
The state of medical records in the USA is... not great, so it's easier to show evidence of the vaccination that can at least theoretically be verified.
EDIT: man, the rapid-downvoting is even worse here than in the Apple CSAM threads. :D
> because it's easier to lie and say you already had COVID, and there's a bunch of people who'd probably do so.
It's not actually. They're equivalent. The vaccine proof is PAPER which can be forged. And while evidence of a COVID19 test can be paper too, mine was digital.
It's why I said "at least theoretically" -- the vaccine cards have a date and vaccine lot number on them. I'm making the assumption that this has been recorded somewhere, such that you could at least check that a certain batch was administered on a certain day to a certain person.
Of course, this could all fail under the "medical records in the USA are garbage" issue.
Still, if nothing else, it's better for proving it than "I took a COVID test at home, trust me".
As far as I can tell, natural immunity relates to the variant. If you had Alpha, and then you encounter Delta, your natural immunity may help you a little, but possibly not enough to prevent hospitalization, since Delta is 2.5x more likely to cause a serious hospitalization. So natural immunity counts, but maybe not against powerful variants. And we should be doing whatever we can to prevent people from becoming infectious and spreading it further.
Not so - the recent Israeli data is mostly about people catching covid classic and being protected against delta. Natural seems to cope with variants better, probably because it exposed you to the whole virus, not just the spike protein.
Flip side: why does vaccination automatically count even though there are conditions and medications that can prevent the body from mounting a sufficient immune response? It's a rare case, but if the goal is to prove immunity then test for immunity (i.e. antibody levels) regardless of cause.
Take this as anecdotal because I am not aware of a study being done, but many people with long COVID report the vaccination improving their symptoms. This seems to argue that there is additional defense in getting vaccinated.
it does matter, but your chances of getting it without taking more damage than you started with is a hell of a lot lower than getting it via vaccination.
Gov's are not good at granular management. they have to make broad sweeping rules that everyone needs to fit into or they get nothing done.
Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
On the other hand places with good vaccination rates are reimposing lockdowns and mask mandates. Quite a few public events are getting canceled or rescheduled.
By any metric the COVID response of lockdowns, etc. was at best breakeven in terms of cost effectiveness. Since the risk of COVID is lower now both due to the vaccine and also just our knowledge of treatment, any lockdown/mandate response will have a lower cost effectiveness.
IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case) and end all other restrictions. Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
It would be better to just do a vaccine/verified immunity passport like program but that is practically impossible in the US. Too many people won't like/use the governments app including both the normal conspiracy nuts but also the privacy-minded HN crowd. It also does not help that there are half a dozen passport like apps from insurance companies and various government agencies.
> Why? Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results. Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
> Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12.
We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children.
I'd lean towards "probably not safe"; we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself:
> we only just found that teenage boys are at 6x more risk from heart problems from the vaccine than any risk from covid itself:
That's not what the study says. They compared all reports of possible cardiac events in the days following vaccination, including suspected transient myocarditis, to only one risk of COVID: Hospitalization. Notably, they didn't look at post-COVID myocarditis, just post-vaccine myocarditis.
This is the conclusion from the study:
> Post-vaccination CAE rate was highest in young boys aged 12-15 following dose two. For boys 12-17 without medical comorbidities, the likelihood of post vaccination dose two CAE is 162.2 and 94.0/million respectively. This incidence exceeds their expected 120-day COVID-19 hospitalization rate at both moderate (August 21, 2021 rates) and high COVID-19 hospitalization incidence.
They're comparing apples and oranges. It would have made more sense to compare post-vaccine CAEs to post-COVID CAEs, but instead they chose to compare CAEs against COVID hospitalizations, which is a number known to be very low in teenagers.
It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations. If anything, this would make the vaccines look even worse.
> It stands to reason that the number of CAEs in a COVID infection would be a subset of hospitalizations.
No, the CAEs in the vaccine study included a lot of transient issues that didn't require hospitalization. Most cases of myocarditis resolve on their own relatively quickly.
Myocarditis is common after COVID infections, too. They're just less likely to be explicitly noted because everything gets chalked up to COVID and the patient is already resting anyway, which is the primary treatment for myocarditis. It's not clear why the authors didn't try to compare against that.
> Researchers found that the risk of heart complications for boys aged 12-15 following the vaccine was 162.2 per million, which was the highest out of all the groups they looked at.
> Meanwhile, the risk of a healthy boy needing hospital treatment owing to Covid-19 in the next 120 days is 26.7 per million. This means the risk they face from heart complications is 6.1 times higher than that of hospitalisation.
It would seem more "apples to apples" to compare rates of hospitalization due to myo/pericarditis to hospitalization due to COVID, or rates of diagnosis of each condition.
The only case of vaccine-associated "heart problems" that I've seen required an NSAID with no further treatment. Unfortunate regardless.
How did I find out about it? It's trending on Twitter because the father was on Alex Jones.
I've looked at the VAERS reports of 16-year-old males that died in 2021. There are four cases (one suicide), none match this one. While it's likely that the boy died due to a pre-existing condition, his case should still show up on VAERS (even suicides are included).
The takeaway is that if you hear about something like this, it's not mainstream media. Nobody wants to "harm" the vaccination campaign. Unfortunately, suppressing such cases further erodes trust in media/authorities, which has the opposite of the intended effect. Also, VAERS data appears to be incomplete, rendering risk estimates unreliable.
The background here is that hospitalization from covid increases dramatically with age. Teenagers are at low risk of hospitalization from covid themselves, but I expect that vaccination would still reduce the risk of teenagers transmitting the virus to others.
> Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised[sic] from Covid-19
there is a large range of poor outcomes that are not "hospitalized" if they get covid. they are susceptible to getting long covid and also to bring it home and potentially infect their parents unknowingly. just because one risk is higher doesn't mean the sum of the other risks suddenly don't matter.
In addition to being somewhat misleading as other commenters hawe pointed out, the first author of this non-peer-reviewed study appears to have a degree in the questionably relevant field of sports medicine.
That is a misleading headline. Most of these reported cases of myocarditis are mild and did not require hospitalization, so it's kind of an apples to oranges comparison.
If you want to say COVID and myocarditis are equally bad, you should compare the rates of both of them. You are saying myocarditis (often mild) should be compared to COVID (but only the cases that require hospitalization.)
By that logic, my investment strategy of invest in index funds (goes up over time) is inferior to yours of invest in lottery tickets (but we only consider tickets that won.)
Woah, that's super intense. Wow. I think i will still vaccinate my 12 year old boy because he wants to get the shot and these numbers are still low, but yeah, now i want more info. Thank you.
Regardless of where we end up with respect to vaccination of children for COVID-19, I hope we can all agree that the child's opinion is irrelevant, given that they are not equipped to make an informed decision.
Neither can we expect an average adult to be able to make an informed decision on a topic like this. But if he really wants it, and the shot is optional, why do you believe that should be irrelevant to my decision?
The child's opinion certainly isn't irrelevant, especially if they are a child with special needs who can find the process of getting a vaccine very traumatic.
Yep, crazy that this is the top comment when clearly we already know that none of the studies for kids are completed. Is it likely to be safe? Yes. But we still need to go through the proper process to ensure confidence in the vaccine.
> We don't know they are safe for children under 12. Pediatrics is a profession precisely because "children are not just small adults". Something that is safe for adults isn't automatically safe for children.
True, and the obvious example is that kids don't die of covid, or so little that it is hard to make statistics. For just that reason, vaccines have to be incredibly safe (basically zero risk) for the risk/benefit to be acceptable.
If it wasn't for the risk of transmission to adults there would be no reason for vaccinating kids.
> Serology is a thing, as are records of positive test results.
Serology is a thing, sure. But two points:
Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied. We are not constrained on vaccine supply. So the practical advantage of allowing a totally different pathway is not obvious.
Creating another pathway adds a lot of cognitive load and confusion. The bar bouncer checking vaccination status at the door is not likely to know anything about serology. The same goes for people eager not to get Covid and the people eager not to accidentally kill grandma. Every bit of complexity is met with complaints and confusion; every change in regulation makes it harder for people to know what to do and therefore less likely to do it.
In some future pandemic might we want to create a two-pathway system? E.g., such that there's a government-issued "safe to mingle" digital passport? Sure. That seems like a great thing to start preparing now so it's ready the next time a disease hops the species barrier. For now, though, I think we should stick with the current plan: vaccination for (almost) everybody.
Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value.
The cognitive load could be built into the "vaccine card" anyway - I have a driver's license with a couple of extra checkboxes showing that I need corrective lenses and am authorized to drive a motorcycle, but most people need only be concerned that the card itself exists.
> Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people,
FYI: The current legislation requires weekly testing or proof of vaccination, but it doesn't actually impose the vaccine on anyone who doesn't want it.
It is my understanding that the latest executive orders do require vaccination of US federal employees and contractors; other employers may offer weekly testing as an alternative. So I believe that, if you are a federal employee or contractor, you do in fact have to choose between getting vaccinated or keeping your job. (Or do you consider allowing people to choose to quit rather than get vaccinated sufficient flexibility to not be an "imposition"?)
> Cognitive load does not justify imposing potentially involuntary medical treatments on people, particularly not onto people for whom the benefit is likely of very little marginal value.
No, this is just not correct. Compulsory vaccination has been a thing for hundreds of years.
Nobody has a full system of vaccination status cards and databases. There are just too many people who will avoid vaccination at the slightest excuse. We're in a war and every day of delay costs thousands, or tens of thousands of lives.
We need simple rules that we can apply on a massive scale quickly. The US is a country where more than half of people can't work out if a 1/3 pound burger is bigger or smaller than a 1/4 pound burger.
No one said anything about multiple cards, nor about any databases whatsoever.
Single-mindedness is not a rationale for imposing medical treatment on people.
I'll circle back to my driver's license analogy - the bouncer does not need to know that I was docked 3 points from my driving test for failing to signal - he only needs to know that some granting authority, with expertise in the realm being licensed, granted me the license. (or that I'm old enough to enter the bar, etc.)
'Mandatory medical treatment' sounds like a big deal, but the tragedy of the commons happens with every vaccine. No one benefits much from their own vaccination, we all benefit must from others'. Which is why vaccinations almost always have a requirement, or they don't work (cf flu, cf hpv).
When 1500 Americans are dying every day of a preventable disease, it is absolutely reasonable to take feasibility of enforcement into account. And enforcement has to be done where the greatest risk of spreading occurs. People might not like getting carded at a restaurant, but there is a point where lots of people are dying and it makes sense, right? We card for alcohol, we card for driving, and those we do every day.
I would think someone who tested positive should be able to get a ca state qr code. It seems the science supports that. Having each validator check that the test is the right test, and the doctor and hospital exist, seems not feasible, but getting a state qr code - then using that at the point of enforcement - seems practical.
I largely agree with most everything that you said, regarding enforcement pragmatism and the like.
But I must remind that, at least in this particular conversation, we're talking about people who've just had the illness in question. We don't know how many of the 1,500/day are people who have previously contracted the illness or else contracted the illness from someone else who previously caught the illness, but in all likelihood the proportion of such cases is likely very low. So referencing the 1,500/day likely has very little relevance to a discussion of natural immunity.
Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic. As you can see here and elsewhere, people complain endlessly about shifting recommendations; they reduce trust. That's a very strong incentive to pick an approach and stick with it until the benefit of changing things again becomes very large.
And yes, I agree that next time we do this, we should build it into the card. And better, that card should be digital, so that it can adapt as science discovers more as the pandemic goes on. But what we had was a vaccine, slips of paper, and a lot of questions.
In my experience talking with people, trust is reduced a lot more when politicians and the media fixate on a vaccine and largely ignore natural immunity. A lot of people are perceiving this as authoritarian and punitive (governments want to compel citizens to receive an unnecessary injection) which burns a lot more trust than "good news! we've learned that natural immunity is sufficient to earn privileges that were previously reserved for the vaccinated!".
> Cognitive load is the mediating resource. It doesn't on its own justify it, yes. The justification comes from saving lives in a global pandemic
I specifically don't see how your hypothesis works: "if we allow for natural immunity, it will confuse people and some of them will die". Presumably the failure mode is that some of the "bouncers" of society are too dumb to understand "vaccine OR natural immunity" and will thus reject more people than necessary (either the vaccinated or the naturally immune) and thus our risk of spread will be slightly reduced at the expense of our liberties. In any case, I have a hard time imagining large failure rates here, and the risk associated with any given error is very small (a given failure doesn't significantly increase anyone's risk of serious illness or death).
You are making all those strange excuses to force people to get vaccinated. Some people don’t want to for whatever reasons, if they want to get positive test results, that’s their choice. Stop using twisted logic and marginal cases to make up arguments to satisfy your authoritarian desire.
> Getting a serum test rather than getting the vaccine is not going to be cheaper, easier, or better studied.
The difference is that the serum test is risk free. If I knew I was already immune, I would not have gotten the vaccine to be completely honest, no matter how small the risk is. For the same reason I don't get other safe and effective treatments for diseases I do not have.
Not sure what you mean, if the test determines I have immunity similar to what a vaccine provides and knowing that I choose not to get it, what are the downstream impacts?
I see, I guess I don't know either way, seems like something that isn't particularly difficult to study though so I'd be surprised if it wasn't known at this point.
I'm sure it's quite difficult to study, but no less so than studying the vaccine. I'd be surprised if we didn't already know at least as much about natural immunity, but whether the media are effectively communicating that information is another question.
It will definitely not be better studied because it the focus and the funding is on how well vaccination works. Vaccines have a revenue model; natural immunity doesn't.
If the bar bouncer can see a card that says you have been vaccinated then they can see a card that says you have covid antibodies or that you have had a positive covid test at some point in the past. I don't think this is too burdensome for our hypothetical bouncer.
The people who would be confused by two pathways are already confused. It would not increase confusion. You have a vaccination card or you have a positive test card.
Right now there are already at least two pathways. You have a vaccination card or a negative test card within an allowable date range.
The bigger issues are privacy, etc. Not, "Oh no, there are two options! I'm so confused."
there was a fitness instructor in colorado that didn't get the vaccine because he had tested and had antibodies in his blood. then he got covid again(or maybe the first time?) and it just absolutely decimated his body. he lost 70 lbs and is walking around with an oxygen bottle. the only real way to make sure you have proper antibodies and B and T cell responses is to have either gotten a symptomatic case of covid that lasted a while or getting the vaccine.(yes that's also not foolproof wrt antibodies/t/b response but it's a generally good method)
You can't learn much from a sample size of 1. In particular, there are people who have been vaccinated who have also died of COVID. The question is whether or not natural immunity affords comparable (or better) protection to the virus than the vaccine, and it seems that the data are indicating that it does. This should be a good thing--instead of being angry that it takes away our justification to force others to do something, we should be happy at the prospect of combatting covid without having to force people to do anything.
He has likely done major damage to his body through the use of steroids. He was a professional bodybuilder who admitted to using. This is definitely not a good anecdote.
You may be surprised to hear this - but it's actually the case that fewer people died this year to Russian Roulette than to COVID - and a lot of those people didn't volunteer to spin the wheel. I don't think the specifics about proportional chance of loss are particularly relevant.
That's cool - you can also love playing Russian Roulette itself - that doesn't mean we have to make it legal for you to actually do that.
If the worst thing a vaccine mandate is doing is preventing you from getting your jollies from being an idiot I see no problem with enforcing a mandate.
You probably don't even need to photoshop your name on the card. In most scenarios you could take a small and slightly blurry photo of anyone's card, bring it up on your phone to show someone, and they'll shrug and accept it as evidence that you're vaccinated.
They usually ask for your ID to match the info on the card
I asked and they may have a city agent scanning cards — then you simply stand in line behind someone and see whether or not they are scanning it versus just visually inspecting. If the latter — you are good to go
That doesn't strike me as particularly dumb. It's pretty easy to print out a fake driver's license (or use someone else's) that's going to work fine getting into most bars, and the risks of getting into legal trouble for attempting to use a fake ID to buy alcohol are probably pretty similar to the risks of using a fake vaccine card, and yet most people don't argue that that system is a dumb way to enforce the drinking age (ignoring whether the drinking age itself is a reasonable policy).
> Also, in many cases, "proof of vaccination" includes a cell phone photo of the piece of paper they handed out when you got a vaccine, so as it stands, lying is pretty easy.
One critical difference is that there will be legal consequences if you're using a fake proof of vaccination.
Because we don't have a good legal definition of "natural immunity"? Compared to that, vaccination status is official record which is subject to forgery law and its effectiveness has been well studied against most COVID variants.
Note that it is pretty tricky to define natural immunity in a legal way since there is no good scientific consensus on the correlation between some proxy of natural immunity (e.g. antibody level) and its effectiveness against infection/transmission.
“Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.”
This is out of date and incorrect. The latest data shows that the risk of myocarditis in children after two doses vastly exceeds the risk of myocarditis posed by the virus:
This number has been steadily increasing, as time passes. Current consensus seems to be that one dose is the optimal tradeoff between risk and reward for young children.
That report doesn’t appear to talk about case rates of myocarditis due to COVID at all. It compares COVID hospitalization rates to vaccine-related myocarditis case rates. Is it your assumption that all myocarditis cases are as serious as a COVID hospitalization?
Covid hospitalizations are a superset of myocarditis cases. If you broke out Covid-induced myocarditis, the comparison would be even more lop-sided against the vaccines.
> Is it your assumption that all myocarditis cases are as serious as a COVID hospitalization?
Yes. It is not an assumption. Myocarditis is not a mild condition, despite rhetoric to the contrary.
The (very) few kids who end up hospitalized for Covid have serious co-morbidities that are easy to pre-screen (e.g. severe obesity). For these children, a full vaccination is recommended. Nobody is arguing about that. For healthy kids, it's very different.
It's great that most kids with myocarditis don't end up in the ICU, but being put in the hospital to get hooked up to an IV and an MRI scan is not a good outcome for an otherwise healthy kid who would would have -- at most -- a head cold from SARS-CoV2.
Even if we accept this reasoning (It’s not clear to me that the myocarditis cases are more than ‘call your doc, rest up and take ibuprofen’, and I believe that applies to cases among non-hospitalized COVID patients too), but the last I saw the effective reproduction rate for COVID was >1, so every otherwise healthy kid who gets a ‘head cold’ is also going to pass it on to someone else, right?
> Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid.
How many avoided death because they had good health care?
One of my pet peeves about this pandemic is how death metrics keep being pushed around, as if it was not a big deal.
If this pandemic had hit before we had modern health care facilities, it would have been comparable to the great pandemics in history.
Besides, what happened to the children that didn't die? What sort of issues this could cause that may affect their development? We don't know, so we should play it safe.
> from the vaccine
There isn't just one vaccine. There are several. If one is potentially causing issues, use another.
Also, what about heart problems from Covid-19, even among those not hospitalized?
I can't read your paywalled article, but I've found another link. The 'heart problems' are myocarditis, which in most cases is mild and _resolves_ by itself.
> How many avoided death because they had good health care?
If you are going play that game, you also need to ask how many died between March - June 2020 because of panicked doctors intubating everyone left and right with no one around to advocate for the patients.
> you also need to ask how many died between March - June 2020 because of panicked doctors intubating everyone left and right with no one around to advocate for the patients.
Not sure what this is implying, or what kind of advocacy would have made a better call. Doctors intubated people (despite a shortage of ventilators and the difficulty of triage) because the patients were struggling to breathe, and given available data the medical profession though it would help those patients recover. They've since learned more about the outcomes from this particular disease and when a ventilator is appropriate. Your comment makes it sound as though any idiot off the street could tell who should be on a ventilator and who should not.
I'm not sure why death is the only thing we're trying to avoid. Currently, children's ICUs in Oklahoma are full in part due to the number of Covid patients. I'd rather my child not end up in the hospital, much less be turned away from one in a time of need.
What is the baseline utilization of ICU space? I’m also curious what happened to those heroic efforts of retrofitting parking garages into field-expedient hospitals. Oh, and the notorious “gunshot victims are being left to die because of all the covid, bros!” misinformation that respectable journalists printed without any effort to check the facts.
>that respectable journalists printed without any effort to check the facts.
Journalists from the same publication (Rolling Stone) were responsible for the whole fabricated "A Rape On Campus" article as well. I would not give them the respectable journalist moniker anymore except in jest.
Then you should be concerned about the considerable risk they will end up there due to heart inflammation (in the case of male children).
Edit: I'm not going to respond to every comment below that points out that it's extremely rare, other than to ask that you compare that chance to the chance of hospitalization due to covid, which according to the link above is less likely.
Plus that's comparing one risk of the vaccine to one risk of the virus. You need a holistic comparison. COVID messes you up in lots of other ways too, ways in which the vaccine does not.
> myocarditis is being diagnosed and reported in children if not at the hospital?
The vast majority of people who visit a doctor are diagnosed with no hospitalization and the recommended course for most myocarditis cases is not hospitalization. If the recommendation were hospitalization then many more infected young males would be hospitalized based on myocarditis diagnosis.
“Myocarditis (or pericarditis or myopericarditis) from primary COVID19 infection occurred at a rate as high as 450 per million in young males. Young males infected with the virus are up 6 times more likely to develop myocarditis as those who have received the vaccine.” [0]
So there’s a preprint stating that COVID-19 causes myocarditis at a higher rate than via vaccination. So it’s not quite clear to me whether or not, if looking at it from a risk of myocarditis, that not getting vaccinated is the better choice.
And according to the JCVI, it still is marginally beneficial to get vaccinated over not getting vaccinated. So it’s not like they are advising that natural infection is safer than vaccination.
“For otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year old children, their risk of severe COVID-19 disease is small and therefore the potential for benefit from COVID-19 vaccination is also small. The JCVI’s view is that overall, the health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination to healthy children aged 12 to 15 years are marginally greater than the potential harms.” [1]
"The medium- to long-term effects are unknown and long-term follow-up is being conducted.
Given the very low risk of serious COVID-19 disease in otherwise healthy 12 to 15 year olds, considerations on the potential harms and benefits of vaccination are very finely balanced and a precautionary approach was agreed." [1]
As a concerned parent, this is how I will be approaching vaccination for my sons.
The term hospitalization implies an inpatient (or at least observation) stay, as opposed to an outpatient encounter like the emergency department or a clinic. Most diagnoses made in the outpatient setting do not require hospitalization, which could include both COVID and myo/pericarditis.
That "data point" is that that group is 6x more likely to be affected by myocarditis after receiving a vaccine than to be hospitalized due to COVID. I would like to see an actually useful comparison, like, say, the likelihood of being affected by myocarditis after receiving a vaccine versus the likelihood of being affected by myocarditis after a COVID infection.
Myocarditis, in this circumstance, were cases reported in VAERS, which isn't a mild or asymptomatic condition -- it usually means hospitalization. Furthermore, the researchers who have been analyzing the rates are going back to the VAERS records and actually looking at the case data.
These are severe enough cases to require medical attention.
you're deferring thinking to an unnamed mystery expert and then arguing on behalf of that unnamed mystery expert as if you know what they'd say. lol, just lol.
The cdc link provided raw numbers. The telegraph link is a journalist deducing a conclusion. I don’t think any experts provided any conclusive evidence in this thread (which I gather was the point of the comment you replied to)
Anyone can claim to be an expert. Once one comes forward we can evaluate to see if their claims hold up.
In this case experts have pointed out that the analysis is wrong because it doesn't compare mycardius in the control group even through we know covid also causes that. Nor do they consider harm, despite vaccine caused mycardious being mild.
Kids can also be carriers, and more spread among a partially resistant population means more mutation and more variants. Vaccines are in the process of being approved for all ages.
I think it is very likely that vaccinated people are contracting COVID-19 less than unvaccinated people, but because most testing is done on symptomatic people, and the vaccine is known to reduce symptoms, the sampling bias is likely overstating the effect.
Vaccinations reduce your chance of getting infected and reduce the average duration of the infection. The combination of these two factors thus reduce the R value of covid in vaccinated populations when compared to unvaccinated populations with identical network topologies and behaviors.
"A growing body of evidence indicates that people fully vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) are less likely than unvaccinated persons to acquire SARS-CoV-2 or to transmit it to others."
It's nothing to do with them catching it, it's about them spreading it.
The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the pandemic.
Without the teenagers vaccinated, that's never going to get hit.
Wait until winter hits and the cases spike, then it's suddenly going to become "necessary", but if they'd made that hard decision 3 months ago this would already be over.
How can they know that figure (80%) without knowing % of people with natural immunity? We can guess but there hasn't been much of an effort made to track this.
> The usually bandied figure is 80% immunity to stop the pandemic.
That was pre-Delta. The higher the R0, the more mitigation we need to do. The question is what gets RE below zero.
At this point, with Delta's R0 and the vaccine's effectiveness, it looks like mere vaccination without masks is going to be insufficient in large groups (e.g. at a giant concert, a big play). But, since all the precautions have a multiplier, that's fine. It means we can keep doing those things as long as we take precautions while we do it and not assume vaccine = ignore COVID.
Good thing the only thing that matters is death, not any other issue.
Good thing children never transmit viruses to adults.
Good thing reservoirs of disease never allow for novel mutations.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare projections in one case to actual results in the other.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare one rate in the general population to a rate in an already selected group.
Good thing your source[1] didn't do something fundamentally dishonest like compare self-reported issues to actually verified cases.
Good thing your source[1] didn't make a big deal about the huge multiplier difference between two exceedingly small numbers (0.01622% vs 0.00261%)
Good thing your source[1] didn't falsely imply "hospitalization" and "myocarditis " as equivalently severe, ignoring that the myocarditis responded well and quickly to treatment[2] whereas COVID does not, leading to long hospital stays and/or ventilation and/or death.
I'm not arguing with you, but I'm not 100% sure what specifically was wrong. Can I trouble you to provide a little more context? Was it stylistic? I originally wrote up my issues with his source as a paragraph, but that seemed harder to read. Was it the repetitive beginning of each line? Or was I just being too snarky?
Yes, too snarky, and that sort of repetition is a rhetorical device that acts as a hammer. It is a device for political battle, not curious conversation. No one speaks that way in a conversation.
The thing about comments like that is that they polarize the discussion even further, because those who agree with you will become intensified in their agreement while those who disagree with you will react the way people react when someone hammers them repeatedly. This kind of polarization makes curious conversation impossible, because curious conversation has to do with maintaining connection across differences.
If you are skeptical and think "COVID involved" according to CDC might mean they could have died of other things but also happened to have COVID, then here is an exercise you should do: First, go to CDC and download all the death data for 2015-2020. Second, import this into your spreadsheet of choice and plot all of these deaths as 6 individual time-series plots with Jan-Dec as the X axis. Third, observe that the curves are nearly identical for 2015-2019, with the exception of a very slightly elevated curve for one of the flu seasons (I think it was the tail end of 2017 / start of 2018). Now observe that the curve for 2020 has several giant bumps in it that precisely correlate with the COVID surges in both size and shape. Calculate the area between that curve and any of the previous years. Now observe that it very, very closely matches the number the CDC is reporting as "covid involved" deaths for 2020.
I did this. This is quite convincing to me that the "COVID involved" deaths are not mis-categorized and they actually are related to COVID unless CDC is straight up fabricating death numbers on a massive scale. The stories about the COVID death categorizations being overstated are pure FUD.
The OP asked about kids specifically. Counterpoint:
> Data from the first 12 months of the pandemic in England shows 25 under-18s died from Covid.
> Around 15 had life-limiting or underlying conditions, including 13 living with complex neuro-disabilities
> Six had no underlying conditions recorded in the last five years - though researchers caution some illnesses may have been missed
Were the children with complex neuro-disabilities pushed over the edge by covid? Quite possibly. Is that a reason for parents of healthy children to worry? Unlikely.
> Teenage boys are six times more likely to suffer from heart problems from the vaccine than be hospitalised from Covid-19.
What use is it to compare two different things? Those heart problems aren't all hospitalizations. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are more likely to have heart problems than teenage boys who get vaccinated. Teenage boys who get COVID-19 are more likely to be hospitalized than teenage boys who get vaccinated. Many young men have died of COVID-19, and none have died of the vaccine.
> Only 412 people age 17 or younger in the US have died from covid. [0]
More than twice as many died in August as in July or as in August of last year. With Delta and school in session, expect this number to go up for September.
I've got a child under 12, and while everyone in my household over 12 is vaccinated, I'm not sure if the vaccine has any point for him. If you look at CDC stats, today there are only 412 reported covid19 deaths in the 0-17 age group, 138 in the 0-4 group, meaning 274 in the 4-17 group out of 670,000. Furthermore, kids rarely need treatment, so most infections go undiagnosed.
While I have no objection to a vaccine, and I don't question the efficacy of these, the trivial chance of my son's covid19 complications versus forcing him to a doctor's office over his fear of needles, which will cause him a lot of angst, makes me question whether to do it. These decisions aren't always entirely about death percentages.
IMO the issue is children & schools are the perfect combination for the spread of illnesses. While no one wants to make definitive statements on how much the vaccine reduces the duration & level of contagiousness -> it is almost certainly not 0%.
I think as long as the vaccine is an option for all/most ages then it isn't much of an issue. Although it would be interesting if we allowed kids to get the vaccine at school - possibly without parental permission. (Sort of a tricky area... I think some places provide the HPV vaccine like this since some parents won't let their kids get it.)
My partner is a nurse, and something I think that gets lots a lot in discussing these stats is that many times 'surviving' doesn't mean 'back to normal like nothing happened".
Her stories of it radically complicating totally unrelated illnesses and the potential severe long term effects are more than enough reason to take precautions seriously despite what group or demographic you might be in.
I think about this a lot but almost never hear it brought up, so I agree that the point gets overlooked often. For every death there are probably many people experiencing serious effects. Anyone who has experienced significant long term health problems knows that they can have a massive impact on your life.
This reminds me of a bad take that comes up from time to time around war casualties. Some will see that only a thousand soldiers out of a million died in some conflict and think that it wasn't that dangerous, but for every death in war there can be dozens of people who suffer severe mental and physical harm that negatively affects the rest of their life.
Not sure how accurate that is based on the children’s hospitals in the southern United States being at capacity from COVID. Long symptoms have also become an issue in children.
Thanks! Based on the nature.com link, it looks like there needs to be more time and work done to make concrete claims (as I suspected with something as complicated as "long covid").
I would also be interested in seeing comparisons to "long <other infectious diseases>".
I would agree with you if I was questioning water fluoridation or if vaccines gave people autism.
A request to support a claim about the "long term" effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years ago, in a rapidly changing environment, for which it seems pretty improbable for there to have already been robust, repeated, falsifiable studies done, is different.
Long Covid in children is an established phenomenon. Which you would know if you had typed "long Covid in children" into Google and looked quickly through the top results.
I would also suggest that if you want "robust, repeated, falsifiable studies" for "effects of a virus/disease discovered less than 2 years ago" you have set your standard implausibly high. That's not how medicine progresses for urgent things, because it's fantastically negligent. Contrast the rapid global Covid response, which saved millions of lives, with the incredible foot-dragging surrounding AIDS in the 80s. If we had waited for perfect knowledge before taking action, hospitals would have been stacking bodies in the streets.
At this stage you get papers saying things like, "A quarter of children experienced persistent symptoms months after hospitalization with acute covid-19 infection, with almost one in ten experiencing multi-system involvement. [...] Our findings highlight the need for replication and further investigation [...]". [1]
Being skeptical of "Long COVID" claims around (typically) asymptomic or mild COVID cases in children is reasonable. Nevertheless, we should vaccinate children -- ordinary acute COVID is bad enough, and of course they are still a transmission vector.
Long COVID isn't well-defined in general; some large subset of it is psychosomatic. The main non-psychosomatic problem seems to be fallout from ARDS (Acute Respitory Distress Syndrome), which is directly related to severe bouts of COVID (and generally younger people have less severe COVID, with or without vaccines).
I'd recommend when you decide to make claims you go ahead and provide a source rather than becoming passive-aggressive and telling someone it isn't your job to educate them.
I'd like to see a better definition of what "long COVID" is. The minimum definition I see most often is symptoms lasting longer than 3 weeks. I've never had a cold where all symptoms were gone at the 3 week mark.
We have been made to associate the term "long COVID" with debilitating illness lasting many months, talk of people joining online support groups, etc. I'd like a better breakdown of what is common.
Edit: Downvotes why? It isn't reasonable to want to know how many people are having "any symptom at all past 3 weeks" and how many are suffering from debilitating syndromes?
Never ending fatigue, random muscle and joint pains, blood pressure fluctuations, constant low-grade headache, numbness of extremities, tinnitus, shortness of breath, chest pain, tachycardia, back pain, anxiety and depression.. and usually its combination of the above that come and go continuously in what seems like waves.
There are probably more symptoms I’m missing, but that is what I experienced for 9 months
A large number of the breakthrough cases I'm (personally) aware of are coming from unvaccinated kids to their parents. I would definitely vaccinate your child once it's approved for under 12 - for your whole family's sake. Then tell them they're doing it to protect their family and let them feel like a brave hero.
Why wouldn't you just have the vulnerable adults get vaccinated? At what point will done of these people just start vaccinating in the womb or just treat it like circumcision? Circumcision is not needed but might as well just poke babies with needles immediately after their born to make sure we traumatize them as much as possible.
> Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12. I have heard second hand many doctors are downplaying the importance of the vaccine for people under 18.
> IMO it would make a lot more sense to just keep vaccines available for everyone older than 2 including boosters every 6 months (just in case)
That's a terrible idea. Children are not small adults, and you can't use the same medicine for children as for adults. There are Pediatricians who work specifically with children. Giving drugs to children is unlike the scenario where a heavy car takes twice the gasoline a ligher care takes.
"Therefore, the risk of cardiac adverse events following the second dose of the mRNA vaccine could be around 3.7 times more likely than hospitalization due to COVID-19 in healthy 12-15-year-old boys during periods when the pandemic is better under control 2.1 times in 16-17-year-olds. The group found that this trend remains even when SARS-CoV-2 transmission rates are high, with vaccination being riskier than hospitalization from COVID-19. The long-term health effect of the mRNA vaccines on teenage boys is unknown. Few clinical trials have been conducted due to the early observation of adverse events." [1]
> Probably because everyone and their uncle self-diagnosed a bad cold as COVID-19 and plenty more would lie about having natural immunity.
This ignores the existence of antibody tests, and there's no reason that lying about a positive antibody test would be easier to get away with than lying about being vaccinated.
> I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies, my results were a “76” (I assume percentage?).
It does not mean percentage. The fact that we cannot directly relate antibody levels to immunological protection is one of the reasons we can't [yet?] use antibody tests to "count" as immunity.
While I posted above about being on the fence about vaccinating my kid, I was in a similar case as you. I'm in my late 40's, and I came down with covid early in the pandemic, before general availability of PCR tests, but I did manage to get an antibody test, and I was positive.
I did get vaccinated because the vaccine reinforces antibodies which are correlated with fewer complications upon subsequent infection. There are some epitopes on sars-cov-2 which closely resemble parts our own clotting factors and interferons, and the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present. So, it seems a vaccine only helps.
One thing about getting vaccinated after recovery from covid, though, is that both the first and second doses knock you on your butt, not just the second.
> the randomized nature of our immune response can lead to some less desirable antibodies being present
Exactly! The point of many COVID vaccines is to teach the immune system to destroy a very specific and very important protein, which is the spike protein. Without that the virus can't enter cells. It's not present in our own body.
We have no idea what kind of immune response any given person might get with an actual infection. Reinfections are a thing.
Your last paragraph makes little sense. We have no idea what kind of immune response any given person might get with a vaccine (any vaccine) either. What kind of test this is? And infections after covid vaccines are sadly also a thing.
People get sick with COVID multiple times, and natural immunity is more hit-or-miss with regards to protection against variants. Reinfections are also frequently nastier than the first infection. It also costs absolutely nothing and at worst will act as an additional safety that makes you feel uncomfortable for a few days.
To provide additional protection (especially since given that timing it almost certainly wasn't the delta variant that you got). Maybe you are protected by your previous infection and maybe you aren't.
It was my understanding that you basically just punch these mRNA sequences into a computer and you could have a new formulation ready for manufacture over the weekend. If it's a regulatory issue, maybe the regulations should be adjusted. Why have a booster of the original stuff that's not working as well?
It's really not that simple. I'm not current, but I studied immunology as part of medical school a long time ago.
The Delta variant replicates really quickly, that is its evolutionary advantage over other strains, it's not that your immune system is weaker to it. What happens is that at first it ramps up a lot faster than your immune response, and during this period, it produce a lot more virions, and your immune system has a bigger fight on its hands.
There are many immunologists working on identifying the nature of the immune response to sars-cov-2, and so far, something on the order of 80 unique antibodies have been identified which are induced by vaccination, and about 200 unique antibodies which are induced by actual infection. The convalescent antibodies target the nucleocapsid (the ball) more than the spike protein.
It appears that the delta variant escapes approximately 1/8 of the antibodies in both cases, so you still have a very strong immune response, just one which doesn't ramp up as fast as the virus.
Now, as for the mRNA sequences, we can create them in a DNA printer (then transcribe to RNA), however, this triggers new safety and efficacy trials at the FDA.
Are you willing to bet that the tweaked Moderna vaccine (the trials of it was announced, right?) shows worse efficacy than the original? Odds 51:49 in your favor, null hypothesis of the same efficacy is a tie. That's generous I think, if nobody knows.
Most proteins are safe, of course, and the odds that any particular new mRNA target is safe is pretty good. But it's not trivial to predict with computational models, and so it requires testing.
I was tested 2 weeks ago for antibodies after receiving the vaccine. My results were "0." And yet I experienced all the typical side effects from the vaccine, indicating that I probably had an immune response to it.
Nobody knows what any particular antibody count means with respect to risk to your health from a future COVID infection. Instead, we need to be looking at the hard statistics about who's getting admitted into hospitals and who's dying.
The data I've seen is not great, in part because reinfection is pretty rare. This study [0] indicating rates of 31.0% and 3.4% respectively is the best I've seen, but I'd hazard a guess that there's some sampling bias - i.e., healthier people are less likely to get symptomatic reinfection and therefore to get tested, so unhealthy people are overrepresented in the data - so those rates are probably overestimates.
It is a free vaccine that could save your life, has been safely administered to billions of people and greatly reduces the odds of you getting infected, transmitting to others or ending up in hospital.
What is the downside? or are you just apathetic to getting it.
I've seen several patients that were sicker the second time they got COVID, including people dying in their 20s and 30s. I can't speculate on what their antibody tests might have showed beforehand.
"Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12"
From what I understand, different ages of people tend to have different sorts of immune responses. While vaccines are safe and effective, it takes some time to get the dosages right for children because of the way their immune system responds to things - at least, with a new vaccine. I'm not an expert, though, and I got this information while looking up variances in side effects (older folks get less than younger folks, and folks with two x chromosomes - mostly females - tend to get more as well).
Think about this for a second. If you give 100,000 pre-teens an HPV vaccine, how long do you have to wait to discover if they are more or less likely to contract genital warts? Now compare that to how long you would have to wait to see if they contract COVID. This is not a valid comparison.
> Still I don't understand the current approach to COVID in the US. Vaccines are safe and available yet we only just approved the use in children under 12
The main issue here is that covid is less of a problem for people who are younger.
That means rarer issues can start to outweigh benefits. It's easily possible for vaccines to be beneficial over a certain age and detrimental under.
Also - while the vaccines lower transmission they do not stop it entirely so again it comes to weighing benefits.
The other issue is about testing how well the vaccines work in different groups. Just because it works well in a 65y grandfather doesn't mean it'll work well in a 2mo baby, or help with dosing decisions.
clinical trials are ongoing for <12 year olds. The biggest change is that the dosages will have to be lower. If you give a young child the current adult dose they will have a higher chance of side effects.
> "for boys 16-17 without medical comorbidities, the rate of CAE is currently 2.1 to 3.5 times higher than their 120-day Covid-19 hospitalization risk, and 1.5 to 2.5 times higher at times of high weekly Covid-19 hospitalization,"
>Sure there is a small population that would get vaccinated but genuinely can not due to a medical issue but that scenario is no different than the seasonal flu and other viruses.
There is a difference. Covid is 10 times more lethal than the average flu. It's not always that they can't either, it's also that their body won't develop enough antibodies.
Main reason for lockdown is so that your hospitals can keep functioning, or in the case of New Zealand, so that you can go back to complete normal life except for travel outside the country.
Comment section here proving once again that high IQ nerds are, when it comes to the stuff that actually matters, overtly authoritarian. You might be all for giving children hormone blockers and championing the right to vote without ID, but it turns out the liberalism was just a LARP all along. I am fortunate to be in a position where my livelihood is not being threatened, and I will never get an unnecessary medical procedure to satisfy either contemptible neurotics, pharma shareholders, or the government. Freedom is the freedom to say "fuck you", and I don't need
to justify why, though with the facts as they currently stand, it's about the easiest thing in the world. Seethe and cope, because at the end of the day you are a slave, and I will never be.
A lot of people will never understand you, so don't waste your time. You should instead try with a red light, say I'm not a slave, and drive through. The light won't understand you either, but maybe you finally will.
That's fine, just stay away from our towns and businesses where you can endanger people who care about each other. Your livelihood may not be threatened, mine isn't either - but you're probably threatening someone else's.
It's unfortunate that it's necessary to provide this reminder within almost every message thread.
It's basically a straw man fallacy, and the fact that it's probably unintentional on the part of the committers tells you something about the single-mindedness of those doing the committing.
How do you know anyone has natural immunity? There are plenty of anti-vaxx conspiracy nutjobs that would happily lie about it to avoid getting improved 5G.
> Seethe and cope, because at the end of the day you are a slave, and I will never be.
See, I'm not that petty, and I mostly content myself with living in a country where hospitalization rates are at a record low thanks to vaccine mandates. I don't need to seethe or think about it that much.
But if I were that petty, I think my seething and coping would be abated by the knowledge a lot of you people are dying these days, unless they can afford top-of-the-line fetus-based therapy.
My country has no mandates and ICU usage from Covid is under 10%. There is a policy in place that will increase measures when ICU occupancy from COVID rises to 10% - 20%.
Or some of us might be aware of the paradox of tolerance and correctly conclude that unlimited tolerance of intolerance is not the only alternative to authoritarianism.
Driving drunk doesn’t imply violating driver’s own bodily integrity against their choice. A drunk driver risks other people’s lives and it’s a punishable crime.
The prerequisites of the applied force in the case of drunk driving would be driver’s acts of volition to choose to get drunk and to choose to drive afterwards.
What are the prerequisites of the applied force in the case of staying unvaccinated? What are the acts of volition that justify the force?
The force would be used to prevent unvaccinated people from participating in certain activities (like attending public indoor gatherings). It’s very directly analogous to drunk driving.
For some few exceptions. I am vaccinated and don't feel threatened by unvaccinated people at all. Yes, there are people with compromised immune systems, but I think it is on them to reduce the risk of exposure without having a mandate on vaccination.
It's not just about immunocompromised people. The fewer people are vaccinated the quicker we get rid of the virus. If don't do it quickly, we're slowly "marinading" the virus in the vaccine, increasing chances for a vaccine-resistant mutation. It's kind of like why you're not allowed to stop a course of antibiotics half-way through.
Well, we have gotten rid of other viruses in the past and it also makes sense in theory given what we know about viruses, so the burden of proof is on those claiming we can't.
You seem to be arguing for the sake of it. I feel that my statement was pretty clear. If I am communicating poorly, I apologize, but there isn't much more I can add.
What are you on about? Cars are actually a pretty good analogy.
Banning cars is equivalent to a full lockdown - useful temporarily if the issue is getting out of control, but despite working well, takes so much away from us that it's definitely not worth it long-term.
Banning drunk, unlicensed, etc. people from driving treats the issue more immediately without taking away ver much at all. Yes, drunkards won't get to drive, even if they're willing to risk it, so that's a negative effect for them, but society as a whole will gladly sacrifice that to protect everyone else (including them, even if they don't want it).
I am certainly confused. Do you think drunk driving on shared roads should be allowed or prohibited? I'm also not interesting in discussing whether anyone's "mind has been destroyed," but I am interesting in discussing whether specific ideas are good ideas or bad ideas.
Can people please stop using that chant? It's not relevant. It was never used for what you're using it for. It was an overly general chant used to push a very specific policy goal.
Bodily integrity isn't a blanket rule. You have it only insofar as it doesn't harm others. Abortion, HRT, plastic surgery... fall into that category. Willingly spreading a deadly disease despite an easy and safe-ish preventative option does not.
I think all your examples are wrong. I am for abortion, but the bodily integrity argument is just plainly bad because it relies on axioms that the child isn't a fully developed human.
I support abortion rights but hate this argument in particular, because bodily integrity of the child would be of interest as well.
HRT and plastic surgery are irrelevant here since they are voluntary choices.
The post I was replying to was using the "my body my choice" chant which as far as I know is almost exclusively used by the abortion right movement.
They were trying to apply it to vaccination, which isn't comparable to abortion for reasons I explained and therefore the chant had no place there.
I do agree that the framing of abortion as a bodily integrity issue is missing a lot of other aspects, which is why we got dumb things like the heartbeat laws. But it is the argument I hear most activists make.
HRT and plastic surgery are relevant because they're choices you should be allowed to make about your body because they don't harm others. Not getting vaxxed doesn't satify that criterion. It's not a perfect comparison since one is an action and the other is the lack of action, but it's still an issue of the government controlling what you do with your body, which I argue is acceptable if and only if it's something that harms others.
> Bodily integrity isn't a blanket rule. You have it only insofar as it doesn't harm others.
To move forward, you have to prove that one particular unvaccinated person harmed another particular person in the case of covid. Good luck with establishing this causation!
> I will never get an unnecessary medical procedure to satisfy either contemptible neurotics, pharma shareholders, or the government.
One man's freedom ends where another man's begins. By not getting vaccinated against coronavirus, you are endangering yourself (which, while fine from a personal freedom point of view, still leaves society in form of either the taxpayer or your health insurance on the hook for the treatment cost should you die from it) and you are endangering others who are legitimately unable to get vaccinated (children < 12 years of age, immunosuppressed people, non-responders) with a deadly disease.
And the more people get infected, the more overwhelmed hospitals get with COVID cases (especially given that the delta mutant is both more infections and more likely to cause severe, ICU-requiring distress)... which means the collective freedom of you and other people to not get vaccinated is likely to directly impact the freedom of others who are in need of an ICU bed. And then there is the immense mental and physical load that the unvaccinated severe cases of COVID put on the individual healthcare workers who are obligated by their professional ethics to treat you, no matter what.
So much loss of life, of wealth, of happiness only to satisfy the radical libertarianism of the few. You know, if it were like with seatbelts where the only one you're endangering by not wearing it is yourself then I'd say go for it, see you in wherever we end up after our death - but by not vaccinating, you are part of a direct threat against everyone else.
Yes, places like NYC are creating a system of getting entry to many places only if you present government authorization. Then they can start adding more conditions to that authorization. Maybe a red state later adds not being a felon or a blue state adds not being on some red flag list. After all, you can still eat, so it's okay. They represent systems for excluding certain classes of people from society.
I'm serving as a poll worker in SF today. There's a section in our manual (page 65, there's a PDF online somewhere) about what to do if a voter is not wearing a facial covering, the TLDR of which is to politely offer them a mask or curbside voting, and then let them vote regardless. We are a long way off from requiring vaccination.
Yeah, it’s really horrible when I have to show my age passport to get served a beer, too.
Edit: moreover, the party that wants fewer restrictions on voting is the same as the party that wants people to get vaccinated. And the party that is desperately trying to stop as many people from voting as possible is also very pro-disease. So this seems like a pretty unlikely scenario.
You kid, but that's a violation of your privacy as well and shouldn't exist.
That change in the US at least was also very contentious when it occurred, and subsequently every time the legal age was changed.
But say we decide that that is OK, which it appears most people have, they're still not really comparable because one is based on the assumption that you're too young to get inebriated responsibly, whereas this is proof you've had a medical procedure performed on your body. I'm sure you can see the glaring difference, one is significantly more extreme and invasive than the other.
Do we actually believe that "big pharma" (in the form of 3 companies that make US approved vaccines) have greater influence than all of the collective industries that would benefit from a looser mandate (so long as the public trusted it)? Pharma is more influential than the entire service sector, plus most manufacturing, and anything else that functionally requires people to be in the same room?
If you believe they are, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point. If you believe they're not, then I think it makes sense to look for another explanation.
So you're just going to pretend that the entire media and political establishment (at least in US) as well as many industries (ex. big tech) are not strongly supportive of big pharma when it comes to the vaccines?
Are you going to pretend people are not being actively censored, banned, cancelled, fired for being vaccine-sceptical?
Do you not believe that the extensively-documented mass manipulation of public opinion is a thing?
If this is the fantasy land you want to base your reasoning in, then I accept that we have different starting points but your reasoning is compelling under your starting point.
The media, political establishment (or at least half of it), and other industries are supportive of vaccine mandates. These loose groups of people can indeed influence the public, and are using this ability to promote vaccines. These premises are uncontroversial.
The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma. Either this is for an altruistic reason (hah!) or big pharma is actually more powerful than those people (or, maybe, that isn't actually happening).
I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
> These loose groups of people can indeed influence the public, and are using this ability to promote vaccines.
There is nothing loose about the US media and political establishments. If you watch mainstream media with any regularity you'd think it was two departments of one corporation.
> The problem is that some folks are jumping to the conclusion that they are doing this because they want to sacrifice their own interests to increase profits for big pharma.
I didn't see anyone make that claim. There are many extensively documented cases of collusion between government and media. 9/11 coverage, Afghanistan, and Iraq wars, virtually any coverage of foreign adversaries (Russia, China, Iran), vaccines, etc. being some obvious examples.
> I know it's comfortable to think that the world's largest economy is entirely under control of three companies, but I see no compelling evidence that this is the case.
Oh yeah, can't think of anything more comfortable to think of!
have you ever sat through the commercials of American TV news stations? pharma has a directly controlling interest in the media. this should be uncontroversial.
I watched broadcast news in America two days ago, in fact, though it's somewhat unusual (I prefer to read news). I do remember some pharma ads. I also remember ads for retail stores, chain restaurants, and tourism (an amusement park, a cruise line, and a more general "come visit place X").
Even if we presume that advertisers are the only stakeholders (forgetting, let's say, investors), I'd disagree that pharma has a controlling interest in the media.
I work for "big pharma" - we were one of the companies that tried to make COVID vaccine. We failed - it worked but was not as good as Pfizer and others (though if those didn't work out, ours would still be worth it).
Nobody is disappointed that we didn't succeed. It would be great PR - "company X is saving the world" but it would not make us all that much money, considering how much world governments are paying for COVID vaccines.
I find the claims of big pharma manipulating to selling more vaccines dubious.
Regulatory capture is understood and happens in other industries (e.g. the MIC). Feel is pretty naive if you don't think politicians are willing to incur massive opportunity costs to society at large in order to enrich themselves and the establishment that they essentially work for.
Do we actually believe that "big pharma" (in the form of 3 companies that make US approved vaccines) have greater influence than all of the collective industries
They only need more influence in key places like FDA and CDC, not more influence overall, to push health policies.
The FDA and CDC are not involved in vaccine mandates. Even the coming federal mandate is through OSHA. They issue recommendations, but so do a lot of other influential people and organizations.
That said, this is a real phenomenon and worth bearing in mind when doing this type of reasoning.
It's only a personal choice if you do not come in contact with anyone else as best as you can.
Else, you run the risk of being infected, not knowing it, passing it onto other people who "have made a personal choice", involuntary manslaughtering them (unless you're religious, then you've biblically murdered them); or, alternatively, you run the risk of ending up in the ICU, and now somebody who did get the vaccine now needs that ICU bed, and they die because you're wasting a perfectly good ICU slot because you "made a personal choice."
Your rights end where the rights of others begin, this is the fundamental rule of modern western society above all others. Be very careful when you think that doesn't apply to you, not all mistakes can be corrected.
Since vaccinated are spreading this around nearly as much as unvaccinated, the involuntary manslaughter argument is moot. Getting your own vaccine doesn't help other people not die...only you. Even high-vaccination regions are having waves of infection that dwarf previous ones. (Israel, Scotland, Hawaii)
That said, allowing civil suits to punish people that gave you a virus that killed you, would be effective to keep both vaxed and unvaxxed careful and staying at home while sick. Hard to prove where you got it, but just a few successful suits will keep people honest.
Mea culpa, though: the chart I remember was of cases not spread/fan-out. I guess it is pretty hard to judge who is spreading it and who is not, in the public. Most articles tend to measure viral shedding or load as an indicator, which does support my stance, but that's science journalism which has been wrong a lot lately. I won't ask any HN reader to make a conclusion based on what I claimed.
I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but vaccination doesn't stop the spread of the virus. It probably slows the spread, which is good, but the magnitude is unclear.
I went down the rabbit hole of looking at COVID cases in Scotland, where vaccinations are quite common. It's worth considering all of the numbers here.
It can reduce or minimize the number of cases you spread while infected (i.e. you won't be infected for as long on average), though, and the positive impacts of this at scale are large. (Consider that case numbers grow exponentially, so even preventing e.g. 20% of transmissions in one month will have outsized effects weeks or months later.)
Is it though? If it’s a personal choice, why is drunk driving banned, and why do we have seatbelt and helmet laws?
If you know that you feel sick, and haven’t been vaccinated, yet go to work at a nursing home and end up spreading a breakthrough infection that kills an immunocompromised resident, is that not manslaughter? How is it different from knowingly getting in a car when intoxicated, and then causing a deadly accident?
You can crash your car even while sober. And you can arrive home safely even while drunk. You don't have "complete control" over whether you crash. But the responsible thing to do is exercise what control you do have. Yes you could catch and spread the virus even after vaccinated but it is still irresponsible to disregard this and risk the lives and livelihoods of others. It is a trivial request and the consequences of spreading the virus are non-trivial.
Liberty has never been (nor should it be) unfettered. Public intervention of any kind, whether it's jailing murderers, enforcing speed limits, pulling over drunk drivers, or requiring minimum food safety standards in restaurants, represents a perceived "liberty" being infringed upon. Unless a specific right is protected in the Constitution, it's fair game when it comes to public policy.
I think that opinion is complacent... spawned out of modern wealth and qualify of life.
Liberty is incredibly broad.if you're approach to the constitution (which I think many today share) is that you may restrict anything that isn't specifically mentioned then you are missing the whole point. Eventually aspects of life/liberty that you hold important will be restricted by those who share your approach.
Because he was drafted and forced to fight? Or would have faced jail time and ostracism if not? Or maybe shot for deserting... Now better question is why did he not fight and liberate eastern Europe against soviets after Germany was defeated? Was he coward? Was he evil?
So it is a personal choice. Would you be OK with the consequences of qualifying it as such?
What if an unvaccinated (by personal choice) person comes down with COVID and has to be hospitalized or - worse - put into ICU. Do you think they would be OK if doctors, faced with the crunch of beds, place them into a second tier, behind all the breakthrough cases? Hospitals do not do that currently, but this is not unheard of (e.g. bumping smokers and alcoholic patients in organ donation queues).
I am willing to accept this is a personal choice if people making that choice accept responsibility for it.
They accept responsibility by paying for medical care, paying insurance, or paying taxes into a socialized healthcare system, depending on which country you live. Refusing to treat sick people is not forcing them to take responsibility for their decisions, it is coercing them into making a decision they don't want to make, and I think k you know that.
Imagine this scenario: You have one ICU bed and two people with gunshot wounds. One got the wound because he played with a gun and shot himself. The other got the wound because he was shot accidentally by the first person. Only one person gets the bed. Which one do you give the bed to?
Let's make it a little more topical: Both people were told not to play with the gun and that there were insufficient ICU beds. The first person still played with the gun and shot himself and another person. This was a personal choice he made. His luck was against him (and the person he shot).
Let's make it more topical still: The two people were told, "Look, we know you want to play with guns. We really don't want you to. Receiving treatment for gunshot wounds is less likely to lead to long life than simply not getting shot, and we have other illnesses we need to treat.
Here's an additional incentive: if we don't have sufficient medical resources to treat everyone, the people who ignore this warning will get treated after those who don't." Yes, this is coercion, inasmuch as it is influencing their decision, but under this definition of coercion, coercion hardly seems like something to worry about, certainly not as much as getting shot.
Should vaccine refusal then result in increased premiums, or increased coinsurance for covid-related care? How many people would make the choice if they had to bear even part of the expected value of their increased medical costs themselves?
Maybe, but that is for insurance companies to decide. Just like they decide rates for smokers, obese people, etc.
Although I don't know of any insurance companies that have rates for people that have not undergone certain medical procedures. That sounds unethical to me.
no, public health isn't a personal choice: public health exists to apply population wide, standardized (possibly tailored somewhat) principles and actions and their loss function is to minimize overall suffering.
Personal choice goes against that, because many people's personal choices will be selfish or convenient to them while putting other people in harm's way. Within a large society, we must be cognizant of the likely impact of our decisions, but history shows that most people will not do so, and therefore must be compelled, legally, to take actions which are for the best of society.
Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal, not personal level, with the goal of ensuring the national survives existential challenges (of which COVID may be one).
> Some freedom is defined and assigned at the federal, not personal level...
That's one philosophy of governance. I believe it to be fundamentally incorrect. But that's your philosophy and your view on this topic stems from that. I get your point, I just disagree wholeheartedly.
I have a right to be selfish. I owe no obligation to anyone else that I have not voluntarily entered into. If you want to redefine "putting other people in harms way" to include breathing the air around me without getting a medical procedure you can, but it is wrong IMO.
This isn't just a philosophy of governance, it's how nearly every country in this world works. You clearly have limits on the freedoms you claim. For example, if you live in the US and you're male, you're subject to the draft and the government will put you in jail otherwise. There are no universal human rights to be selfish (or any others, either).
> You clearly have limits on the freedoms you claim
We aren't talking about how things are, we are talking about how things should be, specifically, whether there should be vaccine mandates or not. Other existing violations of rights are wrong also.
So it is fundamentally about philosophy of governance. You believe society should come first, individuals can be compelled to benefit society even potentially at great cost to themselves, and that a person is morally wrong for not wanting to go along with that. I believe that it is morally wrong to expect a person to value anyone over themselves that they have not chosen to, or to be compelled to do anything on behalf of someone else.
So, your argument is that personal choice can be ignored in favour of your personal definition of 'public health'? Take your logic a step further - why can't we just completely ignore your personal opinion of what's a public good or what is 'public health'? Another step further - ignore everyone's opinion of what's public good and have a small group of elites define this for us? Your argument is nothing more than blanket support for literally any top-down policy which labels itself 'for the public good'. Yawn.
And walking around after that still spreading the virus because you wouldn't feel the symptoms. The vaccinated people look to be the main source of infection these days.
Vaccinated people are way less likely to get infected.
And I don’t think there’s any evidence that vaccinated people have higher viral loads with less symptoms - that would be extremely surprising if true. I understand that vaccinated people can have high viral loads in breakout cases, but presumably in those cases they’re symptomatic - I don’t recall seeing any analysis of this.
The chances of infection for unvaccinated is 4 times of that for vaccinated. They have the same load - Wisconsin study for example, without control for symptoms. They have less symptoms - that is being tought by everybody everywhere. Putting these facts together is obvious.
When people appeal to morals it is an immediate big red sign for me as their appeal most probably have no backing or even goes directly against the facts, just like back in the USSR.
I think we can safely say that counting natural immunity would harm too many $$$ dollars and prevent politicians from maximizing the tragedy of C19 for political, power, and financial gain.
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.
> 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).
> No one has died getting their immunity from the vaccine
Wow. Really? No one? There are 13k+ COVID-19 vaccine related deaths on VAERS alone.
Those are ONLY the ones that have been certified and given a permanent VAERS number (as opposed to a temporary VAERS number that is given out initially).
The report submission process is time consuming, most of those are submitted by doctors and it's a crime to submit false info as well.
> According to CDC guidance listed on its page reporting adverse events from COVID-19 vaccines, seen here , there have been 6,340 reports of death (0.0019%) recorded from December 14, 2020, to July 26, 2021 "among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine." It is important to note that the "FDA requires healthcare providers to report any death after COVID-19 vaccination to VAERS, even if it is unclear whether the vaccine was the cause.”
Firstly these "fact check" websites, including Reuters have become a joke.
They clearly have an agenda and many also have conflicts of interest.
They pretend that just because they call themselves "fact checkers" it automatically makes everything they say true. They have nameless faceless self-proclaimed "experts" that often make a straw man and "fact check" the straw man as false and call it a day.
And a naive person just googles a few keywords, sees the - usually first link - "Fact-check: that thing you were told is totally wrong" article and thinks "Hah! Fact checkers say it's false! Debunked misinformation again!"
Big pharma has billions of dollars of interests to protect. The average so called "anti vax" person has nothing to gain or lose from whether other people do or don't take a vaccine. So a rational person should not so easily accept the commercial propaganda pushed by these companies.
Secondly health care professionals submit the report when they have reason to believe that it is a "vaccine adverse event". Otherwise the "event" is not relevant, the person will not even consider or bother to make the report to begin with.
"even if it is unclear whether the vaccine was the cause" part is a technicality because yes at the time they are submitting it "is not clear" if vaccine is indeed the cause and it is to be investigated.
They will then contact the person that submitted it and if it's a valid report they will assign a permanent number to the report.
There are many obstacles to submitting the report. And since it is voluntary it is under counting.
In Australia 9 deaths are officially accepted as vaccine-related. Again unlike with covid they do anything they can to keep this number low. It is a minimum.
I don't claim to know what the actual number is but it absolutely positively is not ZERO.
VAERS reports can (and should) be done for any death following vaccination, whether or not anyone thinks that death was vaccine-related. There's no evidence that the "13k+ COVID-19 vaccine related deaths" are anything of the sort; VEARS is simply not the sort of scientific study that can provide that sort of evidence. VEARS can throw up red flags for safety halts and further study (as happened with the Johnson and Johnson vaccine), but that's it. It's definitely, definitely not some gotcha data-point for you to wave around to attack the vaccines as unsafe.
"COVID Cases" turns out to be anyone with covid who might be in the hospital for anything else. COVID deaths have included people "greedily" the same way. Shouldn't the vaccine be counted by the same standards and the same statistical methods used?
Comparing Covid statistics to VAERS is comparing apples to oranges.
I completely reject your premise that the covid statistics are shoddy. It's easy to confirm a covid case. You do a PCR test, and if you get a positive back it's covid, end of story. It's admittedly a bit trickier to attribute a covid death... but not really. If a covid patient dies of a heart attack, it could be bad luck, or it could be the disease that coagulates its victims' blood. But usually it's pretty obvious. Someone dying of pneumonia and/or a cytokine storm isn't exactly subtle. There's nothing in the overall death statistics that suggest that the obvious covid deaths are anything but the obvious.
By comparison, establishing a casual connection between a vaccine and any adverse side effects is incredibly difficult, simply because they're so rare. Of the 44000 people in the Pfizer trials, literally none of them died of covid OR the vaccine, vs 15 covid deaths in the unvaccinated control group. And VAERS is just a safety net in case something small-but serious slips through the statistical power of a full scientific study (as happened with the J&J vaccine).
I fail to see how this is relevant. Obviously some set of people will test positive after they've been hospitalized for other causes, and another set will have mild cases that don't progress to the serious your-lungs-no-longer-work stage. The total cases and hospitalizations are still good general metrics to gauge the severity of the crisis and balance risks. If statistics didn't have nuances we wouldn't need statisticians.
Regardless, your objection is irrelevant to the comparison you've tried to make with VAERS. The COVID statistics are a sweeping accounting of common, obvious events that are easy to verify. VAERS, by contrast, is designed for hinting at the sort of literal one-in-a-millon range events that controlled medical trials can sometimes miss, where determining cause and effect is difficult. They're different tools for different jobs. Trying to apply standards from one to the other is simply spurious.
Those reports that have a permanent VAERS number assigned are one-by-one manually verified by contacting and discussing the report with the person that submitted it.
Also, forcing on person A something person B makes which is paid by entity C with absolutely no liability on B & C and the authority does make for good lead into a post public "service" career.
Then, you submit to constant tracking. All of a sudden things one could never have imagined just a couple of years ago become subject to whether a some unaccountable authority gives you permission.
> You can get a COVID certificate if the COVID infection was confirmed with a positive PCR test and occurred no more than 180 days ago.
> You can request the COVID certificate from your cantonal authority using an online form. It will then be sent to you by post.
> Please note:
> As the COVID certificate is compatible with the EU Digital COVID Certificate, the standards applying to the EU certificate must also serve as a basis for the Swiss certificate. This means that a certificate is only issued to people who have recovered following a positive PCR test.
Many other countries are fine considering documented prior infection as equivalent to vaccination for compliance purposes. There are some results hinting infection-recovery alone is better than vaccination alone, especially versus later variants.
The US CDC etc seems slow-moving on key scientific results, in ways that are unnecessarily increasing social conflict. But they’re not even paid by the click!
It is pretty useful though. Studies have found it compares well with vaccines or better.
However like vaccines it also fades. And prior immunity + infection is way better than prior immunity, so being infected no reason not to get vaccinated.
SARS-CoV-2 infection rates of antibody-positive compared with antibody-negative health-care workers in England: a large, multicentre, prospective cohort study (SIREN)
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33844963/
Despite having an account since 2018, they have only posted 5 submissions. 4 of them were posted in the past 3 weeks, and all have to do questioning the viability of the vaccines.
I know we want to have a space here to freely discuss things without being dismissed, but I also think enough of us have managed enough websites to understand that this account shouldn't be taken seriously.
I'm not saying that they are a bot either. Their comments suggest otherwise. But this person has, after nearly three years on this site, decided that now is the time to start submitting articles to the front page, and all of them have been about the same politically controversial thing, so this person clearly has an agenda they are trying to push.
If they are pushing/submitting based on actual facts and studies, then I don't see the problem. It seems like the overall argument is following a pattern of
- A vaccination is currently a requirement for participating in society.
- There are studies showing that having the virues is just as effective (or more) than a vaccination.
- There are places where "having the vaccination" meets the requirement for participating in society.
And, from there, discussing why the US doesn't also follow this logic.
Now, I can't speak to the studies validity. And an argument can be made that it's harder to verify that someone has had the virus already or some such. Or one of any of a dozen other reasons "why not". But having a discussion of the "why not" seems perfectly reasonable.
I admit that this has me fired up. But that is really the long and short of the explanation. You see "pushing agenda" I see "championing underrepresented not just opinion but facts in the face of government overreach and media blackout".
You can even argue that they're not facts, that they're wrong... but the OP is coming from the viewpoint that they appear to be facts. And, as such, it seems the OP is posting in good faith.
Did I not hedge enough? Two years ago I was a happy, contented liberal raising a family and working at my job. I still am, but I believe some quite different things about what is happening in the world, which old me would have dismissed out of hand.
Can you synthesize your thoughts on this? I won't dismiss ideas just because of where they come from, but can't wade through a 2 hour podcast to guess at what you might have meant.
For my own part, I have been quite shocked by the leadership vacuum during the pandemic. It's increasingly clear to me that no one is really at the wheel in the larger part of the West, but many are pretending to be steering the ship. I don't assign anything uber-nefarious to it beyond basic human greed, fear, power lust, incompetence and bullshit. A Chinese style government forced on US, would be, to quote Stalin, a "saddle on a cow." There may be some other countries that would cotton on to it quite readily though if the western coalition were to continue to weaken.
I probably won't do a good job, as I'm still wrapping my head around it, but here goes:
The first thing to note is that there is no "big conspiracy". There are conspiracies, but the driving force is that global economy gives rise to certain conditions related to modern monetary theory and currency manipulation that lead to an inevitable market correction. You can see this in the 8ish year short-term cycle, but there is a longer-term cycle known as the Kondratiev wave too. [0][1]
The global elite (known affectionately as "they") is anyone whose incentives are aligned with the current monetary system, and who has the power to reinforce or undermine it. This includes politicians, international bankers, humanitarians, etc. There is no overarching "cabal", but there may be one or more "cartels" fitted to a particular area of human interest. Most of these people probably only implicitly operate in their role as "they". These networks are no more than something like the UN or the WEF, and are often much less formal than that.
The key here for me is that this theory doesn't posit malevolence, but a shared vision for humanity focused on safety, security, stewardship, and prosperity. All good things right? This is just bog-standard progressivism.
But "they" know about the long term debt cycle. They know that we face real crises that will result in mass death and war if not managed, because we've deferred paying down the cost of our economy for so long (think of renewable vs industrial agriculture as a metaphor, erosion is making it harder and harder to get the land to yield crops). The best global policy is to get ahead of this correction by building structures of control and a narrative of self-sacrifice for the greater good in order to make scarce resources stretch. A great way to do this is to appeal to real global problems (climate change, pandemics, cyber attacks, fertility crisis) to influence people's behavior. LaserHodl calls these "Malthusian fear spells", because they will not automatically come true if we actually tackle the problems head-on.
The reasoning in the above article is a great example of this: don't tell people natural immunity works, because the most efficient solution to our public health crisis is universal vaccination, trade-offs against individual liberty, or even individual health, be damned. The intentions may be good; the side effects are going to contribute to the severity of the coming correction. But a submissive population will also be easier to manage in a crisis. Again, none of this may be explicit in the minds of any of "they", it's just a matter of historical perspective, power, and incentives.
Where the rubber meets the road is that LaserHodl claims the short-term debt cycle is set to coincide with the Kondratiev wave in the next decade. Additionally, 2030 is the date that Bitcoin is projected to hit $1MM or so [2], and is the deadline for the WEF's Agenda for Sustainable Development [3].
His (and my) hope is that Bitcoin adoption will drive a grassroots culture of low time preference [4], returning us to a healthy relationship with traditional values. This will in turn solve many of the the real world problems that face us instead of deferring them to future generations. Further, a culture of "opt-out at every level" will serve to undermine the efforts of those who attempt to further centralize government and consolidate power.
It's important to point out that Bitcoin is not a "weapon" against the global elite any more than a lock on your front door is. It's a defensive tool for building individual wealth and agency, which are the cornerstones of any civilization.
Thanks for sharing your viewpoint. The Kondratiev wave theory is interesting, but I don't think that's what the global leadership has their eye on. You also seem a bit tied up in the current crypto mania. I think there's a significant risk that Bitcoin and other decentralized crypto will be simply outlawed due to environmental concerns and the loss of control and enforcement they represent, but who knows. On that note, I rather agree that we have a reckoning coming, but think it will be climate and sustainability related. Money (and debt) is just an abstraction after all. The thing it stands in for largely comes down to energy, which is significantly at risk. I do think there's a growing sense that collectivist societies will cope much better with the environmental consequences of the past 250 years of industrial exponential growth. Like nearly every natural phenomenon, what looks exponential is often an s-curve. Hitting a growth plateau or (or even decline) after several hundred years of growth is bound to be painful. Truly no one knows when the bill will come due, but there is a building sense that it will be within this century. That is the thing global leaders are thinking when they say things like "Great Reset."
If the pandemic taught me anything though, it's that people are incredibly resilient and adaptable. Whatever comes, we will collectively figure it out. Might as well sleep easy.
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’t get it,” he says. For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”
The authors here agree (I’d really like professionals to discuss this for it’s highly disturbing; but obvious why it wasn’t communicated to subjects)
Thx, that’s promising.
I find it interesting that the fda has to play games: technically the vaccine is still under emergency use authorization & not approved (last paragraph)
I don't know if any of the failed vaccines had antibody dependent enhancement issues but even if not it is a failure of medical ethics to not disclose the risk sufficiently since it was a risk for trial participants. This paper is not expressing concern over approved vaccines.
Yes it’s interesting that they are using previous corona profiles. You would think a yr is long enough but I’m patient and will hedge my bet by losing my job.
Previous corona profiles? The article was written before the vaccines were widely available, so the only people who had received them were in the clinical trials.
A year is absolutely long enough. To quote Derek Lowe in the "From the Pipeline" article:
"We have hundreds of millions of people who have been vaccinated to produce antibodies against the non-Delta coronavirus protein domains and are who are now being exposed to the Delta variant. To reiterate, there is (to the best of my knowledge) no evidence whatsoever of ADE in this situation. In fact, we see the opposite: people who have been vaccinated are far less likely to become infected with the Delta variant, and if they become infected, they are far less likely to experience severe disease. These trends have been seen over and over in different populations, and they are the exact opposite of what you would see if ADE were operating. If the mechanism proposed by Yahi et al. were happening in the real world, then we should see higher Delta infection rates among vaccinated people, with more severe disease. We are not. We are seeing the reverse. The vaccines simply to not appear to be causing ADE, no matter how many reasons one might be able to spin for them to do so."
But it was rolled out to those at highest risk first no? It wasn't until many months later my wife (who wasn't employed in healthcare at the time and is relatively young) was able to get scheduled. By that point it had become clear the at risk population hadn't had an opposite effect than intended.
Unfortunately not in much of the country. Many states prioritized healthcare workers, healthcare administrators, and the spouses of healthcare workers regardless of age either simultaneously or before the compromised and elderly. Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron Desantis was ridiculed by the media for prioritizing elderly and compromised in his state.
The contrary argument is reasonably well-stated within the article, it seems to be mostly a matter of what you assess to be the greatest risks going forward as to which argument you think is more valid.
After glancing at the endnotes, it seems that the bulk of the scientific references examining natural immunity date from before the delta variant established itself.
The reasoned answer is politics. One side of the aisle committed to a message before they had all the data. The other side did this too. Now it's too politically costly to change any of those positions, no matter how much anyone claims to "follow the science".
Thanks dang. Will this then possibly be flagged by some other user? What is the visibility of a flagged post? Hidden from front page and search, viewable from other users comments?
The mods are surprisingly responsive on this site, so I say this without a hint of sarcasm - try emailing them about it. I recently had a thread unflagged within an hour.
The often-repeated phrase is
"The vaccine is safe".
We (as in the world) do not yet have data to say that
"The vaccine" is safe.
Nor is there one vaccine, there are many.
That all work equally well and have the same side effects and
outcomes is unlikely.
We are living in a gigantic experiment at the moment.
Should we not be treated that way?
15 % get vaccine A
15 % get vaccine B
..
.
20% get no vaccine.
Then we watch and learn.
The specific number are not important since much smarter brains
than mine would have to work it out.
If one vaccine turns out to be terrible for whatever reason
we have mitigated the risk.
There is a couple of datapoints now that one vaccine -may-
cause a reduction in fertility for men. I am not saying
it does, but -if- it should turn out to be true having it impact
a controlled portion of the population would be prudent.
We are also continuously learning more about Covid and how it impacts those who do get. As it evolves and mutates, we may find
better way of targeting treatment and vaccinations.
I mean what are the odds that the first "alpha" vaccine gets it all right?
If people start getting boosters or re-vaccinated with a better
vaccine in a year, the possible outcomes of mixing vaccines within
a singel person will also be interesterting and unpredictable.
In my opinion we will have enough data in 10 - 20 years.
Or maybe longer.
I am a pessimist and I spend too much time writing code to handle all edge cases (which I never manage to).
So far the roll out, of all the vaccines that are presently in circulation appears to have been a huge success.
How can that be?
Billions of people.
Not well tested vaccines.
Each person with different immune systems, different medical histories, different medication, different genetic makeups,
some fat, some skinny, some anorexic, diabetes, there are
a staggering number of different permutations that you will
hit in. population of 3 billion people.
I would have expected more people to die and more people to have
severe reactions.
We seem to have been incredibly lucky or just insanely great at
creating safe and effective vaccines. More people have adverse reactions to sleeping pills, suntan lotions, ibuprofen etc
The argument seems fine to me. Let people with natural immunity have the same privileges as vaccinated people assuming they have a piece of paper from a federal entity to prove it.
The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.
> The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.
I think that's a pretty important argument against allowing natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. A lot of people will go and deliberately infect themselves. Some of them will die. They will spread it to others. Many will tie up ICU beds, doctors, nurses and other hospital resources, causing tons of first- and second-order harm.
To what extent has the efficacy of natural immunity been characterized? There should be some minimum bar of understanding that must be met before something becomes a policy even in extreme cases such as these.
I love vaccines; especially the Pfizer until further research helps lower the Moderna (& Pfizer) doses.
If I'd had COVID, I'd want 1 extra dose, perhaps a half a year later, as an extra boost.
But it's unfair – & unscientific – to insist on such doses for the proven-recovered (who are also more likely to have bad vax reactions).
Other countries are doing this better – just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses to get more people 1st-dose vaccinated in early 2021.
Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
> just like other countries got faster immunity, & stronger delta-variant immunity, by delaying 2nds doses
> Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility.
Other countries delayed second doses either due to health and safety concerns or supply constraints while the US pushed forward with EUA before second dose efficacy was fully characterized. To me, this is the opposite of bureaucracy.
Supply constraints (not anything 'safety' related) were the original driving factor for slower 2nd doses elsewhere - but it was already confidently conjectured by domain experts that a longer spacing would likely be more effective. It's even taught in vaccination textbooks, pre-COVID, that a delay of at least 2 months is usually necessary to train the strongest/longest immune response.
(Much like 'spaced repetition' to consciously memorize facts, an immune-response is more-reinforced if a separate presentation happens at a distinctly-different time, when forgetting has begun but is reversible.)
Thus, those countries that trusted the pre-COVID science – like the UK or Canada – delayed 2nd shots for 8 weeks or more - giving more of their population the all-important 1st-dose sooner, & closely monitoring the effects on community cases.
In the meantime, Fauci did interviews insisting the 3/4 week rapid boosting was "optimal". (That was overconfident bluster unsupported by the rushed & limited trial data, which other more honest scientists pointed out.)
Surprise! With data, the textbooks were right. 8 week or longer delays generate immune responses that are stronger & last longer. In the UK, now without such tight supply constraints, it's considered dangerously negligent to not warn patients they should wait at least 8 weeks for the 2nd shot:
In the US, disease experts like Eric Topol & Monica Gandhi now suggest some of the 'fading' immunity showing up in Israeli & US studies, especially with Pfizer, is due to the rushed 3-week booster.
Our flailing CDC still insists, today in their vaccination FAQ, contra the science & the interests of Americans, that "you should get your second shot as close to the [21d or 28d] interval as possible". They're also still urging people not to use N95-quality masks, even though they are now cheap & plentiful and likely 2x-4x more effective than cloth or surgical masks.
The failure to recognize that prior infections are as protective as vaccinations is another error that's wasting vaccine & creating arguments that we could just... skip & do better for everyone.
Thus: "Our local scientific bureaucracy is killing us & generating unnecessary extra social conflict, with their unscientific inflexibility."
You're rewriting history. The US approved EUA and rolled out warp speed before any of this was known for sure. There was speculation on both sides. One being that delaying would be helpul the other being that it would render vaccines useless or that covid would be so bad by then it wouldn't matter. Either way, the US chose a path based on science and data just like most other countries. It wasn't bureaucracy.
Why should the 2020 EUA or 2020 Warp Speed program excuse an early-2021 error in spacing?
Some countries, & domain experts, got it right from the get-go. Those countries have benefited – saving lives – with their proper reading of the precedent & limited trial data.
Fauci, & the US CDC/FDA advisory committees that could have corrected this early enough to benefit, got it wrong. Fauci, especially, misreported a schedule as "optimal" that better experts knew was conjectural, tentative, & rushed.
These managerial functionaries could correct the recommendations now, to help people, but still haven't. The US maximum delay, 6 weeks, is shorter than the minimum delay the UK's vax lead recommends – which is well backed by latest analyses.
What's that continuing failure, if not bureaucratic inertia? Loylty to 2020 guesses rather than 2021 science?
These institutions are slow to integrate new science, and bad at balancing prior knowledge with new info - instead consistently preferring what earlier committees rubber-stamped. And that's still killing Americans.
If catching COVID is only a risk to the people catching it I'd agree.
However by catching COVID you are also a burden to the health care system and possibly take away a hospital bed for someone who actually needs it (already happening). I do have a problem with that.
Theoretically, and in places of transient surges, sure. But most of US isn't currently at that level of health-care rationing.
You know who else puts others at risk? Vaccinated people, overconfident, potentially walking around with their asymptomatic breakthrough infections (whereas an unvaxed person with a rougher case would self-isolate). But we live with that, because people can still protect themselves with vaccination, & by choosing to only come within infection-range of other vaxed people.
It's looking increasingly likelt that natural immunity is stronger against future variants, or stronger against transmission (mucosal immunity in nose/airways instead of in bloodstream), than vaccination alone. So when a young healthy person who's unlikely to land in an ICU gets & recovers from a natural infection, they might be net-lowering their community's risks, over the long run, versus mere vax-immunity. These population-level effects are often weird & non-linear that way.
I'd say, to the maximum extent possible: let their immune systems, and their peers, & their communities, learn in the way they choose. Some lessons are necessarily painful. Those with greater concern should keep their distance in the meantime – but realize the fastest & surest way to broad safety, via deeper herd immunity, is to let the laggards work through their hard lessons ASAP.
A great deal of burden on the health care system -- perhaps even more than completely eliminating COVID -- could be alleviated by people dedicating themselves to better diet and exercise. Why not mandate that?
Poor diet and exercise produce a fairly steady burden on the health care system. We need to provide more health care than we would if people ate better and exercised more, but as diet and exercise deteriorated over the decades there was plenty of time to slowly expand the health care system to meet the increased need.
COVID places a much more dynamic burden on the health care system.
It's similar to the way there are many people could manage to afford a $10/month expense for the next 10 years ($1200 total) but would have a very hard time dealing with am extra one-time $200 expense.
OK that argument has been debunked a million times but here we go:
1. No one is talking about mandates
2. Yes living unhealthy is a burden on the health care system. But I am fine with that as long as your actions only have consequences in your own life. With an infectious disease that's different because you suddenly have a multiplier. I didn't hear about any ICU capacity issues because of obese people.
3. We (at least most countries) already have measures to increase the overall health of our society (smoking bans in certain places, age limits on alcohol consumptions, programs in schools to provide healthier food in cafeterias, you name it).
2. I didn't say anything about ICUs, or about obesity spreading to other people. Across the entire healthcare system, there could be much alleviation of burden if people took dietary and activity-based steps toward being healthier.
3. Banning smoking in public places doesn't stop smoking altogether. If the government wanted to end smoking, they could "mandate" the complete shutdown of tobacco companies. Or the tobacco companies themselves could shut down of their own accord. But folks involved care more about their business than about the health of their "customers". Healthier food in school cafeterias is great, but clearly not enough. People are being hammered with anti-COVID material left and right; nothing even close to that is being done toward pressuring people into taking better care of themselves through diet and exercise.
Poor phrasing on my side, I apologize. Your argument has not been debunked, it's still a bad one.
1. You are responding to a comment that didn't talk about mandates under an article that says nothing about mandates. You are the one who brought it up.
2 and 3: In isolation you are right, we should probably take more measurements towards healthy living. But if you only bring that up as a counter point to COVID measures, you are at very best making a flawed analogy.
My point is: if there is anything feasible measures we can take for healthier living, great we should do that. But we should ALSO do something about COVID.
Perhaps I also had poor phrasing. Let me try again:
We should strive to reduce the COVID burden on the emergency / ICU segment of the healthcare system. But I believe we could alleviate burden across the entire healthcare system if more people ate healthier diets and exercised better. Perhaps we could even alleviate more burden than what could be alleviated by way of completely eliminating COVID.
A lot of people are talking about mandating vaccines, and there is constant awareness of anti-COVID precautions everywhere you look. I think that if the same sort of intense campaign was rallied regarding better eating and exercise -- basically pressuring people, even borderline forcing them -- then we would see better progress in this area.
It is unfortunate, I think, that so many resources are being put into pressuring people to take the vaccine while comparatively little is being put into pressuring people to just be healthier overall. Which might in fact also help in the face of any virus!
Once all who want it are vaccinated, and further 80-95%-plus of the population is either vax- or post-infection- immune, the alleged 'multiplier' of danger-to-others is negligible. The protected are protected; those who want to take thir chances will hurt themselves, & get the painful immunity upgrade, soon enough.
Even with today's HIV treatments, its fatality rate is in the range of COVID. (And: living with it is no cakewalk.) But we haven't outlawed risky sex. People self-sort into compatible risk groupings.
Also, people are most certainly "talking about mandates" when they're discussing whether natural immunity should grant people the same rights to engage in normal activities as vaccination.
... yeah, this is not going to be a productive comment thread. Sadly, COVID has been so politicized that I tend to say "sit down, shut up, and let the public health people drive". Even if they're wrong, they're close-enough to right to satisfy me and that's better than opening public health up to debate.
well that's very loaded, as in, if they're wrong to the point of having long term damage to your body, then probably..don't just get it...right? albeit, we've seen no proof that this is the case at all thus far.
Here's the thing, the dilemma isn't "should I get the shot or shouldn't I get the shot".
The dilemma is "should I support the public experts even if their approach might have some minor flaws, or should I dissent and risk feeding credibility into their opponents that are prolonging this pandemic and getting innocent people killed as they clog up the hospital system".
This is a definite case where "perfect is the enemy of the good".
The vaccines are cheap (government paid about $20 per dose to buy them in mass quantities), safe, and effective, and in plentiful supply (at least in developed countries). Even if natural immunity provides some protection, better to just get everyone vaccinated to maximize the protection, because it would cost more to determine that someone has effective antibodies than to just give them the shot. The only reason people are resisting this is because there has been an antivax propaganda campaign.
Phase 3 trials won’t be complete for years. There is a revolving door between the leadership at the FDA and Pfizer. Countries with high vaccination rates have not reported the expected reduction in cases or deaths. The non-pharmaceutical interventions adopted by some states appear to have no impact on outcomes when compared to states without them. FDA approval of Comirnaty, which nobody got, is a pretty transparent rhetorical stratagem. The guarantees of safety are testimonials from people who either provided material support in the creation of this virus or inflicted Microsoft on the world (I’m not sure which is worse).
You may not find these (non-exhaustive) reasons compelling, but I don’t think hesitancy is the result of some unnamed cabal of villains casting aspersions on the pure intentions of the American politburo and pharmaceutical industry.
You make a lot of claims here, but it doesn't seem that they are supported by data. Hospitalization rates and death rates since early summer are drastically different for the vaccinated than for the unvaccinated. Different policies in different US states are producing very different outcomes. You claimed otherwise but did not offer data; here's some data you might consider.
So I Brave searched “cdc weekly provisional counts of deaths by state and select cause 2020-2021”, and I got a useful table from the CDC that you may want to look at yourself. I summed deaths for all causes for FL and CA and divided by their population 39.5M and 21.5M respectively. Yep, FL has about 1.4x more deaths per capita than CA.
Then I downloaded the table for 2014-2019 and performed the same calculations. For that same period FL has … 1.4x more deaths per capita than CA. Maybe that has more to do with the age distribution of their respective populations rather than the wise rule of Gavin Newsome.
I don’t recommend letting journalists do your stats for you.
It's a waste of resources to figure out whether someone has natural immunity (its quite hard to do logistically). Much easier to just give them the vaccine, then your bases are covered. These are public health decisions -- they don't occur in a vacuum with unlimited resources.
We could make individuals pay for it. Heck, we could tax it, make them pay through the nose for it, and reinvest it back into vaccinations. Up the costs even more if they want to be retested. Since it's not medically necessary, their insurance shouldn't have to cover it, meaning the costs won't have to be borne by everyone else.
So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test? How much fucking money has been spent due to this pandemic, amazing vaccine development, government backstops all over the place, but somehow a routine blood draw and test is seen as too absurd an idea?
> So my medical decisions will be made for me because its too hard to do a proper test
In short, yes, this is called good public health policy. It's not merely a simple blood test and it's not something just any lab could do. Anti-body testing is finicky, expensive, time-consuming, and not as reliable as has_vaccine (boolean). So in other words, we are going to make your medical decision for you because not doing so puts the health of many others at risk and you don't have the right to put countless others at risk. A simple utilitarian analysis yields this as the obvious solution. It is worth sacrificing your personal preference at no risk to yourself to save potentially many lives.
Even the vaccinated are at risk when a large percentage of the population runs around unvaccinated, because each transmission increases the risk of a mutation that gives rise to a vaccine-resistant strain with a higher death rate. Then we'd be back at square one. In the worst case scenario it could kill off the majority of the population.
This situation is exactly analogous to someone in the food industry saying they should have a religious exemption for hand-washing. The bad effects of allowing such an exemption (people dying from food poisoning and catching diseases from food) aren't worth the small sacrifice of simply having to wash your hands before preparing food. With good reason, we ignore people who say "there are microchips in the soap" and still make them wash their hands or seek employment elsewhere.
Pros vs cons of taking natural immunity into account:
Pros:
- An extremely small number of people who would get side effects now wouldn’t
Cons:
- Logistics: you now need to perform a blood test on every single person in the country, process the results, send out vaccine invites based on the results, and set up some system where people can prove their blood test results. None of the aforementioned components currently exist. You also need to come up with some arbitrary threshold for “enough” antibodies.
- Cost: the blood test costs 4x as much as the vaccine, from what I see in other comments
- Incentives: you risk incentivising vaccine skeptics to deliberately contract COVID
>- An extremely small number of people who would get side effects now wouldn’t
What is an 'extremely small' number? The CDC[0] states that [Headache..., Fever, Nausea] are "common." Sadly 'common' is not defined, but with >100,000,000 folks with natural immunity it's hard to imagine a definition of 'common' that squares with any reasonable definition of 'extremely small'.
>Cons:
>- Logistics: you now need to perform a blood test on every single person in the country,
For a large chunk of the population you have past positive test results. For the rest, you just need to offer the option of taking a blood test. Furthermore, the majority of the US is already vaccinated. So in just a few steps you go from "every single person" to, if you allow me to guesstimate, somewhere in the single digit percentages.
Also a missing pro:
You have a government whose vaccine policies are grounded in proper science and medical ethics, reducing the number of vaccine hesitant individuals.
I suspect that using past positive tests would make things even more complicated. It’s very easy to underestimate how difficult things are at the “tens of millions of people” scale, particularly for governments.
> You have a government whose vaccine policies are grounded in proper science and medical ethics, reducing the number of vaccine hesitant individuals
Circular argument, no? This point is only relevant to whether natural immunity should be correct if you accept that your own position (natural immunity should be taken into account) is correct.
We've already don't plenty of covid tests on people throughout the past year or so. Why not start with giving anyone who has a previous positive test a card saying they have the best possible protection.
It seems much harder to quantify the level of immunity conferred by natural infection. It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection.
Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice. Refuses to get vaccinated now because "why bother? I have great immunity now." With no sense of irony, given that he's already been infected twice...
The vaccine either contains or triggers the production of a specific protein that is (fairly) stable across variants - so there's only one thing for the immune system to key off. The concern around natural immunity is that your immune system may respond to some aspect of the virus that isn't as stable, ie it ends up recognising part of the virus that's present in your current infection but may not be in a later infection.
In reality it seems that the immune system does tend to end up targeting the same protein that's in the vaccine, but may be targeting different portions of it (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/ talks about this). My understanding is that current data suggests the naturally acquired immunity is about as robust as the vaccine acquired one, but this wasn't a given.
If you want to optimise for targeting a specific virus, then yes, narrowly targeting the most stable functional element of that virus is preferable to targeting other elements of that virus. If you want to optimise for having a broad response to related viruses, then a less narrowly targeted response is preferable.
I was explaining why there's potentially a difference between natural immunity and vaccine-mediated immunity, and why one of these may well be preferable if the goal is to generate maximum immunity to a widespread virus. But that's not the actual goal, and as a result policy decisions may differ. Is the risk associated with vaccinating people who have some degree of natural immunity justified by any improvement in immunity they gain as a result? I don't know! I have opinions on the matter, but I'm not qualified to make that determination.
>Anecdotally, I know someone who has been infected twice
How does he know he was infected twice?
Saying that a PCR test returned positive values two times isn't a great answer - since by its nature PCR is only counting the existence (above the programmed threshold post amplification).
Serology is the only way to know for certain you were/are infected.
This highlights one of the bigger issues we have: PCR test are a very cheap and a useful way for getting estimates but their failure rate is high enough to make it pretty poor basis for doing large scale data analysis.
I’ve had COVID twice - in December and then just a few weeks ago.
Long haul COVID doesn’t spring back to life and give you a fever for 12 days straight. I had essentially the same symptoms both times: fever, extreme fatigue, a dry cough, complete loss of taste of most things, etc.
Long story short, even if you didn’t get tested one of the two times (I tested positive both times) it’s pretty freaking obvious what you have as long as you don’t have a mild case. My wife got it this time around, and we got her an infusion of monoclonal antibodies early as she’s pregnant. She only had a fever one night, and in trying to explain how she felt I asked her “it feels like you just want to stop existing, right?” She agreed. Before that night it just seemed like a cold for her.
Thank you! I've been fortunate enough to not experience covid, though I've had quite a few family members with cases ranging from annoying and acute to quite devastating and chronic. I appreciate your input; though it's anecdotal, it does help give some greater sense for the individual experience of covid. Although let me not be crass: you have my greatest sympathies for your ill-experiences. I sincerely hope that you're well-recovered, and I wish the best for your loved ones.
Why is it "harder"? I assume you mean harder to quantify than vaccination immunity and I don't believe that's the case, but I'm curious why you believe that is the case.
edit: surprising downvotes so I probably didn't communicate my point well.
I can't imagine a reason why natural immunity would be harder to quantify than vaccine induced immunity. It would seem to me the methodology to quantify both would be very similar.
With a vaccine, you get a standardised dosis of an agent resembling the disease or just a part of it. The remaining variability is the response to that standardised input.
With an infection, you have no control over the degree of exposure, so on top of the variability of the response comes the variability of the exposure.
Additionally, in case of exposure of the full pathogen, there is some variability to what part of the pathogen the immune system will respond. That part can actually be a good thing in total.
we are testing for antibodies but antibodies aren't the only immune system response and depending on who you ask might not even be the "main" defense against covid.
>It depends entirely on an individual immune system detects and combats a particular infection.
Pardon my ignorance, but does this mean by contrast that vaccines are designed to induce a uniform response across immune systems?
EDIT: A reply (deleted before I could respond) mentioned that immune systems will combat the infection by some "pattern" of it's own design, but a vaccine will encourage the immune system to respond in a predetermined way, (increasing likelihood of uniformity, answering my question).
there is no way for it to be perfectly uniform. Let's just say that the immune system employs several layers of RNG (random shuffling of DNA, and also it shoots mutations at certain segments of DNA) to evolve its responses.
A more uniform response than the pathogen itself? Yes. But I think the actual goal of modern vaccination is not a uniform response, but a directed response. Don't waste your time looking at these parts of the virus, spend it on this (important) part.
The question in the title is very very easy to answer.
The political reason that natural immunity “doesn’t count” indeed is not directly about medical reality.
To say things are political is almost an insult these days—I don’t mean it that way at all. But policy has medical implications, and so politics is part of it. This policy-decision is being made because there have been political movements since early on to do variations on “Let 'er rip,” that is, to allow COVID-19 to run rampant until a herd immunity develops, while maybe implementing decontamination procedures in nursing homes instead or so. The most notable statement to this effect was the Great Barrington Declaration but of course there have been smaller ones that hit wider spread.
Policy needs to factor in things like the huge early oppositions to shutdowns, the huge oppositions to masking despite it being absurdly effective for how cheap it is... there remain very strong political forces in this divided country which overlook the significance of younger people with COVID flooding the emergency rooms and overtaxing our limited health workers (NYT today reports that in the US South, they are at this level right now), and the death that can come from this, simply because the danger for young people is usually considerably smaller when those hospitals are operating normally. (See India for a cautionary tale, there.)
Given this political reality, ‘vaccinate everyone’ is a political countermeasure meant to create a potential-energy-barrier to lying. It’s not medical advice, it’s public policy. Lying to say ‘Yeah I was COVID-exposed but it wasn’t bad enough to go to the hospital’ is very very cheap. Forging a CDC vaccination card takes a couple hours of time right now and opens you up to some fraud risks—it’s not a huge cost but if it’s higher than the cost of just going and getting vaccinated, there is a hope that vaccination will win out.
I like to put numbers to things. People give up freedoms when there is a chance they or many other people die. Look at 9/11, not only did we give up multiple freedoms, but subsequently killed many Americans and other civilians in the Middle East as additional fallout.
9/11 killed: 2,977 people (only during the attack, many more likely received cancer or long-term illness and side-effects)
COVID19 has killed (in the US): 664,000 people
Even if you make the argument that 90% of COVID deaths are people who were well past their life expectancy, or obese, or had other health conditions, then that leaves 10% who were otherwise perfectly healthy people who died directly because of COVID, and that is about 66,000 people.
So, by this extremely conservative estimate, COVID has killed ~22x the amount of people 9/11 did.
With that number in mind, do I personally feel like mandating the vaccine ("government tyranny"), or putting innocent people at risk ("dozens of deaths in young women due from clotting, ~1,000 confirmed cases of myocarditis in young people") makes logical sense?
I actually think, yes, it does, 66,000 is a lot of people, it's too many, the death rate of this virus is just too high. If the virus was less transmissible, killed less people, or showed signs of quickly fading away, I would disagree, but it seems like the vaccine is actually a fairly logical tradeoff in reducing needless loss of human life.
How does this tie to the original post? The reason the vaccine is mandated, is because it simplifies public signaling and policy decisions, otherwise too many would assume "natural immunity" is okay and forego the vaccine, even if they did not themselves have COVID, leading to more needless deaths.
In US culture this seems like it would potentially set up some perverse incentives among anti-vaxxers, leading to things like the "measles parties" that fueled the the 2019 NYC measles outbreak: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200527181329.h...
