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.
The only argument I can think of against it is: Certain vaccine skeptic people might be incentivized to catch the virus on purpose.