Looking at this comment section, i wonder how we have gotten to this point : basically any comment gets downvoted by the other side.
This whole crisis has become so political, it's completely absurd. We should be able to quietly talk about what's proven and what's not, what's a safe precaution, what's overkill, etc. without getting too passionate about it..
On a sidenote, I don't know if twitter is a good representative of the public debate in the US, but the level of hysteria on covid has reached an absurd level: obeses american wanting to wear no mask vs psycho-mum wanting to sue the whole world in order to protect their kids...
The most amazing thing about this epidemic could end up being our reactions..
On the plus side, you know you can relax about the crisis because it’s political and no longer a crisis. We can gather around threads like these and complain (humans are hardwired to focus on the negative) because enoughs unknown and unsettled that’s everybody has a similar level of expertise. There’s a hint of a conspiracy and town-gown divides. It’s perfect for keeping those engagement stats up!
> other side is opposing even the most reasonable public health mandates like masking, pushing proven snake-oil like hydroxychloriquine
They is grey area in between these extremes. Religious and medical exemptions to vaccination are widely supported. And most anti-vaxxers aren’t on the hydroxychloroquine train. Within the antivaxxer community, a subset are fine with immunity documentation provided it reflect their natural immunity.
Religious exemption is not widely supported. Many locations do not have religious exemption. And supporting documentation of covid antibodies is creating a massive moral hazard for anti-vaxxers.
Delta is infectious enough that we must assume that every unvaccinated person will get it. Telling people that they will be able to rejoin society after they're vaccinated or they get covid will result in people avoiding vaccination, which means saturating ICUs as those people get covid by happenstance or by deliberate action.
There are people awaiting critical surgeries who cannot get it because of the lack of ICU space.
Triage is a crisis right now in many infected regions
Remember, if R is greater than one, and you can expect to get covid as an unvaccinated person, then that means that by staying unvaccinated you are de facto planning on giving somebody covid.
No. There's a third side pushing for the Scandinavian solution. Pro-vaccine, but anti-mandate.
A little while ago, everyone wanted to be like Norway or Denmark or Sweden -- now they pretend these countries don't exist.
Edit: of course I got shadowbanned from Hacker News for opposing the surveillance state. Curse you.
Edit 2: someone below says "The Scandinavian countries all have vaccine cards, however, and permit people to discriminate based on whether one has those." Private venues setting access rules is incomparable to a surveillance state mandating rules for every person.
"The U.S. won’t jail you if you refuse the vaccine. But you have to stay home. This is functionally identical to the Scandinavian solution, minus public buildings."
I live in Denmark (mods, who are obviously watching me, can verify from my IP) and this is a lie. In Copenhagen today, you can go to stores, malls, museums, anywhere basically without showing a pas. Why don't you shadowban this person for "misinformation" since he is lying?
The Scandinavian solution works because of it's highly functional education system. When enough percentage of people have at least a basic comprehension of logic and the scientific method the "surveillance state" as you call it does not need to strong arm common sense in its population.
The Scandinavian countries all have vaccine cards, however, and permit people to discriminate based on whether one has those.
The U.S. won’t jail you if you refuse the vaccine. But you have to stay home. This is functionally identical to the Scandinavian solution, minus public buildings and minus a federal vaccine certificate.
They’re the same as in nobody is forced to get the vaccine. Nobody will be threatened with state violence for not getting the shot. They’re just barred from a lot of facilities for the choice they made. We do similarly for children whose parents refuse to give them measles shots.
Enforcement, naturally, varies. In Manhattan, I’m constantly asked for card and ID. In Long Island, it never happened.
So you are walking down the street and the cops say “papers please” and you whip them out with the pride of someone protecting the homeland, because you have permission to walk around?
When comparing Denmark to the US you should really be comparing the Denmark of a few months ago to the present US, because Denmark is way ahead of the US on vaccinations and on taking non-vaccine anti-COVID measures.
Due to Denmark's high vaccination rate and widespread following of anti-COVID measures their delta surge in cases was in the bottom half for Europe (and peaked about 60% below the US delta surge), and their delta death surge was almost undetectable when graphed on the same scale as the rest of Europe (their peak was around 8% of the US peak).
Denmark seems to have made it to the stage where COVID is now just another circulating cold virus (joining the previous four coronaviruses that have become endemic in humans and are responsible for about 20% of colds). About a month ago they ended all COVID restrictions. That's why no one has cared about your vaccination status recently.
>"Few children presented to hospital, and long illness duration was uncommon, with either variant. Interpretation COVID-19 in UK school-aged children due to SARSCoV2 Delta strain B.1.617.2 resembles illness due to the Alpha variant B.1.1.7., with short duration and similar symptom burden."
What’s science supposed to be contradicting here? The article says Delta doesn’t make kids sicker than other variants, not that it doesn’t make them sick at all. A shot is still going to be preferable to an infection because it isn’t communicable.
I think the comments author was referring to the socio-political response of some locales to the virus. Over the summer in the US there was quite a bit of media coverage of pediatricians’ editorials and heightened coverage of children’s hospitals. That is just my impression as a person who doesn’t keep daily watch and count of things.
I can see how a knee jerk reaction to the apparent discordance would be to discount either the early coverage or the research. If one takes a breath to think, the two are not mutually exclusive since something not worse for the population overall could also be substantially worse for a subset of the population.
>What’s science supposed to be contradicting here?
There is significant contention over whether the vaccine provides better immunity than prior infection with many claiming it does. "Secondary immune response stronger after infection than after shot" is in direct contradiction of that claim. I haven't read the article in sufficient detail to comment on whether or not that title is justified.
Kids have vanishingly small risk of covid death, 1%-2% of the already vanishingly small risk of death for kids. The article confirms that the 'long covid in kids' fearmongering is also unwarranted. Given that surviving an infection also provides better long term protection (99.9995% of children survive covid), and that an infection later in life becomes significantly more dangerous, it raises big questions over the short-term strategy of covid vaccinating children. In particular as California has mandated covid vaccines for children, which could prove downright harmful long term.
It's unbelievable that this far into the pandemic people are still making this argument. It has been known from near the beginning that the direct risk to kids is relatively small. The risk is secondary exposure. Kids in school spread diseases like kudzu and can expose hundreds of adults very quickly. Protecting kids will prevent spread. Not to mention kids who are vaccinated can still possibly be exposed to covid and have a further immune response as strong as full infection (this bit is not proven, I'm speculating).
It hasn't happened in my kids' schools because they have stringent safety protocols. Mandatory masking, faculty and staff are required to vaccinate and spot testing. They will also shut down at least cohorts of kids to do two weeks of remote learning if there's a confirmed case. This is NYC schools who administer about 1M kids of varying means.
A buried story from last year is that nationwide there was exactly 1 confirmed child influenza death in the entire country. There was 200 the year before. It speaks to the disease prevention protocols being very effective.
> A buried story from last year is that nationwide there was exactly 1 confirmed child influenza death in the entire country. There was 200 the year before. It speaks to the disease prevention protocols being very effective.
Obviously, nobody wants children to die from influenza or COVID, but what are the long-term consequences of young immune systems receiving significantly less exposure to pathogens?
I find the hygiene hypothesis argument to be unconvincing. The notion that over sterilization leads to weaker immune response is plausible if not settled science. But it certainly seems the long-term outcomes in terms of life expectancy and quality of life come out heavily in favor of the sanitized and vaccinated life. Aside from the immediate benefit of fewer deaths due to acute illness, I bet there's a host of long-term syndromes akin to Long Covid that haven't been identified.
> But it certainly seems the long-term outcomes in terms of life expectancy and quality of life come out heavily in favor of the sanitized and vaccinated life.
For who?
As of October 6, according to CDC data[1], 181 children 0-4 and 406 children 5-18 have died from COVID. Obviously, all of these deaths are sad but it's also impossible to ignore how small these numbers are in terms of the overall population of children under the age of 18.
> Aside from the immediate benefit of fewer deaths due to acute illness, I bet there's a host of long-term syndromes akin to Long Covid that haven't been identified.
You bet? What evidence do you have to back up the suggestion that there are long-term syndromes in children that "haven't been identified"?
Isn't this the same argument put forth by some people opposed to vaccination -- that there might be long-term side effects we don't yet know about? So why would this argument be acceptable in promoting vaccination and restrictions but not in opposing vaccination?
I'm not specifically talking about covid vaccination but rather the general approach of disease avoidance.
But to that point we have very clear evidence that vaccines leave the body quickly and long term effects have been carefully studied and found to not exist for any vaccine ever. Conversely human DNA is littered with the remnants of eons if viral DNA. And as someone suffering the effects of a retrovirus (canker sores) it is well known that they can stick around for a lifetime. Not to mention the scar tissue of severe illness that can take years to heal.
I will almost certainly choose to have my children vaccinated as soon as they become eligible. On the other hand I find your argument difficult to accept. I am happy to be injected and subjected to lots of things for the greater good, that’s my choice as an adult, however as a parent I’m wary of any attempt to use my children in furtherance of the greater good.
Put it this way: if for arguments sake it was better for kids to simply become infected to gain immunity and the trade off is that adults might be more likely to be exposed, I think that the correct choice for a parent is what’s best for their child, not the group.
This is the natural response of parents who’s paramount concern is their children. Treating that concern as antisocial is how we end up with raging lunatics at school board meetings.
Thank you. This is the first time I hear someone admitting we are running an open ended experiment with no long term data for guidance. The immune system is not linear. We cannot simply pile up 'immunity tokens' on top of each other. The specific immunization history matters.
"Original antigenic sin, also known as antigenic imprinting or the Hoskins effect,[1] refers to the propensity of the body's immune system to preferentially utilize immunological memory based on a previous infection when a second slightly different version of that foreign pathogen (e.g. a virus or bacterium) is encountered. This leaves the immune system "trapped" by the first response it has made to each antigen, and unable to mount potentially more effective responses during subsequent infections. Antibodies or T-cells induced during infections with the first variant of the pathogen are subject to a form of original antigenic sin, termed repertoire freeze."
We don't understand how vaccines interact with the long-term immune system. The OA cites one of the first studies I know about that looks into the issue. The answer is far from encouraging for mass covid mRNA vaccination campaigns in children: "Secondary immune response stronger after infection than after shot". "By comparison, vaccine-induced memory B cells are less robust, evolving for only a few weeks and never "learning" to protect against variants."
If you feel that child covid mRNA vaccinations are the way to go, provide evidence for your case, instead of obfuscating the issue. No, citing yet another antibody levels study is not very relevant to long term immunity discussions. Antibody levels suffer exponential decay over a few months. B-cells are supposed to kickstart antibody generation for the next infection event. If the vaccines are poor at eliciting B-cell generation, this is a major weakness.
"When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically. In this context the proponent of an activity, rather than the public, should bear the burden of proof."
Perhaps covid mRNA vaccine + infection works well in the long run. Perhaps it doesn't. At this point it's a gamble. I'm not sure what happened that we are willing to gamble the future health of our children.
I don't think the point needs to be proven because the notion that kids can spread Covid to adults is just a given. As is the rate of non-fatal hospitalization among children. And "gamble the future health of our children" is not a plausible concern given that we have proof of safety. My only speculation is on the result of both vaccine plus infection. Which isn't really informative to the debate since deliberate exposure isn't a valid public health policy.
Pfizer vaccine doesn’t prevent infection from delta. Vaccines prevent hospitalization. This is well documented. My friend, a doctor, was just infected by delta this week and she’s vaccinated. Getting kids vaccinated wont prevent other vaccinated kids from being infected.
The kids vaccine is 1/3 of the dose of the adult vaccine. And the adult vaccine is known to drop down to 20% efficacy after 4 months. Kids already have an extremely high resistance to severe problems from Covid.
So what exactly is the point of vaccinating kids? It sounds like a way for Pfizer to justify vaccinating and then boosting the vaccine every 6 months for nothing.
Pfizer is very effective against Delta. Only very marginally less effective than previous strains. And the reason to vaccinate kids despite the low risk to their personal health has been mentioned multiple times in this thread.
> Getting kids vaccinated wont prevent other vaccinated kids from being infected.
It will. Vaccinated people who get COVID have a lower viral load and less severe symptoms (in particular, coughing, sneezing etc) that would help spread the disease. No, it isn’t 100% but it will help, and it’ll also help stop kids from spreading COVID to more vulnerable people like their grandparents.
Please stop spreading misinformation. I recommend that everyone get vaccinated if they can, but the vaccines have only a limited and temporary effect in reducing transmission.
The reality is that those grandparents are going to be exposed to the virus regardless of what their grandchildren do. Those grandparents have had plenty of time to get vaccinated themselves.
1. Vaccinated people with an infection have similar viral load to unvaccinated people.
> Data from COVID-19 tests in the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore are showing that vaccinated people who become infected with Delta SARS-CoV-2 can carry as much virus in their nose as do unvaccinated people. This means that despite the protection offered by vaccines, a proportion of vaccinated people can pass on Delta, possibly aiding its rise.
2. Lightweight symptoms are good. The #1 pandemic control mechanism is self quarantine on symptom onset. Or perhaps you are one of those people that sends their kid with a running nose to school because it's slightly more convenient?
> researchers looking at SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in people who had recovered found that the difference between the highest and lowest levels varied by a factor of over 1,000.
That study is seriously out of date, as it addresses the optimal strategy to prioritize vaccinations when the vaccines are scarce. That's still, sadly, a major concern in many parts of the world, but not so much in the US and Europe.
Since then, there's solid science[1] that hybrid immunity is significantly better than either vaccine-induced or disease-induced. So taking the vaccine is clearly the better choice whether you've been infected or not.
Even though all the science points to infection being better than vaccination at creating immune response, it's not accepted as an alternative. Ridiculous IMO.
I feel like you cherry picked the one study that fits your bias, and ignored the dozen others which do not.
Here’s a direct counter from one of the other studies:
> The CDC researchers found that people previously infected but unvaccinated were 2.34 times more likely to get reinfected than people who were previously infected and fully vaccinated.
And here’s the conclusion of the article:
Overall, the variable immune responses to infection, lower neutralization against delta, and the clear boost in protection from a very safe, highly effective vaccine make a strong argument for vaccinating the recovered.
"> The CDC researchers found that people previously infected but unvaccinated were 2.34 times more likely to get reinfected than people who were previously infected and fully vaccinated."
That's not comparing vaccine vs natural immunity. That's comparing vaccine + natural immunity to natural immunity alone. Not what the question is, even though the framing of the study implies otherwards.
Yes, an article discussing how different studies show different results also quotes authors of studies that show a negative result, what a surprise... not quite the "gotcha" you suggest it is. It also references studies in the other direction, that's the point of that article.
That makes no sense logistically - the test to accurately measure that the people indeed have the antibodies in sufficient strength is more expensive than the vaccine - and now you have to distribute both instead of just one. It's not worth it.
Comments like these oversimplify the immune system. Your real-world protection from illness isn't based solely on the amount of neutralizing antibodies that are circulating in your veins as a result of either infection or vaccination.
It would not be efficient for the immune system to keep antibodies circulating in large numbers for every pathogen you've ever been exposed to. Instead, the immune system generates longer-lasting memory T and B cells, which allow it to recognize pathogens it has been exposed to in the past and more quickly produce antibodies to fight them if necessary.
Most individuals who have been vaccinated or recovered from infection will have protection against SARS-CoV-2 even after the antibodies produced immediately following vaccination or infection have waned and become undetectable.
The evidence to date suggests that the long-lasting memory T and B cell responses are stronger and broader in individuals who have recovered from natural infection, while those who have been vaccinated have higher levels of neutralizing antibodies that wane quickly.
Ultimately, whether you're talking about vaccination or natural infection, the problem with your statement "the test to accurately measure that the people indeed have the antibodies in sufficient strength" is that there is no such test because there is no validated model to correlate titers of neutralizing antibodies to protection against infection and illness.
> the test to accurately measure that the people indeed have the antibodies in sufficient strength is more expensive than the vaccine
Let them pay for it, and make its validity valid for only as long as that rest is predictive. If they can’t get it due to distribution issues, they can do the same thing people who refuse their standard vaccines do—stay away from (and be let be by) others.
Or you can get a heart defect from the shots. Or blood clots.
So there's no categorical "take the shot" or "dont take the shot". It's your personal risk profile that should be the deciding factor. Not some troll on the internet/tv telling you what to do.
You are far more likely to get heart problems that stem from systemic inflammation from an infection like COVID than a vaccination. But you already knew that, you just choose to harp on an opposing viewpoint.
All known cases of post vaccine myocarditis were mild and did not lead to permanent damage.
Also, myocarditis can also be caused byviral infections. We don't know the exact numbers, because it is hard to diagnose myocarditis if the person is already sick with something else at the same time. However, there is the hypothesis that the risk might be the same for people who get a covid infection, or perhaps even higher.
The same thing also applies to blood clots.
> It's your personal risk profile that should be the deciding factor.
Health agencies all around the world all agree over this. The great benefits of vaccination outweigh the minuscle risks.
Yes, but if you catch covid and survive it, you should do the right thing and still get vaccinated against it, because that is more betterer, according to the the completely unbiased media that they happen to be injecting with cash while they otherwise circle the drain.
Why? Please elaborate why you consider this bullshit. I mean making personal decisions based on personal risk is seldom considered "bullshit". Why is it bullshit in this case? Because the TV says so?
Because if you get needlessly infected, you are almost sure to infect others. You choices impact other people.
Framing it as a personal choice is selfish and disingenuous. It is no more personal choice than dumping toxic waste into a river or firing a gun in random direction in public.
There are people who legitimately can't get vaccinated for medical reasons - but those are rarely the ones using the personal choice argument, are they?
But those simple math calculations don’t factor in the chance of getting corona in the first place. 2 years in the pandemic and I only know 3 people who got corona.
People act as if it was 100% certain one would get corona.
The Delta variant is sufficiently contagious that all of us can expect to be exposed multiple times in our lives. Just like what typically happens with the other endemic coronaviruses.
Only a subset of those infected will experience clinically significant symptoms. Probably more than 3 of your acquaintances have had it but didn't even know it, maybe just felt a little tired for a few days.
So let's assume you know 10000 people. COVID risk of death is 1 in 100. The chance you'll be next and die is 1 per 1M. As mentioned above the chance of blood clots from the vaccines is about 1 per 40M.
There have been literal COVID parties as anti-vaxxers try to get immunity the natural way.
The moral hazard of legitimizing natural immunity is very real. Yes the biological science shows that natural antibodies work well, but social science tells us what dumb people will do it that's supported as a solution.
There are a literally people with animals in their rectum. People do strange things. Your dubious moral hazard degrades by the day as more and more people cross the covid threshold with or without intention.
> The moral hazard of legitimizing natural immunity is very real.
It hasn’t for other vaccines/diseases. For example when I went back to grad school and didn’t have a shot record they they tested me for anitibodies instead of using more vaccines. I was low on MMR so got a booster but didn’t need varicella and various others. No big deal.
The natural antibodies work well _if you get them_.
That need you to be infected badly enough your body created the long-term ones (so not complete asymptomatic), and also not badly enough you die or get long covid (which by the way some measure at 50 % infected having in some form - but it's hard to say especially since long covid is not well defined).
Which while might theoretically be true for individuals, it is too unreliable to make a policy of it.
EDIT: but yes, you're right, people (whether they are bad actors spreading misinformation willingly or stupid plague rats believing them) will catch on that and claim they don't need the vaccine then.
Just like they caught on "vaccinated people can still get covid!" - sure they can, it is just two orders of magnitude less likely.
Well yeah, the problem with Delta is that it's so infectious that the tiny fraction of kids that face real risk is still a huge number as an absolute value.
I'd need to see the data backing that figure. I'm pretty sure it's percentage of some subset of deaths related to respiratory disease in particular rather than all causes of deaths like gun shots etc. Unfortunately thats a deeply misleading statistic in that context because it says that Covid is only a small portion of all respiratory related illness among children and yet you are using it in the reverse.
This whole crisis has become so political, it's completely absurd. We should be able to quietly talk about what's proven and what's not, what's a safe precaution, what's overkill, etc. without getting too passionate about it..
On a sidenote, I don't know if twitter is a good representative of the public debate in the US, but the level of hysteria on covid has reached an absurd level: obeses american wanting to wear no mask vs psycho-mum wanting to sue the whole world in order to protect their kids...
The most amazing thing about this epidemic could end up being our reactions..