That’s quite a different issue. People do have autoimmune diseases which harm them, and an external disease (such as covid) can harm someone by triggering a too-strong immune response, as you describe.
I mean, I guess from a behavioral perspective, if people feel unwell they have a disincentive to repeat that experience no matter the reason for the feeling, but I really think feeling unwell from a normal and healthy immune reaction whose timing you can accommodate is quite different from an unpredictable disease.
Obviously, millions upon millions disagree with me. Thus this thread.
So where is the line drawn? I had 2 bad reactions to the shots that were far worse than what a lot of people experienced getting the actual disease.
I’m not planning on joining the booster-of-the-month-club. I’ve had the J&J with a Pfizer booster in the space of a year. They’re now talking about multiple boosters. It’s not like the vaccines stop you from getting covid. They don’t. At some point we are all statistically going to get covid and we need to acknowledge that getting covid is a legitimate form of vaccination.
Large scale studies are understanding how quickly immunity wanes from both immunization and convalescence (ie, prior infection).
In the former case, booster shots can restore adequate levels of antibodies.
In the latter case … what … COVID parties ??
That’s a major issue.
It’s also an issue to establish when a person with convalescent immunity was originally infected. The only thing we could do at this point, AIUI, is regularly monitor their antibody levels.
Which is likely an impractically resource-intensive solution to placate a relative few with relatively weak objections to just getting vaccinated (, too).
These are all a bunch of different issues mixed together.
The line: either (1) you have a disease, or (2) a chronic condition such as an autoimmune disease, or (bright line here) you don’t, you just have a strong reaction from a normal, healthy immune system.
Yes, surviving covid conveys a degree of immunity, as does vaccination, and that should be acknowledged. However, the degree of immunity cannot be quantified in the way it can with vaccinations and their controlled dosages. So someone who’s had covid probably has a decent degree of protection, unless they don’t because it was such a mild case or something. Maybe we should count having had covid as ¾ of a vaccination: you still need two shots, no rounding up, but 2¾ can count for two shots plus the booster (2½).
Multiple boosters—yep. It sucks: so do disease and death. I’m not looking forward to regular (annual?) bouts of malaise and sore arms. But the benefits of being in the booster-of-the-month club seem to far outweigh the drawbacks.
Shots don’t prevent infection—actually, they do. They don’t guarantee that infections won’t occur, but they do prevent them in the majority who get the vaccinations. Which in turn reduces the spread of the disease.
At some point we’ll all get it—maybe. If we hit herd immunity and keep up vaccination and hygeine practices, we might keep going for a while.
And bringing us back to the subject of the thread, we owe our beleaguered doctors and nurses more than we can repay, and we should do everything in our power to not fall under their care right now, so they can keep going. Even if we don’t ever get covid we will get something, and I don’t want the person treating me and my loved ones to be a bitter, bruised, exhausted wreck.
Yes. With SS and my retirement, I’ll have, before taxes, my present after tax income, minus $400 a month for Mrs. Plant (v.3.0) to continue receiving my retirement after I shuffle off the mortal coil.
Do hospitals often evict combative patients? Combative patients are somewhat common, always have been. In particular, people with dementia are quite often combative. I don’t want to be denying care of the hospital can handle it.
I realize that we have a moment in time when hospitals have an extraordinary load of combative patients, and also of very sick patients. But be careful what you wish for.
Even if you’ve had it before, and even if natural immunity is better than vaccination in some cases, natural immunity plus vaccination is always better. There is never a reason, outside of extremely rare edge cases, not to get vaccinated, even if you had it before.
You guys seem to be desperate to concoct a scenario where it’s okay not to get the vaccine and then pretending to be following the science. It’s bullshit. Vaccination is always better. You’re essentially suggesting we should implement this alternative logistical system to accommodate a worse solution for in order to indulge people for making an irrational decision.
You bet they do, as do doctor’s offices, pharmacies, nursing homes etc. We’re under no obligation to treat people who make threats and refuse to consent to evaluation and are just there demanding services that they most likely do not need.
We want to go home to our families safe and sound after our shifts. I never took an oath to care for a patient who was deliberately imminently dangerous to me and I don’t plan to start. Unless their behavior has a medical basis, such patients are best dealt with by the criminal justice system, NOT the health care delivery system.
Combative incompetent patients are somewhat different, but again I’m not required to treat someone whom I can’t deal with safely.
You’re the one who was arguing that policy must follow science, and cannot consider any knock-on behavioral effects. If we did that on obesity, then it would have to be outlawed. The science says it is bad.
But the government can consider the behaviors of people and decide that it’s not in fact a good idea to criminalize obesity. Similarly, the government can consider the behavior of people and not have policy exceptions for those who have had COVID, even though the science says that they increase immunity.
It is entirely the government’s job to consider things other than what the science says before determining the best way to act, whether through laws or through policy.
There’s always a cost-benefit analysis. The vaccine dose for school kids is much smaller than that for adults to minimize dude effects. We haven’t approved a vaccine for little kids because the dose that Pfizer tested thinking it was safe enough proved not to be effective enough.
Side effects tend to be more unpleasant for those with prior immunity (who also need boosting less.)
We could be boosting every 4 months, but we aren’t.
Data suggests that “recovered from covid” is about as effective as two doses of mRNA vaccine. It feels like ignoring the science to completely ignore that.
This is simply not true. I’ve already cited a position that natural immunity is better than vaccine immunity. There is no argument you can make that it doesn’t fulfill immunization requirements.
For what purpose? In order to create epidemiological models to predict COVID spread? Sure, try to figure that out. But that can be done by modelling and sampling populations, rather than creating a huge logistical network to test everyone’s antigens to figure out if they’ve had COVID before to certify them.
To create exceptions so that people can escape things like proof of vaccination to participate in public events? No, I don’t think we should encourage people to find some reason not to get vaccinated nor undermine the reasons we have those requirements.
And, what, we just start mass testing people for antigens in order to provide this proof, burdening the medical system and raising costs even more, so that these people can just not take the vaccine? Instead of going to the doctor to take an antigen test to prove you already survived COVID so that you can now be counted among the people who’ve had it, just go get another fucking dose of the vaccine. It improves your protection, gives us a more reliable way to count you as among the vaccinated, conforms to the already existing vaccine records/verification system.
You seem to be advocating for costs, use of medical resources, additional logistical requirements, and less protection than previous infection + vaccine just so we can cater to the snowflakes who refuse to get the vaccine. What’s the benefit of that to society? Because the costs and downsides are obvious.
Previous infection + vaccine is always better than just previous infection. Therefore vaccination, even for people who’ve had a previous infection, is still better. Maybe in some cases, A is better than B, in some cases B is better than A. But A+B is always better. So get B, whether you have A or Not.
Get vaccinated. It’s easier to track, it has longer protection, it can be boosted without getting sick again. There is no advantage to not getting vaccinated, either for the individual or society. Society shouldn’t cater to your irrational refusal to get the vaccine.
That has nothing to do with what I said. What you’re suggesting is a compulsory policy of never ending combinations of immune therapy. If A is good than A+B is better and A+B+C is better plus boosters of all of them. I’m simply stating that A or B or C… fulfills immunity requirements.
Your intent here is obviously to allow people who’ve had a covid infection but not a vaccine to participate more in society equivalent to someone who has been vaccinated, but you’re trying to be coy and not actually take any real position so that you don’t have to be tied to the obvious downsides of that position.
So feel free to actually make a case for your implicit position. What are the benefits of creating a second system of antigen testing, what do we do when immunity has fallen off from their COVID infection, and what are the downsides of this proposal?