Thank you, Dr.Drake and susan. It’s been a bad day for COVID news. Awhile back, I posted in another thread about the hospitalization of an old friend of mine who refused to get vaccinated and believed COVID wasn’t that bad. While she was in the ICU, her family asked for prayers. She’s been out of the hospital for weeks now but is too frail to care for herself and is on oxygen. She’s about to turn 60.
As bitterly frustrated as I am with these people, it’s still hard to see them suffering and dying.
I don’t know if she’s done a 180 on her views, but she doesn’t seem as anti-vaxx as she was, as she’s stopped dismissing the vaccine. I hate to push her on this because she’s in such bad shape. She HAS totally backed off of her “It’s not a big deal” shtick. She heard people around her dying of it. If that doesn’t make someone take it seriously, nothing would.
This is one reason I can’t get behind anything that makes fun of or makes light a covid denier’s or antivaxxer’s death. Those deaths affect lots of other people, too. (And I also don’t believe in the death penalty for stupidity or motivated reasoning, or poor critical thinking skills.)
I wouldn’t be surprised. OTOH, she seems pretty traumatized by the whole experience, and it’s obvious that real medicine, not homeopathy, saved her, so who knows? Right now she’s so weak and frail, I don’t think she’s thinking about vaccine vs. no-vaccine.
I’m guessing if she’s still on oxygen and feeling weak 4 weeks after leaving the hospital, she may have long COVID? Or maybe it’s just a long recovery because it’s such a vicious virus.
Thank you. It’s such a waste. I’m tremendously frustrated with anti-vaxxers, but I feel more antipathy towards influential people who were out spreading the misinformation, castigating Dr. Faucci, and laughing at the vaccinated than I do the poor folks who buy into the lies, like my former student.
I mean, there’s some truth to that, although she probably will needs a “second” dose, and eventually a booster. But most countries count a recent infection as comparable to vaccination.
Yeah, this is hard. People generally on the “science” side have a really hard time allowing for the benefit of natural immunity. It’s gotten caught up in the polarization of Covid. I’ve had a hard time getting useful information about whether getting covid acted as a booster for me, and I should therefore wait to get boosted, and also, if so, how long should I wait? It’s very hard to find that sort of information because everything is framed in terms of why you should get vaxxed, and getting covid isn’t protective enough, and all these talking points aimed at antivaxxers.
My partner’s aunt got Covid back in the spring of 2020. She had a fairly mild case, relatively speaking. Right after she had it and was released from quarantine, she drove cross-country to visit her elderly mother – my partner’s grandmother. Everyone in the family felt that was wrong, because we didn’t really know much about the immunity one gets from an infection. But, there was really no reason to think it would be unsafe either, especially very soon after she recovered.
Fast forward a bit, and the kooky aunt is not vaccinated. She believes she is still protected by her prior infection. She recently found out that the family winter holiday plans have been shifted because my partner’s brother and his family refuse to be around her. (They are all vaccinated. There has also been a huge rift between him and the aunt because of her stance on the vaccine. He works in biotech, and has gotten in big nasty arguments with her on Facebook.)
When she found out about the changed plans, she sent an email to the family saying the plans should be changed back because it was detrimental to the grandmother if the plans are changed, and the aunt said she wouldn’t come so that the grandmother will get to see everyone. She also included in her email the facts that she is tested weekly because of her job (she is), and she says she took an antibody test a week ago, and she still has antibodies.
Assuming the antibody test thing is true, (I’d require proof that it isn’t some fake, woo test) my partner asked me if there was any way we could be around the aunt.
I’m finding it hard to separate my judgment about the risk from my desire to impose consequences for someone not being willing to fully mitigate their risk to me and my family when doing so requires only getting a couple of shots. I think my family and I would be at a pretty small amount of risk from her. No one is more protected than someone who is fully vaccinated plus has had Covid. We might all have been vaccinated by Christmas break (working on scheduling the kids) plus we have all recently had covid.
We’ve taken other small risks when it has a big benefit, particularly for the kids. I think the risk is small, and the kids love their great aunt, and my partner loves her aunt. But I really want to say no. I have no doubt that my partner’s brother will say no, in part because he definitely wants to impose consequences. He’s very much a scientist, but I don’t think he’ll evaluate the risk in an unbiased way. I’m not saying it’s definitely worth the risk, just that I think he won’t even be able to consider it fairly. (I definitely think the risk is much greater to his family, because they haven’t had covid. So, one less layer of protection than we have. In his shoes, I would say no as well.)
I think even mentioning natural immunity has become charged. I’ve mentioned that we are not trying to be first in line, but are instead waiting around 30 days to get the kids vaccinated. It was super hard to find info about that, because there’s so much about how soon you can get vaccinated. We don’t want the kids to have huge side effects to the shot because of their recent infection, and also want their immunity to extend longer into the future. I don’t think there’s any question that they are protected for the next 30 days.
The thing is, she also doesn’t have good data on it. So she’s willing to risk that her infection only gave her the equivalent of a single shot (which is only 30-ish% effective) or even worse. Sure, she has antibodies (assuming that test was legit), but they may not be the ones that are good against delta.
Sure, with you and your partner, who will have been both vaccinated and have gotten the shots, there’s little risk. The person I’d be concerned most about is grandmother. Older immune systems don’t work as well.
It seems to me that you have a good argument that she should at least get one shot, just to be safe. And, if she’s not willing to do that, it sounds like she’s willing to do exactly what your brother-in-law wants, which is to simply not show up.
That said, if you wanted, you could maybe compromise further by making her get tested and get results right before coming. And then don’t get together for longer than 5 days, which is when unsymptomatic infected people tend to start infecting others.
I don’t see anything wrong with deciding that you need to put your foot down, to make it clear that, if the aunt wants to attend gatherings, she must be as safe as possible. I can also see deciding the above scenario is sufficiently low risk. The one I can’t see is just letting the kooky aunt show up, when the risk is uncertain.
Uncertain risk is ultimately just risk. Risk is just uncertainty about a bad thing happening. Thus lack of information counts as risk.
This suggests recovery from infection is as good as vaccination, possibly better.
I shared a hotel room with a friend who had recovered from covid and then ALSO been fully vaccinated. I said to her, “I’m happy to wear a mask in the room if you want me to, but i am completely comfortable being with you, as I’m pretty sure you will neither give me covid nor catch it from me.”
I didn’t see anything that suggested “possibly better” in the article - did I miss that? Or were you basing that on the stated protection levels from the various studies vs what is claimed for the vaccines?
Maybe I’m conflating that with other articles I’ve read. This suggests “as good as immunization, although a riskier route to get there”, I think. In fact, the concluding paragraph is
Although longer follow-up studies are needed, clinicians should remain optimistic regarding the protective effect of recovery from previous infection. Community immunity to control the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic can be reached with the acquired immunity due to either previous infection or vaccination. Acquired immunity from vaccination is certainly much safer and preferred. Given the evidence of immunity from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection, however, policy makers should consider recovery from previous SARS-CoV-2 infection equal to immunity from vaccination for purposes related to entry to public events, businesses, and the workplace, or travel requirements.
I think it will be more complicated (or maybe simpler depending on how you look at it) once boosters are folded in as part of being fully vaccinated, given that most recovered but not vaxxed people won’t get boosters.
I mean, if instead of totally ignoring infection, public health directives said “recovery in the last N months counts like vaccination, but immunity wanes and a booster would be helpful for these people at this interval”, I think a lot of people who are recovered but not vaxxed would get boosters. There are plenty of people who caught covid who aren’t vaccine deniers.
I really think it would have helped if the US health authorities had given more accurate and less simplified information from the start. Not “don’t wear masks”, but “most people don’t need masks at this time, because…” The whole totally ignoring natural immunity is in the same category of “simplifying to the point of losing credibility”, imho.
Yes. And also, there is data that getting fully vaccinated plus having Covid provides the greatest protection. Obviously, you should not seek out getting covid as that defeats the purpose, but having had it, if you get fully vaccinated, you will be extremely well protected against getting it again.
And there needs to be guidance about breakthrough infections. I think mine acted as a booster, so I should wait to get a booster. But if my workplace were to say, you need a booster to be considered fully vaxxed, I’d have to do that if there’s no guidance on recovery counting. (I do have to wait 90 days to get a booster because of my monoclonal antibody treatment, so I guess I’d have a medical exemption for that long.)
A challenge I am seeing is a number of people (one I know of in particular in another group I frequent) who claim to have had covid, so they refuse vaccination. The trouble is, thier claim is bullshit. They had a sniffle 6 months ago, or a cough, and declared to themselves that “it must have been covid, so I’ve had it.”
As I said, it’s bullshit, and they’re simply using this as an excuse to not be vaccinated. And they bitch and complain about how they are “immune now”, so should not be subject to any vaccination mandates. All based on a made up self-diagnosis.
She’ll probably take the position now that I’ve had it so I don’t need the vaccine.