OT: COVID-19 thread #4

[dice]

I think you asked for that when you said "Frankly, I find the idea of mandating a person with natural immunity to get a Covid vaccine or otherwise destroy their livelihood to be pure evil. No exaggeration, I find that to be evil, and it makes me realize how easily humans have been manipulated into supporting evil atrocities throughout history."

Evil atrocities? Like concentration camps, the gulags, the Rwandan genocide, etc? Those kinds of atrocities? You are comparing those to asking someone to get a vaccination that has been shown to be extremely safe? C'mon.

Again, a complete inability to actually address the argument being made and instead attacking a strawman argument never presented. Let's take a look at all the ways you intentionally misrepresented what I said with your underlined sentence.

First, it is not "asking" someone to get vaccinated that I'm talking about. It is requiring them to get vaccinated at the risk of losing their livelihood and possibly destroying their families. Massive difference, as I'm sure you know but failed to confront.

Second, it's not just requiring "someone" to get vaccinated, it's requiring someone with prior natural immunity to get vaccinated, despite the overwhelming evidence showing that this is not necessary and certainly not necessary enough to require vaccination. You unsurprisingly left this critical factor out.

Look, let's face it, if you guys were confident in the reasonableness and morality of your position, you would not intentionally distort it when advocating for it. You would be direct and truthful. If you really believed that mandating vaccination of people with natural immunity, you would have no problem saying something like this:

"Even if a nurse who worked tirelessly during this entire pandemic has prior natural immunity to Covid, she should be required to be vaccinated. And if she refuses, she should be fired. I don't care that this might destroy her livelihood and her ability to support her family. She should blame herself if that happens for not getting the shot."

You won't say that because it is disgusting, despite it being precisely the position you advocate. Instead you will deflect and obfuscate.

You're just flat wrong when you say it's not necessary to get vaccinated if you have already had Covid. Studies have shown your're about 2.5 times less likely to get Covid when you get the shot, even if you have natural immunity (although to call it "natural immunity" is misleading, since people can and do get it more than once, so it hardly is conferring immunity).

As for constructing straw man arguments, you are the one that went way over the top by saying this was equivalent to the most evil atrocities of all time. That was your argument, not mine.

And yes, I know damn well that people are being forced into getting the vaccine, not just asked, or else they could lose their jobs. People are asked/forced into doing all sorts of things during times of national emergencies. All kinds of goods were rationed during wartimes. We haven't faced a pandemic of this scale for over a hundred years. 500K Americans have lost their lives already. The science has clearly proven, and I emphasize clearly, that getting the shots will significantly reduce your chances of getting seriously ill or dying. Hospital beds have been in such short supply that people have been turned away from getting medical care- that's a national emergency too. And much of it could be prevented by just getting a simple vaccine. If people can't see fit to do their part for the greater good of society, then those individuals should take a long look in the mirror. It's a shame that it has come to employers having to mandate these things, but apparently enough people have gotten so lost in the maze of misinformation circulating on the internet that this is the place we now find ourselves in.

are many companies mandating the vaccine as opposed to giving regular testing options? it seems to me that requiring absolutely no protections during a pandemic would be quite bad for business

given that the military and schools require a spate of vaccinations, this right-wing attempt to create a huge controversy about business requirements (during a freaking PANDEMIC) strikes me as quite ridiculous

[dice]

True, but this pandemic started quite some time before the vaccines were released. So the failure to advocate loudly and consistently the importance of getting in better shape is unforgiveable.

I mean, many people have been pushing for that for quite some time in many ways.

Show me when Biden, Harris, Fauci, or the current or prior CDC director publicly advocated the importance of exercising during the pandemic to reduce the risk of Covid illness. Show me one tweet from any of them on this.

you left out trump and pence for some reason

"mr. trump, we've got a terrible virus circulating throughout the country right now. there is no vaccine available yet. what can we reasonably do to protect ourselves and those around us?"

"better start exercising"

[Dresden]

"Even if a nurse who worked tirelessly during this entire pandemic has prior natural immunity to Covid, she should be required to be vaccinated. And if she refuses, she should be fired. I don't care that this might destroy her livelihood and her ability to support her family. She should blame herself if that happens for not getting the shot."

You won't say that because it is disgusting, despite it being precisely the position you advocate. Instead you will deflect and obfuscate.

Talk about straw man arguments! If you are so concerned about the nurse having to work overtime and in stressful conditions, you should be all for mandatory vaccinations. Health care workers are continuing to get burnt out due to the recent surges, which could largely have been prevented had people taken the shot. There are strikes going on in many hospitals right now due to workers being fed up with chronic understaffing, long hours, and the stress of their jobs due to Covid.

So you can't make arguments about how much you care about health care workers and then be against vaccinations at the same time.

But more to your point, yes, I have no trouble telling a health care worker to get vaccinated, or get tested everyday. Health care workers have to follow all kinds of safety protocols in their job, like wearing protective equipment, both for their own safety, and that of their patients. Is that infringing on their personal freedom? It's part of the job. And so is getting a vaccination during a pandemic when you are working with infected people, or have a job with a lot of customer contact. It's hard to believe you would not want to be vaccinated under those circumstances, but employers have a responsibility to protect their work force and their customers. I would feel much better going to a restaurant where I knew all the staff had been vaxed. And that goes double for health care workers.

[Dresden]

As to whether natural immunity is better than a vaccine- it's hardly clearcut. It's certainly not "overwhelmingly superior" to the vaccine.

https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/covid-19-studies-natural-immunity-versus-vaccination:

"If you've had COVID-19 before, does your natural immunity work better than a vaccine?

The data is clear: Natural immunity is not better. The COVID-19 vaccines create more effective and longer-lasting immunity than natural immunity from infection.

More than a third of COVID-19 infections result in zero protective antibodies
Natural immunity fades faster than vaccine immunity
Natural immunity alone is less than half as effective than natural immunity plus vaccination"

[Chi town]

Interested in which vaccine everyone got and if anyone has contracted COVID post vaccine and what their symptoms were like.

From what I have read it seems like the Pfizer Vacc is the most efficacious. That's what I got and no COVID yet. I've been exposed to people that have had COVID (Found out later but contact tracing is tough with timelines).

[Dresden]

Interested in which vaccine everyone got and if anyone has contracted COVID post vaccine and what their symptoms were like.

From what I have read it seems like the Pfizer Vacc is the most efficacious. That's what I got and no COVID yet. I've been exposed to people that have had COVID (Found out later but contact tracing is tough with timelines).

I was under the impression that Moderna was slightly better and lasted a bit longer, but overall they are so close it's really not that relevant. The JJ was signfiicantly lower, and that's partly why you can now get a booster of one of the other two.

[gardenofsound]

I do wonder if repeat COVID among the unvaccinated and the rate of re-infection is a spurious issue.

There are four categories of people to consider:
Cat 0: Unvaccinated. Has not yet contracted COVID.
Cat 1: Vaccinated. Has not yet contracted COVID.
Cat 2: Unvaccinated. Has contracted COVID.
Cat 3: Vaccinated. Has contracted COVID (pre-vax).

We can probably all agree that Cat 0 is most likely to contract COVID looking forward in the near term unless they have a legitimate medical reason for not having taken the vaccine, in which case they are likely doing everything they can to mitigate contraction (masking, social distancing/isolation, etc).

Cats 1 and 2 are the question I have... my assumption is that Cat 2--again assuming no legitimate medical reason as the caveat to Cat 0--is more likely to contract COVID because they're also largely correlated with the mindset that COVID is no worse than the common cold and so are therefore not taking measures of mitigation.

In other words, there are behaviors that tightly correlate with taking the vaccine, like wearing masks in indoor/crowded areas, social distancing, etc, while the opposite behaviors may correlate with not having taken the vaccine. Those correlating factors may be the stronger causal relationships with COVID re-infection (or post-vax infection).

Is there any study that has successfully statistically isolated the factors down to those two variables alone with a high confidence (>=95%)? The two variables being bools of vaccinated and whether a subject has previously had COVID

[madvillian]

Interested in which vaccine everyone got and if anyone has contracted COVID post vaccine and what their symptoms were like.

From what I have read it seems like the Pfizer Vacc is the most efficacious. That's what I got and no COVID yet. I've been exposed to people that have had COVID (Found out later but contact tracing is tough with timelines).

I got moderna because I thought it was the best one from my research and then I spaced the shots out 60 days because that also seemed smarter based on what I was reading.

I don't know if I've had COVID, if I did I didn't have any symptoms. As for the shots I got a sore arm and some fatique, that was about it. No headache or anything. FWIW I'm in pretty good shape and work out constantly I think that helps my immune system so now that I got the MRNA spike instructions my immune system is supercharged against it. Here's hoping.