jnrjr79 wrote:Not to be flip, but my response to that is more or less “so what?” From a broad policy perspective, it’s cumbersome to verify existence of prior infection as an exception to vaccination mandates. And the goal here isn’t “achieve immunity comparable to others,” it’s “end the pandemic.”
It isn't any more cumbersome when you get tested positive with COVID to fill out a doc that shows you have it and enter in a computer than it is to fill out the same doc because you had a vaccine.
See above. The goal is ending the pandemic. Having super immune people is of great societal benefit. A huge share of the US population has had COVID and they should all nevertheless get vaccinated. The benefits so drastically outweigh the more or less non-existent risks that I can’t really see how this would be controversial.
Why not force everyone to get a booster shot every month until COVID is gone? Why not 2 boosters a month? More is better right? Why not a booster every day? I mean the reasons are obvious.
I support all of this! You can ask the Biden administration why it’s making the decisions it’s making. I can tell you I already have my booster scheduled. I am open to a broader conversation about when to offer boosters here in the US vs. exporting more vaccine to the rest of the world, but that dose sitting at Walgreens is already sitting there, and those of us who can get boosters at this point should do so.
I'm open to this too. When they offer boosters to my group, I will get one. However, what is important is getting the total level of immunity up. I understand the logistical argument of ease of policy being to say everyone has to get a vaccine, and I don't really care if everyone has to get a vaccine either. I'm generally for mandated vaccination, but I totally understand someone that had Delta and says my immunity is better than yours anyway, I don't want to do this extra thing. I don't think that is unreasonable for someone to hold that view. Their immunity is better than mine already. It makes more sense for me to get a booster than for them to get vaccinated, and it's no more difficult to track who had COVID vs who had a vaccine.
When you say “immunity should be what we care about,” it contradicts to some degree the prior sentiment in your argument. To the extent requiring boosters would inhibit transmission of the virus, then yeah, everyone should get one when they can. It’s become clear that immunity is not binary, but is a matter of degree. So there is benefit to having as many people in the world with as much immunity as possible.
Yes, and you should increase immunity in those with lower immunity. Giving Boosters to people whom haven't had COVID but were vaccinated would create more immunity than forcing vaccination on people that have Delta variant antibodies vs alpha variant vaccines.
We can debate the policies we enacted in the pre-vaccine world - whether we locked down too much or not enough, etc. But right now, I am frankly very angry that my life continues to be negatively affected because the pandemic is persisting here because people refuse to be vaccinated. For instance, because of travel restrictions at our kids’ school, which follows the City of Chicago travel order, we are not allowed to leave the state right now without quarantining our kids and losing access to school upon return. The “personal decision” people are making to prolong the pandemic by declining vaccination because “I’ll be fine” is allowing delta to continue to persist. I don’t think it’s too much to tell people that have had COVID that they need to get at least one shot, nevertheless, for the benefit of everyone else. There’s no “I already had the measles” exception to longstanding vaccine mandates at schools. The way in which people can’t allow their brains to think about the COVID vaccines in the same context as prior vaccines is really bizarre.
Someone that has had Delta isn't prolonging this pandemic. They prolonged it in the past by getting sick the first time and not getting vaccinated. Now their immunity is better than yours. They are less of a risk than you going forward.
The one argument that makes a lot of sense to me against natural immunity cards being given and equally valid to vaccine cards is that you'd probably have a massive group of people trying to purposefully contract it to get natural immunity and causing a whole ton of problems out of stupidity.
