Nobody on this site but yourself truly cares what you, personally, do. This entire subthread is about what people in general do.
And it's not particularly surprising that people here find that vaccine reticence is absurd, whether you've caught the thing or not.
I likely caught COVID early on (unproven), and I was part of a clinical trial for a vaccine, where I got two real shots of CureVac. The clinical trial didn't pass and I had to get two more shots of Moderna so I could count as vaccinated for things like events and travels.
Overkill? Yes. Unnecessary? Almost definitely. Annoying to do? Well I did get fever from two of the four shots so yes.
Still did it, and would do it again if I have to, because there is zero fucking risk compared to anything we do in the day to day life such as crossing the street.
I'm on a bicycle for several hours a week roaming the streets of Brussels. I will statistically die from that.
You are not wrong about the efficacy of naturally acquired immunity. It's not a hard call at all. There is a clear order of magnitude plus difference. The math is super simple.
It can be maddening, and make you feel like you live in crazy town, to not see people acknowledge this, and to have leaders at the CDC spout pure lies about it over and over again.
Here's how I made peace with it.
Pfizer will sell $33B worth of vaccines this year. The annual budgets of every news organization in America sum to $10B. So Pfizer's COVID revenue alone could pay for every newsroom all across America, and they'd still have $23B left over. And then there's Moderna, J&J, CVS, and so on.
There are an enormous amount of people working full time and part-time to promote and sell as many vaccines as possible. The biggest competitor to the vax is naturally acquired immunity. So that in particular is a big target of the shills and censors.
People always respond to incentives. This is not specific to the vax industry, and is all around us. I guess the surprising thing is how there may be no exceptions to that rule.
Looking at the data, I see no reason for anyone who's naturally recovered to get it, nor anyone under 20. If you haven't had COVID and are over 30, I think it's a good bet.
Personally I want as many people to have as much immunity to covid as possible, in order to limit (and ideally eradicate) the spread of covid. So the stronger your immunity gets, the more likely it is you will harbor less virus and therefore less likely to spread it to others.
Also, over the last year and a half, my mom went into chemo for like 6 months, had a minor heart attack (and was in the ICU twice for almost two weeks), and went into the ER recently—the majority of those times the hospital wouldn't even let me or my dad into the hospital to visit because covid cases were so high.
For me, the goal is societal (global) reduction or eradication of the virus and for that so that we don't have to argue about masks or vaccines or watch friends and family die or get wickedly sick.
Since there are multiple animal reservoirs your eradication goal is impossible. The most likely scenario is that we'll all be infected eventually no matter what we do. Fortunately the vaccines are very effective at preventing death.
Fair point on the reservoirs. Then I'd hope that thru vaccines, we train our immune system to get better and better at responding to the virus without having to take on the full viral load. I read an article a few months back describing how the immune system is like an info gathering machine, trying to catalog different threats that exist, and I dunno, I guess I just prefer to practice how to swim in a controlled pool than being tossed into the ocean.
Then why shouldn't people with natural immunity (whether vaccinated or not) demand the vaccinated be intentionally exposed to COVID? (And quarantine after exposure.)
Presuming risk of severity of breakthrough cases is as low as we've been told (over and over), isn't demanding intentional exposure a justifiable risk, if it improves a vaccinated individual's immunity to the levels of natural immunity?
Does it make a difference if risk of breakthrough infection severity ends up being lower than risk of vaccine side-effect severity?
well I'd assume that one can also get more immunity thru more vaccine shots and it's a much less risky strategy (aka no virus that can self-replicate) than intentionally exposing oneself to the virus.
Not by the logic that's been applied up to now. "Better immunity is worth the personal risk of vaccination" is the mantra that's been repeated over and over to those who already had covid.
All of a sudden risk-benefit analysis is debatable? Why is breakthrough infection not a risk worth taking, but vaccine side effects are?
Especially vaccine risk vs the limited marginal benefit for those with natural immunity?
If the breakthrough infection risk is lower to oneself and to others than the vaccine risk is to oneself and to others, then I think it would make sense to encourage people to expose themselves to the virus as a way to increase immunity.
I currently believe that the vaccine is much lower short-term risk to oneself (and especially to others) than getting a breakthrough infection. I also believe that the vaccines probably have lower medium- and long-term risks as well.
So yes, for me, if the risk equation changes, I'd be open to changing course. Until then, vaccines seem to be much lower in risk to oneself and to others than the virus itself.
I also think it's absolutely absurd and that people will justify anything. Especially if they're already committed to it, and don't want to find out they're previous actions were nothing but show.
Including "you should intentionally get sick to prevent you from possibly unintentionally getting sick."
it is not impossible to make informed intelligent decisions regarding your behavior, or the situations you choose to become involved in. there are behavioral alternatives that will minimise your risk and others risk, these alternatives are not for everyone, the psychological challenge of social isolation is not bourne well by many people, however it was the best we had until vaccine production was sufficient to provide population scale administration.
please believe me, this is not fear mongering when i say that the >potential< risk posed if this virus generates omega strain variation [hypothetical doomsday strain] would be large and unmanagable.
this can happen if, long road taken variations accumulate over time as a result of unchecked transmission and incubation.
the short road is co-circulation of variants recombining genetic elements as a result of concurrent multivariant infection.
...and apology accepted, i see you are very passionate about your decision
That's just unscientific fear mongering nonsense. Humans are social creatures. For most people social isolation is more harmful than the virus. The human race has already survived previous coronavirus pandemics and they didn't cause doomsday.
you are wrong this is not fear mongering, this is a high potential of increased danger with each successive modification, please explain what bottleneck eliminated the majority of hominoid species but left us here.
Our ancestors eliminated the majority of hominid species, leaving us here. There is no scientific evidence that any early hominid species was wiped out by a viral pandemic.
there is plenty of genetic evidence linking neanderthal genetic features to outcome of disease and genetic infirmity, as well as outcome of covid infection, primarily to do with interferon production and signaling, as well as receptor domains, these are heteroallelic as well, so strong neanderthal heritage with respect to population at large may provide a protective allele, or a predispositional allele.
