Another interesting piece of the public conversation around mandates is the redefinition of the term vaccine (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126...). The CDC claims they redefined it away from the word “immunity” towards the word “protection” because no vaccine grants perfect immunity. Personally I find that to be a bad answer. By taking a weighty word like “vaccine” and redefining it, the expectations of risks and benefits the public holds were exploited. For the majority of the public, those who are under 50 and healthy, COVID poses little risk - it’s not much different from a typical seasonal flu. Personally I think getting an mRNA vaccine is a reasonable low-risk action but the risk of undergoing any medical intervention is nonzero, and it is higher for a novel technology. I bet that if the COVID vaccines were not called a vaccine, people would evaluate the risk reward trade off differently.
People under 50 and healthy probably aren't a majority of the population.
You can probably get away with 'mostly healthy', but there's enough people under 50 that are overweight to make it so that more than half the country is either over 50 or has a co-morbidity. And then there's lots of other things that are impacting people's health.
If you called the mRNA vaccines something else, the risk reward trade off wouldn't change, and there is nice clear evidence that they reduce overall risk for adults, even relatively health adults. The trade off is tighter for younger males, but it also slightly favors vaccination (the number of serious adverse events due to vaccination is smaller than the number of infections requiring hospitalization).
Given the vaccine is not very good at this point at halting transmission, if we wanted a mandate focused on reducing transmission, it would be entirely about testing requirements. As a bonus, that would remove the major issue with coercing people into choosing between an onerous, expensive, and invasive testing regime and having to take a drug they do not want to hold a job.
Vaccinated people get infected at much lower rates than unvaccinated people. The vaccines (especially the mRNA vaccines) are very good at reducing transmission. They of course can't halt transmission in the unvaccinated, and are not 100% protection for the vaccinated.
The vaccines reduce transmission but saying they are “very good” at this conflicts with basic logic, since that descriptor can’t be applied to both the efficacy in March (when it was very good) and the efficacy today, which we know is far less.
Infections among the vaccinated are like 6x less frequent than the unvaccinated.
It's perfectly compatible with base logic to say that there's a bar for very good that they were above then and are still above now, so that's not really a great argument. If you want to construct an argument about what 'very good' should mean, that's different, but there's no logical contradiction involved.
It's like if you eat the best cake of your life and call it very good, that doesn't mean you are lying if you later also call the second best cake of your life very good.
Bill Gates on the vaccines: “ “You know, we didn’t have vaccines that block transmission. We got vaccines that help you with your health, but they only slightly reduced transmission,”
Now go read my original post and tell me who sounds more in line with reality: the person noticing the relatively low efficacy of the vaccines to stop transmission and saying this deficiency should be incorporated in policy, or those who say it is very good (often because they do not want to lead people to avoid the vaccine, ironically, which happens due to loss of trust from such spin) and go on to write and impose policies that assume it is highly effective at stopping all aspects of the virus.
So people lose trust because of spin and "do their own research" and it's vaccine positive messaging (about the vaccines that are safe and work well) that is ultimately the problem?
There is no one problem (nice strawman), but when the CDC makes bold claims in a chaotic, dynamic environment that are unjustified based on the science, which they have done endlessly, it erodes trust to the point where people presume they are bad faith, have conflicts of interest, or are simply incompetent, so subsequent messaging has less effect.
> The regulation requires a vaccine OR a set weekly testing structure. Seems reasonable to me though perhaps a bit broadly targeted.
Why? Who do these measures protect? What problem is being solved and what metrics are being used to determine when we get there? So far, I have yet to hear any politician state any of this.
I think it's very obvious that vaccines protect against covid. Like that's not even worth a comment. There are many many studies and sources showing this.
An argument worth having could be whether or not that is tied enough to workplace to fall under OSHA.
> If you are vaccinated you have no reason to care about anybody else.
Nice.
> People continuing to wear masks post vaccine clearly don’t think the vaccine works.
Maybe they think the vaccines work, but that there are still far too many unvaccinated and unmasked fuckwits walking around spreading the virus and they themselves are trying to avoid participating in that.
It’s also very obvious now that it’s debatable if a 20 something kid who hasn’t taken the vaccine but is healthy and has good vitamin D levels presents more risk to others and is at more risk from COVID as a fully vaccinated 60 year old obese person.
> The CDC claims they redefined it away from the word “immunity” towards the word “protection” because no vaccine grants perfect immunity. Personally I find that to be a bad answer. By taking a weighty word like “vaccine” and redefining it, the expectations of risks and benefits the public holds were exploited.
This isn't anything new though. Vaccines have always had varied amounts of effectiveness. While some, like the polio vaccine are essentially 100% effective, other common ones like the MMR vaccine (components range from 30-90% effectiveness) and flu vaccine (40-60% effective based on year) are about as effective as the covid vaccines, and its never been controversial to call them vaccines.
> other common ones like the MMR vaccine (components range from 30-90% effectiveness)
That's not what the CDC says. The CDC says [1]:
"One dose of MMR vaccine is 93% effective against measles, 78% effective against mumps, and 97% effective against rubella.
"Two doses of MMR vaccine are 97% effective against measles and 88% effective against mumps."
Very different from either flu vaccines or COVID vaccines. Especially since, when talking about any vaccines except flu and COVID, when the CDC says "effective", they mean "prevents you from getting the disease at all or being able to transmit it to others". The people who could still get the disease or transmit it to others are the few percent for whom the vaccine is not effective.
Whereas, when the CDC talks about COVID vaccines, reducing the severity of illness or reducing (not eliminating) the chance of passing it on to others are what you get if the vaccine is "effective" for you. So not only has the meaning of "vaccine" been changed, the meaning of "effective" has been changed as well.
My understanding is that the 88% number for mumps is the upper end of the effective range:
> MMR vaccine is very safe and effective. The mumps component of the MMR vaccine is about 88% (range: 32-95%) effective when a person gets two doses; one dose is about 78% (range: 49%−92%) effective.
> Whereas, when the CDC talks about COVID vaccines, reducing the severity of illness or reducing (not eliminating) the chance of passing it on to others are what you get if the vaccine is "effective" for you. So not only has the meaning of "vaccine" been changed, the meaning of "effective" has been changed as well.
If we're talking this definition got covid vaccines, then the covid vaccines are much more effective than flu vaccines (and probably on par with MMR). If we're using a consistent definition of effectiveness, then covid vaccines are probably slightly less effective than the flu vaxes.
The page you reference is very weird because it's the only vaccine page on the CDC website that gives a range for the effectiveness numbers; all the others just give a percentage. I'm not sure what the range means, unless it's a 95% confidence interval or something like that; but I have great difficulty in believing that 95% confidence intervals would be that wide after decades of usage of the vaccine. But in any case, it looks like "effectiveness" has been used differently for the mumps vaccine (or the mumps component of the MMR vaccine) for some time.
IIRC, there was a mumps outbreak in Ontario in 2011 that raised some doubts about the effectivness of the mumps component of the MMR vaccine; possibly the ranges are from studies done of that outbreak. But again, if the ranges are 95% confidence intervals (and I can't imagine what else they could be), they are atrociously wide for a disease and a vaccine that has been around this long.
It is possible, I suppose, that almost all vaccines really are that uncertain in their effects; but if that's true, it should make us much, much less confident about the wisdom of vaccine mandates in general, and COVID vaccine mandates in particular. If we can still be that uncertain about a vaccine that has been around for decades, how much more uncertain should we be about one that was only discovered last year?
>and its never been controversial to call them vaccines.
They've never been mandated by law before (let alone a unilateral executive order). That it was done by executive fiat rather than legislation makes it especially troubling. If the president can unilaterally mandate a forced medical procedure, what can't they do? This isn't a question about vaccines or vaccine effectiveness, its a question about law, Constitutional rights and executive power.
You're making a different argument than the one I was replying to, which was precisely about vaccine effectiveness and semantics related to that.
But you're also wrong. The mmr vaccine is mandated if you want to attend k-12 public schools or federally funded public universities, and the ability to do that is uncontroversially in executive purview (for universities).
Also note that this EO has a testing option, so calling it a vaccine "mandate" is a stretch, unlike the EO that applies to federal contractors which is a mandate and is uncontroversially constitutional.
It’s fairly obvious that a mandate connected to taxpayer funded schools is a totally different thing than one governing all employers in the US. That’s not to defend the former so much as to point out that the set of arguments justifying it are on a whole different level of sanity than these executive fiats governing the entire labor market.
We aren't talking about public schools or federally funded universities. This isn't an issue of linking the use of public facilities or federal funds to conditions issued by the government - that's entirely different. We're talking about a unilateral executive action that mandates private citizens to undergo medical procedures to conduct their own private affairs. The fact is that there is no legal or Constitutional authority for the President to unilaterally issue laws or mandates. Whether vaccines are beneficial or not is entirely irrelevant. We either have a system of laws that we all live by, or we don't.
> I bet that if the COVID vaccines were not called a vaccine, people would evaluate the risk reward trade off differently
Interestingly, one of the entry-level Covid denialist talking points is that the vaccine is "classified as experimental gene therapy, and not a vaccine".
It's probably not worth spending too much energy seeking logic in illogic. I just thought it was interesting and kind of ironic in this context.
A lot of larger courts have a proprietary document management system that typesets the final documents. And a lot of smaller courts use the modern-day WordPerfect suite (with Paradox and Perfect Authority) as a sort of home-grown one. It depends a lot on the individual court and government.
In this case the metadata just tells us the PDF was generated by iText, so it's probably from a Java or .NET DMS the court uses. The use of Butterick's Equity suggests it's pretty new but I wasn't able to figure out what product they're using.
I used the HN site link ( https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=uscourts.gov ) to quickly grab an older filing from the 5th circuit, which shows a similar Adobe PDF Library; modified by iText as the Producer, and PDFMaker for Word as the Creator.
I'm not sure if it was 2013 or 2016, but the type engine in Word got a big update.
(It may also be that it works better with PDFMaker, doing paragraphs instead of individual words, I've only noticed the difference, not figured out the specifics)
OSHA estimates 6,500 lives will be saved by the mandate over six months or ~0.02% of the U.S. population. While there is uncertainty in these estimates, they are confident hundreds of lives will be saved. At first glance there seems to be many less politically fraught avenues of improving public health.
OSHA was created through the law, and they have the authority to change what they deem necessary whenever they want. Their decisions can be challenged in court (as this rule has been), but it’s not “executive order” per se. Congress gave the President the power to do this.
A vaccine mandate by OSHA, however, is unprecedented, and I can’t speak on how successful it’ll be and whatever unintended consequences it may have
> they have the authority to change what they deems necessary whenever they want.
I think the courts have a history of disagreeing on that point. Not enough, mind you, we've seen an unprecedented expansion of federal powers, but they have been ruling some of the more extreme executive orders unconstitutional.
The saddest part of all this is really the destruction of centrism. There's a strong amount of nuance lost on both extremes in the common centrist opinion that 'the vaccine is good, everyone should get the vaccine, public vaccine mandates may be premature." Primarily:
1. It doesn't close the door on private vaccine mandates, which while certainly concerning to some on the fringe, aren't as much of a hot topic.
2. It specifically calls out "premature"; one of the strongest pro-public vaccine mandate arguments is in their precedence. We absolutely do require vaccination in many situations, such as at grade schools or going to university. A critical, nuanced centrist opinion is simply the sense that these vaccines are extremely new; while they have scientifically demonstrated safety for the duration of the studies, and more generally perceived safety for the duration of their availability, both of these timelines pale in comparison to the timeframe many other commonly available vaccines have been available for.
3. Additionally, on the premature angle: We did have three highly effective vaccines in the US. This has been more-or-less reduced to two (as the J&J's efficacy is in such broad question, combined with their production issues, many vaccine sites aren't offering it anymore). Public vaccine mandates would in-effect be a public backing of a private corporation's revenue; the same people who rightly despise America's military-industrial complex aren't seeing the incredibly apt correlates to the increasing power of the public health-industrial complex.
4. Finally, on the premature angle: I strongly, in all walks of life, take the stance "if a choice isn't obvious, its because you don't have enough data". The choice on public vaccine mandates, democratically, is undeniably Not Obvious; its obvious to many individuals, in both direction, and thus it is not obvious to the voting public in aggregate. Thus, doing nothing except gathering more data, which our public health institutions are quite great at, is the right course. This always crystalizes the correct choice.
In short, the issue has become too politicized; I feel the best course of action right now is for politicians to step back and let our doctors and scientists take the lead. With the increasing existence and availability of effective treatment options, combined with the increasing pro-vaccine population driving down infections, hospitalizations, and death; a public vaccine mandate may end up inflaming one side of the political spectrum, and hurting our economy by causing significantly increased turnover and vacancies in an already difficult climate for businesses, unnecessarily.
> the common centrist opinion that 'the vaccine is good, everyone should get the vaccine, public vaccine mandates may be premature."
I think you've misstated the centrist opinion here. If it were really obvious that "the vaccine is good, everyone should get the vaccine", then public vaccine mandates would be the obvious choice. The reason public vaccine mandates are premature is that it is not obvious that everyone should get the vaccine. People's risk profiles vary widely, for both vaccines and for COVID. That's why it should be left to individual people and individual workplaces to strike the best balance for them, instead of a one-size-fits-all mandate for everybody.
Mandating all Americans get a extremely new vaccine or else they are unable to be employed is pure madness with few exceptions, such as a plague that stands to kill off a large % of the species.
Not all mandates are equal, not all vaccines are equal, and not all diseases are equal. A mandate barring employment, for a vaccine involving a novel mechanism and drug, for COVID is bonkers.
Yes, exactly: these are reasons to not be convinced that "everyone should get the vaccine". It is extremely hard to imagine a realistic situation in which we would be that convinced--convinced enough to justify the mandates that are actually being done--but that's exactly my point. The "really obvious" standard (which is extremely difficult to meet) is the one we should be applying, but we're not.
If this is true (and I'm not saying it's not), then that means public vaccine mandates should never be made at all, because if they're obviously justified, they're not necessary, and if they're not obviously justified, they're not justified at all (since, as I've argued upthread, the "really obvious" standard is the only justifiable one for mandates in the first place).
This inability to discern the nuance of the situation really scares me. It showcases an unfortunate lack of critical thinking concerning the impact of large scale public policy, like this vaccine mandate.
"The vaccine is good, and everyone should get a vaccine" is, ultimately, a personal health decision.
"The vaccine is good, and everyone must get a vaccine if you want to work" brings in a fantastically large number of externalities to the discussion, including, but not limited to:
* The exploitation of America's lack of social safety net to more tastefully hide the assertion that this is a blanket vaccine mandate. America is capitalistic; most people work. A bill which straight-up said "every citizen must get a vaccine" would be shot-down by every judge in the country, rightfully; is this bill really, meaningfully different, when there are few public safety nets in place to catch people who refuse?
* The overuse of executive power to dictate private company behavior. This is basically what OSHA does; no one is arguing there is not precedence. The argument is whether this goes too far beyond their jurisdiction.
* The overuse of executive power to force companies to become vaccine police; this is something many companies, even ones that BROADLY support the vaccine, fundamentally do not want to do. Its a massive internal logistical effort. They've never done anything like it before.
* Personal liberty; like it or not, America is founded on a strong basis of personal liberties, arguably the strongest in the world. A common counter-argument is "what about my freedom to feel safe among my coworkers"; first, semantically, what's being described here is not a Freedom. You cannot have the "Freedom" to feel safe. Maybe it could be classified as a Right, but the Rights afforded to US Citizens are few between and very well defined; this is absolutely, in any sense of the word, not one of them.
* Logistics; everyone forgets about the second part of the mandate; either be vaccinated or face continuous testing. Going back to the corporate vaccine police argument; companies are not set up to do in-house testing, by and large. Its OBSCENELY expensive and time-consuming; one local, large company, here in a low-vaccination state, says they've already spent eight figures this year on testing, thanks to an internal mandate that looks identical to this upcoming public one. Off the record; they wish they could discontinue it, they fundamentally cannot afford it. Many companies will outsource it to the Walgreens and CVS's and other private healthcare entities, which are already strained enough. Can our healthcare system handle the increased load of tens of millions of tests every day? Did anyone in power even consider this?
* Executive christening of private corporation profit; we have, effectively, two highly functional vaccines. Passing this bill means, in no uncertain terms, that these two companies will make billions of dollars. We already have a military-industrial complex; why not add a public health-industrial complex to the mix as well; so much for equitable, public good.
* Impact to other countries; Vaccines are a critical, limited resource. We have the best ones, and the best manufacturing capacity. Other countries, including many low-income underserved ones like in Africa and East Asia, need and want these doses that we're forcing onto people who don't want them.
* Impact to future elections; We live in a democracy. This is a massive gambit by the left, which may end up inciting the right-leaning centrists to actually get out and vote Biden out. Political power is a limited resource; is this the best thing for the left to spend theirs on?
* Impact to the economy; we're in a worker shortage right now. Forcing a massive portion of the population to make a decision between their personal health and work, will inevitably lead to many choosing personal health. They'll "make it work"; maybe by moving to smaller companies that aren't subject to the mandate, leaning on spousal support, what little public safety net our country has, or something else worse.
> "The vaccine is good, and everyone should get a vaccine" is, ultimately, a personal health decision.
No, "The vaccine is good, I should get the vaccine" is a personal health decision. "The vaccine is good, everyone should get the vaccine" is a much, much broader claim, which only makes sense as an attempt to justify a mandate, which has all of the downsides you list. That's why I objected to it: because framing such a broad claim as a "personal health decision" or a "centrist position" is exactly the kind of lack of critical thinking that you rightly criticize.
If I am vaccinated for chicken pox why do I have to worry if my friend is not vaccinated for it and gets it ?
If Covid vaccination is a vaccination i true sense the above assumption should apply to it no ?
Also using a government agency intended for construction / mining hard hat and fall safety for vaccinating people who don’t want to get vaccinated for personal medical reasons is outrageous. This is the kind of stuff that happens in a communist country like North Korea
>If I am vaccinated for chicken pox why do I have to worry if my friend is not vaccinated for it and gets it ?
When my "friend" is taking up an ICU bed at the local hospital and I die from a heart attack that would have been easily treatable when there were beds available, I care. When I can't get the surgery I need to deal with cancer because the hospital is overstressed dealing with my "friends", I care.
Every time the virus infects someone, it replicates millions of times inside their body. If one of those mutations is more contagious and prolongs this pandemic, I care.
As other posters have told you, vaccines aren't 100%. I get my flu shot each year and I still don't want to spend time around people who have a cold.
> If I am vaccinated for chicken pox why do I have to worry if my friend is not vaccinated for it and gets it ?
Vaccines don't work like that. They give you a better chance of not getting something (chicken pox vaccine is 90% effective), and the rest of the vaccine's effectiveness is made up in scale (if everyone has 90% resistance, the virus has nowhere to "catch hold" and just disappears). Many people don't get that, and think vaccines should either be 100% effective or they shouldn't be used at all, or they don't understand that they only work well when they are applied at scale (which is why schools mandate many vaccines with few exceptions).
> his is the kind of stuff that happens in a communist country like North Korea
Or America in the 1950s and 1960s when they wanted to get rid of polio, chicken pox, measles, hepatitis, etc... It is crazy: America back then didn't care about these nut case concerns, they were just focused on getting the job done. What happened to this country?
By all reasonable metrics, the covid vaccine makes the risk of covid negligible for all interested groups. If you're worried get the vaccine (I have) and carry on.
Sticking your nose in everyone else's business is just unhealthy. If others don't want to get it. That is their decision
The virus completely endemic at this point, it will never be eradicated. We have a vaccine that is effective and free to all who want it. Breakthrough infections happen, but not often and those who get them usually recover. Will I need to wear a mask for the rest of my life? Will I need to worry about my children staying home from school forever? I want to forget about the virus and get on with my life.
> Breakthrough infections happen, but not often and those who get them usually recover.
Data from my country (the Czech Republic), last Thursday (4th): 372 people newly admitted to hospitals, out of them 167 were fully vaccinated. I'm not saying the number is huge or alarming (much more vaccinated people in the population, those 167 people are also older on average than the other group), but it's still far from "not often".
> Will I need to wear a mask for the rest of my life? Will I need to worry about my children staying home from school forever? I want to forget about the virus and get on with my life.
Here's a scary thought: We the humanity are a bit more intelligent than other animals and a bit more flexible (also more destructive), but no one said we'll be the kings forever. Maybe a single lucky virus is enough to significantly hurt us. Maybe we're a couple of mutations far from never being able to forget the virus and yes, wearing masks for the rest of our lives. We can't forget that HIV exists, can we? Nobody said that a stupid new coronavirus can't be our downfall.
I think everyone is sick of hearing about COVID-19, but hitting your information saturation point is not the same as a disease becoming endemic.
The virus is objectively not endemic yet, as demonstrated by the overwhelmed hospital systems. This may not be the case where you live, but there are many places in the US where crisis standards of care are either currently implemented, on the verge of being implemented, or have just been ceased. While you're totally right about breakthrough infections etc, it's a bit premature to say we're back to normal when people are at risk of dying of treatable conditions solely because hospitals are full of mostly unvaccinated covid patients.
The virus is objectively endemic. It's regularly found in people and cannot be eradicated. Even if you could somehow eradicate it among humans, it has animal reservoirs so re-contamination would always be a threat. If hospital capacity is an issue, then we should expand capacity to reflect the current state of the world, instead of hoping that the world will somehow return to how it was prior to the pandemic.
The question wasn't if we're trying to eradicate it or not, or if we're going to ever return to a pre-pandemic normal, it's whether we're in an epidemic/pandemic or endemic phase.
My point is just that, as tired of hearing about it as everyone is, covid is still killing many people both directly (through infection) and indirectly (through tying up healthcare resources). We're still not at a place where covid is like the flu or colds because, as one example measure, it's overwhelming hospitals.
We should definitely be talking about expanding healthcare capacity, if not for covid than for the burgeoning obesity, diabetes, and hypertension epidemic. Those are discussions that have been happening for years, and ultimately work on a decade timescale.
The study states:
"We studied sera from adults (ages 18 to 55 years) who received two doses of the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine in phase 1 clinical trials (12). The majority of our study focused on 14 individuals who received the 250-μg dose, although we validated key conclusions with a smaller subset of eight trial participants who received the 100-μg dose. The sera were collected at 36 and 119 days after the first vaccine dose, corresponding to 7 and 90 days after the second dose."
Strange that the study would focus on individuals who received a 250-μg dose. The adult dose is 100-μg (https://reference.medscape.com/drug/mrna-1273-moderna-covid-...). Yes, the study states that key findings were validated with 8 participants who received the regular dosage, but still seems odd to me.
The comparison dataset is explained as:
"The convalescent plasma samples were characterized in earlier studies (13–16) and grouped into an early time point of 15 to 60 days after symptom onset and a late time point of 100 to 150 days after symptom onset."
So the comparison was between vaccinated individuals, most of whom received a higher dose than is being given out, to infected individuals, and the time periods don't exactly line up. For the vaccinated dataset, the time periods were 7 and 90 days after the second dose. For the other dataset, the time periods were 15-60 days, and 100-150 days after symptom offset.
Deeper into the study, there is also this:
"The escape maps of the 100-μg cohort resembled those of the 250-μg cohort and fell into the 456/484-targeting, core-targeting, or flat categories (fig. S6). Although the sample sizes are small, and a higher fraction of the 100-μg dose escape maps were flat than for the 250-μg cohort (4 of 8 versus 5 of 14, respectively), this suggests that 100- and 250-μg doses elicit antibody responses similar in the breadth of their RBD-binding specificity."
Even more interesting is when asked "What percent of CDC employees are vaccinated?"...Walensky essentially responded, she didn't know. As the primary national tracker of the pandemic, you would think CDC would know their numbers (especially internal ones) inside out.
They may not have studied it themselves, but others have[1].
> This study found that among Kentucky residents who were previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 in 2020, those who were unvaccinated against COVID-19 had significantly higher likelihood of reinfection during May and June 2021. This finding supports the CDC recommendation that all eligible persons be offered COVID-19 vaccination, regardless of previous SARS-CoV-2 infection status.
>As opposed to natural immunity which is proving to be more robust and long lasting.
What are you basing this on? I'm aware of one (unpublished, widely criticized) study with something like this conclusion that people like to throw around.
Evidence that natural immunity is long lasting and on par with the vaccine's initial levels of protection:
Oct 28, 2021
> Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were identified in 97% of COVID-19 convalescent donors at initial presentation. In follow-up analyses, of 116 donors presenting at repeat time points, 91.4% had detectable IgG levels up to 11 months after symptom recovery
> Model 1 ... found that cases in the vaccinated group (n=238, 1.5%) were 13 fold more likely to experience a breakthrough infection than the natural immunity group
> Model 2 ... found that cases in the vaccinated group (n=640, 1.4%) were 6-fold more likely to experience a breakthrough infection than the natural immunity group
> Model 3 ... found that cases in the infection-vaccine group (n=20, 0.14%) had about half the risk of experiencing a breakthrough infection than the natural immunity group
> The presence of IgG antibodies to nucleocapsid protein was associated with substantially reduced risk of reinfection in staff and residents for up to 10 months after primary infection.
> As with antibodies, the numbers of different immune cell types varied substantially between individuals. Neither gender nor differences in disease severity could account for this variability. However, 95% of the people had at least 3 out of 5 immune-system components that could recognize SARS-CoV-2 up to 8 months after infection.
Your second link is the unpublished, widely criticized study I was referring to. Even taken at a face value, it does not indicate infection-acquired immunity is longer lasting, only more robust.
None of the other links indicate infection-acquired immunity is more robust or longer lasting than vaccine-acquired. Only that there is some lasting immunity in some people.
i'm curious to learn more about the discussion and criticism surrounding the 2nd link, if you'd be so kind as to share such resources
true, none of the other links are directly comparative to vaccine efficacy. my claim is in the context that _other_ studies show vaccine efficacy drops off after 6 months.
>“The biggest limitation in the study is that testing [for SARS-CoV-2 infection] is still a voluntary thing—it’s not part of the study design.” That means, she says, that comparisons could be confounded if, for example, previously infected people who developed mild symptoms were less likely to get tested than vaccinated people, perhaps because they think they are immune.
I don't think your point 2. should be taken for granted. From the conclusion of the contested study:
>Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant.
I don't understand. Yes, many of the vaccine effectiveness studies are limited by the window of time they use. That's a separate issue from vaccines being redundant for previously infected people. Studies show that previously infected people still benefit from vaccination.
> As opposed to natural immunity which is proving to be more robust and long lasting.
IF your immune system is strong enough and lucky enough to lock to the appropriate parts of the virus.
If your immune system doesn't do that, well, you wind up dead. So, yeah, immunity after recovery might be better because the other ones aren't part of your study as they're in a hole in the ground.
i'm not suggesting people don't get the vaccine, but coming in contact with the virus prior to the extensive availability of the vaccine was unavoidable for many.
> People I thought were rational just turned complete morons.
Same. Some of the smartest, most rational people I know completely lost their damn minds. Tribalism is more important than just about anything, it seems.
Also, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments generally? You've been doing it a lot, and we're trying for something a bit different than internet default here.
These are phrased well because for most of them people are going to think "yeah, the other side is crazy". Only a few of that full thread reveal Zuby's bias.
For me, it is very obvious which side this person is on (both the twitterer and HN poster) based on keyword like "authoritarian" and "propaganda" and "fear of death", not to mention "people have science as religion".
- Authoritarianism - The left is authoritarian because they are for mandates and lockdowns.
- Propaganda - The mainstream media and the CDC have continually overexaggerated the threat of COVID.
- Fear of death - People on the left only cares about virtual signaling and not the threat to their personal safety that comes with giving up freedom.
Perspective from the left:
- Authoritarianism - The Trump admin lied to us about the threat of COVID, tried to cover up their mismanagement of the pandemic, restricted people's individual freedom to prioritize their health by forcing people back to work. Also there is the whole trying to invalidate fair elections thing.
- Propaganda - Fox News and Republicans have continually downplayed the threat of COVID and the effectiveness of the vaccine.
- Fear of death - The people on the right would rather follow the leaders of their party than protect their own safety.
The one about science being religion is one of the few that reveals Zuby's bias.
If these vaccines work so well, why are all the blue states requiring fully vaccinated individuals to wear masks? You can even get a booster and still be required to wear a mask. If they are so effective, why does any vaccinated individual give a single crap about the vaccination status of anybody else? Who are these masks trying to protect?
If anything the only people downplaying the effectiveness of the vaccine are the “experts” and all these worthless politicians.
Note: I’m fully vaccinated and believe these vaccines are perhaps some of the best humans have created. There is zero reason to continue dragging this crap on beyond last January. Vaccines were the promised end of all these restrictions. That people seem perfectly okay shifting the goalposts well beyond that is scary as hell.
Vaccines are effective at reducing death and hospitalization. They don't reduce transmission to zero, for the Delta variant in particular. Children and many teens are not vaccinated, and they're also particularly vulnerable to the Delta variant. Masks are most effective at stopping transmission. For the same reason cars are equipped with brakes and seatbelts.
When will masks go away? What is the exact needed to stop mandating them?
And vaccomated people don’t need masks. It isn’t a science thing. It’s just plain stupid to keep wearing them. Life has plenty of other things for people to worry about besides just this myopic fixation on covid.
Are they? Are masks the most effective at stopping transmission? Even cloth masks? Masks mandates don't seem to make a difference. And studies sure cloth masks are mostly useless
Masks are an amulet and nothing more. It’s like religion. Deep in most peoples heart they know their religion isn’t real but they’ll never admit it, even to themselves.
Same with masks… deep in most peoples hearts, they know masks don’t do a darn thing. But they’ll never admit it… don’t wanna be thought of as “the others”…
Sorry, I should have said "susceptible." But I did not say that children are exhibiting more severe symptoms; those are your words. However, the infection rate of children is much higher with Delta than other variants.
As an aside, I know that this is a hot-button topic. It would be appreciated if you follow the site guidelines, and be more charitable in conversation.
So what if the infection rate in kids is higher? They still aren’t at risk of serious illness. They are far more at risk of house fires, swimming pools and driving.
They increase the overall rate of transmission, putting everybody they're in contact with at greater risk. Especially since they're in schools, often in close contact with multiple cohorts per day. Diseases spread most quickly through densely-connected social networks. We didn't see significant transmission in children with the early variants, but with Delta, the game has changed.
The people who catch it care. The people with dead relatives especially care. The hospitals full beyond capacity care. The patients denied treatment because hospitals are overloaded care. The health care professionals who are overworked and have PTSD from working under these conditions care. Not everybody has, or even can, get a vaccine. For those people, and because of those people, masks are used.
This is the same frustrating nonsense I see over and over. And it's frustrating specifically because many of his points I can agree with (somewhat), but shit like this always devolves into "the evil government and media is trying to keep you down".
I mean look at all the talk of "authoritarianism" and "people enjoy being subjugated". I can only assume he's talking about things like mask and vaccine mandates. Which is so fucking bizarre to me because we've had things like seatbelt and helmet laws for decades, vaccine mandates ever since I was born, and one of his complaints is that "the government and media can politicize anything"?? None of this shit used to be politicized to anywhere near the degree it is today - now even things that have the most mild downsides, yet with clear benefits to others, are "the government is out to own you". All with the same bullshit tone of "ahh, look at those ignorant sheeple"...
>we've had things like seatbelt and helmet laws for decades
Libertarians and other freedom lovers have been fighting, arguing against and civilly disobeying those laws, vehemently, for as long as they have been in existence. Perhaps it didn't get as much play in the media.
> I'm actually fine with those "freedom lovers" not having to wear seatbelts or helmets, as long as EMS and doctors are free to leave them on the road.
So you'd be OK with denying life-saving measures to overeaters with diabetes, swingers with AIDS, and smokers with lung cancer? After all, their lifestyle choices are to blame, so according to what you have shared, they don't deserve help.
Some people always seem to be in a rush to forget the humanity in people they disagree with so they can justify letting them die in ways they would consider murder if the tables were turned. It’s like they think they’ve found a loophole to behaving morally or ethically that they think society won’t judge them for.
> Which is so fucking bizarre to me because we've had things like seatbelt and helmet laws for decades, vaccine mandates ever since I was born
It takes a lot of work to go from seatbelt and helmet laws to requiring proof of medical status to enter a clothing store. Especially since most of the people pushing this crap also require everybody to wear masks as well. Like, do these people think vaccines don’t work? Because they sure don’t seem to act like vaccines do anything at all.
I'd say on average HN readers can avoid COVID by way of privilege. They can have food delivered to them, work from home, receive necessities from Amazon, etc.
This allows them to disproportionately value individual freedoms over the greater good with little to no personal risk.
You don't see this level of anti-mask/anti-vaxx nonsense on forums for Uber drivers and grocery store workers, for example.
I’d say the average HN reader can afford to completely ignore how badly our motivations have screwed over the working class. It’s easy to call for lockdowns and “the new normal” when you and your significant other are making a half million dollars a year and live in a big house with a huge yard.
If anything, the people who are the most ungrounded and fearful are also the most privileged people I know. All the working class folks I know called bullshit on this a long, long time ago. It takes a hell of a lot of privilege for a bunch of spoiled work-from-home tech people to run around shaming everybody about trying to live their lives.
No one is calling for lockdowns anymore. Lockdowns were a temporary measure to avoid overloading hospitals, and (at least in my country) workers who were put out of work were compensated generously by the government in order to keep their needs met.
You do understand that lockdowns are basically the opposite of mask and vaccine mandates right? Masks and vaccines help us avoid lockdowns and get back to normal. Yet all of the people I see complaining about lockdowns are the same people I see refusing to wear masks and refusing to get vaccinated.
People _were_ fine with lockdowns when implementing such measures helped avoid failures in the healthcare system (which is still kind of an issue in certain places in the United States, as ludocode above points out).
No one is calling for lockdowns now, especially now that we have a safe, working vaccine and that we're seemingly close to actual treatments to reduce the death rate of COVID. Vaccines are free. So how is a vaccine mandate fucking over the working class? Or are you just disingenuously using them a cudgel to argue against policies which have the potential to save lives?
Vaccines are free. Anybody can get one. The end. Why people are tolerating the continuance of covid crap almost a year after the release of the vaccine is beyond me. Accept that covid isn’t going away and move on. Move on people.
Forcing restrictions of any kind is complete crap. And masks == restrictions. So does vaccine mandates.
And feel free to downvote me and call me names. I’ve taken heaps of verbal abuse and tons of gaslighting from plenty of real world people. Online people I don’t get phased by at all. Y’all need to realize that “the other side” has very rational arguments and is, quite frankly, correct in those arguments.
The most important reason there are mask and vaccine mandates is that hospitals are already overloaded with unvaccinated COVID patients, which means no one else can get health care. Cancer patients (like my family member) are dying due to lack of treatment. People with sudden injuries (like from car crashes) can't get a bed in a hospital. If we completely remove all restrictions it would get much worse.
Another reason is that not everyone can get vaccinated. My kids are under the age limit for the vaccine. Obviously their risk of death is low, but their risk of long COVID may not be. It bothers me that people who interact with my daughter on a daily basis (like two of the mothers of other children at her daycare) refuse to get vaccinated.
How does any of what you said equate to vaccinated people being required to wear a mask? Do you not believe vaccines work? Why did you get one than?
And the kids argument is plain wrong. Unlike many respiratory viruses out there, covid doesn’t really affect kids. Full stop.
Full hospitals don’t matter. They are private companies who had more than a year and a half to prepare for this. Expecting all of society to bail them out? No thanks.
First, science (and medicine) and "believe" don't go well together. The data we have currently shows that the vaccines are moderately effective at preventing covid and very effective at preventing hospitalization.
> Unlike many respiratory viruses out there, covid doesn’t really affect kids. Full stop.
You need to provide some serious source for your full stops, because I'm sure I've seen papers that said otherwise.
Also covid is not a virus, and it's these subtle misunderstandings and unclear statements that I hear more often from the anti-vaxx crowd, that also make me want to align with the other crowd a little bit more.
> Full hospitals don’t matter.
Until you or someone you love needs medical attention of any kind.
Man, you said earlier that the other side "has very rational arguments", is that supposed to be it?
Mask mandates are necessary mostly because there are still so many unvaccinated people. I generally agree that masks are no longer necessary among vaccinated people. My friends and I don't wear masks when we hang out. I'm okay with establishments dropping mask mandates as long as they have vaccine mandates. That isn't possible for places like grocery stores.
I know you think we should all just drop our masks and stop caring if the unvaccinated get COVID. I get it, and I'd love to not care. But they fill the hospitals, wasting my tax dollars and affecting my family's ability to get treatment.
> Full hospitals don’t matter. They are private companies who had more than a year and a half to prepare for this. Expecting all of society to bail them out? No thanks.
This is so backwards I don't even know where to start.
First of all, hospitals in my country, like many (most?) Western countries, are not private companies. Here they are owned and operated by municipalities.
Second of all, you can't expect all hospitals to prepare for a massive temporary influx of patients. Where are they supposed to get the doctors and nurses? You think a whole country can just double or triple the amount of nurses in a year, and then lay them all off afterwards when the pandemic is over? Where are they supposed to get the space for these patients? You think it's quick to build a hospital? Where are they supposed to get the money to do this?
Third of all, are you not worried about getting in a car wreck and having no ambulance available to come save you because they're all busy picking up unvaccinated COVID patients? Because this is a real thing that is happening right now. I'm guessing you're a fan of private health care; are you not worried about your costs spiking because you're now in competition for medical care with countless unvaccinated COVID patients? "Full hospitals don't matter" is the most backwards and ignorant comment I've seen on this. This absolutely matters to you. It directly affects your ability to get care.
That doesn’t seem right. It’s mostly the bus drivers, police and firefighter unions and the like who came out against vaccine mandates in large numbers. Your typical tech worker is happy with office-mandated vaccine and masks.
>EDIT: One feature I would love on HN is some way to add tags to posters that I see, so I could somehow mark the worst offenders in reality-denying and can make sure to disregard their opinions in other ways, because their brains obviously can process information correctly.
But why do you need a tagging system for that? If they're constantly spewing "reality-denying" comments then surely you can tell by the comments? Or do you find the tagging system useful for when they make plausibly sounding comments, so you can dismiss those with prejudice as well?
It's somewhat annoying to do the work of reading a lead in comment that carefully walks the line while giving it the benefit of the doubt, just to see follow up comments consisting of tired refrains like "masks don't work" [0] and loaded terms like "lockdown". So yes, the latter - personal reputation matters for a reason.
Forgoing context (eg cached judgements) is highly inefficient. Having to individually evaluate each bit of chaff severely undermines the ability to have productive discussion. Looking at the larger picture, destroying the discourse with nonsensical spam seems to have become the entire political game at this point. If we want to have any hope at actually addressing the issues facing us in good faith debate, we've got to upgrade our discussion forums to mitigate the noise floor.
[0] If your criticism is that ersatz cloth masks are ineffective, then the conclusion is to push people towards real N95/P100 respirators rather than just rejecting the insufficient approach.
If someone is easy to manipulate to spread misinformation about Ivermectin being effective for treating COVID in humans, do I really want to listen to their opinions about (for example) technology or are they horribly misinformed in that as well?
Depends. In perfectly logical debate, you'd be right. But I think real world is more complex.
What if "who someone is" a "someone who is easily manipulated and used by bad actors to amplify dangerous misinformation"?
Or, someone being American person of color is pretty important when they talk about racism in US. As opposed to someone, who is not only not a person of color but has been to US like once for a week (like me).
Or perhaps more relevantly, what if "who someone is" is "a certified medical doctor" as opposed to "someone with no experience in medical field who gets their information from corporate social network who makes most money when people are angry because anger is very good for engagement"?
Or, similarly: What if someone who isn't even an American amplifies their opinions on what direction America should take its public health policy in?
But I am strongly in the camp that it doesn't matter. I welcome your opinion, and want to read it. No discussions are perfectly logical; that's not a relevant component in the application of critical thinking to look past who is speaking, and at what they are speaking about. A gag is a poor replacement for Reason, and more-over only serves to strengthen the bubbles we build for ourselves in both our offline and online lives.
I would agree that credentialism is valuable; but that is very, very different from "once said something on the internet that I disagreed with."
First off, your edit removes any credibility your post had
> It's strange that HN is the most antivaxx place on the internet that I know
I assume based on the fanatical nature of your post that for you anti-vax means anything but fervent orthodoxy, where nobody gets to exercise free thought and everyone has to prove on a minute by minute basis that they've followed whatever the New York Times thinks is the vaccine protocol du jour.
I say this, because I think what makes HN special is that it allows free thought. I've seen almost no "conspiracy theory" type vaccine discussion, only healthy a scepticism about different aspects. The consensus is clearly that the pros outweigh the cons, but this site somewhat uniquely allows a discussion instead of just calling any debate "anti-vax" and pretending the poster doesnt deserve to think for themselves. So all said, this is a feature, not a bug. If you're interested in a more religious discussion board, there are plenty.
and plus lumping anti-mask with anti-vaxx is incredibly disingenuous. I am firmly anti-mask and pro-vaccine. It’s absolutely insane to continue with this mask stuff when anybody can get a vaccine. There is zero reason for a vaccinated individual to continue wearing a mask in any circumstance at all. Zero.
anybody who brings up kids is being intentionally obtuse. They know full well that kids are at basically zero risk of serious covid.
Lastly, calling everything you disagree with as “dangerous misinformation” is just intellectually dishonest nonsense. Yeah there is plenty of nonsense out there… but lots of non-crazy people can legitimately object to virtually every single thing society has done the last year and three quarters. To think it is impossible that well intentioned people can think any way but the orthodox covid narrative is, well, not very open minded at all to say it politely.
> I am firmly anti-mask and pro-vaccine. It’s absolutely insane to continue with this mask stuff when anybody can get a vaccine. There is zero reason for a vaccinated individual to continue wearing a mask in any circumstance at all. Zero.
Ok that's just nonsense.
Both vaccines and masks are effective at lowering the likelihood for people getting and spreading COVID. Layered defence / defence in depth is a completed normal approach for pretty much anything serious.
Apartment building have both fire alarms, sprinklers and fire hydrants. Cars have both deformation zones, airbags, seatbelts and ABS. Airplanes have so many redundant safety systems you can't even imagine. When you go to ER with chest pain and shortness of breath, they do both ECG and measure your troponin just to be sure.
Masks (or rather KN95 respirators) are cheap, readily available, and the only negative side is they are very slightly uncomfortable. Why would you not do that?
"I'm anti-mask but pro-vax" makes very little sense. More like a troll post.
> They know full well that kids are at basically zero risk of serious covid.
They do however go to school where they sit in a room in large group perfect for spreading it and then can bring it home and kill their grandparents with it.
> I'm anti-mask but pro-vax" makes very little sense. More like a troll post.
Why would this be a troll post? I’m vaccinated. Covid is not something I care about anymore. Why the hell should I wear a mask? There is zero reason. I could care less if I catch covid. I could care less about “cases” or “slowing the spread”. Covid is here forever. Accept the risk and move on.
I'm vaccinated, but I'm also glad that Trump couldn't have written an Executive Order to inject the population with bleach. There does need to be some limits on what the executive can do, that said, Congress should just pass a law if that's the right thing to do.
We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive comments and breaking the site guidelines. That's not what HN is for.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Another interesting piece of the public conversation around mandates is the redefinition of the term vaccine (https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article25411126...). The CDC claims they redefined it away from the word “immunity” towards the word “protection” because no vaccine grants perfect immunity. Personally I find that to be a bad answer. By taking a weighty word like “vaccine” and redefining it, the expectations of risks and benefits the public holds were exploited. For the majority of the public, those who are under 50 and healthy, COVID poses little risk - it’s not much different from a typical seasonal flu. Personally I think getting an mRNA vaccine is a reasonable low-risk action but the risk of undergoing any medical intervention is nonzero, and it is higher for a novel technology. I bet that if the COVID vaccines were not called a vaccine, people would evaluate the risk reward trade off differently.