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Comment by jdavis703 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, as long as COVID-19 fills up hospitals we should do this. Not having hospitals seriously compromises quality of life.

I had untreated kidney stones for about a week at the peak of the pandemic. When I was in the middle of an attack I could not work, the pain was too severe. I was missing several hours of work everyday just dealing with pain.

I finally got to the emergency room which did basic imaging and gave me painkillers and muscle relaxers.

I didn’t get the actual stones removed until 6 months later!

So yes, I’d rather vaccinate and mask up then be denied healthcare.

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> Not having hospitals seriously compromises quality of life.

A non-trivial percentage of healthcare workers were infected in 2020 and recovered with natural immunity to Covid. Some of those feel strongly enough about vaccine mandates that they are prepared to move jurisdictions or retire, which would exacerbate existing staffing shortages in some hospitals. If we don't want more hospital shortages, we should reconsider unnecessary vaccine mandates for those with hard-earned natural immunity, which includes nasal/mucosal immunity, unlike intramuscular vaccines that were developed for symptom reduction, https://www.statnews.com/2021/08/10/covid-intranasal-vaccine...

> Vaccines that are injected into the arm have done a spectacular job at preventing severe disease and death. But they do not generate the kind of protection in the nasal passages that would be needed to block all infection. That’s called “sterilizing immunity.” The fact that the vaccines don’t block all infections and don’t prevent vaccinated people from transmitting isn’t a big surprise, said Kathryn Edwards, a vaccine expert at Vanderbilt School of Medicine.

The UK's SAGE also commented on nasal (inhaler) vaccine development and the consequences of non-sterilizing intramuscular vaccines for variants, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

> Whilst we feel that current vaccines are excellent for reducing the risk of hospital admission and disease, we propose that research be focused on vaccines that also induce high and durable levels of mucosal immunity in order to reduce infection of and transmission from vaccinated individuals. This could also reduce the possibility of variant selection in vaccinated individuals.

A recent study showed having had COVID before offers less protection from reinfection than the vaccine [0].

"The study of hundreds of Kentucky residents with previous infections through June 2021 found that those who were unvaccinated had 2.34 times the odds of reinfection compared with those who were fully vaccinated. The findings suggest that among people who have had COVID-19 previously, getting fully vaccinated provides additional protection against reinfection."

[0] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...

Detailed response to that study, https://satyameva.medium.com/analysis-of-reduced-risk-of-rei...

> Also what should be obvious is this study doesn’t really look at the relative strengths of naturally acquired immunity vs vaccination acquired immunity, it is looking at whether vaccination can add further to the robust protection elicited by covid infection.

Latest UK data shows 137 confirmed cases of reinfection out of 5.2 million first-positive PCR tests, which works out to 0.003%, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/... (see chart on page 18)

This article completely destroy the CDC's report: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/more-voodoo-e....

The CDC's report is a fantastic example as to why the CDC don't deserve our trust. They are dishonest. They cherry pick data to fit their narrative. They are unburdened by the constraints of peer review. They admit in their own study that it can't apply causation and yet they remain silent as the media run wild and report the study as causative fact.

This analysis has, to my knowledge, not been debunked at all: https://arieh.substack.com/p/inside-israels-delta-outbreak-p....

It shows natural immunity far outclassing vaccine immunity in Israel.

In terms of peer reviewed studies, they all show that natural immunity is fantastic:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781112

https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2589-5370(21)0...

https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-37...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8209951/pdf/RMV...

https://arieh.substack.com/p/inside-israels-delta-outbreak-p...

> it looks like recovered people — people who had tested positive for the coronavirus in a past PCR test — are massively under-represented. Recovered people are around 9% of Israel’s population, but they’re less than 1% of current cases.

> That has led to speculation that recovery from past Covid is more protective against infection from the Delta Variant than vaccination. Known recovered people in Israel are mostly not vaccinated, though some chose to get a single booster dose ... From data I was passed last week, recovered people were testing at only 0.1% positivity, compared to more than 1% for vaccinated people.

> I wouldn’t be surprised if natural infection turned out to be more protective against variants than spike protein vaccination. It makes sense that the body’s immune system would find more ways to attack the whole pathogen and would recognise different parts of it compared to the changing spike in variants.

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-... argues that people are misinterpreting the Israeli data due to Simpson's paradox:

  In the case of vaccine efficacy vs. severe disease, it is
  the fact that both vaccination status and risk of severe 
  disease are systematically higher in the older age group 
  that makes overall efficacy numbers if estimated without 
  stratifying by age misleading, producing a paradoxical 
  result that the overall efficacy (67.5%) is much lower 
  than the efficacy for either of the age groups (91.8% and 
  85.2%).

Thanks for sharing this analysis. I scanned through it and it seems reasonable to me. I don't think anyone actually thinks natural immunity is 7 times as effective as vaccine immunity, as the numbers suggest might suggest without deeper or more thorough analysis.

As far as I can tell, the analysis you link also continues to support the notion that natural immunity works wonderfully well, on par with or better than vaccine immunity as far as we can tell.

> Some of those feel strongly enough about vaccine mandates

Is it more or less than scientists arguing against man-made climate change?

First off, I'm sorry you had to suffer like that - and I don't want anyone to be denied healthcare.

> I’d rather vaccinate and mask up then be denied healthcare

You've presented a false dichotomy here - mass vaccination and masking will not necessarily prevent overwhelmed hospitals.

Israel is a prime example - with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world - their hospitals are being overwhelmed right now due to the variants. The CDC is reporting similar data from the U.S. [1][2][3]. There's no doubt that vaccination is saving some lives, but it also may be partly to blame for the increasing dominance of variants of concern. [4][5]

And counterintuitively, compulsory masking is likely setting us up for a very bad winter in terms of endemic illnesses such as influenza and RSV - which poses an increased risk of overwhelming medical facilities even further.

I only raise these counterpoints to help inform others and bring much needed nuance to these discussions.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7034e3.htm

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

[3] https://www.cdc.gov/library/covid19/08132021_covidupdate.htm...

[4] Risk of rapid evolutionary escape from biomedical interventions targeting SARS-CoV-2 spike protein https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33909660/

[5] Can we predict the limits of SARS-CoV-2 variants and their phenotypic consequences? https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/long-term-evoluti...

[6] The impact of COVID-19 nonpharmaceutical interventions on the future dynamics of endemic infections https://www.pnas.org/content/117/48/30547

Only 66% of Israelis are fully vaccinated: there's a good 3 million hard-core religious orthodox who won't let science interfere with their deity's will.

3 million of blissfully and deliberately ignorant individuals who won't adapt their social behavior to avoid viral spread is more than enough to overrun any health system.

How many of those were infected and recovered in the last 18 months?

How many were infected multiple times in the last 18 months?

I don't have the Israel numbers, but UK data shows 137 confirmed cases of reinfection out of 5.2 million first-positive PCR tests, which works out to 0.003%, see charge on page 18, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

I would be cautious about interpreting those numbers without a bit of nuance.

The original spring 2020 outbreak in the UK was huge, affecting a sizable percentage of the population. However at that time PCR testing was nowhere near scaled up to the point that all of these cases could be tested.

Therefore if you were infected in the first wave, recovered, and are now reinfected 16 months later you probably aren't going to be one of those 137 because it's quite unlikely you were PCR tested the first time around.

That's not to say reinfection is super-common either, but it's probably at least an order of magnitude (or possibly even two) more common than that raw percentage would suggest. In other words, you've produced a statistic with zero significant figures of accuracy.

I was infected 3 times in last 9 months, according to my IgG level. First time I was one day away of hospitalization, 20% lungs damaged. Second time it was 37.1C temperature for 3 days (for those from imperial system, norm in 36.9) and no other symptoms. Third time I didn't notice at all.

It's closer to 1 million than 3 million. There are about 6 million vaccinated out of a nation of 9 million, but that's also including kids 0-12. The number I know is about 1 million eligible who refuse the shot.

It's not the ultra orthodox who really stand out. There's about 30% in the general 20-29 groups who haven't taken their shots (going down to about 20% in 30-39 and down to 10% in the 60+ group), and many Arabs who are reluctant to do so too.

> Israel is a prime example - with the highest vaccination rate in the world

Israel has 60% of the population fully vacced, compared to iceland with 71%

>Israel's ICUs overflow as unvaccinated patients fall severely ill

https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/sj1lzflgk

Isreal also pretty strictly contolled things early on so had less natural immunity than others going into this wave (but Iceland did that too). And they struck a deal to get the vaccine early, so may have wanin immunity (lots of debate on this and whether this actually just behavior change due to presumption of immunity).

Did you notice the distinct lack of flu outbreak last winter? I suppose marks and social distancing just prevented it altogether.

They did. Australia publishes data on this and the effect is profound. Australia has had about 400 flu cases in 2021, compared to a 5-year average of about 50000. None of those cases in 2021 have been hospitalised or led to death, when in the average year there’d be about 150. 2020 also yielded a similarly precipitous drop in cases.

Did states that didn’t shut down schools or businesses see normal rates of flu? https://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/index.htm

It seems like it just disappeared regardless of restrictions.

It could have disappeared from Europe because the new version did not arrive from South-East Asia, where it normally originates. The anti-covid measures there might have prevented the world outbreak.

The previous flu version is not as potent due to vaccination and people having had it, thus the herd immunity is achieved.

> You've presented a false dichotomy here - mass vaccination and masking will not necessarily prevent overwhelmed hospitals.

That’s a very disingenuous way of presenting things: we can’t extinguish the house fire so we might as well leave the kids upstairs. It’s used far too much by people keen to profit from a cultural war that has nothing to do with health policies. It’s a sad news that a simple solution isn’t enough, but in no way it should called “a counter-point”. It’s not. “Vaccines alone are not enough” isn’t a counter point to saying that they are a necessary aspect of getting the pandemic to acceptable levels. It’s just saying they are insufficient.

Vaccines are incredibly effective; if hospitals are overwhelmed there would be far more deaths without the vaccines and you cannot in good conscience argue against widespread vaccination by claiming they are not enough on their own. There are many more things that can be done, and put all together last year, they have helped delay infection, spread the wave of hospitalisation to manageable levels. If we need more efforts now, let’s not throw the most effective tool we have because it’s not a cure-all.

For people in a similar situation. Chanca Piedra might help.

How about also starting mass campaign to get people healthy and taking appropriate supplements - using carrots where necessary?

Hospitals are always full. Like any business, they mean to run at close to capacity. Capacity here has more to do with staffing than actual rooms, beds, or equipment.

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