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Comment by gfodor | Hacker News Reader

People were forced to get it or lose their jobs.

Were you not forced to take certain vaccines before going to school?

Not all vaccines are the same. For example, I was never forced to take a vaccine to go to school that wasn't approved by the FDA.

This is an incredibly common expectation, and the only reason people took exception to it is because they dislike the government telling them what to do. Interesting I never heard from grandpa rail against the military for the vaccinations he was forced to get in the military...

No, it was unprecedented to tell people to take an emergency authorized drug of a highly experimental nature or lose their jobs.

It was always a gamble. I took it, knowing it was a gamble, since COVID was very dangerous. We forced people to gamble. It was criminal.

You are comparing the volunteer military, an organization where the government controls its enlistees every move / food / clothing literally all parts of their life... to the life of an every day citizen?

Jobs are also voluntary.

Yeah being alive is technically voluntary too if you want to be an edge-lord cynic about it.

Or those of who got the virus before the vaccine. Now we’re demonized for not wanting to double dip.

I had COVID twice before I had the chance to get vaccinated. I then thought I’d wait for the new vaccine for my busy wedding season that’s starting now.

Too bad it’s just a booster and I’m not eligible to get or because I haven’t gotten the probably essentially useless (for me) original vaccine. As far as I’m aware they didn’t announce the details of this until sometime in August. At this point by the time I got the booster that might provide me some protection the virus will probably have mutated again.

Good, there's no evidence of long-term immunity after an infection or a vaccination. Hence the boosters.

> no evidence of long-term immunity after an infection

Define immunity, but there is absolutely evidence of long term effectiveness against hospitilization and death if you care to look for it.

"No evidence" doesn't mean we looked for it and it doesn't exist, it means we didn't look for it yet or have chosen not to look into it. In this case you seem to be citing ancient talking points from before it was possible to tell how long lasting the immunity from covid would be, AKA in early 2021 they couldn't state for fact that immunity against severe death would last longer than a year because the disease itself was too new, (although sar-cov1 was known to have long lasting immunity 10 years later, but lets pretend we didn't know that it would work the same). Now we know because the disease has been around long enough to gather those types of statistics.

So you have some evidence to the contrary?

Sure, here's hopefully a helpful summary but you can search for your own primary sources.

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...

> Virus-specific B cells increased over time. People had more memory B cells six months after symptom onset than at one month afterwards. Although the number of these cells appeared to reach a plateau after a few months, levels didn’t decline over the period studied.

Take the above snippet for example. From this you could make the statement "we don't have evidence for natural immunity lasting beyond 8 months" But that is explicitly a limit coming from the length of study.

>"we don't have evidence for natural immunity lasting beyond 8 months"

Better get a booster then.

I fear you missed my point.

I fear you've avoided mine. There are verifiable reinfections. Covid-19 is probably going to celebrate it's 3rd birthday in a few weeks maybe even a few days from now and Omicron has reinfecting for the entire year those that have had other Covid variants before.

I'm going to demonize the person that thinks they don't need a vaccine.

Like I said, define immunity, I presumed protection from severe disease or death, for which prior infection hold quite well. Mild symptomatic infection is not generally avoidable vaccinated or otherwise.

> I'm going to demonize the person that thinks they don't need a vaccine.

Not sure what that's doing here.

Good.

You want the right to breathe virus particles all over me so that you can avoid basic safety measures? Sorry, my sympathy ends where my lungs begin.

Vaccinated people spread viruses, what do you mean ?

Is drunk driving perfectly OK because sober driving also sometimes results in accidents?

You smuggled in two assumptions:

- That forcing people to take a drug authorized under EUA with a relatively novel technology is a "basic safety measure"

- That people who didn't comply with this "basic" measure are not breathing virus particles all over you

I'll leave it to you to decide how good these assumptions are.

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