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Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> It’s a win-win because you get to gamble on quicker immunity.

Yes. I am very worried that countries are leaning towards "immunity passports". If we tell people that in order to work you must have gotten and recovered from this disease, everyone will suddenly seek to be infected. How many people will sign up for this simply because they feel they need to get this disease in order to return to work? The disease could become a valuable commodity to be sought, even purchased. If the choice is between getting the virus or remaining unemployed for the foreseeable future, I'll roll the dice.

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Immunity passports reveal a naive understanding of infection. Thousands of people in South Korea have tested positive even after testing negative. Some of those people continued to infect others. One man in China has tested positive for the virus for over 70 days despite having no symptoms. You can read anecdotes on /r/covid19positive from people who, after exercise, suddenly tested positive and developed more severe symptoms after having previously “recovered” and tested negative.

It could very well be that the virus remains reactivatable in some people for an unknown amount of time, maybe even establishing permanent latency like HIV or herpes. Neurological effects are known to occur with this virus and the types of tissue known to be affected continues to expand.

In such a scenario, an immunity “passport” would become more of a scarlet letter.

The WHO is warning there is no proof that having recovered from an infection actually makes you immune

Well it’s not going to make your more susceptible, that’s for sure.

>> makes you immune

Of course not. Nobody has any such evidence. "Immune" is an absolute term. Even a vaccine doesn't make one "immune" to a disease. So the WHO is absolutely correct in saying that. But if this disease is like the vast majority of similar infections, have had it once likely reduces one's chances of getting it a second time. Of all the viruses that cause disease, only a very few are regularly caught repeatedly.

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