When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated | Hacker News Reader

When You’ve Been Fully Vaccinated

cdc.gov

80 pointscyberlab157 comments

Why should you not attend medium-size gatherings after being vaccinated? It's okay to be in a group of 100 people in a plane, but not in that same group of people in a field outside? It doesn't make any sense to me. There are more people dying from shark attacks than from covid spread through medium-size gatherings of vaccinated people.

I feel like the CDC has this mistaken idea of how to get trust, that they will become trusted by always erring on the side of "more lockdown". But always making the same mistake isn't the way to get people to trust you, it's the way to get people to realize, oh this group doesn't really tell you the truth. They are like the boy crying wolf, giving you many false warnings and making it impossible to tell the real warnings.

Spot on. This is why at the beginning, I was the weirdo yelling at everyone "put a damn mask on, the CDC only is saying what they're saying about avoiding masks because of baseless claims of lack of masks for hospitals if you buy them" and now I'm strongly anti-mask (the social cost has gone far beyond the cost of covid itself)

What is the social cost of wearing masks? Genuinely curious.

My 70 year old mother doesn’t want to leave the house despite being fully vaccinated because it’s hard for her to breathe in a mask. How much of the rest of her life does she need to be a shut in?

She should see a doctor about underlying medical conditions if she finds it difficult to breathe through a cloth mask.

Why do you assume she hasn’t? Not everything is fixable, especially as you get older.

It would be assumed that she hadn't seen a doctor about it because she wouldn't have to wear a mask if she has a legitimate medical condition

So all we have learned about you is that you like doing the opposite of whatever they say.

Or that he prefers not to take everything they say at face value and applies his own judgement as an adult before blindly following anything and everything that is thrown out there.

Sure, but there's no real explanation of why, just a performative explanation of their own brilliance.

No, I like doing what makes sense based on the information I have to the best of my ability. At the beginning that was an assessment of claims about mask supply being based purely in fear and unconnected to any ongoing issues. The hospital isn't buying masks from the grocery store. Everyone buying packs of n95 on amazon ought to exhaust the same supply chains the hospitals use, but thats irrelevant if the threat is real, since the supply would (and did) simply ramp up to match demand.

Time goes on and the reality of the virus sets in, I have friends who get it, a number of elderly people I know some quickly trying to follow CDC and WHO guidelines to a T, others saying it doesn't add up and they'll go about their life as afraid of it as they are of a cold or flu. And so more time goes on and I'm checking in with these people, those who got covid, it certainly wasn't pleasant but they never complained about symptoms that were anything more than typical of getting sick, and the elderly people I know, those who are all about following the rules to the T, seem to be full of anxiety about it and declining in (primarily mental) health as a result. Wheres the others not believing in it as much (one lady I know strongly anti-mask, another just sort of blase about it) seem to be enjoying their lives day to day far more.

So thats some of where I'm coming from.

What social cost is far beyond so many dead?

Very similar to the cost we would incur of avoiding driving due to how many it kills constantly. The benefits of accepting the risk outweigh the risk itself.

I believe I can stick to this well enough with the official numbers of deaths, but the truth is I am extremely skeptical of the legitimacy of those numbers considering how deaths get reported, in some cases with decapitations in motor accidents being included in the count because they had covid when it happened, as well as the funding incentives hospitals have to exaggerate their claims of patients dieing of covid. No I'm not claiming some conspiracy theory here, I mean, I think it is a conspiracy but not a deliberate one, its mostly everyone trying to do the right thing, it makes sense to divert more funds to hospitals dealing with a new deadly pandemic, but that also unfortunately creates an incentive to exaggerate to get more funds. Not some sinister plan, just the result of people behaving as people do.

I understand cause of death statistics can be calculated, but do you have an article on what happened with a decapitation being counted as a covid death?

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/verify/covid-deaths-car-c...

There's at least one widely known case specifically a motorcycle accident listed there, which due to being widely known was corrected.

This comes down to how you fill in unknowns in your model of the world, many seem to be just trusting authoritative reports. I would like to trust official reporting, but direct knowledge via peers involved in various industries has proven to me or at least created a confident opinion that trusting things at face value is absurd and a near guarantee of inaccurate conclusions. Its amazing how many seem to experience Gell-Mann amnesia in regards to this sort of thing.

Since there's only one public report of this which easily is found on google (which is what I linked), I'd assume such extreme (decapitation) false labeling of cause of death is not so common. However cases of elderly who had multiple conditions being reported as covid deaths appears likely as a fairly massive distortion of the reported death count. The motorcycle case just serves to show how extreme that can get, you've got to ask just how a report like that even occurred, and also note that it seems to only have been corrected after public scrutiny. (I can't be sure it was corrected due to public scrutiny, but I'm leaning towards that since explanation of how it was corrected is dismissive and vague, no clear suggestion that it would have been corrected if not for publicity of it, seems an easy extra few words to add if it were the truth)

I can understand if this way if thinking isn't yours and if accepting official numbers is preferred, but what I can't understand is the absolute certainty that any other perspective is wrong.

Public health is complex, and it's a bit tough for us to "agree" that it's "okay" to have different, looser perspectives on how to manage a pandemic. If 50% of the population decides that COVID-19 is fake and that nobody is actually affected at all, then we would have no power as a society to do anything about pandemics.

Agreed that it is complex and I understand it is a bit tough, which is part of why I think the authoritative perspective should not disappear or be entirely disrespected, but would best be toned down. I would trust the CDC or WHO far more if they demonstrated themselves to be organizations I could trust. To me, that starts with being honest instead of carefully chosen lies expected to be "most effective" at controlling people to do the right thing. I have faith in the long term that this will be learned by these organizations and they will get better, but for now I don't see it as rational to accept at face value anything coming out of them that has any wiggle room of interpretation.

The rest of the population that believes things you believe are crazy, are not crazy, but just working with different information. There's cases of some beliefs which pretty much exclusively crazy people believe (mass gangstalking for example) but that's pretty easy to identify and has very direct correlation with mental health conditions. The way to fix this is to treat people as the rational agents they are and allow them to make their own choices. For now it seems myself and others who question authoritative sources on what reality is, have to almost default to "what the authority says is probably lies" because that seems to be true.

And don't forget that in February of last year they were telling people to stop wearing masks.

I don't really have any evidence for this, but one possible thought process behind discouraging larger gatherings among vaccinated people is that (some) unvaccinated people would be likely to join in on those gatherings if they become renormalized too early. It's inevitable that large gatherings will be renormalized soon enough and that a lot of people who decline to get vaccinated will join them, but I can imagine many people would see telling a noble lie (of omission) to defer that inevitability for as long as possible as the right call.

> but I can imagine many people would see telling a noble lie (of omission) to defer that inevitability for as long as possible as the right call.

Whatever the benefits of that “noble” lie are have to be weighed against entire generations of people learning that there government has no qualms about lying to them.

If you really want to know:

The spread of covid is actually controlled by managing overall risk. If the collective risk of a group is low enough the spread slows down to a low level or if it's high enough the spread speeds up to a high level. Overall, higher risk activities can be balanced by lower risk activities and still control the spread, so some higher-risk things can be allowed if they are uncommon enough and valuable enough. So, e.g, suppose someone figured out that allowing plane travel and medium-size gatherings were about the same risk but we could only tolerate one or the other but not both and still control the spread of covid. Then it would come down to which was more important/valuable.

Of course, this is complicated, and involves assessing and balancing the relative risk and importance of many more things than those two, and needs to be boiled down to something that can be effectively communicated to a mass audience.

> I feel like the CDC has this mistaken idea of how to get trust, that they will become trusted by always erring on the side of "more lockdown"... like the boy crying wolf...

No, in fact, the contradiction you see in the different recommendations about medium-sized gatherings and plane travel shows that the CDC is balancing their recommendations, some more restrictive and some more permissive.

I can see where you're coming from: you want there to be simple and clear recommendations based on simple and clear criteria. But the problem -- balancing risk across a society -- is inherently nuanced and complicated. The more simple and clear you make the solution, the poorer fit the solution has to the actual problem.

Where’s the cost benefit analysis?

Psychologically, the moment you get the first shot you feel immortal. The CDC here is offering the public health version of abstinence training. Yes, in theory you should behave like you're unprotected until two weeks after the second shot. In practice, people are going to throw a rager on the first warm weekend of spring, followed by a hedonistic summer, and it would be nice to have more guidelines about mitigating risk in those circumstances, and fewer expecting people to maintain an unrealistic strictness.

It's also a bummer to see basic CDC guidelines still not mentioning adequate ventilation, which helps far more than masks do, over a year after we learned the disease is airborne.

I certainly had that feeling ... until 5 days after my first shot when I tested positive for COVID (which I almost certainly contracted at the pharmacy where I got the shot). Talk about an emotional rollercoaster. Thankfully my case was very mild so maybe the vaccine still helped.

But now that I'm doubly protected (natural antibodies and vaccine-induced antibodies?) I'm ready for that hedonistic summer you mentioned - where do I sign up!?

You're not double protected, it's the same antibodies. Recovered from Covid antibodies = vaccine antibodies. But that's just how I understand it, I'm not an expert.

I don't really understand why people who just recovered from Covid (~1 month) still need the vaccine. Not that I mind it, I just can't get it.

Because both give you antibodies, but only the vaccine has that microchip

Yeah, I had some questions about whether I should still get my second dose having had COVID after the first dose. Would it potentially cause any health concerns? Did I even need it? Should that dose instead become a first dose for someone else? Most of the guidance I found was the medical equivalent of "shrug, go ahead and get the second dose", so I did. Hope you're able to get yours soon!

There's no way to make money from people naturally being immune, so regulators have no reason to incentivize that behavior.

And tribally, it's not as much of a bonding experience as sticking a painful sharp object into your shoulder and injecting yourself with the tribe's serum.

The vaccines give you antibodies for one part of the virus: the spike protein. Recovery from covid gives you antibodies for more parts of the virus. This is why reinfection in recovered people is so much rarer than infection in vaccinated people.

Of course the risks of covid are much higher than the risks of any vaccines.

People who have recovered from covid-19 have fewer antibodies for the spike protein than people who have been vaccinated with the mRNA vaccines.

Presumably they have antibodies to things other than the spike protein though, but I don't think the widespread antibody tests look for anything else.

Oh man, that's awful! But your blood is probably half antibodies now. Fire up the BBQ!

I don't know. People I know, who are admittedly mostly a bit older, are all talking 2 weeks after second jab. But, yes, at that point many plan to start traveling, getting together with people, etc. Fortunately, in the US, we're on pace to have a pretty good vaccination rollout by the time summer really kicks in.

> "It's also a bummer to see basic CDC guidelines still not mentioning adequate ventilation, which helps far more than masks do..."

this is somewhat true, but note that adequate ventilation only need be passive, though many will erroneously interpret that as active filtration (e.g., hepa hvac). that's the same sort of logical mistake people make with masks. active filtration helps on the margin, but is not a primary mitigation like distancing or being outside are.

> "...the disease is airborne."

this part is more murky. it's airborne more like a leaf than a bird, in that nearly all virus particles either fall to the ground or fall apart relatively quickly, on the order of seconds. it's true that what remains in the air for more than a few seconds is potentially infectious, but the chances of getting infected from that, if appropriately distanced or outside, is miniscule (i.e., too small to worry about relative to other risks in our lives).

You're misunderstanding what airborne means. It means you can get through the HVAC on your cruise ship, or at choir practice, or in any poorly ventilated space no matter how far apart people stand.

no, that's mediopolitical narrative talking, to instill fear and promote compliance. airborne basically means 'viable virus aloft in the air', in contrast to something like ballistic motion or droplets. no study has conclusively proven that corona transmits, much less survives, in the air for any appreciable duration. at best, there is some inconclusive inference of it.

the princess cruises case, for example, employed some contact tracing (with unreliable subjects) and pcr-tested for (dead) virus particles on surfaces well after-the-fact. none of that comes close to proving airborne transmission (especially not fanciful diagrams of what could have been--those aren't proof, just conjecture). infections were overwhelmingly likely to have spread through prolonged conversations indoors where people were breathing each others' direct exhaust ('droplets'), like you'd do on a vacation, not just by being on the same ship.

It's science talking, dude. Lancet article published today: https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1382825519171833859

Keep in mind that if you're travelling internationally you'll still have to abide by local rules on what vaccinated people can and cannot do. In Canada, for instance, you have to take PCR tests before and after your flight, self quarantine for 14 days with an additional PCR test on day 10. The first three days of your quarantine will be spent in a government-approved hotel booked for CDN 2000 (~1600 USD). They don't care about whether you've already recovered from covid (it might exempt you from the hotel stay, but not the self-quarantine), or whether you've tested negative, or whether you're fully vaccinated.

Madness. The main people who get screwed by this are Canadian citizens/residents. Everyone else would do fine without visiting Canada. (I know such rules are precisely for preventing people from visiting Canada, and I'm sure it's working...). I hope countries will change such policies for vaccinated people soon.

Canada is currently struggling badly with a massive third wave. Cases are higher now than they've ever been, so these requirements are the opposite of madness.

Also note the only people that can come into Canada right now are citizens and residents. It's closed to foreigners.[1]

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...

I have no problem with closing to foreigners. Having a 3rd wave shouldn't really matter. In the list of priorities, a quarantine to fully vaccinated people with negative covid test before and after the flight, should be at the bottom of the list. (assuming the vaccine is approved by the Canadian FDA or whatever they follow in Canada). According to the OP, they require 14 days quarantine including 3 days at an expensive hotel? I mean, seriously WTF... If they said 3 days quarantine at home followed by a negative test then I would say OK. But what the OP is describing is madness. No other word for it.

The point is to put a financial penalty to Canadians traveling internationally without actually putting a restriction on travel, since it's against the Canadian charter and would be difficult politically to do so.

As to why they put in the hotel requirement, it was in response to political controversy. It's not organized well and you can actually skip it if you come in by land or just pay a cheaper $700 fine walk past the hotel counter in the airport so I've heard.

The rest of the requirements have been there since the start and haven't been updated probably because barely anyone has been properly vaccinated in canada yet, and non-resident citizens can't vote.

They could stop it at the airplane level by not providing any flights out. If they allow you to leave to visit a relative saddling then with a 3,000+ tax on the way is not really fair.

The borders are closed for vacation travel and most employment related travel.

The hotel costs are the best example of a good idea implemented poorly. Asking for a negative test good idea. Having to wait upto 3 days to get results a bad idea. Limiting the number of hotels or places they can stay to a handful and allowing them to charge top rates plus covid surcharges while providing a budget experience a really bad idea. Forcing a 3 day hotel package when your test might be available in 24 hours is the icing in the cake.

Similar rules apply in Hawaii (as I am currently learning the hard way). You have to fill out a rather Draconian questionnaire to go there. I'm wondering if there's actually a legal basis for Hawaii to do this for domestic flights, or if it's just "because we can". Also, the information on the official Hawaii web site conflicts with that provided by UAL, which makes it hard to figure out how to comply.

States do have public health powers. For example, based on SCOTUS precedent, they can require vaccines (or at least fine people who don't get them or prevent them from attending school). And, in practice, airlines are going to impose any rules a state established.

in Taiwan, it's about the same. arrive in the country and quarantine for two weeks at your own expense, at a quarantine hotel. I think it's a good policy, however I think it's excessive. but however seems to be working as covid is non-existent here.

> They don't care about whether you've already recovered from covid

Why? Aren't the resulting antibodies the same as those acquired from the vaccine?

> They don't care about whether you've already recovered from covid ... or whether you're fully vaccinated

Well, it sounds like they're treating the two states the same, so at least it's consistent.

Related to this, I don't understand why recovering from Covid and having Igm and Igg antibodies confirmed by test doesn't count the same as having received a full vaccination.

Isn't that exactly what the vaccine does? The end result is you get antibodies that last for several months at least, and cannot get reinfected.

And yet, every time I need to travel I need a PCR test. It's not often at all, mind you, but going between 2 countries is a major pain.

Meanwhile professional drivers, and only them, are allowed to travel with a previous positive Covid test + Igg antibodies test. And last time I crossed the border, they let in a woman who had a lateral flow test, smh.

It makes no sense to me.

Anyone has any insight aside from downvotes?

Can’t find a source atm (it was some video presentation from a biological researcher recently) but I heard that the level of antibodies you get from a vaccine is a multiple higher than from a prior infection.

Also, the infection supposedly only protects you for a short period of time (clear since re-infection is possible).

Also we don’t have much data on how a prior-infected person can spread the virus as a carrier. We have this same concern with the vaccine.

Edit: when we see that certain professions have special rules, it’s more likely that they just got special permission since the job is important not that they have different biological safety.

That's interesting, first time I hear about it. I did read it protects from more variants.

And it's the Igg antibodies that protect from re-infection, but only for 3-6 months at most. Some say it's the same for the vaccine, so it will likely need to be a regular thing, like flu shots.

The idea is that when you get sick, your body just starts randomly throwing things at the virus to see what works, and eventually it finds something that “works”, even though it might not be the optimal solution. The vaccine gives your immune system a plan for the “most effective” solution, which is expected to act more quickly and cover more variants. This is why they are also recommending people get vaccinated even if they have already recovered from an infection.

> The idea is that when you get sick, your body just starts randomly throwing things at the virus to see what works, and eventually it finds something that “works”, even though it might not be the optimal solution.

This is a remarkably apt description of that part of the immune system. For anyone curious, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_cell#Development

The antibodies are not all that matters, they would simply disappear over time. The second dose spurs the B & T lymphocytes to produce even more.

> That booster shot is necessary for the T-cells to stimulate the memory B-cells to produce massive quantities of antibodies. If the booster isn’t given within the appropriate window, lower quantities of antibodies will be produced that may not provide as powerful protection from the virus.

https://theconversation.com/why-it-takes-2-shots-to-make-mrn...

Without commenting on the content itself, this is nice public messaging. It's clear, unambiguous, quick and easy to read, and preempts most follow-up questions people are likely to have.

Shoot first, ask questions later?

My daughter's boyfriend, an RN, has been fully vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine. This week, on the advice of hospital management, he is getting the first of two jabs of the Moderna vaccine.

Anyone else heard of this double vaccination approach?

Is this a joke?

That’s incredibly wasteful of him and unscientific.

Wasteful of his employer, not him.

It's not like they're forcing him to do it. He could just say "no"...

In many states there wouldn't necessarily be any protection from losing his job, if he did.

Let me explain how that would play out.

```

Employer: We want you to take an extra and unnecessary vaccine dose, which you, as an RN, likely understand to be most-likely useless.

Employee: That's useless and unnecessary. No, I won't take it.

Employer: You're fired.

```

What kind of magical world do you think people live in where their employer doesn't hold a stupid amount of power over them?

What kind of world do you live where (high skilled/paid) people get fired over something like that?

Depending on the employment contract, vaccinations of any kind may be required as a condition of employment. This is common for public school.

I do not know any of the specifics of OP's situation, but it does sound reasonable.

Trial lawyers are salivating over all kinds of constitutional and civil rights infringement. I can't wait to see them go to town on the woke employers mandating experimental vaccines on the sheep.

Disservice to the society at large but unscientific? Isn’t it going to very marginally improve effectiveness, like from 95% to 95.5%?

Well, I am skeptical. It's why I asked (and apparently pissed off some down-voting-inclined people by asking).

This seems strange, aren't the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines built using the exact same mRNA sequence?

They're not identical, though similar. You can see them here:

https://github.com/NAalytics/Assemblies-of-putative-SARS-CoV...

I am not aware of any published recommendations backed by evidence for this. Give that, this seems highly irresponsible and a waste of two doses of Moderna vaccine that would be far effective in the fight against COVID if given to someone who actually has not been vaccinated.

Both vaccines are mRNA based, not sure what your daughter’s boyfriend is trying to achieve here. Really wasteful.

If you complete all four lines on the vaccination card do you get a free sub sandwich or something?

No you get a free vaccine, obviously.

You do get free Krispy Kreme, but you don't need four lines of the card.

https://krispykreme.com/promos/vaccineoffer

Much prefer this offer.

https://www.theonion.com/krispy-kreme-offers-vaccinated-cust...

Not specifically. But when I got vaccinated the nurse told me she expected booster shots to come out later for the major vaccines.

That's fine, it's not like we have a shortage or anything.

It's entirely location dependent, isn't it? Some places have an abundance.

There's some evidence that this is actually dangerous. Getting repeat vaccines can confuse your immune system.

In the UK, there's data showing 3x to 4x the rate of adverse effects from the vaccine for people who already have the antibodies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZcQ3xVDSR8&t=690s

Not going to happen. I am not going to risk my life and my family's life on emergency use experimental vaccines. Typical vaccines are multi year efforts 5 o 6 years atleast multiple rounds of trials over longer time horizon to identify the side effects.

Honest question, does this mean you will be doing a self-imposed lockdown for 5 years until you see the long term effects of vaccination?

No I believe I along with my family have already been exposed to the virus with various interactions. We live in a crowded condo with central air and people piling on in the mail room. Everyone in the building including me ordering takeout. There is no reason for me to be in lockdown.

Someone just down voted me for saying CDC does not have the authority to tell me an American Citizen what I can and cannot do without a warrant.

No, you got downvoted for reading a set of guidelines and complaining like it was a set of orders.

This has been my basic approach for months.

The risk has to be balanced with the rewards. So I wear masks when asked to and wash my hands often. And take the 1/1000ish risk of contracting covid a few times a week. Trusting that my low risk of it having lasting complications means that it costs me something like 1/million chance of really bad outcomes to resume most of my normal life.

This must be an Onion News article. Because right off the bat CDC cannot tell me an American Citizen with inalienable rights to not gather. As the law stands today. If you don't like the law, change it.

I can't tell if this is satire or not

Welcome to Hypernormalisation.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hypernormali...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

Unfortunately, it's probably not. But it's another case of someone not being able to tell the difference between a law and guidelines from a public health agency. (Or someone ignoring the difference so that they can be "outraged".)

These are recommendations. A private company can fire you or kick you out for disobeying their terms of service, whether adopted from the CDC or the Contributor Covenant.

The CDC has been horrible on this topic. They’ve been incredibly reluctant to say that vaccinated people can act any differently than non-vaccinated people...

Because in the USA all the anti-vaxxers will just produce fake vaccination cards. If the CDC comes out and says those who have been vaccinated don't need masks, suddenly everyone will be "vaccinated".

Remember all the fake ADA cards last summer?

They might be talking about actual forged cards heh. In my country, people started doing them, fake stamps and all, so they switched to checking QR codes that link to approved labs' websites. Ridiculous, but at 40 Euros per test that you need every time, probably profitable.

Yes, it's the same as a lot of completely untrained "service" dogs

That's a valid concern all over the world I would think. If some people start walking around normally and people question them and they just respond "I'm vaccinated!", that'll spread like a wildfire.

Every time our government agencies have tried to manipulate the public by being economical with the truth instead of just being honest and open about the balancing consideration all they’ve done is burned massive amounts of credibility with the public and given rise to conspiracy theories.

How am I supposed to counter these conspiracy theories when government officials are concededly out there telling “noble” lies?

Very hard agree. People still haven't gotten over the CDC not recommending masks because they didn't want to create a shortage for the medical community. The CDC is not some PR firm, communicate what the science is saying and let someone else worry about supply-chain issues.

What are you talking about? Direct quotes from TFA, guidance for vaccinated people:

YOU CAN:

- "Visit inside a home or private setting without a mask with other fully vaccinated people of any age"

- "Visit inside a home or private setting without a mask with one household of unvaccinated people who are not at risk for severe illness"

- "Travel domestically without a pre- or post-travel test"

- "Travel domestically without quarantining after travel"

- "Travel internationally without a pre-travel test depending on destination"

- "Travel internationally without quarantining after travel"

We’re still learning how vaccines will affect the spread of COVID-19. After you’ve been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, you should keep taking precautions—like wearing a mask, staying 6 feet apart from others, and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces—in public places until we know more.

This requires more justification. If we took the cautious choice every time we didn’t have all the facts, civilization would collapse.

We may not have gold standard scientific studies but what is our best guess of the distribution of possible consequences of fully vaccinated people attending medium or large gatherings? How do those balance against our best guess of the distribution of costs of continuing to bar such attendance?

Where’s the analysis?

To me the justification is: we're in the midst of what we already know to be a global pandemic. The number of lives lost is nothing to scoff at. We do not want to declare victory until we know we can declare victory.

Personally, I feel that's a fair justification for the CDC's hesitation.

If we throw out cost benefit analysis and just go with our guts “out of an abundance of caution” we are no better than the anti-vaxxers.

I think there's an argument to be made that we can make the cost benefit analysis with or without assuming the vaccine is a silver-bullet. The CDC is choosing to not make that assumption and make the analysis that way.

I don't think it's fair to put that methodology in the same bucket as anti-vax logic.

Assuming the vaccine is or isn’t perfectly effective aren’t the only two options. They can use a probability distribution. Surely at least one statistician works at the CDC.

Fair point. I guess I'm just not approaching it from the same angle as you. I am just assuming they're doing that kind of work, but are not publicly giving advice until they feel confident in that advice. Maybe I'm wrong in giving them the benefit of the doubt here.

OK, so do a cost benefit. What is the cost of a mask? Next to nothing--a buck at most, and even the disposable ones can be reused a few times. The cost is vanishingly small. Wearing masks and maintaining social distancing is a tiny, minuscule price to pay, even if the benefit is still questionable for people around vaccinated people. It costs almost nothing and is almost zero effort, so why wouldn't you?

I just don't get this thing against masks, for the life of me I don't understand the mentality. In the past people have gone off to war and died for their country, and yet today we have people ready to riot about putting a little piece of cloth on their faces. I can't figure it out.

Do you also claim that medium and large gatherings have zero value?

> In the past people have gone off to war and died for their country,

There’s no evidence that a fully vaccinated person wearing a mask is doing anything positive for anyone, much less their country.

It does not cost anything to avoid gatherings.

Clearly we are going to have gatherings again at some point. The only real question is the timing.

Considering only 6% are provably true Covid deaths, I'm really not so sure the number of lives lost isn't something to scoff at. Most people that say something like that also get in a car almost every day.

We can diff-in-diff deaths from medical emergencies; there doesn't need to be very strong proof beyond that because of remarkable signal strength.

Can you explain further or link to some resource that does? I am not entirely convinced one way or the other, but I've leaned more and more towards viewing covid like any other cold based on information I'm aware of. The apparent absolute lack of integrity of CDCs summaries of how to interpret their data vs. the appearance of the data has also contributed to my view. I'm not going to say I'd be happy to be proven wrong - it would mean the world is a in a worse state than I'd hope it is, but I don't intend to have an incorrect model of reality, so if my model is wrong please help me correct it.

I've heard of vaccinated people coming down with covid. Vaccines are reported to be extremely effective against hospitalization and death, but it looks like there's some evidence vaccines don't completely prevent spreading it.

> Where’s the analysis?

One hand: Analysis takes a while. A quorum/consensus never seems to form within the year.

Other hand: It's disheartening to hear such blatant conjecture from government officials.

Appreciate the clear messaging, I think they need more coherence regarding masking, otherwise they lose credibility.

I also think the CDC should start to heavily invest in STI prevention now...

Good reminder that just because you’ve had the jab that doesn’t mean that everything is “back to normal.” We’re still in a pandemic. It’s still critical everyone continue to wear masks and social distance in public. Also more mutations are appearing from the UK and South Africa so likely we will need booster shots in a few months. We’re almost there but not quite.

We'll never be "there" whatever "there" means. All signs are pointing towards this becoming endemic in humans like the flu.

I mean we said as much back in March of 2020. These lockdowns weren’t to eradicate covid. They were to intentionally slow it down to buy time to build up healthcare systems. Somehow that messaging has been lost to “if everybody did a hard lockdown, this would be over sooner”

The CDC is doing a mass disservice by keeping restrictions on vaccinated people. The message they are giving is “vaccines don’t really work and even if they did it isn’t good enough”. We have oodles of proof from Israel that these vaccines are perhaps the best humans have ever created. But no... that isn’t good enough for our public health overlords.

I have no clue how this all ends in lockdown states. But the overly conservative “mother knows best” public health messaging isn’t really gonna sell vaccines to people who weren’t concerned about covid.

Also, the idea of being a fully vaccinated grocery store worker having to wear an uncomfortable mask for a full shift knowing full well it is only for appearances... especially when your politicians offer no suggestions when they can take it off again. That is some hot garbage.

Where’s “Keep calm and carry on” when you actually need it.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted, but it could be down to the "more mutations are appearing from the UK and South Africa" line - as I understand it, we know about those mutations just because the UK and SA are doing a very good job of documenting every mutation they come across. There'll be just as many, if not more, variations in the US but the US isn't bothering to track and document them.

> It’s still critical everyone continue to wear masks and social distance in public.

Why? Honestly, I don't understand this line of thinking at all for the fully vaccinated. The CDC said vaccinated people don't spread the virus [1]. They also said vaccinated people can gather without masks.[2] In RARE instances the South African variant escapes the Pfizer vaccine, but the vast majority of people vaccinated won't get sick from it.[3] Sure, be careful, but that doesn't mean we need to live in irrational fear.

[1] https://fortune.com/2021/04/01/its-official-vaccinated-peopl...

[2] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/cdc-guid...

[3] https://abcnews.go.com/Health/rare-instances-south-africa-va...

Since I got flagged in other comments, I'll post again here. Does this imply that we will wear mask, social distancing and avoid indoor gathering until the dusk of humanity? I know my question is retarded and stupid compared to smart HN folks, so please enlighten me.

Of course not. At some point immunity will be high enough, and infections, hospitalizations and deaths will be low enough that those restrictions will go away. That point is not today, but this page lays out what the CDC thinks vaccinated people can do until that point.

I don’t think apologists for the CDC are grasping what’s at stake here. If the government and especially government scientists are widely perceived to have lied to the public, no matter how noble a reason they think they have, it is going to further shatter faith in our institutions. This could well be our Watergate.

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