Most authorities are downplaying natural immunity, despite evidence like this. The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.
Well, I'm currently in quarantine from my 4 month old and wife because an acquaintance refused to get vaccinated. "young people don't die from COVID" type mentality.
I attended my brother's bachelor party - of which we all thought everyone was vaccinated. Turns out this person, not only refused to get vaccinated - but had COVID exposure and still decided to attend. He told us the day after being in close contact for 3 days, that he tested positive and had symptoms during our contact with him.
Of the unvaccinated people I know, this mentality is the large majority of them. They refuse to get vaccinated because they refuse to consider how their actions might actually impact someone else.
Also, presumably, this person would now be as immune as someone who's gotten the vaccine, based on this study.
What mentality is this? It is well known that young people are at extremely low risk of dying, even more so than the average person.
> He told us the day after being in close contact for 3 days, that he tested positive and had symptoms during our contact with him.
The problem wasn't that your acquaintance refused the vaccine. The problem is that he didn't stay home. You could say the same thing about the flu. If you have it, don't go to parties. Who goes to a party with a flu? A cold even?
I hardly think this guy is representative. There's also evidence that asymptomatic people don't spread COVID. This would mean that if they don't have symptoms, you won't get it, and if they do and they're like most people, they'll stay home which means no transmission.
> Of the unvaccinated [sic] people I know, this mentality is the large majority of them. They refuse to get vaccinated because they refuse to consider how their actions might actually impact someone else.
This seems unnecessarily hostile. Plenty of people don't want to be vaccinated either because they've had COVID and don't need it (this study isn't the first; Peter McCullough for example has spoken about other studies), they don't want to risk the potential side effects, including long term, of an experimental vaccine that is not technically approved by the FDA, ethical/religious reasons (the use of stem cell lines derived from aborted children during vaccine research, etc), and because the virus is not a serious threat to most people.
It is disturbing how the media is lumping those wary of the COVID vaccine in with antivaxers (~2% of the population; 98% of Americans get all common immunizations), COVID deniers, or "grandma killers". Let's not do that, as the OP recommends.
We wouldn’t be in the middle of a pandemic if this were true.
> This would mean that if they don't have symptoms, you won't get it
It's flu-like transmission - which is mostly through droplets. If you're not sneezing in the face of people you don't have high chances of passing it around
"When taken together, I think these two studies show that people with asymptomatic covid-19 can and do spread the disease, and the best estimate from both studies is that those with symptomatic disease are about three to four times more infectious than those with asymptomatic disease. That is not a huge difference. Even though people with symptoms are a couple of times more infectious than people without symptoms, those without symptoms could still be causing more infections overall."
[0] https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/06/06/can-asymptomatic-p...
They've considered it, they just don't care. What they actually care more about is the insinuation that they should care at all.
To not trust vaccination is to not trust science.
However, that's across the population. Factors like extended contact period increase viral load intake, could further decrease the effectiveness. Since my 4 month old can't get vaccinated against COVID yet, we decided it wasn't worth taking the risk.
Most vaccines have an efficacy lower than the COVID vaccines. Basically you are feeding off of your own fear, and you don't trust science. That's your right, but don't blame anyone for your self-imposed quarantine but yourself at this point.
Regardless, this study is good news — because it means that every person who is infected and then recovers contributes towards herd immunity, regardless of their outlook on vaccines.
Is it actually the case that immunocompromised people cannot be vaccinated? The ones that I know have been; as far as I know, the mRNA vaccines by virtue of not being based on live virus are not dangerous to those with weakened immune systems.
In recent studies something like half of organ transplant recipients did not produce antibodies after being vaccinated, and there have been a few cases where a group of vaccinated transplant recipients caught Covid (e.g. from a vaccinated nurse who had an asymptomatic infection) and had severe symptoms including some deaths.
We both got vaccinated as soon as we could.
If so you should probably email these researchers or something. Bet they would be interested
This year I've been heavily sick several times (and the flu almost never caused me all this pain before in my life) and it was never covid.
If one of the test returned a false positive I would have been convinced it was covid. If I actually got covid again I would have believed I was one of the rare reinfections.
It's not like bringing your bomb onto a plane decreases the odds of an attack, because what are the odds of two bombs.
The devil is in the details here. If natural immunity wears off after 6-9 months (as some studies suggest), and one spouse got infected again after that period, then the odds of the other one of getting re-infected too are pretty high.
It would be a shame if such people avoided the vaccine under a disinformation-driven impression that the vaccines are risky, and ended up catching/spreading Covid later on.
OK, I think I can agree with this, I've seen lots of "getting the vaccine provides much better immunity than getting Covid"-type statements that seemed more like conjecture.
> The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.
Is this a serious statement? The problem isn't that natural immunity doesn't keep make you immune, the problem is that "acquiring natural immunity" often results in death, especially for vulnerable populations.
> Is this a serious statement? The problem isn't that natural immunity doesn't keep make you immune, the problem is that "acquiring natural immunity" often results in death, especially for vulnerable populations.
It's a real policy question: how much to worry about vaccinating people who already had COVID. The confusion (or propaganda?) downplaying natural immunity means that many people would needlessly get the vaccine while already possessing immunity from prior infection.
In the US, this no longer matters, as we already have more vaccine supply than we have people willing to receive it. Elsewhere, though, where supplies remain scarce, we absolutely should be focusing efforts around vaccinating people who have not yet gotten the disease.
You're reading beyond what I'm saying. My point is that there is no need to push those who have already gotten Covid to also get the vaccine. I'm not saying anything about getting sick as an alternative to getting the vaccine.