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You're ignoring that a significant portion of #2 have already got resistance via infection. There is no point whatsoever for those people to get vaccinated, apart from padding out the pockets of Big Pharma.

With the scale of vaccinations that we already have, COVID is firmly in the realm of influenza in terms of potential future deathtoll. In fact, for much of this year the UK had higher influenza deaths than COVID deaths:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/22/flu-pneumonia-de...

Why don't we pressure people to get influenza vaccines yearly?

>There is no point whatsoever for those people to get vaccinated

False, the vaccine is more effective than antibodies from a previous infection. It's not a huge difference, but it is absolutely statistically significant.

This message has been brought to you by Pfizer.

Source or GTFO

EDIT: Your downvotes are delicious as you provide no source. The notion of vaccine immunity being stronger than natural immunity, especially with mRNA vaccines, is absurd. You are generating response to a single surface protein of the virus. The virus has many surface proteins and a natural infection will tune the immune system to respond to all of them. There is no evidence of vaccine immunity being stronger than natural.

There have been numerous studies showing that 2 doses elicits higher antibody responses than natural immunity alone, here's an example of one:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01325-6

Useless paper. Measuring arbitrary antibody levels. The antibody levels produced by natural exposure could be sufficient to protect against hospitalization, and the additional vaccine dose could be unnecessary. Also, 21-day follow up (laughable).

Show me some real-world data of previously infected individuals getting severe reinfections at significantly higher rates than the fully vaccinated. That's the metric needed to make your claim and those data have not been produced. Also, the staying power of the vaccine is already in question BY ITS OWN MANUFACTURER just via the prospect of boosters. They admit implicitly that the immunity their drug produces does not last.

From the paper you cited:

> circulating antibody levels alone are not definitive measures of immune status

This is well established in the literature.

The paper you have cited absolutely does not support the claim that the "vaccine is more effective than antibodies from a previous infection".

Says the person that's also providing no source? Why is your statement somehow more trustworthy?

Because before 2020, natural immunity to virtually any infectious disease was considered sufficient and superior to immunization. The entire concept of natural immunity being "not good enough' is brand new. It was never uttered before COVID, and it has never been proven even during COVID. It's an absurdity, that nobody in the realm of infectious disease even entertained before government started acting forcefully on behalf of pharmaceutical companies in the past 18 months.

Go look for yourself. "Do I need varicella vaccine if I had chickenpox?" The answer is NO.

>Oh, this is a different disease

Okay, then produce a single study indicating that those with prior COVID infection are hospitalized with a reinfection at higher rates than the fully vaccinated. That study doesn't exist. It's all just arbitrary anti-body level response studies, which are useless. If you can't produce a study to show why this infectious disease should be treated differently than all the others, then we'll go with the default position: natural immunity is enough.

Again, where is your source?

"Don't take the unproven, unjustified drug" is the default position in medicine. You are trying to shift the burden of proof here and it's embarrassing.

YOU are making at least 3 positive claims when advocating vaccination for those with prior COVID infections:

1) COVID natural immunity breaks historical patterns of natural immunity in similar infectious disease 2) People with "only" natural immunity are at significant risk of severe reinfection 3) There is a risk-adjusted, significant benefit for those with "only" natural immunity to get vaccinated

Israel found that with delta it's the opposite: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/309762. " Israelis who were vaccinated were 6.72 times more likely to get infected after the shot than after natural infection"

> the vaccine is more effective than antibodies from a previous infection

Unless you can cite at least one peer-reviewed primary source, then we must regard your claims as purely uninformed opinion.

And to further counter your claims, here is evidence that naturally acquired immunity is equally as effective as vaccination [1].

Quote from [1]:

- "The cumulative incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection remained almost zero among previously infected unvaccinated subjects, previously infected subjects who were vaccinated, and previously uninfected subjects who were vaccinated"

[1] Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v...

> Why don't we pressure people to get influenza vaccines yearly?

At least here in the US, we absolutely do.

I am in cohort #1. I don't want to continue to increase the chances of breakthrough mutations and I do not want others to do so.

I do not want a substantial number of people getting sick and having to use collective resources to heal them at the expense of others because of a collectively bad choice. I do not want to substitute, work overtime, or have reduced productivity due to this.

While vaccinated people are fairly safe, even with us all being vaccinated we are adding to the background risk of hospitalization the equivalent of several hard flu seasons. I've had a really bad flu where I felt I was dying, twice in my life. I do not look forward to having my body bearing that brunt every couple of years for the rest of my life.

> I do not want a substantial number of people getting sick and having to use collective resources to heal them at the expense of others because of a collectively bad choice

Why are you ok with using this argument for covid, but not smoking / obesity / football / etc.? The principle is sound, but the selective application is not.

Who says they aren’t? I think there are some very good arguments to be made about how society could collectively benefit by not subsidizing activities like these through insured healthcare.

I do not find it unreasonable that people who partake in high-risk activities or have high-risk lifestyles also contribute different amounts.

I am very much in favor of taxing cigarretes and unhealthy foods so that consumers pay for the externalities of their actions.

> I am in cohort #1. I don't want to continue to increase the chances of breakthrough mutations and I do not want others to do so.

Mutations can happen anywhere in the world. To reduce the odds of mutations, we need to vaccinate as many people as we can globally. Our efforts would be much better spent getting vaccines in the hands of people in other countries that are very willing to take it.

> I am in cohort #1. I don't want to continue to increase the chances of breakthrough mutations and I do not want others to do so.

I'm very much with you, but I think that ship sailed between the lack of international coordination, the lack of vaccination mandates or other measures to improve rates even in the well-supplied-with-vaccine US, and the rush to remove other measures like closures and mask mandates way before it made any sense to.

Instead, we're running an active program to train COVID to overcome the "miracle" vaccine we're so proud of. Should be... interesting.

> every couple of years for the rest of my life.

That ship has sailed? Covid is not going away, ever. It's politically impossible to mandate 100% vaccination, and even if you could, there's still animal reserves. The best case scenario is that covid becomes like the common cold, and you can mostly avoid it with occasional booster shots.

I wish everyone would get vaccinated too, but let's be realistic. How many years do you think you can keep up rules like "must show vaccination card to enter"? At what point does everyone, including vaccinated people, start ignoring them? Personally I think it's going to fail out of the gate, and I'm on team vax.

> That ship has sailed? Covid is not going away, ever.

Why not? We managed to eradicate smallpox. There was political will all over the world to vaccinate almost everyone, and it worked. What's so different about Covid?

It's not nearly deadly enough, unlike smallpox. From Wikipedia:

The risk of death after contracting the disease was about 30%, with higher rates among babies.[6][12] Often those who survived had extensive scarring of their skin, and some were left blind.

Also critical: There was no animal reservoir for smallpox.

If the group of people in 2) were not a petri dish for viral mutations, and if my insurance didn't have to pay tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat them when they get hospitalized, due to an unwillingness to get a free vaccination, I would have no issue with any of them.

After a year and a half of this nightmare, I'm not really interested in lifting a finger to help people who are both too stupid to help themselves, and who are putting the rest of us in danger by doing so. If you actively refuse to grab at a life preserver that we're tossing you, it's not on the rest of us to jump in the water to help you.

Full FDA approval is coming next month, but I'm sure by the time that happens, the goalposts will once again be moved, and there will be a new crop of excuses for why people aren't getting vaccinated. This has stopped being an argument about facts a very long time ago - it's now an argument about political identity.

> The good news is that almost exclusively, they're going to be the ones dying.

Oh, this is not even remotely true. Our medical infrastructure is a limited, contended resources. When the medical system got overrun for several month, the risk is not only passed to those anti-vaxxers but also to those who with serious other medical conditions.

Just under 50% of the country has no vaccine despite it being free and widely available for months.

Only 57% have up to one dose.

If it was a vote the vaccine would have lost.

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

The result will be 3) everyone will be infected with a vastly more contagious, possibly more deadly variant that is resistant to vaccine. Your scenario isn't an option. It's not "over" because it has run its course in a single wave.

Looking at the history of disease, that's pretty unlikely. Traditionally, the optimal virus is going to get more contagious, but far less deadly; a disease that kills its host rapidly generally burns itself out.

Now, the consequences of getting to that more optimal virus I'm a lot more hazy about.

> Traditionally, the optimal virus is going to get more contagious, but far less deadly; a disease that kills its host rapidly generally burns itself out

The Spanish flu mutated into a more deadly variant, half-way through that pandemic. It went on to kill more people than World War I.

Deadliness is only selected against once it impedes transmission. A virus that kills after transmitting (because you spread it while asymptomaticly) will only burn out once a ton of people die inhibiting transmission.