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Comment by steverb | Hacker News Reader

I predict that by December of 2021 enough people will have gotten the vaccine or have had COVID that the hospitalization numbers will drop precipitously and then we can all go back to a normal life.

The OSHA requirement will hang around, but people won't be freaking out about it because it will be normal. Within two years there will be a childhood COVID vaccine that is safe and effective and it will be required for school attendance like all the other shots.

All the people freaking out about the vaccine/mask requirements will have matured out of it or will find something else to be outraged about.

If I'm wrong, I will come back and say I was wrong. :-) I may lose an internet point or two.

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The big problem is they still want people who've recovered from COVID to get vaccinated. This is a very big deal and I wouldn't be surprised if the whole OSHA plan goes to the Supreme Court.

I've recovered from COVID and stand against vaccine mandates.

Not sure why you think that's a problem. The vaccines offer better protection against variants than having had COVID and recovering.

Edit: Apparently this is new information to people: https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...

Please share evidence for this claim.

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...

Getting a vaccine after recovering from covid would be along the lines of getting a booster shot. You'd develop some new antibodies, and strengthen your immune memory for the disease. It'll offer you better protection no matter what.

Your link doesn't address better protection against variants specifically, just better protection against reinfection in general. The linked study specifically states that it does not include delta.

that's okay, a nonzero benefit is still a benefit

It does not say that there is non-zero benefit vs variants. This data does not exist, it could be the case that natural immunity is as good, better, or worse vs variants, or perhaps is different depending on variant.

it doesn't have to have non-zero benefit vs. variants, it just has to have non-zero benefit overall to outweigh the negligible cost in the net cost/benefit calculus

I was addressing a specific statement that was unsupported

>The vaccines offer better protection against variants than having had COVID and recovering.

The cost/benefit overall is much more complicated than this simple statement.

the overall cost/benefit for getting vaccinated is actually not at all complicated

for example: how are you personally, materially harmed by taking the vaccine?

that would be the cost

Keep in mind this discussion thread is about people who have already contracted Covid and recovered.

The benefits:

Unknown increase in immunity against alpha strain

Unknown increase in immunity against variant strains

...

The Costs:

Chance of currently known adverse effects

Chance of unknown adverse effects specific to vaccination of people with prior immunity.

Some recent data [1] suggests that those with prior covid infection 13X lower chances or reinfection with delta than those with 2 vaccine doses. If this is accurate, it begs the question of how much benefit is gained by vaccination on top of existing immunity in comparison to to the rare but known side effects.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

any benefit would be enough, because those adverse effects are extremely rare in non-contraindicated people

Im sorry, but that is missing the point.Any benefit doesn't equal cost/benefit.

For some with naturally acquired immunity, Both costs and benefits are amazingly small!

If you are a healthy 18 year old (infection fatality 1/100,000)[1] w/o vaccine, plus have previously acquired immunity 13X better[2] than a vaccine 90+% effective, you are talking about about 1/ 10s of millions of chance of death or severe complications IF you are infected. This easily puts it in competition with the more serious vaccine complications.

Looking at just two aspects for this hypothetical individual, you could weigh

1/10 million chance of death with no booster vaccine shot VS 17/100,000 chance of bells palsy[3] and a 60% chance of fever, chills and headache.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0 https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on... https://www.fda.gov/media/144413/download

I checked your link regarding Bell's palsy, as an example, and the study said:

  >Currently available information is insufficient to determine a causal relationship with the vaccine

so where are you getting the evidence for the claim that 17/100,000 people will get Bell's palsy?

is all your evidence for a non-negligible cost this flimsy?

17/100k It is straight from the prescribing information.

Similar nonzero observations have been made in other national studies with sufficiently large samples.[1]

Some countries have added additional content around it to the prescribing info [2].

Scientific consensus is that the risk is clearly is lower than covid.

Another rare but acknowledged side effect is mycarditis.

We can quibble about the rates but they do exist.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

https://healthycanadians.gc.ca/recall-alert-rappel-avis/hc-s...

https://www.aappublications.org/news/2021/06/10/covid-vaccin...

Numbers differ by study and vaccine. The prescribing info for phizer mentions bells palsy, but not the calculated rate.

An analysis looking at the trial data puts it at 14-18/100k higher than the expected baseline

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

A analsys from the previously linked lancet study had a muck larger sample ~500k, but different collection methods and found smaller but nonzero results

>The age-standardised difference for the incidence compared with the background population was 41·5 (95% CI 11·7 to 71·4) for CoronaVac and 17·0 (−6·6 to 40·6) for BNT162b2, equivalent to an additional 4·8 cases per 100 000 people vaccinated for CoronaVac and 2·0 cases per 100 000 people vaccinated for BNT162b2.

Most if not all the vaccine trials saw small increases <1% in serious adverse events in the treatment arm

You're correct that link doesn't. Sorry. Let me go find the other one. I'll be back.

Sorry it took so long. Had a work fire to put out.

Here you go: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abi9915

Are you an immunologist by any chance?

I agree with this part - if you can show you have antibodies, I don't care where you got them from (well, I would have preferred they were gotten from a vaccine, but that's besides the point now!).

My only stipulation is that if you say you had it, you need to have an antibody test to prove it, and if the test is negative, you need a vaccine.

We aren't ever going back to normal at this point.

Once government gets power, it doesn't give it back.

We're pushing closer to 2 Americas, one with freedom and one with vaccine mandates

You do realize that we vote for our government representatives, right? The 'government' is us.

"Us" is ~50% of the population in many congressional districts. Even in the most hard left/right jurisdictions you get like an 80-20 split on federal elections. That's a 1 in 5 minority of the population. That's f-ing huge.

And between the left complaining about disenfranchisement and the right complaining about voter fraud the elected representative holds less legitimacy in the eyes of the "I didn't vote for them" minority in any given district.

Look at the crazy things totalitarian governments do to keep marginalized 10-30% religious and ethnic minorities from causing instability. A pissed off group of similar size in a western country that isn't willing to stoop that low is a civil unrest bomb waiting to go off.

Gerrymandering allows the ones in charge to stay in charge.

Agreed, that forces us to vote more overwhelmingly against whoever is gerrymandering.

We didn't vote for this. OSHA isn't elected at all.

OSHA is in the executive branch, under the president, who we voted for.

Funny... That's what many predicted would happen six months ago when the vaccine was available.

And your argument is that by the time the onerous regulation becomes unnecessary everyone will be used to it.

Kind of like how the patriot act was there for so long we all just became numb to the constant surveillance, the nude airport screenings etc.

Personally I think sooner, unless another variant worse than Delta springs up. Right now Mu, Lambda are known but Delta appears to out compete.

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