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Comment by wrycoder | Hacker News Reader

We can test for natural immunity. That then counts as fully vaccinated.

It should count. But why test for it and why expect proof? If someone is concerned, get vaccinated if you don't have antibodies already. And wear a mask when cases go above N in your area. Problem solved.

What use is there to build systems of control that will turn into more surveillance and eventual enslavement?

>What use is there to build systems of control that will turn into more surveillance and eventual enslavement?

After the seatbelt laws came in, I didn't wear my seat belt. Before I new it, I was arrested. They sent me to a prison work camp. I had to work 14 hours a day. I nearly died of starvation. (The food was crap, I couldn't keep it down.) Fortunately, a guard took pity on me, and I managed to escape. I'm safe now, with a new ID, good internet access, etc, which is how I'm able to share my story.

If only we hadn't put up with those darn seatbelt laws, maybe things wouldn't have turned out so badly.

Cute analogy but it's not an honest or accurate one. Look at what's happening in Australia as an example.

They're going to force people who quarantine at home (rather than a government-mandated quarantine "hotel" with guards) to install and use an app. Facial recognition, GPS tracking in your own home. And it will randomly ping you, and if you don't respond within 15 minutes it'll send the police to your house to conduct an in-person quarantine check. Source:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824

Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source:

https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...

“NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian yesterday announced freedoms for fully vaccinated people once 70% of the state’s eligible population are double dosed. These include being able to go to hospitality venues, hairdressers and gyms, and have five people to your home.”

They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097

Do you really want similar systems built everywhere? Do you really want to have to show a covid vaccine passport to go to the theater or the gym or the bar? What about those 100+ million Americans who have antibodies from past covid infection already?

Do you believe that there is a point at which we should raise the alarm about impending tyranny? Do you believe that there was ever a point in the last 4 years where we had a President who may have had ties to supremacist movements? Do you believe that there was ever in the last 4 years a legitimate risk of tyranny taking over the land when he was in office? When would you personally depart from your cute but ineffectual seatbelt example and take a good hard long objective look at the system being built? I don't trust these people. They want power and control.

Taking a medication as a condition of maintaining basic human rights, or merely existing is a long bridge to cross. This bears no equivalency to a seat belt.

We know the shots don’t prevent spread, nor prevent you from getting it, the only argument is it lessens severity of symptoms, yet many are dying after the shots anyways and being hospitalized.

So you are basically arguing they I need to take a medicine that supposedly reduces symptoms, although in practice it isn’t showing that effect, but carries other potential negative health effects unique to the shot itself.

A more analogous car argument is that I would be required by law to pick up random hitch hikers everyday and drive them to their destination as a condition of owning and driving a vehicle, especially if we are working off the public good argument. If I refuse, I lose the car. Most likely 98% of those hitch hikers won’t chop me up into little pieces in the middle of the desert, but there is always that one...

> We know the shots don’t prevent spread, nor prevent you from getting it, the only argument is it lessens severity of symptoms

That's just not true. The shots significantly decrease the chance that you'll get COVID. They also significantly decrease the chance that you'll spread COVID. This is most clear via the lower likelihood of infection. (You can't spread it if you don't have it.)

Sure, the shots are not 100% effective. They were never claimed to be. That doesn't mean they are not very effective. They are.

Pretty much all of public health is cost-benefit analysis.

Vaccines dramatically reduce the incidence and severity of disease, and therefore the spread. It would be nice if I could say ‘prevent’ instead of ‘reduce’ there, but this is the vaccine we have for the pandemic we’re facing. Vaccine complications are about 1e-5, COVID complications (conditional on infection) are like 1e-2. Excepting non-falsifiable mRNA concerns the balance seems firmly in favor of vaccines if we’re all going to be exposed eventually.

It’s fair to argue that individuals should be able to chose to forgo that benefit based on their own views; it’s not fair to argue that there’s no benefit.

That's a little over the top.

Kids get vaccinated to go to schools. We aren't in chains.

Some kids get vaccinated to go to some schools. And none of that is comparable to this pandemic situation where we have politicians blatantly ignoring the science and taking bread off the table by firing people who don't comply, even if they have excellent antibodies from past covid infection.

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

"The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label."

Alarm bells should be going off. Take a look at Australia. Are they in chains? Are they the frog in the boiling pot? I think they are the frog in the boiling pot.

When do we raise the alarm? When would you raise the alarm? When is it no longer over the top?

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824

Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source:

https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...

They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097

You want this to happen in the USA too? Because that's where we are headed once we allow covid vaccine passports and mandates like in NYC to fester and spread. The slope is slippery. Time to nip it in the bud, and if being "over the top" is what it takes to get that done then so be it. Assuage my fears if you really believe there isn't a risk of tyranny. We just went through a presidency where people were regularly warning about totalitarian regimes emerging in the USA. So I think I'm a bit warranted in raising the alarm when I see it happening in other democracies around the world.

Every time there is a pandemic, governments take extraordinary measures that people complain about. Many of them quite a bit harsher than any of the things you've described. Because pandemics are serious things that disrupt our normal ultra-social lives.

Let me say this. All of your spamming has not convinced me of your position. So, if you really wanted to, then perhaps you should reconsider your approach.

The upvotes I am getting tell me all I need to know, even if you yourself are not convinced. Nothing will convince some people even if it's staring them in the face, because they are uncomfortable. And we have been taught to be too comfortable.

It's the frog in the pot. We have never had the capabilities for mass surveillance and complete control over who participates in society, to the extent that we do now because of technology. Stalin would be salivating if he was still alive right now.

The data is on my side. The pandemic, while very serious, has touched over 100 million Americans directly (in the form of past covid) and I would still bet that the majority of those people would recoil in horror at what's going on in Australia or move away from NYC's "papers please" model if they had a choice.

Paranoid alarmism, as far as I am concerned. The real threat to our freedoms right now are demagogues trying to undermine our democracies.

Look, I can't speak for Australia. I just know Midnight Oil, and they had plenty of beef with Australia's government.

But the US can hardly even keep track of who has been vaccinated and who hasn't, who has had covid and who has not, who has died from covid, who has not. We are not on the cusp of some covid surveillance state. And requiring vaccination, even among those who have had the disease, is a defensible policy, not least because the extent of immunity to the virus depends on a number of factors (like how sick you got, how old you are, how long it has been since).

In my experience, most arguments about slippery-slopes to hell are just wrong. Probably because the slopes aren't that slippery, or the slope is so shallow you don't really know which way is down, or because predicting the future is actually really really hard.

In Australia the authoritarians are manufacturing consent using the usual suspect pollsters. They claim most Australians support this tyranny by quoting bullshit polls. Beware as your polls are just as rigged.

I know a lot of Australians and absolutely none of them are against the lockdowns. Many of them think the government should have gone further. And these are people who absolutely hate the current government and want labor in charge again.

I don't know if the polls are rigged, that's certainly possible, but why do you believe that they are?

If you look at the last few elections in the US, Britain, Aus etc you will find that the polls have been far removed from reality.

Those who own polling companies use them as a tool of influence and propaganda, nothing more.

Define far-removed from reality.

538's polling averages on election day put Biden at 51.8% of the vote and Trump at 43.4%. The margins of error were roughly 3 points either way.

Biden received 51.3% of the popular vote and Trump 46.9%.

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general...

Retrospective averages are used by guys like Nate to memory hole the fact that all the big name polls had Biden ahead by 10 points. It is only the big name polls that are quoted by the media during the actual campaign.

Yeah, he won by 5% not 10% points. But if you look at what happened, is that they were pretty accurate about Biden's percent, and underestimated Trump's (e.g. undecideds or shy voters broke for Trump). And again, if your margin of error is 3 points, then a 55-45 could be a 52-48, a 10 pt difference shrinks to a 4 pt difference.

In any case, even if the polls were systematically off, and they may have been, that doesn't justify calling them all propaganda, or bs. It isn't even evidence of it. Because, as it happens, polling people is effing hard.

The fact that ALL the 'major' polls were heavily biased towards Biden, and Clinton before him, is clear evidence of corruption. They are not all bullshit. In 2016 the LA Times/usc poll was honest and accurate, so it was shut down for the 2020 election.

No, it is not "clear evidence of corruption". Not even close. It's evidence of being wrong. And no, not all the major polls overly favored Biden. At this point, you're just making crap up.

Look, there clearly are some "bullshit polls", and there are partisan polls paid for by candidates which tend to be favorable to them, and there a good polls with consistent bias, a kind of "house" effect as a consequence of their sampling methodology, etc.

That's why Nate Silver does averages of polls, btw, and weights polls in the average by their accuracy in previous elections.

Please name one single major poll that did not 'overly favour' Biden? I am happy to engage but please do not accuse me of lying.

It wasn't retrospective. It was a prediction, available on the day of the election, and before. Basically, you are talking nonsense, rationalizing your priors.

It is retrospective now. It is you who is talking nonsense.

Oh come on. Silver's polling averages, and his election predictions, were up a year before the election, and are still up for everyone to see. "Retrospective now" doesn't even make sense. Keeping up his model and his averages on the web isn't "memory holing" anything, it's being radically honest. You can still see his 2016 predictions too!

> We aren't in chains.

Just don't try to move too much and you won't even feel 'em.

People who have really experienced oppression might have a less absurd perspective on what it means to be free.

> We can test for natural immunity. That then counts as fully vaccinated

According to who? It's not in the US or Canada, as examples. That's the point of the topic you're replying to.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2313728/canada-refuses-entry-to...

s/counts/should count/

I would imagine there's a trial process that would have to go through, just as we had with vaccinations.

Why? There are already tests for antibodies. And we already know over 100 million Americans had covid already.

https://www.publichealth.columbia.edu/public-health-now/news...

A new study published in the journal Nature estimates that 103 million Americans, or 31 percent of the U.S. population, had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 by the end of 2020.

And we know that those antibodies from past covid are excellent, I call them superior.

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

The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a “Don’t try this at home” label.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/previous-...

> The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study...

And the CDC has a study saying the opposite:

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

So, maybe we need a few more studies before jumping to conclusions.

The CDC study you reference:

Overall, 246 case-patients met eligibility requirements and were successfully matched by age, sex, and date of initial infection with 492 controls.

The Israeli study I linked:

Overall, 673,676 MHS members 16 years and older were eligible for the study group of fully vaccinated SARS-CoV-2-naïve individuals; 62,883 were eligible for the study group of unvaccinated previously infected individuals and 42,099 individuals were eligible for the study group of previously infected and single-dose vaccinees.

I'm going to go ahead and trust the more recent Israeli study which has much more data to go off of. Also note that in either case, the narrative is still that past infection provides protection. If it's much better, almost as good, or as good as the vaccines is all fine by me. It's still excellent protection and on par with what people were rolling with maskless just a few weeks ago.

Time to evolve the narrative in the media about "vax vs unvax"

This is a case of the CDC either lying or at least being deliberately misleading with their headline: the study in question shows that amongst people previously infected with COVID those who were also vaccinated were less likely to be hospitalized.

“In today’s MMWR, a study of COVID-19 infections in Kentucky among people who were previously infected with SAR-CoV-2 shows that unvaccinated individuals are more than twice as likely to be reinfected with COVID-19 than those who were fully vaccinated after initially contracting the virus.”

If you read it carefully, that CDC study compares vaccinated vs unvaccinated in the population of people that recovered from covid.

It does not compare vaccinated (and not recovered) vs recovered (but not vaccinated), but I have seen many people misinterpret it in this way including journalists.

I think this sort of misdirection is by design with how often I see it happening, the right does not have a monopoly on spreading misinformation.

The "we are figuring this out as we go" factor for this is massive, something that's rarely acknowledged yet a big factor for the more rational opposition to "just vaccinate everybody all the time".

The consequences of "just vaccinate everybody":

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/boys-more-at-r...

What if this was worse? That's some 25 million people in the USA alone. What if it was much worse and what if we don't know the full story?

We must be allowed to figure everything out as we go, but for some reason the Democrats in power want to divide us along vaxed vs unvaxed lines. Why? That's a false dilemma considering the 100+ million who have excellent antibodies from natural immunity already.

It's weird how under-reported any findings on side-effects are, another one to watch out for is hepatitis infections [0]

I also don't think it's particularly useful to frame this into a US domestic "the democrats in power!" narrative.

The issue is extremely polarized all over the world, rarely any place allows for any nuance outside of the imagined "anybody who doesn't want to get vaccinated fears Bill Gates 5G" two camps.

Trying to make this into a "Them Democrats are to blame!" is just more of that partisan kindergarten in a different flavor.

[0] https://www.dovepress.com/hepatitis-c-virus-reactivation-fol...

I agree that it is weird how under-reported findings on side effects are. The narrative has been such that it's not considered okay or safe to discuss those or to report on those as openly. And treating the established narrative as sacrosanct.

I hear you and accept your point about mentioning a political party. If you are sensitive to that type of thing, it is my hope that you will also be sensitive to the "vax vs unvax" and "pandemic of the unvaccinated" false dilemmas being painted in the media.

I believe there are many, very smart people working on this, taking this very seriously, and giving the best advice they can.

You're free to think it's political power grab designed to divide us, but I won't entertain that kind of debate.

That's a fallacious appeal to authority and also an appeal to the volume of supposed authorities. It doesn't matter how smart they are. That doesn't change that we do see tyranny emerging, notably in places like Australia. And even NYC where they are now piloting "papers please" as a model. I've shared these before, but here is what is happening in Australia:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/pandemic-a...

They're arresting people for making Facebook posts against lockdowns. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-54007824

Australia presumes to say how many people can visit your home. Source:

https://theconversation.com/vaccine-passports-are-coming-to-...

They can arbitrarily lock you in your apartment building for up to weeks, no one allowed to leave. Source:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53316097

Do you want things like these being built everywhere? Does Australia not have "many, very smart people working on this" and taking it seriously? Is this a debate to entertain, or an existential threat to your and my free way of life? I'm not here to debate anything. I have lots of work to do. I'm here to raise the alarm far outside my comfort zone because barely anyone else is. This is a blatant power grab. Wake up.

But the vaccine is free and safe. Unless you're allergic to the vaccine, or immunocompromised, there's no good reason not to get the vaccine.

Even if you've had covid already, it's not going to do any harm.

What reason is there TO get it if you have better antibodies from past covid? Why should anyone bother with the unknowns of that?

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

Over 100 million Americans already fall into this bucket of having these antibodies. Why should they care about something that doesn't matter? Reinfection is very rare - so these people are not a risk to anyone.

>But the vaccine is free and safe.

Can you please explain how you know this, when it's been available for only a year, while a human lifespan is several decades?

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