Isn’t it just easier (and with virtually no risk) to require people to vaccinate rather than debate over who did/did not actually have COVID?
This kind of illogical policy gives fuel to antivaxers.
Also, this article provides some arguments based more on biology. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
There is such a thing as testing for neutralizing antibodies by testing the antibodies against the virus directly. But in general, all of the relevant tests seem to be more expensive and harder to standardize.
Every human body creates its own set of antibodies against the virus (or the vaccine). Starting from different strains of the virus, the potential for uncertainty is too great.
Too great for what? Even with 2 jabs, the immunity is <90% against Delta and research shows post-covid immunity is more effective.
Nor is it clear who actually has a "more effective" or even "sufficiently effective" immunity, given that the infection could be up to a year or more ago, and almost nobody knows exactly what strain they got. And no, you can't tell any of that easily, reliably or cheaply by antibody testing.
Proof of vaccination is the cheapest and most reliable proof of a reasonable chance of immunity.
And those who argue the most don't really argue about "they don't need the vaccine", but rather assume the vaccine is much bigger risk or damage than is at all reasonable. And that, yes, puts you very close to the "anti-vaxx" bubble.
Not OP, but if arguing against it is anti-vaxx, then I guess you should call me anti-vaxx and I'll call you unreasonable.
Anti-vaxers hate all vaccines. Most of this thread is about following actual science and practices used for other vaccines. If you've had it, then don't get the vaccine, otherwise get the vaccine.
Comirnaty had hundreds of millions of doses administered so far, and maybe - maybe - one woman died of myocarditis. This is nothing to potentially hundreds of thousands of prevented fatalities, much less the unpleasant to severe bouts of Covid-19.
Why is it riskier and to whom?
Nor does it actually prove any immunity against disease. You can only assume that these antibodies probe prior contact to the virus and that this prior contact resulted in a robust response. The strength of the immunity cannot be inferred from such titres...
It can have false negatives, making people needlessly take a vaccine, so everyone should take the vaccine in the name of equality?
Vaccine certificates neither prove you actually got the vaccine (though highly likely), nor do they prove any immunity against disease (though fairly likely).
With this level of arguments, I can argue noone should be permitted to take the vaccine.
You probably can't understand (and don't want to) why that is not the case for people who got infected at some unknown random point in the past and with an unknown, random variant of the Virus. And I don't care to explain it to you.
And you probably also don't want to understand why those lab tests aren't designed, regulated or approved as a proof of immunity. To be rigorous enough, probably every single lab would have to do control studies to find out if their tests predict immunity against reinfection.
Otherwise you're just arguing with double standards trying to console insecurity.
Next you are going to tell me you know of a vaccine-related car crash.
Please revisit your priors or who you put trust in, as they might as well lie.
Not sure what else to tell you. The math suggests this is unlikely. But here it is.
Edit: also, nice edit changing it from "next I'll tell you that car accidents are marked as COVID deaths." I didn't say that and have no data on that so I appreciate you changing it.
The odds that 5 people in a row have such serious side effect is 1/10^25. That is equivalent to tossing 83 coins in a row and getting all heads.
Which is more likelier. 1/10^25 or that you have false information regarding this. : )
The implied qualification of - there exists a HN-er so divide by 1e9 to get odds - is nowhere close to accounting for the additional degrees of freedom from the social graph.
Edit, here's some corrections:
This isn't 5 people in a row who had issues, it's 5 people within 4 nodes of distance in their social network. 4 nodes of distance is a lot of people, probably around 200,000 - 2,000,000.
The odds of having severe complications from the vaccine are about 1 in 100,000.
Therefore, everyone should expect to have 2-20 people within 4 nodes of their social network to have severe complications from the vaccine.
The mistake is not realizing the absolutely massive amount of people within 4 nodes of distance in your social network.
The other massive issue I see here is that there should also be somewhere around 500 covid deaths in the same pool of people that produced these 5 people with vaccine complications. The fact that they are focused on the 5 and not the 500 speaks heavily to their biases.
Keep in mind, all of this also assumes that what they're saying is 100% accurate, and these complications were definitely caused by the vaccine, and were not a coincidence. In truth, for every 1 person that has complications with the vaccine, 10-100x had the unlucky coincidence of something bad occurring that would have happened even if they hadn't gotten the vaccine.
There are around 200 strokes per 100 000 people per year [1].
And number of "heart issues" is even more, only deaths because of heart issues are around ~170 per 100k people per year.
Correlation is not causation.
[1] https://www.world-stroke.org/assets/downloads/WSO_Global_Str...
Definition of social circle is "A social circle is a group of socially interconnected people". I doubt anyone would complain about having a small social circle if it contained 2M people. :)
> My daughter's bf's friends mom
"My dad's coworker" - 2 steps
"my wife's brothers" - 2 steps
"My daughter's bf's friends mom" - 4 steps
"A friend" - 1 step
He might have a small social circle, but even a small circle is going to explode exponentially when you start hoping outwards. By the 4th jump, you're going to start seeing extreme numbers regardless of how small your personal social circle is.
Thanks.
Same guy as before. I know of two people who temporarily lost taste and I heard of one person who died from COVID, a coworker's uncle.
You can rationalize this however you like, but these are the cases I'm aware of.
What you have calculated:
(using 4 deaths at 1e-6 odds, because it's simpler and still gives 10x better odds at 1e-24)
Taking 4 death row inmates, jabbing them with AstraZeneca and expecting all 4 of them to die.
What you have not calculated:
Jabbing 1e9 people, 10k of them developing serious issues (expected prior) and there being a multi-hop connection between 5 of them. Two of them actually being brothers (familial clustering), and some with issues likely more prevalent so not even from the 10k group (1/1e5 cutoff).
You might not believe in democracy, but this is still a better system than autocracy. Even if you were right (hint: you're not), this is setting a very dangerous precedent than can and will be abused down the line.
Legal requirements are shaped by such "conveniences" all the time. Of course you wouldn't need a driver's license if you could argue with a police officer at a traffic stop that you are qualified to drive, had no DOIs etc. It's a lot easier though to require a driving test and a current license.
Same thing with the vaccination.
> how complicated the testing is or how many health providers and labs there are.
AFAIK, you can actually test blood reactivity to virus protein, proving a positive.
I'm not sure how you would prove that a person actually got vaccinated and it wasn't the case of doctor pouring vaccine down the drain, someone else taking the vaccine instead etc.
And yes, standardizing such testing, as complicated and expensive as it is, across all the relevant labs across the country would be a bureaucratic nightmare.
I'm not going to engage with your bullshit about doctors faking vaccinations.
Fake vaccinations[3], including fake certificates are popular, especially when they are forced. If you want a fake vaccination, I know a guy who knows a guy. Point is - it's not bullshit.
Yes, checking certificates is easier than testing for antibodies. While harder, I still think antibody tests would have less false positives and I most certainly don't think the relative easiness to administer vaccines is a good reason to require everyone to take them, even when they are more immune then those who only got the vaccine.
A friend had an antibody test as he already had covid and didn't want to go for a vaccine. It was no big deal.
[1] https://www.covid.is/sub-categories/travel-to-and-within-ice...
[2] https://www.landlaeknir.is/um-embaettid/greinar/grein/item43...
I don't even know how Iceland's health system is organized. But it would be a good bet that it is light years ahead of the mess of the 52 states plus territories and whatever! Much different story.