Scientists discover a highly potent antibody against SARS-CoV-2
actu.epfl.ch
actu.epfl.ch
Honestly surprising why so few people know about the antibody therapy we already have, reduces death by 80 to 90 %. Also unclear why we still need vaccine mandates when we have a cure.
https://floridahealthcovid19.gov/monoclonal-antibody-therapy...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/covid-monoclonal-abbot...
Do promptly delivered monoclonals blunt your body's natural immune response and prevent natural immunity, as your body doesn't need to make its own antibodies?
If so, all the more reason to get vaccinated as soon as the engineered antibodies fade. Or before treatment, I don't see why having both wouldn't be extra effective?
Additionally, death is only one of many of the devastating outcomes of Covid. In many cases there are profound and longterm effects. So we need the goddamn vaccine mandates.
The technology to make monoclonal antibodies is simpler than that for mRNA vaccines.
> That's also the reason they tend to be so expensive
Economies of scale play a big role. At similar scale mab should be cheaper than mRNA.
It’s more mature technology, but unlike the mRNA vaccines it’s not cell free and as a result is harder to scale up. At similar scale mRNA will still be cheaper; that’s one if mRNA’s biggest selling points.
I'd like to see how to explain all 15,000 deaths per week as being simply "with Covid" instead of caused by Covid. Is it all still lockdown-related stress causing the deaths? And all of them happened to die "with Covid?"
1. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...
It's exhausting to be facing this misinformation spread in different languages and cultures. Even here in Sweden I have had to put up with people using flawed statistics to make a point without considering the nuances of the metrics they choose to parade around.
I'm tired.
While I agree with you that a significant part of those deaths are in fact from COVID, there's other explanations other than "lockdown stress" that could cause increased excess deaths - people avoiding medical treatment due to fear of catching COVID in healthcare settings, hospitals being overloaded in the first place and surgeries being delayed, or poorer health outcomes due to financial impact, which in extreme cases could cause food insecurity or homelessness.
We all know with covid doesn't always mean because of covid, but it's statistically significant enough that dying shortly after covid gives a pretty damn good representation of the infection rate. It's statistically unlikely that you die from unrelated causes within 28 days of a positive covid test
Was the URL changed? This is a press release from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and Lausanne University Hospital, both public institutions.
Corruption. It always have been the alpha and omega of this whole vaccine story, minus the part where governments went on-board as a way to restrict citizens right.
The right way would be to compare number of people vaccinated to prevent one person falling so ill they require monoclonals. Since this >> 1, the financial calculations aren't so straightforward.
Instead we should have ramped up production of these game changing drugs. Why didn’t we?
Also, prior to COVID, monoclonal antibodies were being tested in single digit numbers of patients with highly aggressive cancers at a cost of $500K per treatment. The cost has come down 100x, so it's inaccurate to claim production hasn't ramped up. It has, it's just still way more cost effective to get a vaccine.
The assumption that vaccines would end the pandemic was also based on the idea they would stop transmission. This turned out to be wrong. Vaccines are excellent at preventing hospitalization but do a crappy job stopping transmission.
So when we have vaccines who are only excellent at self-protection and we also have a cure, I don’t see why we would compel anyone to take something they don’t want to.
I'm also curious what is acceptable about monoclonal antibodies, but not the vaccine? They've been developed by the same types of scientists, on a similar timeline to the mRNA vaccine technology, and they work on similar fundamentals, but the MCAs are a less effective solution in terms of cost, production, deployment, and long term protection. The whole thing just seems like a temper tantrum with no rational basis.
I don’t know since I’m vaccinated. I just think people should have a choice.
It's never ethical to compel the innocent to do anything.
A shifting of the incentives would be far more ethical, but difficult politically - perhaps make people who are unvaccinated pay a greater percentage of their treatment, or need to take special insurance. I'd advocate that kind of thing for most things relating to personal/lifestyle choice, obesity being a good example, giving better premiums to non-smokers, vegetarians etc but when the numbers of (possible) patients becomes big then it's unlikely to be taken up either by an electorate nor by a politician.
That's ignoring how many health systems seem fundamentally broken for other reasons (e.g. US and UK).
What does that even mean? Innocent of what, having an immune system?
Financial incentives, such as being fired if you create a hazardous workplace by refusing vaccination, are a form of compulsion on an escalating ladder of methods to convince people. The government absolutely leaned on business to make that happen in order to avoid a direct mandate.
Innocent of a crime. That's it's usual meaning, and we compel those guilty of crimes to do things they don't want to.
> Financial incentives, such as being fired if you create a hazardous workplace by refusing vaccination, are a form of compulsion on an escalating ladder of methods to convince people.
That's not an incentive, that's a punishment. I do agree, however, that it is a form of compulsion (a compulsion is never also an incentive).
I don't know why everyone's up in arms about this particular vaccine. Kids around the world are given vaccines for polio, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, measles, tuberculosis, hepatitis B, hiaemophilus influenza type b (Hib), diarrhea, smallpox etc.
Why is everyone up in arms about this particular vaccine, esp. when the mRNA based ones don't even have any part of the virus? I can't think of any reason other than stupid/criminal politicians on the right using whatever slogans they can to influence their sheeple to maintain their foothold. Jeez.
Why I'm referring to them is because the only members of society we usually compel to do anything are:
- children - those in the military - those guilty of a crime - those who have lost their mind
Adults innocent of a crime, not in the military, and who are compos mentis are not subject to compulsion - to compel them would likely be a crime.
> I don't know why everyone's up in arms about this particular vaccine.
I am not everyone and I am not up in arms about the vaccine, I am responding to the element of compulsion and violation of the normal situation of legal standing between an individual and the government (who would be the ones doing the compelling). If you compel someone to get any of the other vaccines listed, then I would be "up in arms" about that too.
From [1]:
> An invasive procedure is one where purposeful/deliberate access to the body is gained via an incision, percutaneous puncture, where instrumentation is used in addition to the puncture needle, or instrumentation via a natural orifice. It begins when entry to the body is gained and ends when the instrument is removed, and/or the skin is closed. Invasive procedures are performed by trained healthcare professionals using instruments, which include, but are not limited to, endoscopes, catheters, scalpels, scissors, devices and tubes.
Without the consent of the person it would constitute a serious form of assault and battery, a common law crime that stretches back at least 1000 years. I do hope that you or anyone else is not subject to such things on a daily basis.
Are you?
So do we test everyone all the time to determine whether they need the stuff? If they test positive, how do we encourage them to take the MCA? Or we could give them to everyone all the time, continually, as a prophylaxis. I'm sure that would to over well.
You could also limit the prophylaxis to particularly endangered folks, but you'd still fill the hospitals with not particularly endangered people who drew the short straw.
That's essentially what we are doing, except the not particularly endangered people can just get the vaccination.
I wonder what other populations you might compel to do things - or not - for the "herd" and their health. My guess is it would look cruel and capricious very quickly, much like any other tyranny.
Also, it causes the spread to go exponential as there's no restriction to the spread, so the hospital admissions go exponential too
Plus, there's the whole US treatment costs thing too
And if you don't prevent the spread then your infection rate is exponential and collapse the healthcare system. Ignoring vaccines in favour of treating the critically ill is absolutely the wrong way to go about it
Are we going to get to a situation like the annual Flu vaccine, where it is tested and released in (what I'm guessing) less than a year? Otherwise, it seems like we'll be chasing this virus with outdated solutions forever. Moderna and Pfizer are both currently testing a vaccine that is specific to Delta, but by the time it's approved (my guess: January/February) the current wave will be long behind us.
> A leading hypothesis is that these variants, characterized by a large number of nonsynonymous mutations, originated within individuals with long durations of infection during which the virus was subject to prolonged immune pressure (7, 8), and that this was potentially facilitated by the within-host emergence of deletions (49). [0]
Consequently, some have suggested that monitoring for new strains might focus on such patients as a way to predict future adaptations in the wild, as scientist have observed some mutations re-occurring within immunocompromised individuals. So it might be possible to predict some mutations.
[0] : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/15/health/coronavirus-varian...
[1] : https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abg0821
And yes, there are virologists who are studying the mutation-space of the virus and are planning a vaccine regimen which targets all possible mutations of SARS-CoV-2. Check out this absolutely terrific lecture by Paul Bieniasz about his work on exploring the mutation space of SARS-CoV-2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIcaSqQFrX0
It isn’t clear exactly what is going to happen, but as more people get vaccinated and natural immunity and the variants continue to evolve the situation might change a lot or become unnoticeable.
I would love to see an epidemic expert comment on the long term evolutionary effects of different mitigation strategies which might differ in preferences than short term trying to reduce number of infections.
Those evolutionary pressures relate to transmissibility. Basically, a virus that kills its host before it can spread doesn't spread very far at all.
SARS-CoV-2's defining feature of asymptomatic spread decouples this and so far hasn't led to weakening – indeed, Delta is both substantially more transmissible and more likely to cause severe disease and death.
> Research early in the pandemic suggested that the rate of asymptomatic infections could be as high as 81%. But a meta-analysis published last month, which included 13 studies involving 21,708 people, calculated the rate of asymptomatic presentation to be 17%. The analysis defined asymptomatic people as those who showed none of the key COVID-19 symptoms during the entire follow-up period, and the authors included only studies that followed participants for at least seven days.
There are many more I've read where the authors have tried to quantify asymptomatic spread and been found wanting (studies on children are particularly enlightening). I wouldn't be surprised if the final figure ends up being very close to, if not, zero, though we're still in the clutches of the initial panic so I suspect those findings to take time due more to social resistance than the frictions involved in actual science.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03141-3?error=coo...
For example[1]:
> We determined secondary attack rates (SAR) among close contacts of 59 asymptomatic and symptomatic coronavirus disease case-patients by presymptomatic and symptomatic exposure. We observed no transmission from asymptomatic case-patients and highest SAR through presymptomatic exposure.
"Presymptomatic transmission" is asymptomatic transmission. Whether the infection itself becomes symptomatic later (which, as you've referenced, the research strongly suggests will happen) is of no relevance to the discussion.
> Whether the infection itself becomes symptomatic later (which, as you've referenced, the research strongly suggests will happen) is of no relevance to the discussion.
What's actually irrelevant is talking about asymptomatic infections - defined as those which do not become symptomatic - as if they do become symptomatic. Again, I'm yet to find a paper that does this. Whether or not an infection is more likely to become symptomatic or not is not relevant here, nor did I make reference to any such likelihood, because it's not relevant.
I can't tell if you're quibbling because you don't want to accept a minor correction or because you haven't bothered to read any of the literature.
So if the ancestral strain + variants all cannot spread epidemically any more due to the build up of immunity in the population, then a strain which achieves immune escape and an R0 of > 1.0 would be favored even though the virus might be much less "fit" and less virulent in a totally naive population.
Clearly though the major adaptation is going to be on the human side with most of the population eventually acquiring T-cells, which will greatly decrease the virulence going forwards.
It appears that COVID-19 can also enter cells (these would be immune cells that came to 'help') via so called Fc-pathway.
Therefore allow the virus to multiply even more
"... In addition to viral entry via ACE2, antibodies against coronavirus spike proteins (anti-spike-S-IgG) can induce antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) of viral entry via type II Fcγ receptors. ..." [1]
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-antibody-depen...
I can't flag you, but someone else really should since your followup is completely disingenuous.
Perhaps, it is time to relinquish the presumptions of moral superiority -- and just discuss technical details without the drama ...
I am saying that you wrote does not cover full spectrum of how the virus replicates, therefore your comment does illuminate the complexity that's present in interaction with our immune system. Which includes, according to the NIH paper I referenced, antibody-dependent-enhancement (ADE).
> However, using monkey and mouse models of SARS-CoV-2 infection, none of the in vitro infection-enhancing Abs enhanced SARS-CoV-2 virus replication or infectious virus in the lung in vivo. Three of 46 monkeys had lung pathology or bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) cytokine levels greater than controls. However, repeat studies with dose ranges of in vitro enhancing Abs did not increase lung pathology. Thus, in vitro infection-enhancing RBD and NTD Abs controlled virus in vivo and was rarely associated with enhanced lung pathology. [1]
You're interjecting it because you want to talk about it because you're an antivaxxer.
It has no relevance outside of some narrow understanding of what happens during severe COVID itself and the mechanism behind why some people get very sick and most people do not.
And you're practicing sealioning acting like you're just innoccently interjecting.
That's because the vaccines don't effectively stop the spread of SARS2. This is one of the great lies still being shoveled on the public - despite the facts that prove otherwise.
See: Britain has a lot more cases per capita than the US, despite their high vaccination rates and more aggressive lock-down & restrictive measures taken.
Or see: the New England states with high vaccination rates and a recent record surge in cases.
Or see: Israel's recent epic case surge despite their very high vaccination rate.
The vaccines dramatically reduce mortality and that's the primary reason most people should get the jab. There's zero evidence so far that we can actually stop SARS2 via vaccine. It doesn't make sense to be forced to live in bomb shelters forever as eg Australia is doing, that's idiotic and tyrannical. What matters isn't the case counts, it's the number of deaths that matter and Britain's high vaccination rate is doing its job there for example.
As a resident of New England, I've been expecting a fall surge for a while. In the north, we're all shutting windows and turning on our furnaces at night, which means much worse ventilation. The afternoons are still warm enough to socialize outside, but that will start to change in November. Followed by holiday travel. And we still have towns with low vaccination rates.
Our absolute numbers are still fairly low in many places, and we don't have people lined up in the corridors of the local hospitals.
> What matters isn't the case counts, it's the number of deaths that matter
I actually think that severe illness counts are important, too. I'll make some sacrifices to avoid hospitalization or merely being incapacitated for a couple weeks.
Perhaps you could furnish us with some examples of such viruses? Every virus I can think of certainly hasn't weakened over time.
Of course, this means that most breakthrough infections are delta.
I don't see why rate of adaption would stay consistent with the early stages of a new virus in later stages.
I don't see how you conclude the virus adapted after 18 months due to six variants of concern existing. Especially because existing solutions are still very effective with the new variants, even if its somewhat of a decline. Even if you accept that as "adaption" its still a sample size of 1.
Those people receive an infusion of human antibodies purified from donated blood (human immunoglobulins) every few weeks. It's been in use for several decades.
My father is an immunocompromised transplant patient and has been isolating now since the start of the pandemic. His first two vaccines had no antibody response and we will get results on his third dose in just over a month from now.
The situation has been really difficult for us as a family and he’s not had human contact this whole time (lives alone, I’m in another country). His renal consultant and local NHS consultants offer no hope or mention of MCA treatment. Has anyone more information on this in the UK?
https://www.pharmatimes.com/news/nhs_patients_gain_access_to....
>Initially, Ronapreve will be targeted at hospitalised patients who have not mounted an antibody response against COVID-19.
>This includes individuals who are immunocompromised, such as patients with certain cancer or autoimmune diseases.
So currently, the only people who have this antibody are people who have had COVID, correct?
Here's an article I just came across today on this [1]. It is originally from the NYT, but I saw it reprinted in the Seattle Times so that's where I'm linking (and I think their paywall is more lenient).
https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/if-youve-already-h...
I challenge anyone to show data otherwise before they reflexively down vote.
In any case, you're the one making a claim here: can you show the benefits of natural immunity? Can you show the risk vs reward of catching COVID-19, potentially spreading it to thousands, and getting natural immunity rather than just getting a vaccine? Bringing money into it just colors your argument poorly. It's not like getting the vaccine costs you any money personally.
Vaccines seem to provide better immunity than previously being infected [3]. In fact, a lot of research shows that getting a vaccine after being infected actually improves your protection against reinfection [4].
Would you argue in good faith this way about any other vaccine? Measles? Mumps? Anthrax? Ebola?
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/...
[3] https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
[4] https://www.news-medical.net/news/20211010/Research-finds-di...
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
Based on the information in your link, it's a absolutely tiny sample in a very small specific conservative community. I'm really skeptical that they controlled for the unvaccinated cohort that caught covid twice hanging out in anti-vaxxer communities where covid infection was high. The CDC should be embarrassed about using this as evidence.
Or from the article you just linked:
> As for the Israel medical records study, Topol and others point out several limitations, such as the inherent weakness of a retrospective analysis compared with a prospective study that regularly tests all participants as it tracks new infections, symptomatic infections, hospitalizations, and deaths going forward in time. “It will be important to see these findings replicated or refuted,” says Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at Emory University.
She adds: “The biggest limitation in the study is that testing [for SARS-CoV-2 infection] is still a voluntary thing—it’s not part of the study design.” That means, she says, that comparisons could be confounded if, for example, previously infected people who developed mild symptoms were less likely to get tested than vaccinated people, perhaps because they think they are immune.
They've already run the gambit of heart problems and such, why make them run it again?
So I’d ask the reverse question: if the risk reduction is scientifically demonstrated and quite clear, what responsibility do public officials have towards enforcing the safety of others? When should we let them take that right, and when should we refuse them that power? I won’t claim to know this answer either!
Bonus points: Studies not funded by pharmaceutical companies.
There is also this here in the US, acknowledging "Kentucky’s local health departments, disease investigators, and regional epidemiologists; Kentucky Department for Public Health immunization and data team members; Suzanne Beavers, CDC" - https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm
There are multiple studies that show previously infected are well protected, and Israel shows 13x better than Pfizer’s
That statement has multiple issues. What does "better" mean? Where did you look? How do you define immunity (risk, falloff time, etc.). There's a new paper every week comparing how the vaccination and infection responses are different. Generalising to one-dimensional "better" is not going to happen in serious publications.
We're still at the level of (for example) "Therefore, antibody immunity acquired by natural infection or different modes of vaccination may have a differing susceptibility to erosion by SARS-CoV-2 evolution." https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34103407/
There's certainly a lot of research around different responses and they're a single pubmed query away. "But beware saying that outloud" is just FUD.
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
The study you cite has some major issues. First, it's a proposed benefit based on a hypothetical mechanism, and not empirical data. Second, it does not indicate the likelihood of mutations that would be better treated by the vaccine. Third, it does not indicate how much more effective it would be, just that it's "possible".
Please stick to the topic and facts rather than being sneeringly dismissive. I'm not part of some bloc of anti-vaxxers, and open to changing my mind based on new information. In fact I've had covid AND I'm vaccinated, so the intent of my post is to spark discussion and get more data. Dismissing my post as FUD is ad hominem.
It can't be an ad hominem since I never said anything about you. Your post was FUD because you stated it very loosely and asked for hard data to refute it. You're quite likely right on infection providing better protection, but we neither have a hard confirmation of that (or you'd link it, right?) nor did you provide any support for "But beware saying that outloud." Not only there's ongoing research on differences (as we both provided), many people do say that outloud.
When I say "beware saying that outloud", it's a pointer to the nature of discussion on covid, which should be obvious to anyone paying attention - and that is that if you counter a prevailing or official narrative, you will be belittled and brushed aside, often without any conclusive data to back it up. The irony is thick.
You saw a lot of this at the beginning of covid... lots of people saying "well I had a bad cough for a little while... maybe I already had it"
You could maybe specify that people who have had covid need a positive test to skirt any vaccine mandates... but any sort added complexity at this scale is going to create a bunch of additional nonsense. People aren't even capable of understanding how to wear masks correctly.
So just get the vaccine so we can all get on with our stupid lives. I get vaccines all the time, this one is free, and in the grand scheme of things if you're right... this is fairly minor when it comes to pharma grifts.
Not getting vaccinated because you don't want to support the pharma industry is like driving your car on the sidewalk because you don't want to support the department of transportation. You're not making a point to anyone, and you're putting a bunch of strangers at risk to do it.
You can tell people that if they had covid they're at less risk because they've built up a resistance, but you can also tell them everyone is required to get the vaccine anyway.
But we can do testing.
For the record:
> Earlier estimates that 80% of infections are asymptomatic were too high and have since been revised down to between 17% and 20% of people with infections.[1]
> It’s also unclear to what extent people with no symptoms transmit SARS-CoV-2. The only test for live virus is viral culture. PCR and lateral flow tests do not distinguish live virus. No test of infection or infectiousness is currently available for routine use.678 As things stand, a person who tests positive with any kind of test may or may not have an active infection with live virus, and may or may not be infectious.[1]
And not getting vaccinated because you don't want to support the pharma industry misses that they get $20 per shot for the vaccine, but will get thousands per dose of the expensive meds you'll need if you wind up in the ICU.
Strengthening your argument further, the pharma industry already got $20 per shot for the vaccine.
The government signed a contract for the shots, so if you're letting them go to waste, you're just wasting your tax dollars which went to pharma companies anyways.
However, this is a false dichotomy. First, because the same studies that show this ALSO show that getting vaccinated on top of natural immunity is better still ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... ), second because natural immunity prior to the vaccine implies getting COVID and the extremely high risk of complications (from hospitalization, to long COVID symptoms, to death), and third, because there isn't any data around what happens if you get vaccinated first, then get COVID (i.e., is the combination of natural response + vaccine the same if the order is reversed).
There is no situation where getting vaccinated does not help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, or suffering serious symptoms.
Not clear why this is an argument for vaccine mandates when natural immunity is already better than the vaccine alone, and puts individuals in the same or better place as the vaccine.
> second because natural immunity prior to the vaccine implies getting COVID and the extremy high risk of complications
What does this have to do with people who already had covid?
> there isn't any data around what happens if you get vaccinated first, then get COVID
Once again what does this have to do with people who already had covid?
> There is no situation where getting vaccinated does not help reduce the likelihood of catching COVID, or suffering serious symptoms.
If you are already in a state where you are at least as protected as vaccinated people, how is this an argument for mandate for those with natural immunity?
You won't be able to find any data comparing mandates for those who have had COVID vs no mandate having any real effect on the general population because those who have already had it are very well protected.
You can have had the j&j vaccine and be way less protected than natural immunity, and be considered compliant. This is absolutely inconsistent.
Pretty major distinction.
It is absurd to suggest that someone deliberately getting covid is a safer way to get immunity.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/antibody-testing-sug...
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...
We have done such studies before with regarding to the hepatitis B vaccine. Most nursing students had no immunity against it after having received two doses of the vaccine.
I think antibody levels should be tied to the mandates. For what it is worth, I am against such mandates.
For vaccines for which the vaccine has few side effects, this is, AFAICT, not usually considered worthwhile — providers seem to prefer giving an extra MMR dose to people with unknown vaccination status for example. For COVID, at least with current vaccines, maybe it would make sense.
(ISTM, based on available data, people who have had COVID ought not to be required to get two doses, but one might be reasonable from a public health perspective.)
How do you make sure people aren't faking vaccination status, as you say? A positive PCR test on public record is in fact more trustworthy.
The tests used in most places have significant false positives/negatives on a population level. You may think you were infected when you weren't. With vaccination you know whether you were vaccinated.
(My son had a bout of severe pneumonia around the same time. We wondered, too. Not COVID, it turns out.)
Therein lies a significant problem with "I don't need the vaccine, I have natural immunity!"
That's just as trustworthy. Probably more since what it asserts is less variable than how long you maintain antibodies.
The link I provided "is an electronic vaccination record drawn from the data stored in the California immunization registry."
It doesn't accept user submissions; it only accepts data from recognized health organizations. The website allows you to put in your name and birthdate and get a QR code that can be scanned and will take you back to the website, showing dates you were vaccinated. It requires someone confirming that the QR code is directing them to the correct website, and confirm name and birthdate, but that's far more available to actually check than a PCR test.
Meaning no need to rely on easily faked vaccination cards; you instead ask for a QR code, scan it, and confirm it took you to the government site, with a name and birthdate that matches some government issued picture ID. Still 'beatable', if you have good fake ID for a person who has been vaccinated, but just as good in 'security' as relying on a PCR test (since it's still ultimately pulling from a publicly readable, only privately writeable DB), and probably a better assertion than "PCR test", since it can work for everyone, and tells you the date of vaccination (whereas date of antibodies being detected doesn't tell you anything about whether they still have natural immunity now).
So, you can't prove a negative, that being that someone has not been vaccinated. But you can prove that you had covid.
CA is larger than LA county, so immediately is more effective than what you proposed in your OP.
There are also multiple initiatives to make country-wide databases of vaccination status available via app. Test status? False positives, false negatives, can be done at home, etc, and -still only applies to people who have had COVID-. Everyone without a health issue (that should keep them out of public spaces anyway) can get vaccinated.
1. You cannot prove someone has been vaccinated as the system currently exists. That ship has already sailed. Anyone can opt out by lying that they got vaccinated somewhere that doesn't keep public records. Those mandating vaccinations have have to accept this because vaccines aren't approved for more than 2 (or 3) shots, so you can't force people to get vaccinated again if they don't have a verifiable record. Even if there's a worldwide database rolled out, it's too late, too many people got vaccinated off the record.
2. You CAN prove you've had covid with a high degree of certainty. Recent tests have low false positive rates.
Why let people slip out of the vaccine mandate with an easy lie yet corner those who have already had covid and therefore better immunity than the vaccinated? It's nonsense that ignores reality.
You do the society a favor, and the app they provide lets you know if you continue to have covid19 antibodies.
To avoid that, we should definitely sweep basic immunology under the rug and lump all those who've caught and recovered from covid in with the other unvaccinated underclass. They should've thought twice about the ramifications of their actions before deciding catch and recover from covid.
Thank god for these mandates. I can't image how society would function, if at all, if a perverse incentive were to exist. People would want to get sick. COVID parties. It'd be like the days before the vaccines when..
when...
...
I forgot my point. Lock them all up.
Under the "man dates" all 160M are considered "unvaccinated", even though "science" shows their immunity is longer lasting than that derived from the vaccine, and a lot of them are currently being thrown out of their jobs.
Your link says 120M. Not a big deal, but odd since you linked right to it.
> Under the "man dates" all 160M are considered "unvaccinated",
What? No, only the unvaccinated ones are considered unvaccinated. Are you suggesting that everyone who has been infected is unvaccinated?
> a lot of them are currently being thrown out of their jobs.
Actually, it looks like it's very few. [1][2]
1. Lots Of People Say They'll Quit Over Vaccine Mandates, But Research Shows Few Do. https://www.npr.org/2021/09/29/1041500566/vaccine-mandate-qu...
2. Only a fraction of U.S. health care workers are risking their jobs over vaccinations. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/07/science/covid-us-health-w...
CDC says "1 in 4.2 (95% UI* 3.6 – 4.9) COVID–19 infections were reported". Your friendly coronavirus tracker says there were 45,431,167 confirmed cases in the United States. Simple arithmetic shows that there were, therefore, 45,431,167 * 4.2 = 190,810,901 total cases. 120M figure was computed months ago, when there were fewer confirmed cases, but the ratio still holds. Most people had it already. Moreover a lot of people had it _and_ had the vaccine as well. Kids and anyone healthy under 30 aren't at risk. Let's end this charade.
Lest you think I'm an anti-vaxxer, no - I think people 40 years old and older should definitely get vaccinated and I'm vaccinated myself (I have comorbidities). But I also think this must be strictly personal choice, and you _can't_ collect enough safety data over just 9 months, especially if you vaccinate your control groups.
[1] Just a few days ago: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10076925/NYT-report...
When you need a ride home from the airport, do you want a licensed driver, or an unlicensed one?
Plus, I would like to know if asymptomatic vaccinated do indeed have reduced spread as opposed to asymptomatic non-vaccinated.
Or to put it simply: can you give me studies supporting the claim that vaccinated people are less likely to spread COVID-19, whether asymptomatic or symptomatic vs. non-vaccinated?
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By the way, does possessing the COVID-19 pass automatically imply that you are less likely to transmit?
This is entirely normal. The immune system doesn't keep elevated neutralizing antibody levels forever, that is too expensive. The immune system relies on B cells to kickstart neutralizing antibody production if the need arises. How those people would react to a further infection event would be extremely interesting. Do they produce antibodies? How fast? But the researchers didn't look into that.
The linked article is overselling vaccine effectiveness and underplays natural immunity. This is borderline misinformation.
https://www.healio.com/hematology-oncology/learn-immuno-onco...
> As a student in the Soviet Union I noticed subscribers to what Russians called the sovok mindset talked in interminable strings of pogovorki, i.e goofball proverbs or aphorisms you’d heard a million times before (“He who takes no risk, drinks no champagne,” or “Work isn’t a wolf, it won’t run off into the woods,” etc). This was a learned defense mechanism, adopted by a people who’d found out the hard way that anyone caught not speaking nonstop nonsense could be suspected of harboring original thoughts. Voluble stupidity is a great disguise in a society where silence is suspect.
That said, I can confirm that even in USSR people did very much harbor original thoughts even though quite obviously there was no free press and one could pay dearly for speaking their mind. You just had to be sure that you know everyone you're speaking to really, really well. The KGB had lots of "secret collaborators" embedded within the populace (much like the FBI in the US today), so if you're not careful with your jokes or thoughts, you could easily get 5 years in the labor camp. I predict that the United States will be like that within 10 years or less.
There's even a Soviet joke about this: a judge is heard laughing when exiting the court, and a friend of his asks "why are you laughing?", "The guy on trial told a really funny joke.", "Could you tell it to me?", "No, I can't, I just gave him 5 years in the labor camp for it."
(Wikipedia lists it as filmed in 'sepia', which could colloquially be called black & white)
Have I got it back-to-front?
It's awful, being a prescriptivist. Everything you read howls at you "Ignoramus journalist!", and everyone you meet seems to be foreign. Every dictionary seems to have been compiled by an "algorithm", based on some irrelevant corpus; and the meanings of words I thought I knew keep shifting. I guess defending Norlins against a hurricane tidal surge must have felt a bit like this.
Maybe I should just chill a bit more.
//actu.epfl.ch/news/scientists-discover-a-highly-potent-antibody-again/
Edit: fixed now. Thanks you guys.