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Comment by colordrops | Hacker News Reader

A record of positive infection. I'm in LA county and they keep a database.

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.

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> A record of positive infection.

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.

Except you don't, because lots of people are faking vaccination status. In fact it's probably less reliable than a positive PCR test. It's extremely common to fake vaccination cards among the anti-vaxx community.

_You_ know whether you've been vaccinated even if you're lying to others about it. Are you presuming now that antivaxxers are convincing themselves they've been vaccinated? I guess it's vaguely plausible.

No I'm suggesting that there shouldn't be a mandate for those who can reliably prove they have had covid.

That works in places that kept good records, but I have to imagine the vast majority of counties don't have those records. Plus I'm sure many people got infected and stayed home with mild/moderate cases and never got tested (because they knew they had it and/or didn't want to risk spreading to others), so there would be no record for them anyway. Or their cases were so early on in the pandemic that there were no tests available or the ones that were available were very unreliable (I remember the early ones only had ~50% accuracy)

My family had Covid in January 2020. All of the now known symptoms but there were no tests available yet. Our doctor later confirmed it based on symptoms a couple of months later but we were not eligible for tests then. A year and a half later we would certainly have B-cells but antibodies would likely have faded. So what do people in that situation do?

Given that there's significant overlap between COVID symptoms and those of other common winter diseases, you really can't "confirm based on symptoms".

(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!"

https://www.t-detect.com/

T-detect can apparently read your t-cells, so it would be good for a while I would say.

Get vaccinated. This isn't a political two-sided issue.

Easy, don't excuse people who don't have a verifiable record or from a test with a known high false positive rate. What's so hard about that? Airlines have figured it out, limiting which tests you can use. Why can't public health officials?

You're in LA County, so you should be aware of https://myvaccinerecord.cdph.ca.gov/

That's just as trustworthy. Probably more since what it asserts is less variable than how long you maintain antibodies.

No, you can't prove a negative. People can fake vaccine status from other locations. You can't fake a PCR test result in a public DB.

...what are you even talking about with "you can't prove a negative?"

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).

What I mean is that unless you only accept vaccination status if it's in a public database, any one can fake being vaccinated. Many if not most jurisdictions do not record it, and a piece of paper is all you need. And you can't force people to get it again if it's not on record, because the vaccines aren't approved for arbitrary numbers of shots. The anti-vaxx community is rife with fake covid vaccine cards.

So, you can't prove a negative, that being that someone has not been vaccinated. But you can prove that you had covid.

You can prove that you were vaccinated in CA. I've already been in venues that required that if you had a CA driver's license (and required government issued photo ID).

But CA is not the entire world. What do you do with people who got vaccinated elsewhere? What about CA residents that claim they got vaccinated elsewhere? You can't do anything about that. It's a huge gaping hole in the logic.

Your original post said "I'm in LA county and they keep a database."

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.

This doesn't address anything I said. Please directly address these two points:

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.

Cheapest way is to donate blood/plasma via the Red Cross.

You do the society a favor, and the app they provide lets you know if you continue to have covid19 antibodies.

So that nobody gets angry, be aware that they've stopped doing this test quite recently. Still good to do: I’ve now done it several times this year, and my first time was selfishly motivated in part by the free antibody test. You could even be doing yourself or a friend a favor, you never know!

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