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This argument is disingenuous for a few reasons. Not least of which is that no one calls "natural" immunity psuedoscience—it's how the vaccine works. We take issue with people relying solely on that vs a vaccine (where at this point n=hundreds of millions) that prevents hospitalizations.

America does not have the capacity for everyone to get sick "the old fashioned way" and then go back to business as usual. The past several months should have clued most of us in on that by now. What happens when we reach a critical mass of health workers quitting?

The transmission argument similarly falls short given that the vaccine reduces the odds of you becoming a vector in the first place, or progressing to the point you require state intervention to survive.

I'm all for personal choice. If you want to opt out of vaccinations, that has already been in place. It means you may not be able to attend a public school, or hold a position as a nurse. Those are the tradeoffs we make in the name of our freedom.

Americans have chosen, in this instance, to put Planet Fitness and Applebee's over the public health. Had everyone been paid to stay home until domestic transmission halted + masked and socially distanced when necessary + got the vaccine if able to we would not see nearly a million dead Americans. I hold the elected officials (Dems and Reps) responsible for politicizing this pandemic and poisoning the public discourse such that a non-negligible portion of our population is consuming veterinary formulations of an anti-helminth dewormer instead of the free mRNA vaccine.

The Federal government threatening 30% of the population with joblessness is calling natural immunity psuedoscience.

> We take issue with people relying solely on that vs a vaccine (where at this point n=hundreds of millions) that prevents hospitalizations.

The rest of the world understands that previously infected people have natural immunity and are granted the same freedoms as vaccinated people.

From the outside looking in this issue looks like Americans having a religious war as usual

> The rest of the world understands that previously infected people have natural immunity

From your comment I'm not sure you fully understand what that means in terms of COVID-19, and what are the real world implications of natural vs vaccine-induced immune response.

For starters, a prior COVID-19 infection, unlike taking the vaccine, not only leads to a worse and sometimes outright ineffective immune response but also leaves you open to reinfection that are reported to be far more serious and outright deadly.

https://www.immunology.org/coronavirus/connect-coronavirus-p...

> and are granted the same freedoms as vaccinated people.

This really depends on which country you opt to cherry pick. In the EU for instance prior infections are not recognized as being the same as vaccination and consequently travellers are not "granted the same rights". For a person who had a previous COVID-19 infection to be granted the same privileges as a fully vaccinated person, that person has to take at least a single dose of a vaccine.

> From the outside looking in this issue looks like Americans having a religious war as usual

From the outside looking in, the only thing that's dumbfounding is this widespread resistence to get the damn shot. Countries like Portugal and Spain already show fully vaccinated rates of around 80% of their population, Canada reports 75%, and unexplainably the US only has around 58% of it's population? What can possibly explain this madness?

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/world/covid-vaccina...

> In the EU for instance prior infections are not recognized as being the same as vaccination and consequently travellers are not "granted the same rights". For a person who had a previous COVID-19 infection to be granted the same privileges as a fully vaccinated person, that person has to take at least a single dose of a vaccine.

I don't know where you heard that

"Recovered persons, holding an EU Digital COVID Certificate should be exempt from travel-related testing or quarantine during the first 180 days after a positive PCR test."

https://ec.europa.eu/info/live-work-travel-eu/coronavirus-re...

> What can possibly explain this madness?

Americans treating it like a sportsball game as usual

> "Recovered persons, holding an EU Digital COVID Certificate should be exempt from travel-related testing or quarantine during the first 180 days after a positive PCR test."

If you pay attention to the source you've cited, you'll notice that:

a) the EU requires a Certificate of Recovery, which has stringent requirements,

b) the EU requires mandatory PCR tests for people holding a Recovery Certificate after 180 days from the positive PCR test, which are not required for fully vaccinated persons,

c) to avoid mandatory PCR tests a recovered person needs to take at least a single dose of a vaccine.

If you read your source, you'll eventually get to this info.

Yes the stringent requirement of getting a test that proves that you've recovered.

You can also get a test certificate after getting a RAT test in any drop-in testing center 30 mins before you travel.

The fact is that the rest of the world understands this while in the US you will chant the mantra "trust the science" while ignoring the science because this like everything has been turned into a religious war between the two halves of the political spectrum

>Not least of which is that no one calls "natural" immunity psuedoscience—it's how the vaccine works.

I’m sure that’s how it was intended to work but the term you’re looking for is artificial immunity or vaccine derived immunity. Unfortunately the vaccines don’t confer immunity so there goes that.

>What happens when we reach a critical mass of health workers quitting?

For not consenting to a vaccination mandate? We’re all about to find out. Can you imagine working on the front lines for over a year to suddenly be discarded like a piece of trash because you won’t take a vaccine (when you are almost certainly already immune)?

>The transmission argument similarly falls short given that the vaccine reduces the odds of you becoming a vector in the first place, or progressing to the point you require state intervention to survive

Speaking of disingenuous... I’m not sure why people gloss over the fact that the vaccines don’t prevent transmission. Why fumble over word games instead of acknowledging the simple fact that you don’t get immunity from the vaccine.

Now follow that train of thought to it’s logical end. Universal forced vaccination of everyone on Earth with passports to boot and the outbreaks still continue.

Well hey at least we have this neato “world ID” (vaccine passport) which couldn’t possibly be used for nefarious means.

> ...the vaccines don’t prevent transmission.

This is one of the MAJOR things that make me concerned about the vaccine. A leaky vaccine almost seems worse than none at all, to me. (Just look at mareks disease in chickens)

> The vaccines have only ever been effective at reduction of symptoms. They have never prevented transmission and never promised to.

This is outright false. Vaccines lower the risk of transmission. They are however not full proof, and it's effect drops over time.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02689-y

> Even with 100% vaccination coverage, there will still be outbreaks. It’s only a matter of time before the goalposts shift on “fully vaccinated” and one’s passport isn’t valid anymore. Not until you get the booster. And you may think it ends at shot #3, nope. This goes on for as long as we let it.

This antivax/denialist/contrarian blend of bullshit is tiring and disheartening.

It seems people like you don't realize how the scientific community is scrambling to not only find a cure or fix to mitigate the impact of a disease that's also developing but also better understand the real world impact of the currently available treatments.

Public health officials are then taking this info and all updates and developments to determine public health and safety guidelines.

Yet, somehow clueless people try to spin these facts as if the world is full of certainties and any update in light of new info is somehow the result of an evil inconsistent conspiracy?

Listen, practically all the recent updates regarding public health and safety guidelines are a reaction to a variant that didn't existed until a few months ago well after the current batch of vaccines was developed and has proven deadlier and easier to spread. All the updates you're somehow attacking and criticizing can be tracked to the inception and spread of that variant, as a direct consequence of learning more about it and how the current set of vaccines work to counter it. But somehow you fail to take into account and instead pretend that nothing changed besides whims of evil officials conspiring against you? Where does that make any sense?

I draw two lines: no vaccine mandates and vaccines are unnecessary for kids. But, the data we have so far does show that vaccines are very good at preventing severe covid & death among adults. While natural immunity is also good, the individual risk and collective pandemic burden can be significantly reduced in adults by getting the vaccine.

For reference, nice epi data dashboards from MN: https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vb...

> The vaccines have only ever been effective at reduction of symptoms. They have never prevented transmission and never promised to.

Sigh,

https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/mounting-evidence-suggests...

[Even delta]

This from May, which is before Delta.