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Comment by ericmay | Hacker News Reader

We know that natural immunity (don’t forget it’s not forever - it doesn’t protect against sufficient mutations) is going to happen so the idea that it isn’t recognize or wasn’t recognized is incorrect. What we are concerned about is how many people have to die from a preventable disease while this herd immunity naturally comes to bear.

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It isn’t recognized in the sense that you can show a vax card to get in a restaurant or on a flight, but not proof of previous infection.

First, this is not totally accurate -- you can board flights with literally no proof of anything, and international travel often does permit an affidavit of prior infection.

Second, just get a vaccine, jfc. Been infected? Great, now you're even more immune. Do one easy thing for your fellow humans. Can't? Plenty of documentable, obtainable exceptions. Won't? Fine. Don't avail yourself of the luxuries which are the result of humans working together to build something. Easy.

Why not base policy on science and data rather than an apeal to "unity"

I believe some countries do recognize it (Germany maybe?)

Yes, definitely the case in Germany.

Yes, in EU people who have recovered from Covid get the EU digital certificate.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/coronavirus/eu-d...

But France revoked the Passe Sanitaire and mutated it into a Vaccinal Pass, meaning you can’t get it using a PCR test or a previous infection, only the vaccine will be accepted.

You need to get one booster shot after your infection in France to get a pass (instead of two shots for the usual vaccination course). That has always been the case.

In France you get a pass for ~6 months after covid recovery, then one booster shot is indeed required.

But with vaccination, you get a pass for ~7 months, then (from Jan 2022) you also need a booster shot...

https://www.gouvernement.fr/info-coronavirus/pass-sanitaire

The prime minister announced 2 days ago that the Passe Sanitaire will be changed into a Passe Vaccinal, meaning PCR tests won’t be able to get it.

Perhaps to discourage 'covid parties' or other purposeful contractions of the virus.

As far as I know the US is the only country that for some reason doesn't think it matters if you are recovered. Israel, EU, others all seem to recognize it. Why the US does not, is not clear to me.

The problem in the US is that it became a political issue and both sides don’t want to lose face by ceding even an inch

True, about so many issues.

Other nations aren’t owned by pharmaceutical companies.

In my country it is if the infection is less than 6 month ago. And count as a first vaccination, so you can only take half a moderna after a prior infection.

Which makes sense for a lot of reasons.

1) Allowing a prior infection will lead to idiots having COVID parties to get tested.

2) Natural immunity is more variant-specific.

3) Tests are binary, but viral load determines natural response. The amount of viral load and natural response you need to fight off future infections and the amount to trigger a positive result are almost certainly not the same concentration.

4) Tests, unlike needles in the arm, have false positives.

>2) Natural immunity is more variant-specific.

How is it more variant specific? The gene therapy shots only expose you to the spike protein, whereas natural infection gives you exposure to the whole virus. As we see with omnicron, this variant has evolved so that the spike protein is the most changed aspect about it.

The spike protein, even through Omicron, is the most stable part. Your stupid body can pick up on any feature of the virus, and any other identifier is worse than the spike protein against the natural waves of different variants. Even if Omicron is worse than against natural immunity (something I would not concede, but will for the sake of this sentence) you're likely to have gotten COVID more times naturally than someone who was vaccinated over the past year.

Since there is literally no downside, get the fucking vaccine.

> Since there is literally no downside

There are downsides for recipients of bad batches.

Public VAERS data is reporting inter-batch variances where 90+% of adverse side effects are happening in 5% of batches. VAERS data is noisy, see site videos for more discussion, but extreme inter-batch variances across all three vendors is not expected. EU regulators have previously expressed concern about inter-batch manufacturing variance.

http://howbad.info

Tried to access that site, and my internet provider (AT&T Fiber) marked it as a spam site and wouldn’t let me proceed unless I added it to a whitelist in my router. Very odd.

> http://howbad.info

Wow. People die and get seriously ill but it seems stupidly irresponsible to assume some correlation between that outcome and a vaccine batch absent other sorts of analysis.

I entered mine and i see: the longer ago i got the shot, the higher number of deaths and serious illness. I.e. The correlation seems to be higher number of deaths as time increases.

What makes you think I didn't get it?

>any other identifier is worse than the spike protein against the natural waves of different variants

Source?

In Germany you can. I am sure that's true for many regions. However, the granted protection status doesn't last as long as full vaccination.

The virus is so contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect. Pretty much everyone will eventually be infected (if they don't die from something else first).

https://www.sciencealert.com/delta-variant-means-we-can-rule...

Measles is way more infectious and does achieve herd immunity at around 95% vaccinated.

Question is, can we get 95% immunity to Covid, as opposed to “benign but still infectious”.

The measles vaccine more or less protects you for the rest of your life, although a single refreshment might be sensible. Flu and covid vaccines would need constant adaptation and you will never reach that in a globalized world.

Yes, plus the Covid vaccine doesn’t seem to give much immunity against infection and spreading, so the whole game is off.

What can prevent it? Certainly not the current vaccines.

Current mRNA vaccines are highly effective at preventing severe disease and death of all widely circulating variants, including omicron

> highly effective

Varies by # of months since last dose, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSZMtSPX3iE

Dec 20, https://www.euronews.com/next/2021/12/20/omicron-3-vaccine-d...

> COVID-19 vaccines will not be enough to withstand the Omicron variant, warned the CEO of BioNTech, the German company behind the mRNA vaccine produced with Pfizer. "We must be aware that even triple-vaccinated are likely to transmit the disease…It is obvious we are far from 95 per cent effectiveness that we obtained against the initial virus."

I was responding to the above question about preventing death not infection.

He's talking about preventing infection.

>> What we are concerned about is how many people have to die from a preventable disease

> What can prevent it?

Thus my answer.

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