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Comment by trentnix | Hacker News Reader

They could start by not terminating perfectly capable doctors and nurses who have decided, for whatever their reasons may be, to refuse vaccination. I’m vaccinated (and boosted) but I cannot understand why it was okay for these people to be on the frontlines of the fight for over a year but suddenly they are no longer acceptable. And I find no convincing argument as to why actually recovering from infection counts for nothing, but the vaccine does.

The decision to terminate unvaccinated individuals reeks of bureaucracy, not an understanding of science or medicine.

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It’s pretty simple. They are more likely to get sick and more likely to infect those whose care they are entrusted with.

There’s a long history of this type of sanction. If you are a provider or nurse in a hospital who fails to get a measles, hepatitis, or rabies (after exposure) shot, you’ll be terminated for cause in many places.

The reason why recovery doesn’t “count” the same as vaccination is that immunity doesn’t last very long - 60-90 days typically. Some countries, such as Israel will recognize a single Pfizer dose and recovery as immune, if you have a negative PCR test.

> It’s pretty simple. They are more likely to get sick and more likely to infect those whose care they are entrusted with.

In a vacuum, that makes sense. But in the midst of genuine shortage of healthcare professionals, it's myopic foolishness. And I'd guess your comment about the lasting effect of actual recovery is going to turn out to be very wrong and already contradicts most everything I've seen recently regarding the immune response to reinfection after Covid recovery.

edit: Here are a few links that contradict your statement that immunity doesn't last very long:

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/lasting...

https://www.futurity.org/covid-19-survivors-immunity-viruses...

In all honesty I don't want people uneducated or conspiracy-minded enough to not take the vaccine treating me anyway even in a shortage situation.

Let them eat cake!

You don't want people who have medical degrees and are experts in their field treating you?

Because you have a better understanding of this than they do?

That seems like a strange position to take.

I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"

I believe my beliefs and choices are morally superior to yours, so that completely invalidates your merit! /s

What percentage of doctors are unvaccinated? Or is there atleast a number or some reporting on doctors getting fired for refusing vaccinations?

>I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"

Examples?

It’s literally the dumbest line of logic and my barely literate neighbor justifies his antivax status with the same theory. “What do the doctors who have declined the vaccine know that I don’t”

Even though over 99% of practicing doctors and something like 99.9% of hospitalists are vaccinated, they hold up that 1/1,000 as some sort of “truthsayer”.

If 999 experts in a field told you they trusted something and 1/1,000 said they didn’t —- you’d have to be an absolute fool to blindly follow the 1 and I'm a bit surprised how common this argument is on HN.

Well, I personally know three and have seen many videos of others who feel that the risks outweigh the benefits for healthy people who have natural immunity.

So, that's more than one.

Just nonsense. “Natural immunity” is another one of those amazing shibboleth words for those who don’t understand probabilities. It’s kind of amazing how innumerate most antivax people are.

Can you elaborate on what your problem is with the term "natural immunity"?

Doctors are just people, and like other people, a minority are idiots or feel they are invincible.

I would take a different position, like "what do these highly qualified health care workers understand that I don't?"

I’m all ears. On the face of it, getting vaccinated is a no brainer. I’d love to hear a medical reason for healthy individuals not to get vaccinated.

So far I’ve only heard arguments about vaccine mandates infringing on peoples rights, even though they never batted an eyelid at other vaccines. Why is this one a problem?

So far looking at the death rates, cases of severe illness, vaccination is the way to go. So I’d love to hear a compelling argument why you’d avoid it.

Having natural immunity is an excellent reason, according to all of the studies I've read.

No it’s not because the risk of getting serious illness is/was much higher compared to any vaccine. The risk of death is certainly higher. Again getting vaccinated is a no brainer on the face of it.

From what I've seen, there is no risk in being vaccinated when you already have prior infection, and there are benefits to doing so. So I don't see why prior infection would constitute a good medical reason to avoid vaccination.

(Aside: it is worth noting that vaccination also induces "natural immunity", as it introduces viral units [via various mechanisms depending on specific vaccine type] that cause the immune system to work more or less the same way as it would if presented with a regular viral infection. So using the term "natural immunity" when what you really mean is "prior infection" smacks quite heavily of chemophobia.)

> Because you have a better understanding of this than they do?

I think that the vast majority of doctors that have taken the vaccine to protect themselves are probably smarter than the tiny minority that have refused, yes.

It seems like you don't have that much experience with real world doctors. Lots of highly educated doctors become complete crackpots who you'd not want to be putting a band-aid on you. Dr. Oz is one such very high profile example (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mehmet_Oz#Reception) but there's lots more. I've had experiences with much less famous doctors that got all the proper education but then later lost their minds and/or decided to just make as much cash as possible. Really really common. I have trust in the field of medicine but in specific doctors just because they have their medical degree? no way.

Israel issues vaccination credentials to recovered COVID patients with 1 Pfizer dose. There’s a lot of data from there about this topic.

Initially, those folks are “super immune”, but it fades much quicker than expected last summer. Around November data started indicating that those individuals were much more likely (10x iirc) to contract COVID than a person fully vaccinated in the same timeframe.

I encourage everyone eligible to protect themselves by getting vaccinated but that doesn't produce lasting immunity against infection either. Immunity is a spectrum, not a binary condition.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...

Confine them to covid wards

Those doctors and nurses are little more than saboteurs. Would you hire someone who would willingly increases their own risk of being unable to work by orders of magnitude for no actual gain?

Note that this is not like not hiring someone who likes to go mountain biking and therefore are more likely to hurt themselves and not work. Hobbies like that have real benefits. Vaccine denial not.

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