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Comment by _Microft | Hacker News Reader

There is an appropriate xkcd now:

There are layers to this.

1) "I'm going to protect myself with natural immunity" with no other context is a stupid statement for the reasons given in the comic. It does feel like people do make this proclamation, but it's likely that they're just leaving relevant context out, and that they're actually in one of the below categories.

2) "I'm not afraid of getting sick myself, so I'm willing to do so early and protect people later" makes a little bit of sense, except that in reality such people (my bias; I could be wrong) tend to infect themselves in an uncontrolled manner that fails to protect others anyway. (I would support a version of the Great Barrington Declaration that was fully controlled, where all infections were consensual. I actually had a run-in with Jeffrey Tucker about this at a libertarian event.)

3) "Tried as I did to avoid it, I got infected anyway. But at least I should be good to go at this point." This makes sense (pending scientific review). The cost to self and others is already paid.

4) "I would not be afraid of getting sick so long as I had an early treatment plan" also makes sense in principle. It's an alternative to vaccination. Also pending scientific review; I have no idea who's right here.

4 is an absolutely terrible alternative to vaccination. It's like saying if the boat sinks I'm going to either swim or put on a life vest.

2 prior to vaccination was absolutely horrible nonsense. There was an expectation relatively early that we would have a vaccine within a few years and that it was absolutely possible to hold out and have only a fraction of the population would have to get it pre vaccine. If you hold position 2 the only logical way to proceed would be to take protective measures prior to vaccination, vaccinate, then get infected.

This is still suboptimal because the more the infections are spread out the lower the burden on the system for those who do get sick. The reason you don't see fully fleshed out though processes beyond I'm going to get sick and get it over with is that if they really thought it all the way through they would drop the entire position.

> 4 is an absolutely terrible alternative to vaccination. It's like saying if the boat sinks I'm going to either swim or put on a life vest.

I don't dismiss it prima facie like you do here. On one hand you probably have small but non-zero damage from the vaccines (putting aside the controversy of supposed significant damage). On the other, you supposedly have the ability to keep damage from the disease to also small (but non-zero) by early treatment. Plus, you get immunity to more proteins in the end. At least some studies out there indicate that infection-based immunity is stronger and/or longer lasting than vaccine-based.

But again, the reality of the situation may very well be as you imply. I just want to steelman their argument. I'm also rather skeptical of their claims about mitigating damage with early treatment, but maybe.

> 2 prior to vaccination was absolutely horrible nonsense.

I have mixed agreement here. As it pertains to careless massive spread of the thing, I'm with you.

As it pertains to individual choices, I really think it's a value judgment. Do you want to live life hidden away for this unknown period of time, the government apparently moving the goal posts over and over, etc etc? Or would you rather just take a risk in life like you always do, albeit a bit larger one than usual? Or maybe you're close to the end of life anyway, and you're willing to risk dying to see your grandkids one last time? etc etc.

I've always had zero judgment toward people who make this choice in as much as it affects only them. I was close to taking this route myself (in a controlled manner) winter 2020-2021 if the vaccines didn't come out. (On the other hand, I've had a lot of judgment toward people in as much as they affect others. It's been a tough couple years for me as a libertarian.)

> If you hold position 2 the only logical way to proceed would be to take protective measures prior to vaccination, vaccinate, then get infected.

This is more or less me, other than pulling back during hospital surges.

3 is actually poor as well.

Natural immunity doesn't involve a known infectious dose, and the virus actually has parts of its genome (ORF8) which antagonize MHC and the humoral immune system.

If you get very sick then its much better than vaccination because you gain T-cell epitopes to the whole genome and the response is very strong. But someone who just pops PCR positive and has little to no symptoms may not have seroconverted and form no immunity at all.

There's this very stupid idea that "natural is better" and that is false. A pile of the nonstructural proteins are all thought to be involved in immune suppression and are the exact opposite of anything that you'd ever want to put into a vaccine. The virus itself wants to be as stealthy as possible for as long as possible, for reasons that one would think would be entirely obvious. That makes it worse.

Hmm, then it sounds like getting infected before vaccination is more likely to be valuable than getting infected after, since you'd be less likely to be very sick after. And of course you don't want to get very sick.

I guess there's no free lunch here.

That's very difficult to know, but most studies of "superimmunity" were done on people who got sick and then got vaccinated, not the other way around (and those generally were patient contacts, so often more severe than symptoms that would normally be treated at home).

The only way to have a known, titrated response is to be vaccinated. And the vaccines actually are free, and the side effects are very low and they're safer than aspirin. And they're designed to bypass innate and intrinsic immunity and to stimulate humoral immunity -- where the natural virus has a gene that specifically tries to combat the host humoral immune response.

The fetish for natural immunity is ascientific. Every bit as much as something like Steve Jobs rejecting surgery for his cancer in favor of natural alternative treatments.

This would have to be my favourite xkcd regarding COVID.

https://xkcd.com/2300/

Hm, I'd have expected a better response under the 'xkcd' moniker, something more... logical. Something like...

             Say, I think I'll
    O  o --- take my chances
   /|\/|\    with this cough
   /\  /\
   ---------------------
             But why would you risk
    O  o --- being infected? You'll
   /|\/|\    feel miserable!
    /\ /\
   ---------------------
             I'd rather feel miserable
    O  o --- only once instead of
   /|\/|\    three-four times.
   /\  /\

The comic was pretty unfunny and ignorant. For most people, COVID never was a major threat, and getting infected and getting immunity was always a valid approach. Read the great Barrington declaration, signed by over 10,000 scientists and thoroughly attacked by people like Dr. Fauci without any science backing the attack. Also read all the studies on the matter, which almost universally conclude those with natural immunity fare better against re-infection than those with vaccine immunity alone.

Speaking as an unvaccinated with natural immunity, along with all my immediate family and friends in the same boat.

Edit: adjusted signature numbers for Barrington declaration.

> which almost universally conclude those with natural immunity fare better against re-infection than those with vaccine immunity alone

Almost as if the immune system... worked as intended. Shocking.

This begs the question, why not simply use immunity status instead of vaccination status? If someone has the right antibodies to fight COVID, does it matter how these were obtained?

Other countries, notably Israel do allow it. Their scientific establishment is apparently a lot smarter than the one in the U.S. Or maybe less corrupt? We can only guess at the motivation behind apparent incompetence of these agencies, often referred to as "conspiracy theorizing".

> This begs the question, why not simply use immunity status instead of vaccination status? If someone has the right antibodies to fight COVID, does it matter how these were obtained?

Because humans love any opportunity to discriminate against another group of people. Despite this discrimination making zero sense, since clearly us vaccinated people are still spreading COVID at very high rates.

This seems like a reasonable approach and it’s been talked about. Is there anything stopping individual states from issuing such certification?

1. To err on safe side - better have 2 immunities than 1 (esp when it's self reported)

2. Unity - we're in this together and I'm sorry if you live in a place where communities are disconnected

We're in this together sounds a lot more like "You're in this with me."

I can present to you a very good reason not to use immunity status. Every idiot and their brother was discussing how they had already had it when statistically this was absolutely impossible. Everyone who had the sniffles from late 2019! to current is absolutely sure they have had it because it would be more convenient to be immune than not.

It would be impossible to give antibody tests to 60M antivaxxers in any reasonable time frame. Instead of asking people to wait in line a year for a test that has very little medical use the politically expedient thing would be to ask for the equivalent of a doctors note saying they pinky swear their patient had covid. Some states/some doctors would fire up the presses and within a month 95% of the antivaxxers there would have a certificate regardless of actual status.

Since vaccination is actually in everyone's interests even if they have already had covid this would lead to less people being vaccinated and it would be against even the anti vaxxers interests and furthermore locations that only allow vaccinated or tested people would now be equally full of infectious people as vulnerable people with a newly false sense of security.

> Some states/some doctors would fire up the presses and within a month 95% of the antivaxxers there would have a certificate regardless of actual status.

Then test them and fire the doctors who deciced to lie.

I have natural immunity too. Got it by being vaccinated, instead of taking the much larger risk of being infected. Aside from the higher risk from the disease, there's the risk of infecting others. An infected person can infect others before symptoms appear, so having everyone with low risk get infected creates the possibility of infecting others of high risk, which of course defeats the whole purpose of the immunization effort.

Nope. That's vaccine immunity. Let's get our terms right.

Also, you can infect others presymptomatically with the vaccine. With omicron, it looks like asymptomatic transmission also occurs. Don't worry. I've researched this. You're not the first person in this world to try to make others feel guilty for not getting the vaccine. The problem is you don't have a ton of science backing your guilt trip.

That is referred to as "vaccine derived immunity", look it up. Drastically different from natural immunity.

>> I have natural immunity too. Got it by being vaccinated, instead of taking the much larger risk of being infected.

> That is referred to as "vaccine derived immunity", look it up. Drastically different from natural immunity.

Uh, what now? "Drastically different"? Are people who get vaccinated aliens with different kind of immune systems?

Natural immunity and vaccine derived immunity are quite similar, since they arise from the same mechanisms. IIRC, the main difference is vaccine derived immunity is more consistent and predictable (e.g. in a lot of cases natural immunity can be inferior).

They have different priors and according to CDC a prior exposure to Covid yields better protection than vaccine alone, and vaccine in addition to prior exposure does not yield statistical significant reduction in hazard ratio.

> They have different priors and according to CDC a prior exposure to Covid yields better protection than vaccine alone, and vaccine in addition to prior exposure does not yield statistical significant reduction in hazard ratio.

I wouldn't read too much into that:

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-science-heal...

> The new study’s findings do make sense, said Christine Petersen, a University of Iowa epidemiologist. She said a vaccine developed against an earlier form of the coronavirus is likely to become less and less effective against newer, mutated versions....

> Another thing to consider: The “staunchly unvaccinated” aren’t likely to get tested and the study only included lab-confirmed cases, Wherry said....

> CDC officials noted other limitations. The study was done before the omicron variant took over and before many Americans received booster doses, which have been shown to dramatically amplify protection by raising levels of virus-fighting antibodies. The analysis also did not include information on the severity of past infections, or address the risk of severe illness or death from COVID-19.

> — 6-fold lower in California and 4.5-fold lower in New York in those who were vaccinated but not previously infected.

> — 29-fold lower in California and 15-fold lower in New York in those who had been infected but never vaccinated.

> — 32.5-fold lower in California and 20-fold lower in New York in those who had been infected and vaccinated.

So 29 fold lower rates in California for unvaccinated with prior infection, how much of that do you want to attribute to behavior vs actual immunity? Why is it so unbelievable that getting infected actually gives immunity?

Except when they are not similar, that is. This is more common than you seem to think, e.g. TBE - tick-borne encephalitis - is a nasty piece of work of a disease which can leave the victim with permanent disabilities (around 25%), dead (around 2.5% for the strain common here in Sweden, far higher for the strain endemic in Russia), cognitively impaired and more. I got it in 2005 (which made me the "index patient" for this part of the country, it had not been seen before in this area) and it was... unpleasant. Now that I had the disease I am immune for life. My wife and children got vaccinated to avoid my fate. The vaccination consists of three initial doses followed by a new dose every 3d to 5th year, depending on age (the older, the more frequent).

The current crop of SARS2 vaccines comes of far worse than the TBE vaccine with immunity waning in a period counted in weeks, not years [1,2,3]. Natural immunity is "from 6 to 27 times stronger" depending on which researcher you listen to. Here's part of the abstract of the largest study (~700.000 test subjects) on these matters:

SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees had a 13.06-fold (95% CI, 8.08 to 21.11) increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021. The increased risk was significant (P<0.001) for symptomatic disease as well. When allowing the infection to occur at any time before vaccination (from March 2020 to February 2021), evidence of waning natural immunity was demonstrated, though SARS-CoV-2 naïve vaccinees had a 5.96-fold (95% CI, 4.85 to 7.33) increased risk for breakthrough infection and a 7.13-fold (95% CI, 5.51 to 9.21) increased risk for symptomatic disease. SARS-CoV-2-naïve vaccinees were also at a greater risk for COVID-19-related-hospitalizations compared to those that were previously infected.

[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

[2] https://www.westernjournal.com/johns-hopkins-doc-says-natura...

[3] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

Just to make sure that no one reads this and believe in that "Great Barrington" claim, the numbers (as of today) are:

Total Signatures 920,477

Medical & Public Health Scientists 15,707

Medical practitioners 46,412

The rest fall under "concerned citizens" category.

The Great Barrington Declaration is complete garbage, and does not have a million scientists' signatures. Even if you go by the self-proclaimed numbers, slightly under a million "concerned citizens" signed it and 15,000 public health scientists signed it. The next question then is how they verified those 15,000 were scientists and the answer is they didn't. You checked a box when you signed it. So at best, they have 15000 people who would claim that they are scientist. Oh, btw, you didn't have to put your real name to sign it, so you have individuals with clearly fake names claiming to be scientists signing this thing and there still were only 15,000 signatures. Nope, do not base public health decisions on this dumpster fire of a petition.

If your only critique is that some of the signatures are fake, then you haven't exactly disproved the declaration as much as hurled insults at it. That's usually what people do when they don't have facts on their side.

When a large part of the argument for the position was that it was the reasoned words of qualified experts the fact that it is a complete lie full of signatures of imaginary people is even more destructive than one might imagine to its credibility because honest positions aren't normally advanced by lies.

If I produced a position that advanced the idea that water makes things wet and it was signed by Roger Rabbit and Porky Pig you wouldn't give it serious thought and assume that it pushing some untruth or other because generally the truth doesn't walk in clothed in a lie.

Positions unworthy of consideration don't need to be debunked because they have proven their lack of worth on their face. If you believe the ideas contained therein are worthy you ought to strip them of their association to obvious liars and present them bare to the world lest they be casually dismissed.

I considered the great barrington declaration first and foremost based on its ideas, not based on its signatories. Similarly, I would take seriously the claim water is wet because it's actually true. I've also spent a good deal of time listening to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the co-creators of the declaration. I would that he had Dr. Fauci's job. Actually, he would probably be miserable because the job is about politics far more than it is about science.

I assume you want people to take what you're saying seriously, we all do.

It would help if you were to mention why it is "a complete lie", how the positions therein are "unworthy of consideration", have "proven their lack of worth on their face", as well as which signatories are "imaginary people".

I am literally not saying that you are wrong.

I'm saying that making broad statements in the context "everyone knows...", without support, will lose anyone but those willing to endlessly argue with you in the same opinionated context. In other words, instead of a worthwhile discussion, this is the equivalent of standing behind barricades on one side of the street screaming at the people behind the barricades on their side of the street who are screaming at you. Despite well composed sentences above, it has no more value than graffiti. Why bother?

The Great Barrington declaration was a web form signed by such luminaries as 'Dr Johnny Fartpants', 'Professor Notaf Uckingclue', Dr Johnny Bananas”, “Professor Cominic Dummings” a resident at the “university of your mum” and another supposed specialist whose name was the first verse of the Macarena.

A web form with no verification step that tells people that they don't have to lock down is going to be seen by 10,000 weirdos on the internet for every one doctor or scientist. Not doing at least a first pass filter of removing obvious nonsense and counting doctors based on people checking a box robs them of all credibility.

Furthermore the notable authors who really are the primary minds behind it also pushed for an entire list of now discredited theories and flawed studies now known to be nonsense. Like claiming that we were nearly at the threshold for herd immunity back in 2020.

In retrospect their theories look even worse than they did at the time. Suggesting that we ought to let covid wash over half of us while the other half somehow stayed away from the first in October 2020 looks especially insane when vaccination began in December 2020. It's like being in an out of control truck hurtling towards the cliff with a fellow in the back yelling "jump jump you're going over anyway!" in retrospect with the perfect clarity provided by hindsight knowing that the truck will slow to a stop before hitting the cliff edge and going over that fellow looks either malicious or stupid.

Winter 2020 was bad but not bothering with precautionary measures would have meant many more would have faced covid without the better tools and vaccination to blunt the harm. Furthermore as deaths continued to rise as our health care system choked people would have eventually when deaths rose enough self imposed the isolation and economic consequences the declaration spoke out against being imposed from on high.

It's bad science, bad methodology, bad public policy, bad logic and bad faith. 'Professor Notaf Uckingclue' needs to go back to school.

Do you include Prof Cominic Dummings and Dr Johnny Bananas in your numbers? [1]

[1] https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/herd-immunity-...

Attempting to refute the entire petition based on a few fake signatures is a similar argument used against the VAERS database.

"Hey it doesn't matter if there's 20,000 deaths, I found this one fake report! The entire system is thus suspicious and should be disregarded"

Luckily people see right through this weak argument.

OP thinks the claims hold more weight due to the number of signatures otherwise they wouldn’t have mentioned the numbers. Therefore it is perfectly valid to point out that the people on the list were not properly verified.

Not sure what your point about VAERS is.

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