Coronavirus in the United States - news and thoughts

The UK is recommending booster shots at 3 months. Case closed. I posted the largest study in the world to date showing Natural Immunity is vastly superior. You keep trotting out 100 people studies. You keep making yourself look foolish the more you argue against this. The vaccine doesn't stop you from spreading the virus. Zero reason for kids to get it. Everyone over 18 who doesn't have NI get the vaccine. The rest should wait until the rest of the world gets vaccinated first. That's how you beat this virus. Your solution prolongs the virus. Good job.

 

Size isn't everything. Your largest study is very homogenous in terms of people within the study. Some viruses effect people with different genomes differently. Other viruses have "cousins" that may be prevalent in certain areas of the world, and unknown in other parts, that could effect natural immunity and make it stronger in one population set, whereas other population sets don't have this advantage.

You keep burying your head in the sand when it comes to multiple studies that show vaccines to be more effective. A good scientist doesn't just accept one study, when multiple other studies, even if smaller, have completely opposite results. A good scientists tries to figure out why. That's the important question. Why did the Israeli study have one result, along with others, whereas multiple studies had a completely different result? Answer this question, and we'll likely know more about the virus, and how to defeat it.

Last, by not vaccinating children under 18, we are allowing the virus to run free amongst 22% of the population, give or take. That's not a way to defeat a virus. Especially one that mutates as fast as COVID.

 

That's exactly the way to eradicate a virus. That way 22% of the population has natural immunity to a virus that has killed a handful of healthy kids. It's why most parents aren't getting their young kids vaccinated. It's stupid. I posted the meta analysis last week. Go find it. You are so hung up on vaccines that you won't look at the data staring you in the face.

 

Several problem with this plan. First, we know kids are vectors in transmission. We also know they are less likely to have major symptoms, and more likely to be asymptomatic spreaders. The more people with the virus, the more it spreads to unvaccinated people, vaccinated breakthrough cases, and those reinfected with a second case. The unvaxxed population will always include those immuno-suppressed who cannot be vaccinated. And breakthrough cases will include elderly, who even if vaccinated, are more at risk if they get COVID as compared to the kids. What are the vulnerable supposed to do? Not be around kids at all?

Second, the more people infected, the more copies the virus makes of itself, the greater the chance of a new variant. While you can never reduce the risk to zero for a new variant, the more people vaccinated, the less people get vaccine, the less copies the virus makes of itself, the lower the risk for a new variant. What happens if the next variant has significantly more vaccine resistance than the current ones? Or worse, if the next variant effects all people the same, and people of all ages start getting as sick as the elderly? Variants are going to happen, but we can lower the number of new variants that appear by vaccinating everyone.

Last, natural immunity, like vaccine immunity, appears to wane. Leads to the question. What's better. Six month booster shots, or constant re-infection over the years for young kids? Yes, we don't know the long term effects of the vaccine, but we also don't know the long term effects of contracting COVID. The vaccine contains a mRNA strand and some organics that all break down and leave the body within 8 hours. The virus? It contains the same mRNA strand as the vaccine, plus an entire viral genome that we're not sure what it might do to the body years after infection. Or if multiple infection will make things worse long term? Odds are, the vaccine is safer than the virus

 

I have hesitated to post on here because I've been lurking & it's gotten really contentious on this board, but I wanted to share my perspective because I'm in Western NY, & several posts throughout have referenced NY.

Currently, Erie County (Buffalo) has a higher vaccination rate than say Bronx County. We get daily numbers on our phones & our "spike" right now is 72 deaths. Because of that the county has forced us back to phase 1 - indoor masking at all times. Schools have been in this already.

They refer to a decreased capacity, but several local hospitals had to decrease their capacity due to staff shortages due to a massive strike and folks quitting over the mandate. The bulk of the patients are surgical, cardiac, etc, so this sudden decreased capacity really isn't covid related.

https://data.democratandchronicle.com/covid-19-vaccine-tracker/new-york/erie-county/36029/

That's the tracker for the state.

People here are angry like so many others. Especially parents. We were told the vaccine would be required for school & that if our kids were vaccinated then no masks, could do gym, etc. Right now if you call your kid in sick and he has so much as a runny nose, vaccinated or not a negative COVID test is required. They still have to mask up. The county is at war with our school district because they want to give the kids 5 min mask breaks, desks are all still 6 ft apart, no water fountains, no lockers, lunch in assigned seats so they can be tracked. It's surreal. My son's group was out of school since early March 2020.

 

Now, personal note. Some of you know my health issues. A year before covid brain tumor #3 came along. I was on increased chemo, plus I have lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. I'm immunosuppressed. I was wearing masks, gloves, etc because my life depended on it. I mean proper N95 masks or cloth masks with a filter pocket. I lived my life - watched games, worked in Healthcare, shopped, etc.

Covid came. My office had a good amount of at risk patients, some with active covid who were coughing, wearning masks wrong, etc. Didn't get it. I got vaccinated knowing that I was going to need a booster because with my immune system it wasn't going to be as effective. But like my yearly flu shot figured it'd give me a chance.

I never asked the world to stop for me. Had people been given proper masks with proper instructions things could've been different. I literally laughed when Faucci said we didn't need masks. Proper masks work. Wearing them under the nose doesn't work. Do the vaccines help? Yes. Should kids get vaccinated? After my son got myocarditis twice from his I'd say it should've waited for more studies. But this will be like the flu shot, which is fine, and the focus needs to move to treatments.

 

Lastly, no one, and I mean no one should lose their jobs over this. Testing would actually be of greater benefit because you CAN get covid fully vaccinated. One of my bosses got covid, got fully vaccinated, and got covid AGAIN 3 months after his 2nd shot.

Get vaccinated because it helps. Wear a mask because if used properly it works. But let people live their lives. It can be done.

Thanks for listening .

 

Wrong and wrong. Kids aren't major spreaders of covid. Natural immunity lasts a hell of a lot longer than 3-6 months. Not debatable. You are making yourself look foolish in the face of facts staring you in the face. Go read up on things before posting again. You are making zero sense. When one doesn't have the data on their side they resort to making broad baseless claims. You are spot on with those.

 

Children didn't pass on the wild strain of COVID must. But Delta is different.

The delta variant is inherently more transmissible and, therefore, will be more contagious between children, between adults, and between adults and children and vice versa.
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The wild type of COVID took a lot of time to build up enough viral load before a person became contagious. In kids, their immune system worked fast enough to beat COVID before the kid became contagious. But Delta works much faster. And even in kids, their immune system can't work fast enough to eradicate the virus before they become contagious.

Omicron could be even faster and more contagious than Delta. We don't know yet.

 

https://www.aap.org/en/pages/2019-n...hildren-and-covid-19-state-level-data-report/

Since the pandemic began, children represented 17.0% of total cumulated cases. For the week ending November 25, children were 24.6% of reported weekly COVID-19 cases (children, under age 18, make up 22.2% of the US population).

This doesnt explicitly prove they spread it, but they do get it almost as much as adults, so chances are part of that is due to them spreading amongst themselves.

 

The biggest public health disaster of our lifetime was shutting down schools. It hurts the poorest the most.

Sorry to hear this. So thankful I live in Florida when I hear stories like this.

 

I'm coming around to your way of thinking. Here in TX we are much looser on these things, and I think it makes a difference on quality of life. Earlier in the school year the school district did mask mandates when the case load increased but relaxed them when it leveled off. I don't make my teenage kid wear a mask. He is vaccinated and his chances are serious illness are low. My 20 year old daughter, fully vaxed got it, but she immediately got monoclonal antibodies and it never got it too bad. She did a month later develop pneumonia - not sure if related to covid or not. She doesn't always take great care of herself.

I could see the more rigorous standards early on, but it becomes really hard to maintain this for years on end.

I've been supportive of the vaccine mandates and have little sympathy for adults who refuse to get vaxed. Especially health care workers. I agreed with doing it to pressure people to get it done. At this point, a high percent of adults have either been vaxed or have natural immunity so I'm not sure it is worth the fight anymore. I still feel strongly that health care workers should have it, and it boggles my mind that they don't feel the same way. But I'd be OK with some sort of natural immunity exception. And either way better testing protocols need to be implemented, especially if Omicron turns out to be the real deal.

 

This is insane. People under 18 should never receive the jab unless they have underlying conditions. The virus cannot be contained by being vaccinated. It's a lie. The purpose of the vaccine is to keep people from dying not spreading the virus. The vaccinated can spread the virus just the same as the unvaccinated. If the vaccinated are so confident in the vaccine, they should not care who or who is not vaccinated.

 

There is a pretty clear pattern. Vaccines initially provide more protection due to their consisted antibody reaction. However as the antibodies fade, natural immunity, to the extent it fully activates about 2/3 of the time, seems to have longer lasting protection. I wouldn't waste time arguing vaccines are better, because it really depends. But the main point it is mostly an irrelevant question and a curiousity. Who cares? The vaccine is helpful whether you do or you don't have natural immunity. And getting the disease to develop immunity is idiotic.

This article makes the point that this whole argument is political, not medical.

Vaccine vs. natural immunity: A debate driven by politics, not medicine

I'd suggest don't keep taking the bait by arguing about it

 

Protection offered by booster shot beats 'natural immunity,' study suggests

Small sample size, but antibody response after the booster is 3 times stronger than after 2nd shot and multiples higher than natural immunity.

A small study that’s among the first to track people’s protective antibodies over time found that those who were immunized against COVID-19 with two doses of an mRNA vaccine and received a booster shot about eight months later saw their levels of neutralizing antibodies skyrocket.
Among this group of 33 fully vaccinated and boosted people, the median level of these antibodies was 23 times higher one week after the booster shot than it had been just before the tune-up dose.

What’s more, their median post-booster antibody level was three times higher than was typical for another group of people whose antibodies were measured a few weeks after getting their second dose of vaccine, when they’re close to their peak. And it was 53 times higher than that of a group of 76 unvaccinated people who had recovered from COVID-19 just two to six weeks earlier.

 

What science is being ignored? What's the most basic reality of science?

You keep making these claims despite repeatedly being shown how you are wrong.

 

While the vaccinated can get COVID and spread the virus, it's a lie to say vaccinated spread COVID just like the unvaxxed. Vaccinated people have a layer of protection the unvaxxed do not. Even at 50% after 6 months, that's significant. The vaccinated also recover days quicker, meaning they are contagious for 3 or less days than the unvaxxed. Very significant with a virus that has many asymptomatic cases that can spread the virus unknowingly.

And yes, the argument which is better, natural or vaccine immunity is silly. What we should be looking into is why different studies yield different results. That's useful knowledge. Especially when natural immunity comes with the risk of getting COVID. And the vaccine significantly reduces that risk.

 

It would be interesting if the checked both groups further out like 6 months. We now that the vaccine induced immunity wanes, hence boosters. But most of the data I have seen shows natural immunity seems to last much much longer.

 

Natural Immunity is being ignored. So much so our moronic cdc was not even tracking meaningful data on it. It is more than incompetence...

And the damage has been done. More damage has been done by willful ignoring of the most basic of science when it comes to getting people to take the shot than any other thing.

 

My parents are 16 months since getting Covid. Still have antibodies to donate. And the other part of natural immunity that gets ignored is that those with NI are almost surely going to have a more robust T-Cell/B-Cell response that is not even being discussed and likely will last for years if not decades. It’s all tunnel vision for a narrative.