> to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.

Well, I'm currently in quarantine from my 4 month old and wife because an acquaintance refused to get vaccinated. "young people don't die from COVID" type mentality.

I attended my brother's bachelor party - of which we all thought everyone was vaccinated. Turns out this person, not only refused to get vaccinated - but had COVID exposure and still decided to attend. He told us the day after being in close contact for 3 days, that he tested positive and had symptoms during our contact with him.

Of the unvaccinated people I know, this mentality is the large majority of them. They refuse to get vaccinated because they refuse to consider how their actions might actually impact someone else.

I'm talking about those who have recovered when I say natural immunity, not all unvaccinated.

Also, presumably, this person would now be as immune as someone who's gotten the vaccine, based on this study.

> They refuse to get vaccinated because they refuse to consider how their actions might actually impact someone else.

They've considered it, they just don't care. What they actually care more about is the insinuation that they should care at all.

> "young people don't die from COVID" type mentality.

What mentality is this? It is well known that young people are at extremely low risk of dying, even more so than the average person.

> He told us the day after being in close contact for 3 days, that he tested positive and had symptoms during our contact with him.

The problem wasn't that your acquaintance refused the vaccine. The problem is that he didn't stay home. You could say the same thing about the flu. If you have it, don't go to parties. Who goes to a party with a flu? A cold even?

I hardly think this guy is representative. There's also evidence that asymptomatic people don't spread COVID. This would mean that if they don't have symptoms, you won't get it, and if they do and they're like most people, they'll stay home which means no transmission.

> Of the unvaccinated [sic] people I know, this mentality is the large majority of them. They refuse to get vaccinated because they refuse to consider how their actions might actually impact someone else.

This seems unnecessarily hostile. Plenty of people don't want to be vaccinated either because they've had COVID and don't need it (this study isn't the first; Peter McCullough for example has spoken about other studies), they don't want to risk the potential side effects, including long term, of an experimental vaccine that is not technically approved by the FDA, ethical/religious reasons (the use of stem cell lines derived from aborted children during vaccine research, etc), and because the virus is not a serious threat to most people.

It is disturbing how the media is lumping those wary of the COVID vaccine in with antivaxers (~2% of the population; 98% of Americans get all common immunizations), COVID deniers, or "grandma killers". Let's not do that, as the OP recommends.

> There's also evidence that asymptomatic people don't spread COVID. This would mean that if they don't have symptoms, you won't get it, and if they do and they're like most people, they'll stay home which means no transmission.

We wouldn’t be in the middle of a pandemic if this were true.

It's been a pretty mild pandemic. What has been newsworthy about was the removal of freedom, not the number of dead people.

It's flu-like transmission - which is mostly through droplets. If you're not sneezing in the face of people you don't have high chances of passing it around

It's the 9th pandemic in human history in the number of deaths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#Major_epidem...

Looks like it's much lower than 9th population adjusted.

There a difference between asymptomatic and presymptomatic.

Parent poster actually meant presymptomatic.

> This would mean that if they don't have symptoms, you won't get it

Why so? Or are you mixing up asymptomatic with presymptomatic, as many do? It is clear that latter do indeed play a big role in spreading infection, but the science is not so clear on the former. Likely that asymptomatic do not spread it.

One of the unfortunate things about SARS2 is that there is reasonable evidence of some asymptomatic spread. Particularly the recent Japanese study[0]

"When taken together, I think these two studies show that people with asymptomatic covid-19 can and do spread the disease, and the best estimate from both studies is that those with symptomatic disease are about three to four times more infectious than those with asymptomatic disease. That is not a huge difference. Even though people with symptoms are a couple of times more infectious than people without symptoms, those without symptoms could still be causing more infections overall."

[0] https://sebastianrushworth.com/2021/06/06/can-asymptomatic-p...

Why are you quarantined if you got vaccinated?

Keep in mind that vaccine is not 100% effective.

The measles vaccine is less effective than the COVID vaccine, and for mumps is less than 90% effective. Are you going to quarantine yourself over those lowered percentages? Most vaccines are less effective than the COVID vaccine.

To not trust vaccination is to not trust science.

Stating the facts is also science.

Data indicates actual effectiveness as about 91.5%.

However, that's across the population. Factors like extended contact period increase viral load intake, could further decrease the effectiveness. Since my 4 month old can't get vaccinated against COVID yet, we decided it wasn't worth taking the risk.

Infants almost have a 0% chance of encountering any issues with COVID. 8 out of 100,000 children need to be hospitalized. You're talking about a 0.08% chance of hospitalization and for infants it's actually even lower.

Most vaccines have an efficacy lower than the COVID vaccines. Basically you are feeding off of your own fear, and you don't trust science. That's your right, but don't blame anyone for your self-imposed quarantine but yourself at this point.

100% this. It's not only about oneself. For young and healthy people, vaccination is primarily for helping and protecting others.

The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised. I personally don't think in terms of "blanked demonizing" people, but neither am I going to blanket-absolve all the unvaccinated — especially willful anti-vaxxers.

Regardless, this study is good news — because it means that every person who is infected and then recovers contributes towards herd immunity, regardless of their outlook on vaccines.

I'm talking about those who have recovered when I say natural immunity, not all unvaccinated.

> The unvaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated, such as the immunocompromised

Is it actually the case that immunocompromised people cannot be vaccinated? The ones that I know have been; as far as I know, the mRNA vaccines by virtue of not being based on live virus are not dangerous to those with weakened immune systems.

Immunocompromised people can safely get the vaccine, but it might not work, leaving them still vulnerable to the virus.

In recent studies something like half of organ transplant recipients did not produce antibodies after being vaccinated, and there have been a few cases where a group of vaccinated transplant recipients caught Covid (e.g. from a vaccinated nurse who had an asymptomatic infection) and had severe symptoms including some deaths.

Can you provide a link to those cases?

There might also be not enough data on how vaccine affects people with rare health conditions.

The vaccinated are still vectors for the infection of those who cannot be vaccinated.

If you are immunocompromised, you're not only vulnerable to COVID-19, but to a plethora of other viruses going around all the time.

My wife and I got COVID twice 9 months apart last year. The second time my wife ended up in the hospital.

We both got vaccinated as soon as we could.

Re-infection is very rare, so the chance that it happened to two people in the same household is extremely rare. Are you certain you were infected with covid both times?

Not certain, but the second time we had a positive PCR test to confirm. The first time, there were no tests in NYC but close contacts had it and we had the same exact symptoms (which are not similar no any other flu/disease we have had).

People in the same household have high chances of infecting each other.

Please read that comment again, it's about RE-infection

I know it is, my point is that two spouses getting re-infected isn't two independent things.

It's not like bringing your bomb onto a plane decreases the odds of an attack, because what are the odds of two bombs.

The devil is in the details here. If natural immunity wears off after 6-9 months (as some studies suggest), and one spouse got infected again after that period, then the odds of the other one of getting re-infected too are pretty high.

Wow really? Do you have positive test results that document the sequence of events?

If so you should probably email these researchers or something. Bet they would be interested

There is already a decent understanding of documented reinfections. The first such cases came out a year ago, e.g.: https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20200406006700320 , or https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-doctor-reinfect... By the end of last summer there were clear documented cases with secondary infection from a different viral strain than the original one, e.g: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3681489 The original publication (and the reply that I cite that raises some concerns, but leaves the main argument in place) estimated that the protection from a past infection is about 83%, so significantly smaller than that from the 2-dose mRNA vaccines. https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n124/rr-0

While I agree reinfections are likely to exist in small numbers, the tests we're using are often not great so it's hard to say whether those were covid or something else.

This year I've been heavily sick several times (and the flu almost never caused me all this pain before in my life) and it was never covid.

If one of the test returned a false positive I would have been convinced it was covid. If I actually got covid again I would have believed I was one of the rare reinfections.

PCR tests are more likely to give you a false negative than a false positive.

The second time we had a positive PCR test to confirm. The first time, there were no tests in NYC but people I worked with had it confirmed and we had the same exact symptoms (which are not similar no any other flu/disease we have had).

You really shouldn't be saying this on public forums without proof. You have no proof that the first infection wasn't the flu or a bad cold. The odds of reinfection are very small, and the odds of both of you getting reinfected is vanishingly so. Without proof this is potentially fear mongering.

I can imagine it being downplayed out of fear that it could slow down the vaccination program by pushing people over the edge that were hesitant to get vaccinated and possibly questioning covid-19 in the first place.

It's fine if those previously infected don't get the vaccine. I don't see why information on how natural immunity is effective would make people who haven't gotten Covid even less likely to get the vaccine.

There are many people who are convinced their respiratory infection earlier in the pandemic was Covid despite never having been tested. While some of those may plausibly have been Covid, many were surely flu or some other disease.

It would be a shame if such people avoided the vaccine under a disinformation-driven impression that the vaccines are risky, and ended up catching/spreading Covid later on.

I can only imagine it's because it might convince people that don't take Covid-19 seriously to not get the vaccine because even if they didn't get it, they'd be immune once infected going forward, missing the point about hospitalization, protecting the vulnerable, etc.

> Most authorities are downplaying natural immunity, despite evidence like this.

OK, I think I can agree with this, I've seen lots of "getting the vaccine provides much better immunity than getting Covid"-type statements that seemed more like conjecture.

> The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.

Is this a serious statement? The problem isn't that natural immunity doesn't keep make you immune, the problem is that "acquiring natural immunity" often results in death, especially for vulnerable populations.

> > The more widely this spreads, the more people will realize it's ok to rely on natural immunity, and to not blanket demonize those who are unvaccinated.

> Is this a serious statement? The problem isn't that natural immunity doesn't keep make you immune, the problem is that "acquiring natural immunity" often results in death, especially for vulnerable populations.

It's a real policy question: how much to worry about vaccinating people who already had COVID. The confusion (or propaganda?) downplaying natural immunity means that many people would needlessly get the vaccine while already possessing immunity from prior infection.

In the US, this no longer matters, as we already have more vaccine supply than we have people willing to receive it. Elsewhere, though, where supplies remain scarce, we absolutely should be focusing efforts around vaccinating people who have not yet gotten the disease.

> the problem is that "acquiring natural immunity" often results in death, especially for vulnerable populations

You're reading beyond what I'm saying. My point is that there is no need to push those who have already gotten Covid to also get the vaccine. I'm not saying anything about getting sick as an alternative to getting the vaccine.

Thanks, and apologies, I misunderstood your comment.

It rarely results in death. Even men 65-75 have a only a 3% chance of dying if they get covid. To put that into perspective, according to the mortality tables, those people have a 1.5-3.5% chance of dying in a given year even under normal circumstances.

Polio has a death rate in the mid single digits, too.

For children and middle aged adults as well, not just people over 65. That and the permanent deformity and paralysis are a big difference.