It was a good selling point, only now it seems that vaccinations don’t prevent the spread as much as previously thought, especially the variants such as Delta variant. So it seem there won’t be any herd immunity anytime soon.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-diseas...

Unfortunately the Delta variant is sufficiently contagious that there will be no significant herd immunity effect to protect the unvaccinated. I encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can, but vaccinated people can still spread the virus. Eventually almost everyone will be exposed.

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

When (or if) herd immunity is reached (measured by rate of community spread), they can drop the need for vaccine passports. The passports are just there in the meantime while infection rates are high.

Yes you can. Most of those refusing the vaccine will eventually catch this and have natural immunity.

We’re seeing that people can get reinfected, so it’s unlikely natural immunity will protect you from Covid any more than the flu or a cold. I personally know of someone who got it last year, then got vaccinated, and then got it again and almost was hospitalized.

This is a tricky one.

> We’re seeing that people can get reinfected, so it’s unlikely natural immunity will protect you from Covid any more than the flu or a cold.

If COVID immunity ends up working like cold immunity that would be fine. About 20% of colds are caused by coronaviruses that caused deadly pandemics when they first appeared in humans. As with COVID these tended to cause much more serious illness in non-immune adults than in non-immune children.

Now we all get them as non-immune children, and although that does not confer upon us immunity from reinfection it does confer protection against serious illness.

Perhaps immunity wasn't the right word. Protection may have been a better term. People's second cases aren't as bad as their first, in general, because their body's immune system is better able to respond after a first infection.

Covid-19 will not going away. It can be expected to be transmitted like other endemic coronaviruses, and not be a big deal for most people. Children in the future will catch it, like they do other common cold coronaviruses, and they will grow into protected adults.

Interestingly, the one person I know that I gave the example over was almost hospitalized on his 2nd post-vaccine case of covid. It was worst than his first. But it also was likely a different variant than his 2020 case.

Comparisons to the flu and colds aren't scientifically valid. Influenza mutates much faster than SARS-CoV-2, which is why the flu vaccine is reformulated every year. Common colds are caused by dozens of different viruses (including at least 4 other coronaviruses) and gaining immunity to one of them won't protect you from the others. SARS-CoV-2 also mutates but at a much slower rate than influenza.

Reinfection by SARS-CoV-2 is possible but rare. There may be some benefit to vaccination even for those who have recovered from infection, although the duration of additional protection is unclear.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7032e1.htm

I've had it twice, which is why I KNOW that the "natural immunity" argument from people who are too cowardly to spend 10 minutes in a drug store is nonsense.

There's tons on science talking about the immune system response from a covid infection. From what I've seen the protection conferred from the immune system response to the virus is at least as good as vaccine immunity and perhaps better, given that it is a more broad based immune system response not targeting just the spike protein like the vaccines.

I don't understand your comment. We were talking about herd immunity at the moment, and that natural immunity and not just vaccine immunity counts towards that.

Why did you bring up cowardly? Is that in reference to the woman who had to be hospitalized for anaphylactic shock after her first vaccination?

If that is possible and happens, why bother with whole passport thing is first place? Seems kinda pointless if there isn't surefire solution either way.

To be more clear, those who don't die first.

No you can't. Not without vaccinating kids.

Kids can't acquire natural immunity? I haven't read that