Antibody tests exist. I’m not in any way antivax, but it makes no sense why people who already had COVID should be required to receive a vaccine instead of just proving they have antibodies.

This kind of illogical policy gives fuel to antivaxers.

What's the difference in cost to the organization giving the shots or the antibody tests? My expectation is that they're about the same. If that's true, it's easier and more certain to just require vaccination.

Also, this article provides some arguments based more on biology. https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/10/prior-infection-vs-v...

No it's not easier because my employees will quit

You can test for "antibodies". But the question of "is this patient immune from Covid-19" is a lot harder to answer and especially to standardize.

There is such a thing as testing for neutralizing antibodies by testing the antibodies against the virus directly. But in general, all of the relevant tests seem to be more expensive and harder to standardize.

Every human body creates its own set of antibodies against the virus (or the vaccine). Starting from different strains of the virus, the potential for uncertainty is too great.

> potential for uncertainty is too great

Too great for what? Even with 2 jabs, the immunity is <90% against Delta and research shows post-covid immunity is more effective.

You are overestimating the "research shows" part, and no research shows that "natural immunity" is achieving a higher than 90% immunity against any infection.

Nor is it clear who actually has a "more effective" or even "sufficiently effective" immunity, given that the infection could be up to a year or more ago, and almost nobody knows exactly what strain they got. And no, you can't tell any of that easily, reliably or cheaply by antibody testing.

Proof of vaccination is the cheapest and most reliable proof of a reasonable chance of immunity.

So if it costs a company the same, then workers can take medicine they don't need that has a risk to save someone a buck? How about we stick with science instead of profits?

How do you define antivax? Pretty sure you would be defined as an antivaxxer by most people as a result of your opinion that some people don't need to get vaccines

So, if you have post-infection immunity against virus that you can prove (test blood reactivity against virus protein), and it's likely better than typical 2 doses (research shows), you should still be legally required to take 2 jabs even though there are often side effects, even serious ones?

Not OP, but if arguing against it is anti-vaxx, then I guess you should call me anti-vaxx and I'll call you unreasonable.

That's a really bad way to define ant-vax since that would encompass a lot of people following accepted practices with the measles vaccine along with some others.

Anti-vaxers hate all vaccines. Most of this thread is about following actual science and practices used for other vaccines. If you've had it, then don't get the vaccine, otherwise get the vaccine.

I agree with you, but society has recently decided to label anyone with these beliefs as an anti-vaxxer, so we'll have to get used to the new terminology

It's not about whether the individual "needs" the vaccines, but rather about rules a society can live by.

And those who argue the most don't really argue about "they don't need the vaccine", but rather assume the vaccine is much bigger risk or damage than is at all reasonable. And that, yes, puts you very close to the "anti-vaxx" bubble.

People seem to have completely forgotten the difference between circulating antibodies and immune cells. If somebody had Covid-19 a while ago and didn't have exposure to it they may still have immune cells but no circulating antibodies.

There is always a risk with vaccination as with any medication. It's small, but why take it? Taking a vaccine to make other people feel better is emotional and not scientific. There is no debate, there are blood tests. The same logic has been applied to measles.

You'd find that judging an individual's immunity by a vague notion of prior infection with Covid-19 is probably riskier than the vaccine.

Comirnaty had hundreds of millions of doses administered so far, and maybe - maybe - one woman died of myocarditis. This is nothing to potentially hundreds of thousands of prevented fatalities, much less the unpleasant to severe bouts of Covid-19.

How about judging by blood reactivity to virus protein in an ELISA test? [1]

Why is it riskier and to whom?

[1] https://www.fda.gov/media/141777/download

This kind of testing isn't exactly cheap and it is hard to standardize because of all the variables and the fickleness of the process. The one you link is specific to one particular laboratory. These tests also tend to fail a few weeks or months after the infection.

Nor does it actually prove any immunity against disease. You can only assume that these antibodies probe prior contact to the virus and that this prior contact resulted in a robust response. The strength of the immunity cannot be inferred from such titres...

It's expensive, so noone should have the option even if they pay for it? (friend paid about 20€)

It can have false negatives, making people needlessly take a vaccine, so everyone should take the vaccine in the name of equality?

Vaccine certificates neither prove you actually got the vaccine (though highly likely), nor do they prove any immunity against disease (though fairly likely).

With this level of arguments, I can argue noone should be permitted to take the vaccine.

There have been rigorous studies that correlate the specific vaccine with the specific desired outcome of immunity.

You probably can't understand (and don't want to) why that is not the case for people who got infected at some unknown random point in the past and with an unknown, random variant of the Virus. And I don't care to explain it to you.

And you probably also don't want to understand why those lab tests aren't designed, regulated or approved as a proof of immunity. To be rigorous enough, probably every single lab would have to do control studies to find out if their tests predict immunity against reinfection.

I hope you expect every single vaccine production lab to do control studies on vaccine effectiveness.

Otherwise you're just arguing with double standards trying to console insecurity.

Well, there’s a risk with the blood draw as well. It’s also small.

That's not even in the same realm.

Pretty much. There are some indications that myocarditis, the most serious, but very rare and even more rarely fatal complication of the mRNA vaccines, is caused by accidental intravenous injection of the vaccine.

They are not the same. But the "risk" from the vaccines does seem negligible compared to almost anything else.

I don't have a large social circle. I know of 2 vaccine related deaths (stroke), 2 vaccine related hospitalizations (heart issues), and one person now with tinnitus soon after the vaccine. Is the vaccine a better option than COVID? Data says yes (unless maybe for younger people, especially males). Is the vaccine 100% safe? No.

Sorry but that's impossible. FIVE vaccine related deaths/issues in your small social circle?

Next you are going to tell me you know of a vaccine-related car crash.

Please revisit your priors or who you put trust in, as they might as well lie.

I don't know which vaccine each took. My dad's coworker had a stoke and died 2 days after getting the vaccine, two of my wife's brothers were the ones with heart issues. My daughter's bf's friends mom also had a stroke 2 days later. A friend now has tinnitus.

Not sure what else to tell you. The math suggests this is unlikely. But here it is.

Edit: also, nice edit changing it from "next I'll tell you that car accidents are marked as COVID deaths." I didn't say that and have no data on that so I appreciate you changing it.

Odds of death from AstraZenaca are 1 in 1 million. Let's take odds of the event of having serious complications to be 1/100,000 just to be more skeptical.

The odds that 5 people in a row have such serious side effect is 1/10^25. That is equivalent to tossing 83 coins in a row and getting all heads.

Which is more likelier. 1/10^25 or that you have false information regarding this. : )

I'm pro vaccine, and am convinced that the benefits of the vaccine absolutely eclipse the risks, but your math is so horrendously wrong here. Delete this.

Edit, here's some corrections:

This isn't 5 people in a row who had issues, it's 5 people within 4 nodes of distance in their social network. 4 nodes of distance is a lot of people, probably around 200,000 - 2,000,000.

The odds of having severe complications from the vaccine are about 1 in 100,000.

Therefore, everyone should expect to have 2-20 people within 4 nodes of their social network to have severe complications from the vaccine.

The mistake is not realizing the absolutely massive amount of people within 4 nodes of distance in your social network.

The other massive issue I see here is that there should also be somewhere around 500 covid deaths in the same pool of people that produced these 5 people with vaccine complications. The fact that they are focused on the 5 and not the 500 speaks heavily to their biases.

Keep in mind, all of this also assumes that what they're saying is 100% accurate, and these complications were definitely caused by the vaccine, and were not a coincidence. In truth, for every 1 person that has complications with the vaccine, 10-100x had the unlucky coincidence of something bad occurring that would have happened even if they hadn't gotten the vaccine.

> probably around 200,000 - 2,000,000

There are around 200 strokes per 100 000 people per year [1].

And number of "heart issues" is even more, only deaths because of heart issues are around ~170 per 100k people per year.

Correlation is not causation.

[1] https://www.world-stroke.org/assets/downloads/WSO_Global_Str...

The numbers are probably even less favorable since the vaccinations have been skewed to the older population for much of the time.

> The fact that they are focused on the 5 and not the 500 speaks heavily to their biases.

Same guy as before. I know of two people who temporarily lost taste and I heard of one person who died from COVID, a coworker's uncle.

You can rationalize this however you like, but these are the cases I'm aware of.

You are wrong about what is meant by a "social circle". They are people that he socializes with.

Definition of social circle is "A social circle is a group of socially interconnected people". I doubt anyone would complain about having a small social circle if it contained 2M people. :)

No.

> My daughter's bf's friends mom

They said: "I don't have a large social circle." You need to read context a bit more carefully.

Sure, he said that, but only one of the complications are actually IN his social circle, the rest are two or more steps removed.

"My dad's coworker" - 2 steps

"my wife's brothers" - 2 steps

"My daughter's bf's friends mom" - 4 steps

"A friend" - 1 step

He might have a small social circle, but even a small circle is going to explode exponentially when you start hoping outwards. By the 4th jump, you're going to start seeing extreme numbers regardless of how small your personal social circle is.

I stand corrected. Now it makes sense that only 1 side-effect in his circle.

Thanks.

To put the calculation in perspective.

What you have calculated:

(using 4 deaths at 1e-6 odds, because it's simpler and still gives 10x better odds at 1e-24)

Taking 4 death row inmates, jabbing them with AstraZeneca and expecting all 4 of them to die.

What you have not calculated:

Jabbing 1e9 people, 10k of them developing serious issues (expected prior) and there being a multi-hop connection between 5 of them. Two of them actually being brothers (familial clustering), and some with issues likely more prevalent so not even from the 10k group (1/1e5 cutoff).

Your math is wrong, see the birthday paradox. But still, unlikely.

It's a back of the envelope calculation. I've a strong intuition that the precise answer isn't too far off.

The math is monumentally off. It fixates on 5 specific people having issiues, instead of: There exist some 5 loosely connected people that some HN-er heard about, and probably hasn't even met all of them in person, especially the ones that died.

The implied qualification of - there exists a HN-er so divide by 1e9 to get odds - is nowhere close to accounting for the additional degrees of freedom from the social graph.

I know someone who died 2 days after getting lunch.

3 people in my family are after 3rd dose, me included. No issues. Another 7 people are after 2 doses, aged 30-90, again no issues. We all got Pfizer vaccine. Do you have any proof on what you are saying? Because what you just wrote would make a news headlines. Sorry, but without proof it's really hard to believe what you are writing, that sounds more like one of the anti vaccine movement propaganda.

> Isn’t it just easier [...] to require people to [do what I think is right] rather than debate [...]? - said every soviet officers ever.

You might not believe in democracy, but this is still a better system than autocracy. Even if you were right (hint: you're not), this is setting a very dangerous precedent than can and will be abused down the line.

What a BS argument. It is indeed easier to verify vaccination than natural immunity. That is a cold hard fact, and people who contradict it don't understand how complicated the testing is or how many health providers and labs there are.

Legal requirements are shaped by such "conveniences" all the time. Of course you wouldn't need a driver's license if you could argue with a police officer at a traffic stop that you are qualified to drive, had no DOIs etc. It's a lot easier though to require a driving test and a current license.

Same thing with the vaccination.

Would you please educate me on

> how complicated the testing is or how many health providers and labs there are.

AFAIK, you can actually test blood reactivity to virus protein, proving a positive.

I'm not sure how you would prove that a person actually got vaccinated and it wasn't the case of doctor pouring vaccine down the drain, someone else taking the vaccine instead etc.

I don't have time to explain to you the intricacies of antibody testing. However, it is much more difficult than to standardize on what antigens and what titres to pick and how to correlate that for a "positive" result. Testing for neutralizing antibodies is even harder, because it involves isolating the antibodies and testing them against live virus particles and a cell culture.

And yes, standardizing such testing, as complicated and expensive as it is, across all the relevant labs across the country would be a bureaucratic nightmare.

I'm not going to engage with your bullshit about doctors faking vaccinations.

Iceland accepts either vaccine or previous infection certificates[1][2]. They seemed to handle covid well, being fairly strict.

Fake vaccinations[3], including fake certificates are popular, especially when they are forced. If you want a fake vaccination, I know a guy who knows a guy. Point is - it's not bullshit.

Yes, checking certificates is easier than testing for antibodies. While harder, I still think antibody tests would have less false positives and I most certainly don't think the relative easiness to administer vaccines is a good reason to require everyone to take them, even when they are more immune then those who only got the vaccine.

A friend had an antibody test as he already had covid and didn't want to go for a vaccine. It was no big deal.

[1] https://www.covid.is/sub-categories/travel-to-and-within-ice...

[2] https://www.landlaeknir.is/um-embaettid/greinar/grein/item43...

[3] https://text.npr.org/1026863219

Did you notice that Iceland is a slightly smaller country, with probably quite a bit fewer medical labs? Also an island, with islands generally having an easier time with all the pandemic restrictions stuff?

I don't even know how Iceland's health system is organized. But it would be a good bet that it is light years ahead of the mess of the 52 states plus territories and whatever! Much different story.