Always_Ask_Questions

>> I am completely bewildered that even if we could compare this pandemic to the flu season

Original estimates were that several million people in US would have died if no measures were taken. These estimates sounded over the top, but seem to be close to reality. Not even counting, how more virulent COVID would have become if it were allowed to run wild. Note the country names that are now sanitized from the variant names: British, Indian, Brazil, South Africa. There are (so far) no German/US/French/Canadian/Japanese/Ozzy variants because many countries dealt with the issue.

> if there is a chiyuv to love your wife

I am not sure. I’ll have to ask a shailah (youall happy?)

And I’ll do whatever my wife answers.

RW > everyone would have gotten reinfected by now.

RW, you are appealing to (your own) emotions. You first find articles that uncover problems with vaccines, then you find other articles that talk about immunity from COVID. And then you combine these two stories without knowing how they align.

I quoted articles that compare people under same conditions – some with vaccines, some with COVID.

RW > first of all the article said that people who had covid likely develop antibodies for most of their life.

RW, I think I see why we disagree. This is a very complicated issue and changing over time. you seem to read popular articles where reporters digest research papers for us. This is often fine. When we know a lot about, say, flu, and a new article about flu comes out and adds one more item about it, a popular article would easily explain it to us. Here we have research papers done very quickly, often preprints, sometimes written in a hurry, that address multiple issues. Your healthline reporter will have to simplify to make it readable, even presuming he understood the article.

If you click on the actual research paper, you will see that the paper does not say what you just said. I tried to summarize what the paper say. I may be mistaken also.

If you’re offered an unconventional product, you need to check whether it is legal and ethical before using it

RW, thanks for the sources. The Nature article talks about exactly the issue I mentioned – longer lasting protection from B Cells (that will produce antibodies in the future) that are developed both by (at least) mild Covid cases and vaccine. This is indeed hopeful. They have a caveat that variants might block this production of antibodies.

Healthline refers to the paper “Necessity of COVID-19 vaccination in previously infected individuals”. This paper shows 97% effectiveness of mRNA vaccines for those without previous infection and 66%(3x) effectiveness for those with previous infection – the author conclude from the latter that there is no benefit of giving vaccines to previously infected. This judgment is made from the world /WHO perspective that it is better to re-allocate vaccines to poor countries.

My note: High effectiveness of both vaccine and previous infection in this paper comparing to the ones I quoted is due to several factors: other papers I quoted defined previous infection as PCR tests given to everyone. This paper use only highly symptomatic cases as “infected” (those who were sick and went to take a test, with %age of positive test varying over time from 5% to 20% – higher than usual testing). Similarly, they measure 2nd infection as people coming for a test. So, these results are for “at least mild symptomatic COVID”. They also do not seem to adjust for demographics, while acknowledging that unvaccinated were younger (39 v 42 average age).

Bottom line: there is support to say that those with a symptomatic mild case have immunity comparable to vaccines. It could be further enhanced by one does of vaccine – unless you want to ethically donate it to 3rd world. Easy cases may be more risky. All of this pre-Delta.

And, of course, none of these papers suggest any benefit of actually not taking a vaccine and waiting for “natural immunity”.

RW> What numbers will I give for natural immunity when they aren’t reporting on them?

It may be google’s fault that you can’t find the numbers (not kidding). Google adapts their algorithms to what you click on – so you get Reuters, and I get Lancet… Here is what I found (all is for pre-Delta):

PCR-based infected people are 80% protected against re-infection, 47% for those over 65. Does not decrease at 6-7 months. [1] similar 83% result for UK medical personnel [2]. comparisons are in both cases with uninfected unvaccinated people with the same demographics. So, other than with older people, previous infection is close to vaccines.

Kentucky residents with previous infections: those of them who were unvaccinated had 2.3 more infections compared with those who were fully vaccinated [3]. So, vaccination provides additional benefit to those who were previously infected

[1] Hansen Assessment of protection against reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 among 4 million PCR-tested individuals in Denmark in 2020: a population-level observational study, Lancet, March 2021
[2] V Hall Do antibody positive healthcare workers have lower SARS-CoV-2 infection rates than antibody negative healthcare workers? preprint
[2] Alyson M. Cavanaugh, Reduced Risk of Reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 After COVID-19 Vaccination — Kentucky, May–June 2021

> How come they never did this with the flu btw? To mandate that everyone gets the vaccine?

a good comparison. Several reasons:
1) Flu natural R0 is 1.3, COVID 2+ for the Wuhan original, and 4+ for Delta.
2) Flu a- and pre-symptomatic transmission is not significant (see meta-study below). Thus, if you and your kids just stay home or SD or masked when sick, you won’t transmit
3) Most population has flu antibodies and, thus, only very young and very old/weak are vulnerable
4) Flu vaccines are less effective than COVID
If you multiple these factors together, the difference is huge

Eleni Patrozou, MDa,b and Leonard A. Mermel,Does Influenza Transmission Occur from Asymptomatic Infection or Prior to Symptom Onset? 2009

YS > lot of people I know who don’t want to get immunized because they have antibodies were tested positive for antibodies months ago and never actually showed COVID symptoms nor tested positive at any point.

non-professional understanding of theory: I think the issue is with T-cell protection. Antibodies are very specific and may be less effective with new variants. T-cell immunity is not helping with initial infection, but kicks in later to protect against serious disease and are also longer-lasting. T-cells generalize better and should be more protective against variants. Light cases of disease might not generate T-cell protection at all. Vaccines do, and possibly AZ and J&J more than mRNAs.

Bottom line, suggest to them to get one vaccine, with their initial disease working as a prime.

> Actually, 12-18. So far.

I don’t want to out anybody, but if you have 18 months of antibodies, you probably worked in the Wuhan lab or worked at the proverbial wet market butchering ferrets.

Health > Why does Medication or Vaccines take 9 – 10 years to be approved instead of a few months?!?

There are differences between medications and vaccines. My simple understanding:
medicines – balance between risk and benefit, often can be used in severe cases if there no other hope. On the other hand, medicines taken against chronic diseases, affect patients continuously and have potential of side effects, so require a lot of testing

vaccines – on one hand, their effect is time-limited. So, complications are expected only during a short time interval. On the other hand, it is given to millions of healthy people who have low probability of getting a disease, so even very low risk is not acceptable. During pandemic, though, risk of disease is very high, allowing for faster approval due to a higher benefit.

> how do i survive this lockdown,

People love quoting Rashbi as an ideal of learning v working. Why not learn like Rashbi and his son did, while hiding from Romans? Maybe share with us here something you learned.

One old book says “if the czar would understand the value of Torah, he would put a soldier with a rifle near each Jew”. while turning the page, I continued in my mind “and when someone attack the Jew, the soldier defends him”. The next page actually said: “and when the Jew distracts from learning, the soldier is pricking him with the bayonet …”. And that was before Internet. So, value the time that you got.

RW> Are you messing with us or just lack basic comprehension skills? You keep repeating that I said I am willing to avoid vaxpass venues. When did I say that! I clearly wrote (in answer to your question) that both vaccinated and nonvaccinated should boycott these venues who require proof of vaccination in order for things not to get worse.

I understand that you want me to boycott them, but I think your boycott would be sufficient. I hope you do not expect us respecting your desires more than you respect ours.

>> And that means to boycott places which require you show a vaccination card whether you are vaccinated or not.

So, we agree. Please boycott places that require a vaccination card and I hope you will not define us freedom to congregate in such places. Unfortunately, many anti-vax/mask/SD people disregard privacy of others. Now, I can see people without masks and duck anti-SD kissers, but vaccination status is harder to check. Anecdotally, many would lie or ignore recommendations/regulations, or even show fake cards. I am really happy you are not one of those.

We just had a parsha with Hashem giving us a mitzva to be empirical with potential demagogues, navvim sheker – check their predictions. I think Biden’s unprompted very specific prediction on July 8, less than 40 days before it happened, qualifies: “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. “. Do we accept navi sheker defense when he blames the previous naviim?

RebE > Afghanistan as Iraq is being overrun by terrorists.

(part of the ) Iraq was overrun by terrorists by the way Obama left it. And he also blamed Bush for that. Possibly were Hillary elected, ISIS would have still be there. Biden had an immediate view, and probably a hand, at that. All he learned was that if you blame others and avoid taking responsibility, you can survive politically.

RW > Fine but what is the solution here long term.

You don’t know what the long term is. Maybe, this or next vaccine will work. Or, the virs, h’V will mutate to worse. Or, maybe one of the evil empire will find a way to weaponize the virus (further).
Address the current problem.

Biden knows history and Senate. He will only resign when, like w/ Nixon, Senators will tell him they are going to vote to convict. A better question – whether any of the Secretaries – State, Defense or Military leaders or advisors will resign. Either, because their advice was so bad, or if their good advice was not followed.

Unfortunately, lack of public/media criticism of D- Presidents does not serve them well. With Trump, you would have seen people threating or actually resigning or being fired, when he disregarded their opinions. So, each of these disagreements was vetted through robust discussions. Even Obama
had Biden contradicting many of his decisions (killing Osama, staying in Afghanistan), forcing a discussion. With Biden, most of the discussions are happening after the disaster already happened.
Petraeus, McMaster, Bloomberg published in the last day. I don’t know whether they were quiet before, or were not quoted, or were trying to talk in private, but it is too late for a lot of innocent people.

health > You as a Lib will defend it, no matter what.

If you are addressing some other, liberal AAQ, in this group, then let him answer this question. I get enough flak her for my actual positions to answer the baseless one!

health > But the Government should persuade the Pharmaceutical companies to make vaccines that work directly on the Variants!

so far, response was that they are tracking it and testing new vaccines but for now the original vaccines are sufficient. Maybe this takes into account difficulty of changing manufacturing process that is quite complicated.

> Is there any state in the USA that the government successfully handled Covid?

a good question that is hard to answer given randomness of pandemic over time and different condition in each state. But see below states with lowest cumulative deaths/100K population – it is obvious that most of them are remote, rural, low density, but not all remote states are on this list! And many of them have older population (Maine, Vermont), so maybe they did something right.

Hawaii 40 / 100k
Vermont
Alaska
Utah
Oregon
Maine 80
Washington
Guam
puerto rico
New Hampshire
Colorado
Nebraska
Idaho 120/100k
Virginia
Wyoming

phil > In Israel it is currently at 53% while the unvaccinated positive cases are only at 43%

recent stats from Israel: rate of serious cases among older than 60 vaccinated is 7x lower than among remaining unvaccinated. From early data, seems like 3rd booster reduces this further.

Shmuel’s father used same layered approach, keeping orphan’s money hidden and between 2 layers of his own – top for robbers, lower for damage

> Covid-19 strikes hardest as those whose lives were already coming to an end meaning that but for the government, the economic impact would have been negligible.

I don’t think this is how halakha looks at the value of life.

coffee, a good question. I’ve looked at recall information. It seems that problems with vaccines are typically found quickly. That is, there might be short-term side effect after vaccine uptake, but not long-term. It seems to make sense in terms of how immunity reacts to a threat. If there are long-term vaccine cases, please point me to them.

As to short-term, there is a lot of data by now. First, original Phase 3 trials are now more than a year old. So, they would have safety info. Second, real world tests are now done on millions of people and statistics collected.

That said, there are some decisions that are made as pressed by time and conservative approach – such as having, for now, doses for younger adults and children being same as for older people.
Immune response seems to be universally higher with younger age, and risk lower… These decisions are based on Phase 3s being set up for a reasonably high dose to pass the test from the first attempt, and lack of data on lower doses. Whenever FDA authorizes 10 mcg for children < 12 y.o. (v 30 mcg for adults) or when regular authorization will be available, hopefully it will be possible for all young people, even above ba mitzva to use lower doses.