<story><title>Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?</title><url>https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jowday</author><text>The answer is pretty simple - the moment authorities start saying &amp;quot;well, natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination, we&amp;#x27;ll accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes&amp;quot;, a huge segment of the population who&amp;#x27;s on the fence about getting the vaccine might just opt to wait until they&amp;#x27;re infected naturally, or, even worse, get infected purposefully (EG, chicken pox parties). Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks.&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world, everyone would understand that getting the vaccine is the appropriate choice of action and we could accept natural immunity from people who were infected before vaccines were available - but unfortunately we&amp;#x27;re forced into playing these weird games where authorities have to try to incentivize people who aren&amp;#x27;t behaving rationally - which in turn leads to further distrust from people on the fence.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>isolli</author><text>While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why doesn’t natural immunity count in the US?</title><url>https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2101</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jowday</author><text>The answer is pretty simple - the moment authorities start saying &amp;quot;well, natural immunity is probably just as good as vaccination, we&amp;#x27;ll accept that as equal to vaccination for passport purposes&amp;quot;, a huge segment of the population who&amp;#x27;s on the fence about getting the vaccine might just opt to wait until they&amp;#x27;re infected naturally, or, even worse, get infected purposefully (EG, chicken pox parties). Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks.&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world, everyone would understand that getting the vaccine is the appropriate choice of action and we could accept natural immunity from people who were infected before vaccines were available - but unfortunately we&amp;#x27;re forced into playing these weird games where authorities have to try to incentivize people who aren&amp;#x27;t behaving rationally - which in turn leads to further distrust from people on the fence.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwawayfear</author><text>Past covid gives antibodies that are superior to two shots of Pfizer.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.science.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-vaccination-remains-vital&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.science.org&amp;#x2F;content&amp;#x2F;article&amp;#x2F;having-sars-cov-2-on...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating them is illogical here.&lt;p&gt;And don&amp;#x27;t even get me started on vaccine passports, which are completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely needs proof of vaccination, like the NICU at the hospital or a nursing home or a college dorm, that information can be relayed via existing protocols. We don&amp;#x27;t need a &amp;quot;papers please&amp;quot; society where paper shufflers and bureaucrats can arbitrarily gate access to society this way.</text></comment>