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1/3rd of Healthcare Workers in U.S. Hospitals Not Vaccinated Against Covid-19 (opens in new tab)

forbes.com

13 pointsmissinfo4y ago8 comments

8 comments

torstenvl4y ago

How many of them have been immunized via prior infection?

There are millions of healthcare workers who were never vaccinated against chickenpox, too.

smt884y ago

Chickenpox is significantly less lethal and less expensive to treat than Covid is, so I'm not sure why it's relevant.

swlp214y ago

Are you sure about that? The CDC suggests many similar complications (which would cost exactly the same to treat regardless of the genesis of them) according to their website and indicates [mostly un-vaccinated] people die from chickenpox too. The comparison surprised me too, but seems to be remarkably appropriate.

https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html

smt884y ago

I'm sure. Chickenpox was a "universal illness" -- everyone was exposed, but only a small fraction developed severe illness or died.

https://www.lung.org/blog/understanding-covid-herd-immunity

Grazester4y ago

I thought the most recent study said that prior Covid infection does not offer as much immunity as the vaccine does. This was posted here also.

torstenvl4y ago

The study published about a month ago found more consistent protection, i.e., the mRNA vaccines produce a consistent level of spike proteins and therefore antibodies in all recipients, whereas some people who had milder prior COVID infections did not produce the same level of antibody response.

The unanswered question is how much that's protective against future infection. Nobody really knows. Antibodies are an important part of the immune system, but the real key for long-term protection is the effect on memory T-cells. I'm not aware of any studies on that topic.

angelzen4y ago

There has been a study a month ago looking into B/T cell response for the covid vaccines. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0829 Article is hypertechnical, fortunately there is a more approachable twitter thread from the first author, https://twitter.com/rishirajgoel/status/1448711946010710023. The HN thread is pretty bare, and I remember a more active conversation, so perhaps either that happened on a dupe, or there is another article along those lines. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28881923

"To summarize:

- Antibodies decrease but memory B/T cells are stable for ≥6 mo

- Immune memory is still effective vs. variants

- "Boosting" from memory = significant (but temporary) increase in antibodies w/ less impact on already durable memory cells"

senortumnus4y ago

“…the American Medical Association says 96% of its practicing physicians have been fully vaccinated…”

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

8 comments

torstenvl4y ago

How many of them have been immunized via prior infection?

There are millions of healthcare workers who were never vaccinated against chickenpox, too.

smt884y ago

Chickenpox is significantly less lethal and less expensive to treat than Covid is, so I'm not sure why it's relevant.

swlp214y ago

https://www.cdc.gov/chickenpox/about/complications.html

smt884y ago

I'm sure. Chickenpox was a "universal illness" -- everyone was exposed, but only a small fraction developed severe illness or died.

https://www.lung.org/blog/understanding-covid-herd-immunity

Grazester4y ago

I thought the most recent study said that prior Covid infection does not offer as much immunity as the vaccine does. This was posted here also.

torstenvl4y ago

angelzen4y ago

"To summarize:

- Antibodies decrease but memory B/T cells are stable for ≥6 mo

- Immune memory is still effective vs. variants

- "Boosting" from memory = significant (but temporary) increase in antibodies w/ less impact on already durable memory cells"

senortumnus4y ago

“…the American Medical Association says 96% of its practicing physicians have been fully vaccinated…”

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse