Fair. That was the term that came to mind in the flow of writing the comment.

Non peer-reviewed preprint from August 2021.

Meanwhile we have the CDC showing that:

- previous COVID exposure + no vaccination is 3x smaller incidence than vaccination without covid exposure

BUT

- previous COVID exposure + vaccination is 2x smaller incidence than without vaccination

arguing that "I got exposed to Covid so the vaccine is not useful for me" is factually incorrect. I had not been clear enough in my objection. So protesting vax mandates have even one less leg to stand on.

(at least here: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e1.htm?s_cid=mm...).

>Some of the rules appear to be punitive towards people who have chosen not to be vaccinated, and not designed to curb the spread of the disease; that is why hypocrisy is being called out.

If more of the population were vaccinated the spread of the disease would be curbed (there are still places under 60% vaccination in the US, for example). It would not be sufficient, but yes the point is to create spaces where you have less risk.

The rule is designed to get more people to be vaccinated. It is accomplishing that objective.

(more nuanced is that I don't believe "vaccinated means everything is OK" is the right position either, and that "vaccinate, but also try to do stuff at half capacity" etc etc would be better but...)

A room with 100% vaccinated people is going to be safer than a room with 100% of people showing up with day-old negative covid tests. (EDIT: actually not sure of this as much now that I'm thinking about it...)

Ultimately the rules forcing vaccination are a result of a huge part of the population refusing vaccination, which is the single most effective policy. It's roundabout because governments don't have the courage to just force the issue (or waited too long and now there's a coalesced movement against it).

Sorry if unvaccinated people feel bad because of it. If they cared about not getting people sick they would vaccinate. Taking covid tests every day doesn't improve your immunity.

If there was a free test of COVID that could judge with a high degree of certainty tell if you were infected or not, this would go a long way to assert your point. But since rapid tests are expensive, hard to come by, and not free (for the gov), we have to live with trade-offs.

The sad point off this is that you're contagious when you're still asymatic, so even those wanting to do the right thing cant prevent accidental spreading. All we can do is reduce our transmission rates as low as possible. Vaccines did a great job of that pre-omicron and though Omicron seems to spread just as freely in vaccinated populations, those with vaccines had far better health outcomes. Who knows what date will throw at us if/when another significant variant mutates into our lives.

The "cleared infection + vax" is statistically similar to "cleared infection" btw.

Also natural infection antibodies have been shown to last for at least 20 months. We know vaccine one wanes in 3-6 months.

There's also some evidence on those with prior infection having higher chances of side-effects, though more research is needed.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/vaccine-after-effects-more-co...