I see many people say "this person, who is vaccinated but got COVID anyways, is allowed to do X. Other person, who has a negative COVID test but am not vaccinated, cannot. That is hypocritical." Can someone explain the hypocrisy?
People do get that negative COVID tests have relatively little proof value after a day or so right?
Natural immunity of an unvaccinated person is superior to a vaccinated person without natural immunity, all else equal, and the difference isn't even close. It concerns me that people still don't accept this.
See https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v... for conclusive proof of this. I don't have my notes on that study in front of me right now but off the top of my head natural immunity was at least 7x superior when compared to people who were double-vaccinated but with no exposure to the actual virus.
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...).
The point of allowing a person to do X is based on the safety of them doing X. If we are preventing X due to fear of covid, then it makes sense to prevent people from doing X if they have covid, regardless of their vaccination status, and allowing them to do it if they do not have covid, regardless of their vaccination status.
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.
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.
