Republicans fighting President Joe Biden's coronavirus vaccine mandates are wielding a new weapon against the White House rules: natural immunity.
GOP embraces natural immunity as substitute for vaccines
Florida wrote natural immunity into state law this week as GOP lawmakers elsewhere are pushing similar measures to sidestep vaccine mandates. Lawsuits over the mandates have also begun leaning on the idea. Conservative federal lawmakers have implored regulators to consider it when formulating mandates.
Scientists acknowledge that people previously infected with COVID-19 have some level of immunity but that vaccines offer a more consistent level of protection. Natural immunity is also far from a one-size-fits-all scenario, making it complicated to enact sweeping exemptions to vaccines.
That’s because how much immunity COVID-19 survivors have depends on how long ago they were infected, how sick they were, and if the virus variant they had is different from mutants circulating now. For example, a person who had a minor case one year ago is much different than a person who had a severe case over the summer when the delta variant was raging through the country. It's also difficult to reliably test whether someone is protected from future infections.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in August that COVID-19 survivors who ignored advice to get vaccinated were more than twice as likely to get infected again. A more recent study from the CDC, looking at data from nearly 190 hospitals in nine states, determined that unvaccinated people who had been infected months earlier were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people who didn’t have a prior infection.
This seems to be another case of the political end justifies any means. That is the political end of picking up votes from those against vaccine mandates justifies making it very difficult for the government to promote best public health practices.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans in Michigan are using the opposite tactic. After accusing Whitmer of too drastic means during the early phase of the virus, they are now accusing her of doing nothing. No they are asking for mandates, just accusing her of not educating the public about vaccination. In other words she is wrong no matter what she does.
ReplyDeleteThe Republican Party is a necrosis in the body politic. The Democratic Party only looks good in comparison. The Republican Party needs to die. But that would leave us with one party. If the Democratic Party is Democratic, it will promote voting changes that will allow new parties to emerge.
DeleteI wanted the second "democratic" to be lower case but I think the Artificial Stupidity did an autocorrect.
DeletePersonally I think Biden would be better served by not imposing sweeping mandates. I understand there are genuine Constitutional questions about his mandate, but we will need to let the lawyers and judges work that out. But even without a federally imposed mandate, other entities can act in their self-interest in ways that promote the common good. It is in an employer's self-interest that its employees be healthy, and that its workplace not become a super-spreader zone, so employers can mandate that its employees be vaccinated. It is in a concert venue's self-interest that its customers and the buying public not perceive venue as an unsafe zone, so it can mandate a vaccination or an on-the-spot negative test.
ReplyDeleteNow that a majority of American adults are fully vaccinated (at least according to the pre-booster standard) and we are making progress with teens and even younger children, the overall situation is much different than it was in 2020. Our society's risk is not zero but it is lower now.
Jim, I agree that Biden would be better served by not mandating. By now people are going to do what they're going to do. An employer has more leverage, so do venues like concerts and airlines.
DeletePA's infection rate rose, leveled, and now it's rising again. If it starts to lower again, perhaps it'll be because it burned through the unvaccinated. Unless a new mutation appears. We also must remember that even if 100% of US citizens are vaccinated, it's not enough. The poor countries need to be vaccinated as well.
DeleteI'm for mandates. Everything and anything that ends this ordeal. We're still behind the curve.
I am willing to believe that having recovered from Covid confers at least some protection, maybe a recent recovery could be equivalent to the J&J vaccine, which isn't quite as effective as the mRNA kind. Seems like an antibody titer would tell if the person had significant immunity. Though I know antibody level doesn't tell the whole story, there is such a thing as T-cell memory. But the fact that people get re-infected tells us that "natural immunity" is imperfect at best. A recent antibody test would at least confirm that the person had in fact had Covid, which would perhaps satisfy a requirement. But wouldn't self-interest motivate one to get one of the mRNA vaccines in addition to have the best protection available?
ReplyDeleteYou are right that the whole thing is being "weaponized".