[kmos17]

Vaccines reinforce natural immunity.

So to be clear you’re arguing let’s kill a whole bunch of people to “increase” the population’s strength, although you express some mild concern about the “cost” of doing that? Is that the argument here?

[_heimdall]

Vaccines attempt to induce natural immunity not reinforce it. This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine. An effective vaccine stimulates the immune system after introducing enough material similar to the natural pathogen that the immune system can learn to respond to it. I could just be misunderstanding your meaning hear, but "reinforce" sounds to me more like an additional layer of defence - a beam reinforcing a homes foundation is adds additional strength to existing beams rather than making the existing beams themselves stronger.

I'm not arguing that we kill anyone. You're implying that choosing not to intervene with vaccines is murder, which I would disagree with, but even then I left open the door for that cost to not be worth it.

My argument here was simply that if vaccines aren't used, as happened for effectively all of natural history, the population remaining (assuming some remain) is stronger for it.

That doesn't meant we should choose not to administer vaccines if we have them and they are proven safe and effective. That also does not mean that we should actively kill anyone, eugenics is a pretty messed up idea.

[defrost]

> This is precisely why vaccines are less effective for those with preexisting conditions and immune disorders - their immune system can't as easily respond to and learn from the vaccine.

You've missed a significant strength of vaccines by focusing on individuals rather than on populations.

Vaccines slow the transmission rate through a population and reduce the severity of infection.

In a population with a high vaccination rates those few with weak immune systems have less exposure to infection.

It's similar to back burning and fuel reduction in combating wildfires.

[_heimdall]

I understand the argument for herd immunity, I've just never seen a study proving it out. The idea is compelling and modelling studies seem to show that its possible, but that is still different from a controlled study showing it happening.

Early on in the Covid pandemic response claims of herd immunity were being thrown around and Fauci was claiming a threshold of 60-65% vaccine rate for it to work. As time went on that number kept going up, eventually he admitted that they used a low number to start with only because they didn't think people would comply if the required vaccine rate seemed unrealistically high.

Herd immunity is almost certainly a thing at a certain immunity rate, the question that goes unanswered is what that rate actually is. For there to even be a case for vaccine mandates, of even just the arguments that people ought to get vaccinated due to herd immunity, we have to know the % of immunized population and the risk of vaccine side effects.

My understanding is that we don't have a solid understanding of the exact tipping point for herd immunity, and that at least during the covid pandemic response we didn't have a solid understanding of the true risks of adverse side effects to the vaccines either.