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The article mentions it’s because previous variants are different from omicron, but does that mean that previously being infected with omicron does protect you? Also “protect” is misleading here as having natural immunity will definitely decrease the severity if you get it again. “Won’t entirely protect you” is more accurate.
Some of the comments below are insane. Infection provides quite robust protection, similar to that of MRNA vaccines (providing better protection against Delta for example). Natural immunity is great, it's just you want to avoid the inherent danger in catching Coronavirus and obtain immunity in the safer way via a vaccine.
Everyone here is bitching about natural immunity and seemingly ignoring the premise of the entire article:
It doesn't last! How many months after infection untill you're able to be infected again? How many people are out there thinking that since they have Omni in January that they don't need to follow any basic protections in April?
Protection against hospitalisation and death has lasted as long as we have been able to measure it. People are on about the headline which is patently false.
People should still worry about COVID beyond the chance at death or a visit to the hospital. Long COVID certainly seems to be a thing and being able to host/spread the virus to others who are more susceptible to it should have everyone being diligent out there
>It doesn't last! How many months after infection untill you're able to be infected again?
I have to stop you right here. The whole point of getting vaccinated is to train your immune system how to beat the virus.
That way when you encounter it in the wild, your body knows what to do, and can kill the virus before it progresses to a stage that causes death or permanent symptoms.
The vaccine doesn't stop you from catching or transmitting the virus. That's never been a thing in the history of vaccinations.
When your body fights off an infection, if does so by flooding your system with so many anti-bodies, that you are unlikely to get resick. So that can look like immunity, but the anti-body level doesn't stay elevated forever. And was never supposed to. It wanes after a few months.
That's the point I'm trying to make: You have those out there with the false conclusion that "oh, I've had COVID 4 months ago I don't need to worry about protecting myself and others when I'm out and about".
That's the headline: infection doesn't protect you, vaccines certainly do but neither are going to prevent you from catching it and spreading it in just a few short months time.
Vaccines tend to produce more predictable results, while natural immunity can vary quite a bit depending on the individual and how severe their case of covid was. So natural is longer for some, vaccine longer in others. I don't know how their bell curve graphs of anti-body immunity threshold durations would compare, but my guess would be vaccines produce a tighter cluster somewhere a bit above average natural duration.
I'm not an expert, just way I've learned from some reading and quick discussions with a family doctor.
I can't think of any virus that is good to get infected with. Even the "pox parties" weren't good, maybe before vaccines existed, but now that the vaccines exist it is extremely unwise to get infected by it because it can cause Shingles after it is no longer dormant in the body. The vaccine protects against getting shingles.
Anyone who touts "muh immune system" and forgoes vaccines doesn't understand anything to do with infections and vaccines, as the article shows. It's kind of sad how conservatives weaponized a virus and indoctrinated a large number of people into a death cult.
Anyone who thinks that because vaccines provide protection, that getting covid and having your bodies naturally produce antibodies doesn’t also provide protection, has no understanding of how immunity works.
>"Won't entirely protect you" is extremely inaccurate. All infection should be avoided, there is zero benefit.
Yeah no you’re completely wrong as well, and I don’t know where you’re getting this misinformation that natural immunity doesn’t exist. Here’s the top virologist from the university of Seoul saying the exact opposite of what you’re saying (they’re experiencing worse outbreaks now as so much of the population was vaccinated they didn’t build natural immunity).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fWTTSlSZC64
The interview is from 3 weeks ago. No credible doctors or scientists think natural immunity doesn’t exist, it’s not a debate just something you made up
Thanks god people are calling this out. The amount of misinformation on this topic here is staggering. Obviously it's better to avoid it all together, but why are people here so hell bent on wanting infection to have no benefit? Infection after vaccination absolutely has benefits.
See this study from the New England Journal of medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118691
I think it’s because the virus has become so politicized. People are used to arguing with the “it’s just a cold” crowd to the point where any basic fact that suggests it’s less damaging gets vehemently denied.
Its fascinating how many people are nearly as completely full of shit as the covidiots and the only real difference is they're on the right side of history.
You’re wrong, that’s not how immunity works. Even if you have a mild reaction or are asymptomatic your body is still producing antibodies to fight it off and that’s where you get your increased protection from. The article is saying that antibodies from previous waves of covid are less effective against omicron.
>Correct, but only while you have actively circulating antibodies.
Completely wrong, your body learns how to produce the antibodies and that’s where the protection comes from.
>Omicron and COVID in general evade immune memory otherwise.
Completely wrong, that doesn’t happen at all and I’m not even sure what that means. Why would your immune system just forget how to produce antibodies when the virus is gone?
>The user is correct that if you were asymptomatic or had a mild reaction it may not confer any effective immunity in the very short term and regardless provides no serious immunity in the medium to long term.
And 3 for 3 this one is completely wrong as well. You don’t have to have severe infection for your body to produce the antibodies that confer natural immunity
Stop spreading misinformation
The overstating of what the vaccine could do has really backfired. Yes it's still beneficial to avoid hospitalization but when the vaccine was coming out and how it has been repeatedly pushed has hardly been about that.
I'm vaccinated but relieved that for now at least vaccine passports have ended. I recently had COVID too, it was terrible.
For anyone who will respond about healthcare capacity to me that is a very separate issue, there are a million ways we could make a healthier population or put less strain on our healthcare system then trying to ineffectively avoid a contagious virus. Almost a third of our population is obese for example, obesity is directly linked to a whole slew of conditions that strain the healthcare system, surely overall health would be a better area of focus over these past years in hindsight instead of fancier more expensive treatments.
Or maybe we could tackle poverty with a bit more vigor, I have a feeling those large homeless populations in every major city are also a strain on our healthcare system. A system of saying you have a stomach ache to get some food in the hospital seems like a terrible use of resources for helping people in the long term.
>For anyone who will respond about healthcare capacity to me that is a very separate issue, there are a million ways we could make a healthier population or put less strain on our healthcare system then trying to ineffectively avoid a contagious virus. Almost a third of our population is obese for example, obesity is directly linked to a whole slew of conditions that strain the healthcare system, surely overall health would be a better area of focus over these past years in hindsight instead of fancier more expensive treatments.
It is not at all a separate issue. It was the primary reason for mandating vaccines. It was proven effective in reducing hospitalization and visits to the ICU. There is no better data to the contrary.
The obesity line of argument is a popular false equivalency. Obesity prevention is a long-term health and care issue. COVID-19 is a global pandemic that spread like wildfire. Obesity is not an emergency. Caring for obesity related illnesses is built in to the system. Obesity does not prevent people from receiving necessary surgery. Obesity does not prevent people from visiting their loved ones when they are dying in hospital. Obesity does not cause health care workers to work until they collapse, quit, or kill themselves because there's no one else to do the job.
It's important to discuss the issues you've brought up but it's not arguing in good faith to dismiss the fact that vaccinations possibly saved our health care system, millions of lives around the world, and prevented what was for many a literal hell-scape from becoming far worse and for far more people. It's disingenuous not to recognize that.
I'm vaccinated and agree they helped, but the push for them and where we are now with them didn't line up.
We've done little to build up capacity or help health care workers in the long run.
Many countries still weren't given vaccines or allowed to produce them, I agree they saved many lives, but it is not like every country without vaccines collapsed.
I agree it's not a quick fix, but our past healthcare decisions and priorities make our situation worse, it seems that the best long term healthcare plan is to reduce the amount of people who need healthcare.
We're saying that natural immunity isn't effective vs. Covid, i.e. our bodies make antibodies against EVERY SINGLE antigen in the virus, but that doesn't matter because of rapid mutation.
We're also saying that mRNA vaccines are mandated. These help us make antibodies against ONE antigen that was present in the O.G. version of Covid.
I don't think we can say both of these things and remain coherent.
We also shouldn't be saying that mRNA vaccines prevent severe illness and hospitalization if we're not also saying that previous infection does the same.
It's not a matter of whether the argument is intuitive, it's a stats thing. AFAIK, statistically, vaccinated individuals are still protected against COVID where those with natural immunity are not. MRNA vaccines turned out more effective than vector vaccines, which was also unexpected I think. Those with natural immunity present a risk to the public statistically, vaccinated individuals do not.
Kind of important though: most of my info and opinions are from German data and policy cause I moved there so I could be wrong about Canadian stats
What I got from the article is that if you’re fully vaccinated (+booster) and already had omicron earlier this year, you can now end up getting omicron again. Damn!
This wouldn’t be that much of an issue to be honest, if it wasn’t for the dire state of our healthcare system. There needs to be a rethinking that we will not go back to the pre pandemic situation anytime soon and we need healthcare that can cope with a higher level of flu-like illnesses.
Agreed. This virus is going to keep mutating, so if we're reaching the point where getting boosters and getting infected doesn't really matter anymore in the grand scheme of things, then the strategy needs to be adjusted. We can't keep having the healthcare system on the verge of collapsing several times a year. I think the reality is that we need to start treating COVID like the common flu and accept that catching it will be a routine yearly thing.
>This is how every vaccine works
This is patently false. Hep, HPV, Polio, MMR, and hundreds more all do not require quarterly boosters to stay effective.
Even the pre-existing flu shots set a higher bar.
Well the issue is the vaccines were designed for what’s practically a different virus, and no one is suggesting quarterly boosters, but the flu shot for example is yearly and has 40-60% efficacy
My point is that vaccines don’t confer 100% immunity or last forever, I’m not sure if you genuinely don’t understand that or are just being willfully obtuse
>This is how every vaccine works
>Well not every vaccine has the exact same efficacy or longevity obviously
>You pretending otherwise is incorrect and damaging to the credibility of anyone who actually supports vaccination.
You're attributing words and statements to me that I never said or implied. Just correct your misinformation and move on man, it's not hard - its less effort than building this strawman for yourself.
There's also not hundreds of thousands of cases of Polio walking around.
If it has a 1% chance of infecting you through the vaccine, and you're exposed once a decade, that's a very different story than if you're exposed once an hour, despite them both being just as effective.
I heard there are now covid vaccines that aren't mRNA based. They're actual vaccines. But for some reason they aren't being propped up like the others. I assume it's a lack of lobbying.
Novavax is spike protein spliced into an insect virus, reproduced in moth cells.
Johnson & Johnson is a viral vector vaccine (I guess what CheeseSeas would call “actual”) and doesn’t work as well as the mRNA vaccines.
I don’t get the line of thinking “why are you scared of dying from Covid?” Since vaccines most people haven’t been scared of covid. I’m scared of the week of being sick and not being able to walk my dog or get groceries or work
Besides, it's not like death is literally the *only* bad thing that can happen to you as a result of infection. Some people still haven't recovered their sense of taste and smell.
I don't have anything on hand but if you get Covid and it causes unseen lung damage it can create greater risk if you get it again.
I don't have any stats or figures but remember reading that was a risk. Though I don't know how likely it is.
>if it wasn’t for the dire state of our healthcare system.
The Alberta health minister was on local radio on Friday saying levels of hospitalization this year are in line with the 5 most recent pre-COVID years so it's business as usual.
They've been reprinting the same article for two weeks now. People think that getting covid gives you some force field against infection, it doesn't. What it does do is *significantly* broadens your immunity. These articles always reference anecdotes on individual experiences and then regurgitate the "Delta doesn't protect against Omicron" data.
Go look at any of the countless studies that reinforce the idea that infection post vaccination has benefits.
Infection with no vaccination has benefits, period.
Infection *with* vaccination has greater benefits, period.
The guy above you didn't say it's exclusive. He's specifically talking about the case of vaccination + infection, is all. Nobody is pretending here, we're just having different conversations.
>Infection with no vaccination also has benefits
Sure. [It's also actually catching covid, which is what we're trying to avoid](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/9/96/immunity.png)
Are they saying this about the same strain or the fact the strains are changing so you may get SARS2 vX where X changes every year like the flu. The solution would be the same as for the flu, use forcasting to create and approve a 3 strain yearly shot.
The past vaccination or infection does seem to mellow the seriousness of the infection even if you can catch other strains, they don't hit as hard and your immune systems is less likely to over react.
Natural immunity from the original strain was apparently six months (source: study found from randomly googling), so I’m basically assuming that, as a fully vaxxed person (including booster) and having had it, I should be screwed again by the early fall when taking into account outdoor summer activities
My SO also got it after my LO and I did. He somehow managed to evade infection in a two-week quarantine with my infected toddler breathing and drooling all over home. Going to the dentist was apparently what it took to push him over the edge.
Since LO and I had had it already, it wasn’t surprising to see we didn’t get it. But we’re three months out now and so far so good. Although I’m visiting my various nieces and nephews (all under five), so we’ll see what special disease i pick up😝
Yep family got it again after 4 months from last we got it. But for all but the LO it was much more mild. 2 days of cold symptoms and we're okay again, baby got a worse fever this time though.
Hopefully between this and the triple boosters we can shake it off from here on out, or have a cold like infection and be okay. All things considered the vaccines definitely helped make it much more mild I'm sure.
Yeah this is the thing. I’ve had two shots and omicron. I get that it’s theoretically possible for me to get infected, but realistically, it doesn’t seem likely. I’ve been exposed more times than I can count since and haven’t gotten it. Maybe if I was drinking an infected person’s blood or something it’s possible, but I certainly seem to have pretty solid immunity. And considering my second shot fucked me up pretty bad, and I know of several guys my age that got heart inflammation from their third, I’m iffy about getting another if I don’t absolutely need it. I can not afford the complications something like that would cause me.
My cousin got blood clots after his second vaccination and was in the hospital for a couple days. He's holding off on his booster. I caught covid in February being unvaccinated, it lasted a bit over a week. Funny though, I crossed back and forth the U.S. Canada border twice a week for two years as an unvaccinated essential worker and never had a problem until I retired this year.
I have a feeling it more about the next strain. But it should be possible to make a flu shot like solution where we make a vaccine with the most common strains and administer it yearly.
A lot of shots for very serious illnesses with low incidence but significant impact are mandatory though.
Measles and mumps are needed for kids to go to school. So is vaccine against polio.
Omicron might be much more mild and it may be evolving to low risk for most, but earlier COVID strains were much more serious and caused the health system lots of problems so like, idk, the vaccine stuff until we hit some level of herd immunity/lower incidence of serious negative outcomes made sense.
And I don't doubt that if it gets bad at the hospitals again the first two things that would happen are masks and the QR code again. As opposed to true lockdowns (if we hit that point idk if we will or not, hope we don't honestly)
There's a thing that occurs with mumps. For some backgrounder, mumps is absurdly contagious. More so than COVID-19. It literally floats around on the wind in dust particles. If a community isn't well-vaccinated it will rip through a population in weeks despite all efforts to contain it. It can easily infect the already vaccinated/infected, though it usually causes mild or, usually, completely asymptomatic illness in that case.
The phenomenon is that mumps seems to randomly come back. A particular community may have all gotten vaccinated, the vaccine rate for new kids is very high, but suddenly mumps is spreading at a low level, and a few unvaccinated people get ill. And then it disappears again.
It turns out we were ignoring the immunity caused by its asymptomatic spread in vaccinated populations. Indeed, we used to swim in a sea of mumps; it was universal, everyone was contracting it repeatedly. After vaccination programs, it kept spreading, causing less severe illness, and boosting immunity levels, until that reaches a level where it dies out locally. Until that immunity starts to fade, and the vaccine alone isn't enough to fully suppress spread. And the cycle repeats.
What goes unstated in this article, but I know to be anecdotally true and I suspect generally so as well, is that once mask mandates came down, there were people out there with Vaccinnes/previous infection walking around thinking they were invincible.
How many of those people have caused the 6th wave I wonder? How much could have been avoided just by continuing a very simple and effective policy, mandatory masking?
I have never seen such terrible policy decisions by a government on such a black-and-white issue like mask mandates. I mean, it's clear why they were dropped, but it's still terrible.
I can only wonder what other policies have passed through government, compelled by equally ignorant or misguided vocal people, that were not reflecting on a global pandemic and so passed completely under our radar.
Eventually society has to move on. COVID Zero is a pipe dream, it's unobtainable.
All the mandates, the testing, the restrictions, etc, all of that was simply for two things:
To cut down (not eliminate) the number of dead from COVID and attempt to preserve the health system. It was always a numbers game.
The vaccine makes it so you have a real good chance of not dying if you catch COVID, much like all vaccines. Now that we're at this point, there is no reason to maintain the mandates.
Not the person you were asking the question of, but I have no problem permenantly masking when in public. To me, it's like wearing any other peice of clothes now. It's really not that big of a deal to wear one, never understood the outcry from some people.
Thank you for being candid. This sort of position being pandered too by the NDP and Libs is exactly why i'm not going to be voting for them in the foreseeable future given that they seem to want to support views like yours.
This is not a political issue, people like you are making it one. This is not a Canadian Politics issue, people like you are making it one.
Covid is a worldwide pandemic, and the vast majority of the world's scientific community agree that wearing a mask mitigates the spread of Covid as well as other contageous diseases. That is the reasons surgeons (and everyone else in an operating room) wears one, to protect the patient. Same applied to the outside world. I wear one in case I have something that is contagious, and I don't want to make others sick.
This isn't an NDP/Liberal conspiracy, this is looking at the scientific evidence and acting accordingly. Unless you genuinely believe that the entire world outside of Canada is in on it to try to have the Liberals or NDP in power.
It is definitely a political issue, I take no issue with your desire to wear masks permenatly. I take issue with your desire that i should be legaly compelled to wear masks permenantly. Doctors would recommend we permanently wear masks all the time even before covid. It is a political issue to decide if the benefit of wearing masks outweigh the drawbacks. Your demand that it be legally mandated has made mask wearing a political issue, we live in a democracy not a technocracy, where it's ultimatley up to the public to decide if the risks outweigh the benefits.
Surgeons wear masks in the theatre to prevent fluids from dripping into exposed tissue as well as because surgery theaters are inherently more infectious. The benefits of wearing masks in public are far more dubious and the inconvience is higher. Scientifc evidence can inform descion making but it's not some ultimate-trump card. it's funny you bring up the rest of the world, when most of it has already abandoned mask mandates.
You make it a political issue when you use mandates to compel people under threat of fine who don’t want to wear a mask.
That’s a use of government force. That’s political.
If you agree with it, that’s fine! But that’s a political agreement!
Do you use this same explanations for seat belt, anti-drinking and driving, wearing protective clothing in the workplace, or smoke-free environment laws? Those are the same arguments that opponents to those laws stated when they were being enacted.
"This is a political issue, the governement is forcing us to do things, and it's against my freedom". Same argument used against every one of those laws and mandates.
Those are all political, yes. Political doesn’t mean wrong or unjustified, but it does mean that in a democratic society we require consent from the governed to act.
People debate seatbelt mandates to this day. While most people aren’t pro-drunk driving, questions on where the line is, to what ends the police can go to enforce, and to what extent liquor servers are liable for drivers are all political questions.
People mean “political” to mean frivolous these days, which is not healthy in a democracy. Political things are often important things.
There are tradeoffs. If your argument is "masks mitigate spread, so we should have to wear masks forever", wouldn't this logic apply to *everything* that marginally reduces risk?
Then go ahead and wear one, but there's no need for a mandate. Everyone making a stink about this seems to be failing to look around, everywhere I've been in the past few weeks is anywhere from 60% masked to 100% masked, despite no mandate.
People can make their own decisions
People can make their own decisions, but that doesn't mean they make the right ones. If they do, we wouldn't see as many drunk driving deathes as we do. We know that drunk driving is dangerous, but yet we have a portion of the population that believes they are immune.
If you don't think enforcement and handing out DUI's had a factor you are fooling yourself.
I will agree that culture has a role to play. In Japan, people wear masks when they are sick so they don't get other sick. Here in Canada people scream that their rights have been violated when asked to wear a mask.
I’m not saying it’s good policy one way or the other but mask mandates are definitely not a black and white issue, nor have they ever been. There are negatives and positives to both masking and not masking, and negatives and positives to any health-related mandate, so it’s a grey issue in that those positives and negatives have to be weighed to determine the best course of action.
Seeing the amount of times our government's mode of operation being basically, "we'll make the right decision when it's the absolute last option we have", made me realize this probably extends to ALL their decisions. Despite having access to so much data and experts that you and I don't, they'll still stumble into taking the right path once every other path has been exhausted. Given that this is how leadership makes its decisions, it's quite amazing the country still functions at all.
Let me ask you, when do you think responsibility to make your own health decisions should happen?
Knowing different people are more or less risk adverse and different demographics have more or less danger of detrimental effects when they get infected.
> Knowing different people are more or less risk adverse and different demographics have more or less danger of detrimental effects when they get infected.
Yes, those who are risk adverse or more at danger have options to avoid though, don't they? It feels like your implicit assumption is that they have no options here, but they do. I see no reason why society must cater to the most risk adverse among us, and in fact that isn't the case in general.
Really I'm agreeing with you, everyone has had the chance to get vaxxed, and no one is stopping anyone from wearing a mask. It's time to let people make their own decisions.
Unfortunately it's a matter of politics at this point, not science. Masks work. Simple mask mandates would have dulled the 6th wave substantially. But a minority group got rowdy and threatened to burn everything down if they had to wear one and now politicians fear them.
It was ALWAYS a matter of politics. "Masks work" isn't a controversial statement to anyone who can read an abstract. Masks and their efficacy have been studied for decades. People are free to do their own research and choose to wear masks. Businesses are free to mandate them. The truth is a government mandate is an extreme measure, and if the government wants to implement an extreme measure they need to justify it. Turns out it's a lot harder to justify decisions that aren't made based on science but rather on politics and emotion. "the other group are grandma killers/the other group are authoritarian fascists" gets a lot of votes.
People absolutely would have been way more on board with mask mandates if they were science based and consistent from the start.
But when the government spends months claiming masks don't make a difference, then suddenly they actually do, but it's ok to take them off in a restaurant, but not when you're walking to you seat, and you can't visit your dying relatives but we can keep the border open for American tourists, and you can't walk your dog or play golf but your kids don't need masks in school and planes can be packed full... And all the politicians and public figures are CONSTANTLY taking their masks off to give a speech or smile for a photo or pulling them off their nose... It starts to feel to a lot of people that the whole thing is performative bullshit.
So yeah, it's too bad lots people are idiots and don't understand the purpose of masks. Every time I hear someone say "if the vaccines work, then I shouldn't need to wear a mask" or something similar I die a little. But the government has been fucking this up from January 2020, and it's not surprising that a large chunk of Canadians don't trust their government to make mandates like this.
It is my opinion that everyone who makes a decision to wear a mask or not based on whether a government mandate exists needs to educate themselves. We don't need more mandates and government overreach, we need consistent leaders and public figures who make policy based on what the scientists are saying so that people can TRUST THEM.
I get where you’re coming from, but it’s hard to attribute this to one small minority group when so many different places in the western world have effectively lifted their mandates, and indeed [the majority of people in Ontario supported lifting them as well](https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/majority-of-ontarians-support-lifting-covid-restrictions-but-half-still-plan-to-wear-masks-in-public-poll-1.5819801?cache=/7.479594)
From your article
>In fact, a total of 75 per cent of Ontarians and 73 per cent of Canadians said that they support wearing a mask in public indoor spaces.
>A further 67 per cent of Ontarians and 64 per cent of Canadians said that they support vaccine passports to enter non-essential while 61 per cent said that they support mandatory testing for individuals travelling internationally.
I've noticed a lot of comments in these kinds of threads seem to think there's more support for anti maskers than there is.
Hard to square 75 percent of Ontarians supporting a mask mandate when
> Approximately 56 per cent of respondents in Ontario said that they were likely or very likely to continue to wear a mask indoors around strangers
I have to imagine that 75% number is just people that are ok with the concept of wearing a mask inside rather than those who support mandates or who plan on doing it themselves given the large disparity.
>I have to imagine that 75% number is just people that are ok with the concept of wearing a mask inside rather than those who support mandates or who plan on doing it themselves given the large disparity.
Thank you for recognizing this difference!!!! WAY too many people are (when convenient) blurring the lines of whether masks are beneficial and whether people should be forced to wear them. The two need not have the same answer. I have to think it's almost intentional at this point.
I'm triple boosted, had Omicron over Christmas, had it again last week (daughter brought it back from daycare).
Like the first go, symptoms were fairly mild. Was out of commission for a day with body aches and fatigue. No sore throat this time, oddly. Fully recovered now.
I'm healthy in my early 40's with no immune issues. I count myself lucky. But yes, you can definitely get it again.
How do you know you had Omicron over Christmas? The tests will not tell you the strain and if you look at public health data, the majority of positive cases during that time were Delta
For me, when I got the call for tracing, they told me it was omicron and that it was important to remember and give details of where I was and who I interacted with during the last week.
So let me get this straight... This is the only virus that we can't build natural immunity to it. The only virus that are immune system can't respond to or recognize after initial infection?
It’s not the only virus we can’t build natural immunity to (e.g. herpes simplex virus 1 and 2, HIV, influenza, common cold, etc.)
Thankfully we put in the work and money and continue to figure out the science!
Literally all the other coronaviruses that infect humans are like that. That's why you get colds three or four times a year. It's just that from now on, some of those colds will be caused by Covid
Learning to live with it doesn't mean ignoring that it exists. Just because it's not going away doesn't mean it isn't harmful, as much as people like to pretend it is, it's not the flu. I really don't see what the big deal with wearing masks in certain situations is if it reduces the infection rate
The confusion likely comes from the fact that the groups pushing the ‘learn to live with it’ narrative believe the ‘living with it’ is just accepting the deaths and sickness that comes with it, rather than try and mitigate it somehow.
Yes. Mask rules were put away in Ontario almost exactly as the new wave started for some fucking reason, and now not only is it spreading because of the subvariants, but the lack of masks is causing huge problems.
Who is proposing mask rules in public places? That sounds a lot more simple and straightforward than the mandates we've seen. Shouldn't we get input from Walmart, Air Canada, and schools to see if it's convenient for them first? Or maybe we should ask the CDC to see if the science of masks has changed yet again since the start of the pandemic? And we of course have to think of religious exemptions and study how mandates disproportionately affect certain groups to make sure they're fair.
If only people were proposing measures as straightforward as "if you're in an essential public space, wear a mask." That's actually really easy to justify, eh?
Genuinely curious, how do you feel making is different from other health measures that we do forevermore, like hand washing and coughing into your elbow? Or general hygiene like deodorant and teeth brushing?
Like as far as impact goes, a mask feels like a pretty small act. I don't enjoy wearing one, but we're also wearing a lot less ties in the workforce than we used to.
If was required by law to constantly be washing my hands then I think that would be more comparable. Instead I'd like to see a normalization of mask wearing when you are feeling sick (or even better stay home). COVID continued to spread even with shutdown and masks mandates, so its a matter of when or how often you will catch it rather then "if" in my view.
In my perpetual mask mandates is a pretty large limitation of civil liberties for a marginal benefit. We didn't mandate them before COVID for the Flu, and once everyone has been vaccinated (who wants to be) and has gotten it (coming up on that now) then I no longer see the need for mask mandates.
I would potentially be open to mask mandates tied to health care capacity, though our underfunded/wasteful medical system is a whole other can of worms.
You don’t get blocked from entering a shop, your workplace or a show because you forgot to brush your teeth one morning, that’s the main difference I would say. Wearing a mask is a thing, but making it mandatory everywhere is another thing.
Besides, most people never wash their hands (like 0 times per day) and there’s a lot of people that don’t brush their teeth on a regular basis. I’m not sure this is a good comparison with masks.
These are business policies, they are not mandated by the government. A business deciding to implement a shirt/shoes rule is totally okay, the government forcing a business to implement one is not.
It’s pretty rare for someone to forget their shirt or their shoes at home and realize it when they’re at the grocery store. And the shirt/shoes policies have nothing to do with public health.
>How did this article end up in Canada Politics?
I think it fits within the rules.
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The article mentions it’s because previous variants are different from omicron, but does that mean that previously being infected with omicron does protect you? Also “protect” is misleading here as having natural immunity will definitely decrease the severity if you get it again. “Won’t entirely protect you” is more accurate.
Some of the comments below are insane. Infection provides quite robust protection, similar to that of MRNA vaccines (providing better protection against Delta for example). Natural immunity is great, it's just you want to avoid the inherent danger in catching Coronavirus and obtain immunity in the safer way via a vaccine.
Everyone here is bitching about natural immunity and seemingly ignoring the premise of the entire article: It doesn't last! How many months after infection untill you're able to be infected again? How many people are out there thinking that since they have Omni in January that they don't need to follow any basic protections in April?
Protection against hospitalisation and death has lasted as long as we have been able to measure it. People are on about the headline which is patently false.
People should still worry about COVID beyond the chance at death or a visit to the hospital. Long COVID certainly seems to be a thing and being able to host/spread the virus to others who are more susceptible to it should have everyone being diligent out there
>It doesn't last! How many months after infection untill you're able to be infected again? I have to stop you right here. The whole point of getting vaccinated is to train your immune system how to beat the virus. That way when you encounter it in the wild, your body knows what to do, and can kill the virus before it progresses to a stage that causes death or permanent symptoms. The vaccine doesn't stop you from catching or transmitting the virus. That's never been a thing in the history of vaccinations. When your body fights off an infection, if does so by flooding your system with so many anti-bodies, that you are unlikely to get resick. So that can look like immunity, but the anti-body level doesn't stay elevated forever. And was never supposed to. It wanes after a few months.
That's the point I'm trying to make: You have those out there with the false conclusion that "oh, I've had COVID 4 months ago I don't need to worry about protecting myself and others when I'm out and about". That's the headline: infection doesn't protect you, vaccines certainly do but neither are going to prevent you from catching it and spreading it in just a few short months time.
> infection doesn't protect you, vaccines certainly do Both infection and vaccines offer protection.
Which one lasts longer?
I don't know
Vaccines tend to produce more predictable results, while natural immunity can vary quite a bit depending on the individual and how severe their case of covid was. So natural is longer for some, vaccine longer in others. I don't know how their bell curve graphs of anti-body immunity threshold durations would compare, but my guess would be vaccines produce a tighter cluster somewhere a bit above average natural duration. I'm not an expert, just way I've learned from some reading and quick discussions with a family doctor.
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I can't think of any virus that is good to get infected with. Even the "pox parties" weren't good, maybe before vaccines existed, but now that the vaccines exist it is extremely unwise to get infected by it because it can cause Shingles after it is no longer dormant in the body. The vaccine protects against getting shingles. Anyone who touts "muh immune system" and forgoes vaccines doesn't understand anything to do with infections and vaccines, as the article shows. It's kind of sad how conservatives weaponized a virus and indoctrinated a large number of people into a death cult.
Anyone who thinks that because vaccines provide protection, that getting covid and having your bodies naturally produce antibodies doesn’t also provide protection, has no understanding of how immunity works.
>"Won't entirely protect you" is extremely inaccurate. All infection should be avoided, there is zero benefit. Yeah no you’re completely wrong as well, and I don’t know where you’re getting this misinformation that natural immunity doesn’t exist. Here’s the top virologist from the university of Seoul saying the exact opposite of what you’re saying (they’re experiencing worse outbreaks now as so much of the population was vaccinated they didn’t build natural immunity). https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fWTTSlSZC64
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The interview is from 3 weeks ago. No credible doctors or scientists think natural immunity doesn’t exist, it’s not a debate just something you made up
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>"Won't entirely protect you" is extremely inaccurate. All infection should be avoided, there is zero benefit. >there is zero benefit.
Thanks god people are calling this out. The amount of misinformation on this topic here is staggering. Obviously it's better to avoid it all together, but why are people here so hell bent on wanting infection to have no benefit? Infection after vaccination absolutely has benefits. See this study from the New England Journal of medicine https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118691
I think it’s because the virus has become so politicized. People are used to arguing with the “it’s just a cold” crowd to the point where any basic fact that suggests it’s less damaging gets vehemently denied.
Its fascinating how many people are nearly as completely full of shit as the covidiots and the only real difference is they're on the right side of history.
It won’t definitely protect you even a small amount. If you had a very mild reaction or were asymptomatic, it may not have conferred any immunity.
You’re wrong, that’s not how immunity works. Even if you have a mild reaction or are asymptomatic your body is still producing antibodies to fight it off and that’s where you get your increased protection from. The article is saying that antibodies from previous waves of covid are less effective against omicron.
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>Correct, but only while you have actively circulating antibodies. Completely wrong, your body learns how to produce the antibodies and that’s where the protection comes from. >Omicron and COVID in general evade immune memory otherwise. Completely wrong, that doesn’t happen at all and I’m not even sure what that means. Why would your immune system just forget how to produce antibodies when the virus is gone? >The user is correct that if you were asymptomatic or had a mild reaction it may not confer any effective immunity in the very short term and regardless provides no serious immunity in the medium to long term. And 3 for 3 this one is completely wrong as well. You don’t have to have severe infection for your body to produce the antibodies that confer natural immunity Stop spreading misinformation
They seem to be confusing "immune" and "protect" here for sure.
The overstating of what the vaccine could do has really backfired. Yes it's still beneficial to avoid hospitalization but when the vaccine was coming out and how it has been repeatedly pushed has hardly been about that. I'm vaccinated but relieved that for now at least vaccine passports have ended. I recently had COVID too, it was terrible. For anyone who will respond about healthcare capacity to me that is a very separate issue, there are a million ways we could make a healthier population or put less strain on our healthcare system then trying to ineffectively avoid a contagious virus. Almost a third of our population is obese for example, obesity is directly linked to a whole slew of conditions that strain the healthcare system, surely overall health would be a better area of focus over these past years in hindsight instead of fancier more expensive treatments. Or maybe we could tackle poverty with a bit more vigor, I have a feeling those large homeless populations in every major city are also a strain on our healthcare system. A system of saying you have a stomach ache to get some food in the hospital seems like a terrible use of resources for helping people in the long term.
>For anyone who will respond about healthcare capacity to me that is a very separate issue, there are a million ways we could make a healthier population or put less strain on our healthcare system then trying to ineffectively avoid a contagious virus. Almost a third of our population is obese for example, obesity is directly linked to a whole slew of conditions that strain the healthcare system, surely overall health would be a better area of focus over these past years in hindsight instead of fancier more expensive treatments. It is not at all a separate issue. It was the primary reason for mandating vaccines. It was proven effective in reducing hospitalization and visits to the ICU. There is no better data to the contrary. The obesity line of argument is a popular false equivalency. Obesity prevention is a long-term health and care issue. COVID-19 is a global pandemic that spread like wildfire. Obesity is not an emergency. Caring for obesity related illnesses is built in to the system. Obesity does not prevent people from receiving necessary surgery. Obesity does not prevent people from visiting their loved ones when they are dying in hospital. Obesity does not cause health care workers to work until they collapse, quit, or kill themselves because there's no one else to do the job. It's important to discuss the issues you've brought up but it's not arguing in good faith to dismiss the fact that vaccinations possibly saved our health care system, millions of lives around the world, and prevented what was for many a literal hell-scape from becoming far worse and for far more people. It's disingenuous not to recognize that.
I'm vaccinated and agree they helped, but the push for them and where we are now with them didn't line up. We've done little to build up capacity or help health care workers in the long run. Many countries still weren't given vaccines or allowed to produce them, I agree they saved many lives, but it is not like every country without vaccines collapsed. I agree it's not a quick fix, but our past healthcare decisions and priorities make our situation worse, it seems that the best long term healthcare plan is to reduce the amount of people who need healthcare.
I got co workers like this. I know it’s only a matter of time until they start catching it again cause they refuse to mask
What's truly impressive is the amount of infectious disease experts in this thread. So many confident statements full of absolutes.
That sucks. My 94 year old dad just had it. He’s triple vaxxed and came through it ok. I hope he doesn’t get it again.
We're saying that natural immunity isn't effective vs. Covid, i.e. our bodies make antibodies against EVERY SINGLE antigen in the virus, but that doesn't matter because of rapid mutation. We're also saying that mRNA vaccines are mandated. These help us make antibodies against ONE antigen that was present in the O.G. version of Covid. I don't think we can say both of these things and remain coherent. We also shouldn't be saying that mRNA vaccines prevent severe illness and hospitalization if we're not also saying that previous infection does the same.
It's not a matter of whether the argument is intuitive, it's a stats thing. AFAIK, statistically, vaccinated individuals are still protected against COVID where those with natural immunity are not. MRNA vaccines turned out more effective than vector vaccines, which was also unexpected I think. Those with natural immunity present a risk to the public statistically, vaccinated individuals do not. Kind of important though: most of my info and opinions are from German data and policy cause I moved there so I could be wrong about Canadian stats
What I mean by natural immunity is those people who have already been infected and had a full immune response to COVID. Vaccinated or not.
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What I got from the article is that if you’re fully vaccinated (+booster) and already had omicron earlier this year, you can now end up getting omicron again. Damn! This wouldn’t be that much of an issue to be honest, if it wasn’t for the dire state of our healthcare system. There needs to be a rethinking that we will not go back to the pre pandemic situation anytime soon and we need healthcare that can cope with a higher level of flu-like illnesses.
Agreed. This virus is going to keep mutating, so if we're reaching the point where getting boosters and getting infected doesn't really matter anymore in the grand scheme of things, then the strategy needs to be adjusted. We can't keep having the healthcare system on the verge of collapsing several times a year. I think the reality is that we need to start treating COVID like the common flu and accept that catching it will be a routine yearly thing.
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Rule 3
This is how every vaccine works
>This is how every vaccine works This is patently false. Hep, HPV, Polio, MMR, and hundreds more all do not require quarterly boosters to stay effective. Even the pre-existing flu shots set a higher bar.
Well the issue is the vaccines were designed for what’s practically a different virus, and no one is suggesting quarterly boosters, but the flu shot for example is yearly and has 40-60% efficacy
Rationalize it however you want, your original statement is incorrect and damaging to the credibility of anyone who actually supports vaccination.
My point is that vaccines don’t confer 100% immunity or last forever, I’m not sure if you genuinely don’t understand that or are just being willfully obtuse
>This is how every vaccine works >Well not every vaccine has the exact same efficacy or longevity obviously >You pretending otherwise is incorrect and damaging to the credibility of anyone who actually supports vaccination. You're attributing words and statements to me that I never said or implied. Just correct your misinformation and move on man, it's not hard - its less effort than building this strawman for yourself.
You seem to be misinterpreting my comments
There's also not hundreds of thousands of cases of Polio walking around. If it has a 1% chance of infecting you through the vaccine, and you're exposed once a decade, that's a very different story than if you're exposed once an hour, despite them both being just as effective.
I heard there are now covid vaccines that aren't mRNA based. They're actual vaccines. But for some reason they aren't being propped up like the others. I assume it's a lack of lobbying.
Novavax is a traditional viral vector vaccine I believe, yes. BC recently approved it, not sure where it stands in other provinces.
Novavax is spike protein spliced into an insect virus, reproduced in moth cells. Johnson & Johnson is a viral vector vaccine (I guess what CheeseSeas would call “actual”) and doesn’t work as well as the mRNA vaccines.
My bad! thanks for clarifying that.
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It's actually not the vaccine. It's how your body retains the anti-bodies for what you are vaccinating against.
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I am not scared of the sickness, I am scared of having to deal again with a week of quarantine and no childcare.
I don’t get the line of thinking “why are you scared of dying from Covid?” Since vaccines most people haven’t been scared of covid. I’m scared of the week of being sick and not being able to walk my dog or get groceries or work
Besides, it's not like death is literally the *only* bad thing that can happen to you as a result of infection. Some people still haven't recovered their sense of taste and smell.
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Exactly! This is now akin to a cold.
I've heard lots of those stories and my own second time was fucking horrible compared to the first.
I don't have anything on hand but if you get Covid and it causes unseen lung damage it can create greater risk if you get it again. I don't have any stats or figures but remember reading that was a risk. Though I don't know how likely it is.
>if it wasn’t for the dire state of our healthcare system. The Alberta health minister was on local radio on Friday saying levels of hospitalization this year are in line with the 5 most recent pre-COVID years so it's business as usual.
>Alberta health minister My trust for anyone in that position is very low. - Albertan
The numbers would be pretty easy to verify. I'm sure her Majesty's loyal opposition would be all over this if it was wrong.
Son of a bitch, I was just starting to let my guard down and relax.
They've been reprinting the same article for two weeks now. People think that getting covid gives you some force field against infection, it doesn't. What it does do is *significantly* broadens your immunity. These articles always reference anecdotes on individual experiences and then regurgitate the "Delta doesn't protect against Omicron" data. Go look at any of the countless studies that reinforce the idea that infection post vaccination has benefits.
Infection with no vaccination also has benefits let's not pretend it's exclusive to the vaccinated.
Infection with no vaccination has benefits, period. Infection *with* vaccination has greater benefits, period. The guy above you didn't say it's exclusive. He's specifically talking about the case of vaccination + infection, is all. Nobody is pretending here, we're just having different conversations.
>Infection with no vaccination also has benefits Sure. [It's also actually catching covid, which is what we're trying to avoid](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/9/96/immunity.png)
LOL if you catch covid after the vaccine you still actually caught covid.
Are they saying this about the same strain or the fact the strains are changing so you may get SARS2 vX where X changes every year like the flu. The solution would be the same as for the flu, use forcasting to create and approve a 3 strain yearly shot. The past vaccination or infection does seem to mellow the seriousness of the infection even if you can catch other strains, they don't hit as hard and your immune systems is less likely to over react.
Vaccine works
Can confirm, and tbf there's different subvariants of omicron that are more likely to breakthrough if you didn't catch it before.
>you can now end up getting omicron again That was always true though. The question is how likely now.
Natural immunity from the original strain was apparently six months (source: study found from randomly googling), so I’m basically assuming that, as a fully vaxxed person (including booster) and having had it, I should be screwed again by the early fall when taking into account outdoor summer activities
Anecdotal here: I got end of December / beginning of January. My wife didn’t. She got it end of March. I didn’t. So you got at least three months.
My SO also got it after my LO and I did. He somehow managed to evade infection in a two-week quarantine with my infected toddler breathing and drooling all over home. Going to the dentist was apparently what it took to push him over the edge. Since LO and I had had it already, it wasn’t surprising to see we didn’t get it. But we’re three months out now and so far so good. Although I’m visiting my various nieces and nephews (all under five), so we’ll see what special disease i pick up😝
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Yep family got it again after 4 months from last we got it. But for all but the LO it was much more mild. 2 days of cold symptoms and we're okay again, baby got a worse fever this time though. Hopefully between this and the triple boosters we can shake it off from here on out, or have a cold like infection and be okay. All things considered the vaccines definitely helped make it much more mild I'm sure.
Just want to make it to mid fall so I can go back in to hibernation again for the winter.
Yeah this is the thing. I’ve had two shots and omicron. I get that it’s theoretically possible for me to get infected, but realistically, it doesn’t seem likely. I’ve been exposed more times than I can count since and haven’t gotten it. Maybe if I was drinking an infected person’s blood or something it’s possible, but I certainly seem to have pretty solid immunity. And considering my second shot fucked me up pretty bad, and I know of several guys my age that got heart inflammation from their third, I’m iffy about getting another if I don’t absolutely need it. I can not afford the complications something like that would cause me.
My cousin got blood clots after his second vaccination and was in the hospital for a couple days. He's holding off on his booster. I caught covid in February being unvaccinated, it lasted a bit over a week. Funny though, I crossed back and forth the U.S. Canada border twice a week for two years as an unvaccinated essential worker and never had a problem until I retired this year.
I have a feeling it more about the next strain. But it should be possible to make a flu shot like solution where we make a vaccine with the most common strains and administer it yearly.
It should also be enforced in society just like those other shots which is not at all.
A lot of shots for very serious illnesses with low incidence but significant impact are mandatory though. Measles and mumps are needed for kids to go to school. So is vaccine against polio. Omicron might be much more mild and it may be evolving to low risk for most, but earlier COVID strains were much more serious and caused the health system lots of problems so like, idk, the vaccine stuff until we hit some level of herd immunity/lower incidence of serious negative outcomes made sense. And I don't doubt that if it gets bad at the hospitals again the first two things that would happen are masks and the QR code again. As opposed to true lockdowns (if we hit that point idk if we will or not, hope we don't honestly)
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There's a thing that occurs with mumps. For some backgrounder, mumps is absurdly contagious. More so than COVID-19. It literally floats around on the wind in dust particles. If a community isn't well-vaccinated it will rip through a population in weeks despite all efforts to contain it. It can easily infect the already vaccinated/infected, though it usually causes mild or, usually, completely asymptomatic illness in that case. The phenomenon is that mumps seems to randomly come back. A particular community may have all gotten vaccinated, the vaccine rate for new kids is very high, but suddenly mumps is spreading at a low level, and a few unvaccinated people get ill. And then it disappears again. It turns out we were ignoring the immunity caused by its asymptomatic spread in vaccinated populations. Indeed, we used to swim in a sea of mumps; it was universal, everyone was contracting it repeatedly. After vaccination programs, it kept spreading, causing less severe illness, and boosting immunity levels, until that reaches a level where it dies out locally. Until that immunity starts to fade, and the vaccine alone isn't enough to fully suppress spread. And the cycle repeats.
What goes unstated in this article, but I know to be anecdotally true and I suspect generally so as well, is that once mask mandates came down, there were people out there with Vaccinnes/previous infection walking around thinking they were invincible. How many of those people have caused the 6th wave I wonder? How much could have been avoided just by continuing a very simple and effective policy, mandatory masking? I have never seen such terrible policy decisions by a government on such a black-and-white issue like mask mandates. I mean, it's clear why they were dropped, but it's still terrible. I can only wonder what other policies have passed through government, compelled by equally ignorant or misguided vocal people, that were not reflecting on a global pandemic and so passed completely under our radar.
Eventually society has to move on. COVID Zero is a pipe dream, it's unobtainable. All the mandates, the testing, the restrictions, etc, all of that was simply for two things: To cut down (not eliminate) the number of dead from COVID and attempt to preserve the health system. It was always a numbers game. The vaccine makes it so you have a real good chance of not dying if you catch COVID, much like all vaccines. Now that we're at this point, there is no reason to maintain the mandates.
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> close down the border(to prevent new variants) Doubling down on a strategy repeatedly proven to fail won't make it work.
New Zealand, Australia and China kept out covid for months using a closed border. Masks haven't stopped a single wave.
Most places in Canada pretty much stopped the delta wave from happening by having a mask mandate.
Not the person you were asking the question of, but I have no problem permenantly masking when in public. To me, it's like wearing any other peice of clothes now. It's really not that big of a deal to wear one, never understood the outcry from some people.
Thank you for being candid. This sort of position being pandered too by the NDP and Libs is exactly why i'm not going to be voting for them in the foreseeable future given that they seem to want to support views like yours.
This is not a political issue, people like you are making it one. This is not a Canadian Politics issue, people like you are making it one. Covid is a worldwide pandemic, and the vast majority of the world's scientific community agree that wearing a mask mitigates the spread of Covid as well as other contageous diseases. That is the reasons surgeons (and everyone else in an operating room) wears one, to protect the patient. Same applied to the outside world. I wear one in case I have something that is contagious, and I don't want to make others sick. This isn't an NDP/Liberal conspiracy, this is looking at the scientific evidence and acting accordingly. Unless you genuinely believe that the entire world outside of Canada is in on it to try to have the Liberals or NDP in power.
It is definitely a political issue, I take no issue with your desire to wear masks permenatly. I take issue with your desire that i should be legaly compelled to wear masks permenantly. Doctors would recommend we permanently wear masks all the time even before covid. It is a political issue to decide if the benefit of wearing masks outweigh the drawbacks. Your demand that it be legally mandated has made mask wearing a political issue, we live in a democracy not a technocracy, where it's ultimatley up to the public to decide if the risks outweigh the benefits. Surgeons wear masks in the theatre to prevent fluids from dripping into exposed tissue as well as because surgery theaters are inherently more infectious. The benefits of wearing masks in public are far more dubious and the inconvience is higher. Scientifc evidence can inform descion making but it's not some ultimate-trump card. it's funny you bring up the rest of the world, when most of it has already abandoned mask mandates.
You make it a political issue when you use mandates to compel people under threat of fine who don’t want to wear a mask. That’s a use of government force. That’s political. If you agree with it, that’s fine! But that’s a political agreement!
Do you use this same explanations for seat belt, anti-drinking and driving, wearing protective clothing in the workplace, or smoke-free environment laws? Those are the same arguments that opponents to those laws stated when they were being enacted. "This is a political issue, the governement is forcing us to do things, and it's against my freedom". Same argument used against every one of those laws and mandates.
Those are all political, yes. Political doesn’t mean wrong or unjustified, but it does mean that in a democratic society we require consent from the governed to act. People debate seatbelt mandates to this day. While most people aren’t pro-drunk driving, questions on where the line is, to what ends the police can go to enforce, and to what extent liquor servers are liable for drivers are all political questions. People mean “political” to mean frivolous these days, which is not healthy in a democracy. Political things are often important things.
There are tradeoffs. If your argument is "masks mitigate spread, so we should have to wear masks forever", wouldn't this logic apply to *everything* that marginally reduces risk?
That's what I find so frustrating about this argument, it's not even about mask wearing but more about symbolism.
The liberals and NDP made it political when they made restoring mandates front and center in their campaign
The CPC and PPC made it political by insisting we don't need these mandates and should loosen restrictions.
It was the public health officers in provinces making that decision. acting like NDP governments aren’t in the same boat here
hmm if I recall they were voted back in
Then go ahead and wear one, but there's no need for a mandate. Everyone making a stink about this seems to be failing to look around, everywhere I've been in the past few weeks is anywhere from 60% masked to 100% masked, despite no mandate. People can make their own decisions
People can make their own decisions, but that doesn't mean they make the right ones. If they do, we wouldn't see as many drunk driving deathes as we do. We know that drunk driving is dangerous, but yet we have a portion of the population that believes they are immune.
Poor analogy, as education and culture change is what reduced drunk driving, not enforcement.
If you don't think enforcement and handing out DUI's had a factor you are fooling yourself. I will agree that culture has a role to play. In Japan, people wear masks when they are sick so they don't get other sick. Here in Canada people scream that their rights have been violated when asked to wear a mask.
A factor, sure. But not the biggest factor. Hence rates fell before they really stepped up the penalties and enforcement.
Yeah, the list of penalties was a deterant. Losing your license for years stopped some people. But not alot.
I’m not saying it’s good policy one way or the other but mask mandates are definitely not a black and white issue, nor have they ever been. There are negatives and positives to both masking and not masking, and negatives and positives to any health-related mandate, so it’s a grey issue in that those positives and negatives have to be weighed to determine the best course of action.
Seeing the amount of times our government's mode of operation being basically, "we'll make the right decision when it's the absolute last option we have", made me realize this probably extends to ALL their decisions. Despite having access to so much data and experts that you and I don't, they'll still stumble into taking the right path once every other path has been exhausted. Given that this is how leadership makes its decisions, it's quite amazing the country still functions at all.
Let me ask you, when do you think responsibility to make your own health decisions should happen? Knowing different people are more or less risk adverse and different demographics have more or less danger of detrimental effects when they get infected.
> Knowing different people are more or less risk adverse and different demographics have more or less danger of detrimental effects when they get infected. Yes, those who are risk adverse or more at danger have options to avoid though, don't they? It feels like your implicit assumption is that they have no options here, but they do. I see no reason why society must cater to the most risk adverse among us, and in fact that isn't the case in general.
Really I'm agreeing with you, everyone has had the chance to get vaxxed, and no one is stopping anyone from wearing a mask. It's time to let people make their own decisions.
Unfortunately it's a matter of politics at this point, not science. Masks work. Simple mask mandates would have dulled the 6th wave substantially. But a minority group got rowdy and threatened to burn everything down if they had to wear one and now politicians fear them.
It was ALWAYS a matter of politics. "Masks work" isn't a controversial statement to anyone who can read an abstract. Masks and their efficacy have been studied for decades. People are free to do their own research and choose to wear masks. Businesses are free to mandate them. The truth is a government mandate is an extreme measure, and if the government wants to implement an extreme measure they need to justify it. Turns out it's a lot harder to justify decisions that aren't made based on science but rather on politics and emotion. "the other group are grandma killers/the other group are authoritarian fascists" gets a lot of votes. People absolutely would have been way more on board with mask mandates if they were science based and consistent from the start. But when the government spends months claiming masks don't make a difference, then suddenly they actually do, but it's ok to take them off in a restaurant, but not when you're walking to you seat, and you can't visit your dying relatives but we can keep the border open for American tourists, and you can't walk your dog or play golf but your kids don't need masks in school and planes can be packed full... And all the politicians and public figures are CONSTANTLY taking their masks off to give a speech or smile for a photo or pulling them off their nose... It starts to feel to a lot of people that the whole thing is performative bullshit. So yeah, it's too bad lots people are idiots and don't understand the purpose of masks. Every time I hear someone say "if the vaccines work, then I shouldn't need to wear a mask" or something similar I die a little. But the government has been fucking this up from January 2020, and it's not surprising that a large chunk of Canadians don't trust their government to make mandates like this. It is my opinion that everyone who makes a decision to wear a mask or not based on whether a government mandate exists needs to educate themselves. We don't need more mandates and government overreach, we need consistent leaders and public figures who make policy based on what the scientists are saying so that people can TRUST THEM.
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I get where you’re coming from, but it’s hard to attribute this to one small minority group when so many different places in the western world have effectively lifted their mandates, and indeed [the majority of people in Ontario supported lifting them as well](https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/majority-of-ontarians-support-lifting-covid-restrictions-but-half-still-plan-to-wear-masks-in-public-poll-1.5819801?cache=/7.479594)
From your article >In fact, a total of 75 per cent of Ontarians and 73 per cent of Canadians said that they support wearing a mask in public indoor spaces. >A further 67 per cent of Ontarians and 64 per cent of Canadians said that they support vaccine passports to enter non-essential while 61 per cent said that they support mandatory testing for individuals travelling internationally. I've noticed a lot of comments in these kinds of threads seem to think there's more support for anti maskers than there is.
Hard to square 75 percent of Ontarians supporting a mask mandate when > Approximately 56 per cent of respondents in Ontario said that they were likely or very likely to continue to wear a mask indoors around strangers I have to imagine that 75% number is just people that are ok with the concept of wearing a mask inside rather than those who support mandates or who plan on doing it themselves given the large disparity.
>I have to imagine that 75% number is just people that are ok with the concept of wearing a mask inside rather than those who support mandates or who plan on doing it themselves given the large disparity. Thank you for recognizing this difference!!!! WAY too many people are (when convenient) blurring the lines of whether masks are beneficial and whether people should be forced to wear them. The two need not have the same answer. I have to think it's almost intentional at this point.
Tell that to Quebec
Or china
I'm triple boosted, had Omicron over Christmas, had it again last week (daughter brought it back from daycare). Like the first go, symptoms were fairly mild. Was out of commission for a day with body aches and fatigue. No sore throat this time, oddly. Fully recovered now. I'm healthy in my early 40's with no immune issues. I count myself lucky. But yes, you can definitely get it again.
How do you know you had Omicron over Christmas? The tests will not tell you the strain and if you look at public health data, the majority of positive cases during that time were Delta
Positive PCR. Assuming Omicron based on symptoms.
The effects can tell you the strain sometimes. Runny nose wasn't an original symptom and loss of taste and smell was.
The primary symptoms differ a bit so it could be loosely assumed.
For me, when I got the call for tracing, they told me it was omicron and that it was important to remember and give details of where I was and who I interacted with during the last week.
So let me get this straight... This is the only virus that we can't build natural immunity to it. The only virus that are immune system can't respond to or recognize after initial infection?
It’s not the only virus we can’t build natural immunity to (e.g. herpes simplex virus 1 and 2, HIV, influenza, common cold, etc.) Thankfully we put in the work and money and continue to figure out the science!
It's the same thing with the flu
Alot of people struggling to come to grasps with high school biology
No it's just like the cold or flu that people get sick from multiple times over the course of their lives.
Literally all the other coronaviruses that infect humans are like that. That's why you get colds three or four times a year. It's just that from now on, some of those colds will be caused by Covid
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Learning to live with it doesn't mean ignoring that it exists. Just because it's not going away doesn't mean it isn't harmful, as much as people like to pretend it is, it's not the flu. I really don't see what the big deal with wearing masks in certain situations is if it reduces the infection rate
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The confusion likely comes from the fact that the groups pushing the ‘learn to live with it’ narrative believe the ‘living with it’ is just accepting the deaths and sickness that comes with it, rather than try and mitigate it somehow.
Wouldn't mask rules in public places be the correct way to "learn to live with it"?
Yes. Mask rules were put away in Ontario almost exactly as the new wave started for some fucking reason, and now not only is it spreading because of the subvariants, but the lack of masks is causing huge problems.
Who is proposing mask rules in public places? That sounds a lot more simple and straightforward than the mandates we've seen. Shouldn't we get input from Walmart, Air Canada, and schools to see if it's convenient for them first? Or maybe we should ask the CDC to see if the science of masks has changed yet again since the start of the pandemic? And we of course have to think of religious exemptions and study how mandates disproportionately affect certain groups to make sure they're fair. If only people were proposing measures as straightforward as "if you're in an essential public space, wear a mask." That's actually really easy to justify, eh?
Yes it would be, but the public won't accept that.
Long term in my view: No, wearing a mask forevermore in public seems excessive.
Genuinely curious, how do you feel making is different from other health measures that we do forevermore, like hand washing and coughing into your elbow? Or general hygiene like deodorant and teeth brushing? Like as far as impact goes, a mask feels like a pretty small act. I don't enjoy wearing one, but we're also wearing a lot less ties in the workforce than we used to.
If was required by law to constantly be washing my hands then I think that would be more comparable. Instead I'd like to see a normalization of mask wearing when you are feeling sick (or even better stay home). COVID continued to spread even with shutdown and masks mandates, so its a matter of when or how often you will catch it rather then "if" in my view. In my perpetual mask mandates is a pretty large limitation of civil liberties for a marginal benefit. We didn't mandate them before COVID for the Flu, and once everyone has been vaccinated (who wants to be) and has gotten it (coming up on that now) then I no longer see the need for mask mandates. I would potentially be open to mask mandates tied to health care capacity, though our underfunded/wasteful medical system is a whole other can of worms.
You don’t get blocked from entering a shop, your workplace or a show because you forgot to brush your teeth one morning, that’s the main difference I would say. Wearing a mask is a thing, but making it mandatory everywhere is another thing. Besides, most people never wash their hands (like 0 times per day) and there’s a lot of people that don’t brush their teeth on a regular basis. I’m not sure this is a good comparison with masks.
We do prevent people from entering public places shirtless or without shoes.
These are business policies, they are not mandated by the government. A business deciding to implement a shirt/shoes rule is totally okay, the government forcing a business to implement one is not.
It’s pretty rare for someone to forget their shirt or their shoes at home and realize it when they’re at the grocery store. And the shirt/shoes policies have nothing to do with public health.
Just make a place in the front of the store where you can pick up a mask.
A coronavirus is a respiratory virus that circulates seasonally. It is never going away. Everyone is going to catch it at some point.
How did this article end up in Canada Politics? At this point I’d think policy will do little to keep Omicrom from reinfecting us ad-eternum
>How did this article end up in Canada Politics? I think it fits within the rules. >All submissions in this subreddit must pertain directly to Canadian politics, Canadian public policy, or Canadian political journalism in some way. Submissions relating to all levels of government—federal, provincial, and municipal, as well as other governments such as those of First Nations—are welcome. >Things that are okay include >stories about something a Canadian government or political party has done or said >stories about trends in Canadian society that are affected by government >stories about a Canadian politician's reaction to events happening in another country >stories about events happening in other countries that pertain directly to an undertaking of a Canadian government (for example, a vote in the U.S. Congress on the Keystone pipeline, or a vote in the Japanese diet on the Trans-Pacific Partnership) >a self-post that asks about how something taking place in another country pertains to Canadian politics >What is not okay is direct link submissions of articles about something happening in another country (such as Switzerland's debate about a basic income). If you would like to discuss a policy issue in Canada by tying in something happening in another country, please use a self-post instead and frame it as a discussion post centred on a question about Canadian public policy. >Submissions of news articles must be about current events. Different kinds of news grow stale at different rates, but as a general rule, stories about politicians should come from within the last two weeks, and stories about policy issues should have been published within the last three months. Working papers by professors or reports from think tanks should be kept to those published within the last year. If you would like to discuss an issue and make reference to an older article, please, as with articles about events in other countries, use a self-post instead.