natural immunity factors in the epidemic

 

.....summary: since those previously vaccinated have a minimal disease, why give them a booster: getting the lowgrade infection probably won't harm the low risk types and will boost their immunity.

this is about children, young people and those without poor immune systems.

And this will allow the vaccine to be sent to poorer countries to protect them (where malnutrition might cause higher mortality).

This might not be true for nursing home/high risk people who have lousy immune systems to begin with. They have been helped by getting the vaccine so might get better immunity with a booster without the risk. Indeed, they might need several booster shots. (something we saw when we gave Hepatitis B vaccine to our patients in a nursing home for the mentally disabled, many of whom had genetic problems with immunity).

For normal people, even if they test negative for antibodies, it doesn't mean they don't have immunity.

part of the reason is that the immune cells will produce antibodies when re-exposed, but might take time to get a high enough antibody response to stop the infection.

Think of warming up your car engine when it is cold: It still works but might take a few minutes if you want to go on the interstate.

And the CDC has a report on the higher risk of covid to black, Hispanic and AmerIndian populations (note: most Hispanics in the US have Amerindian or black ancestry).,

Is this from their poor nutrition, or because they have a higher risk of diabetes/ metabolic syndrome (a major cause of obesity)? 

And yes, I recognize the problems of delivering medical care equally to these populations, because I worked with them for 40 years...it's not racism per se (since the problems are similar if you work with poor people of European origin),.. partly because working with these groups is difficult: poor compliance with medicine, low payments from Medicare/medicaid that make it hard to balance the books, etc. 

The reason the PC prefer to blame racism is that they don't recognize cultural problems....

there are barriers to medical care that are economic and cultural.

Fewer clinics, long waiting periods, staff of a different ethnicity (one quarter of docs are FMG and they often work in these high risk areas where it is hard to recruit American medical graduates... I think of my Filipino husband working with the coal miners in Pennsylvania).

We also see this in poor white populations, but it's hard to separate this population in studies: they are lumped in with the affluent yuppies who are health conscious (i.e. their religion is health and they imagine if they do a lot of this healthy stuff they will live forever) instead of the fatalism ideas of many in the lower class when it comes to health problems.

and what is worrisome about minorities who are at covid risk is that the dirty little secret is that it isn't just racism/cultural barriers per se: that the non vaccination rate is high among Black Americans who don't trust the system: they remember the Tuskegee experiment and don't want to be a guinea pig and take the "experimental" vaccine.

Usually the elite blame the victims: in the USA this is related to the present day activism by elites who prefer to point fingers than get their fingers dirty doing the hard work of getting out to treat the poor.

But all those tweets against the non mask wearing Trumpites seem to ignore that white liberal youth also have a high rate of not being vaccinated, and they also seem to be unaware that virus is all over the world.

It's not just an American problem: even the obedient mask wearing Japanese are in the midst of an repeated outbreak: I suspect the politicians who allowed the Olympics will get the blame.

as for us in the Philippines, we are a mess. The Inquirer notes a quarter million cases are expected in the Manila region by September.

and yes, reports say incompetence and red tape were the reason that the Philippines did not get the vaccine in January.

We are starting to see cases here in our rural town, and I suspect a lot of the increase in cases is due to more testing being done. 

We mandate masks, and partial shut down...And then there is contact tracing: if a positive case visited a business, the employees and those who visited on that day are put into quarantine and the business is closed until it is cleaned up.

This is true for Dr. Angi (twice in quarantine) and our bank (shut down for ten days, meaning I could get money from another branch but not cash my checks). Sigh. I got around this by wiring money from my US bank  that gets my pension by direct deposit.... and I just put oodles of cash into my ATM account in case this happens again. The bad news, of course, is that sometimes we lose internet or electricity, (typhoon season is coming) and that source of cash is sometimes closed. I also keep some in Lolo's safe, but hesitate to keep too much because this could attract thieves. 

And of course, we have help who can do the shopping for us.

All those Yanks who talk about moving to a third world country to retire need to recognize they need a support community: family, or to live in a large ex pat community.