I decided to try to visually represent the concept of "hybrid immunity" to try to show why it's a misleading concept that has the overall effect of hiding the bodies and the magnitude of the damage covid infections leave behind. Here's what I mean🧵
These are made up stats for illustrative purposes only, meant to simplify the concept of hybrid immunity and help make sense of the fact that there are studies showing hybrid is more protective but also studies showing that more covid infections= more total risk of illness/death.
Now when comparing hybrid immunity vs vaccination only, you might get a result like this, where covid is more deadly/dangerous in the vaccinated only group than in the vaccinated+infected group. So you might conclude that hybrid immunity offers better protection. Does it though?
What we need to remember about the hybrid immunity group is that to become the hybrid immunity group, they had to first be the vaccinated only group. And *dead people can't die twice*. So the hybrid group is actually the vaccinated-only group *after selecting out the dead people*
So actually, if you were to follow the same group of people from vaccination to the end result after 2 infections, the total number of deaths in that group would be higher after 2 infections than after 1 infection.
There's some published data on 3 infections and no surprise, your total risk after 3 is even higher. The more times covid passes through, the more people end up with a new chronic illness, disabled, or dead. Even if subsequent infections harm less people than the first one.
Only counting the damage from the second infection has the effect of hiding the bodies, the sequelae and the disability from the first. But by definition, you can't achieve "hybrid immunity" without a first infection. So those numbers are baked in and should be disclosed.
To recap: despite "hybrid immunity" seeming more protective, your *total* risk of ending up disabled or dead keeps rising with each infection. Which means the honest way to discuss hybrid immunity is to count the *total* number of dead and disabled people it creates.
And the honest conclusion of such a discussion would be that covid infections should be avoided, even if previously infected. Leadership concerned about the health of their population would be aiming to keep everyone's total number of infections as low as possible.
"Hybrid immunity" through mass infection may be the current strategy of choice for many countries, but it's not a PH strategy. Public health = preventive medicine. Mass infection/reinfection doesn't prevent harm, it causes it. Mass infection is not a public health strategy. /end
One last thought, the fact that widespread hybrid immunity through mass infection necessarily requires a portion of the population to die or be disabled by a covid infection is the reason articles like this are so disturbing. cbc.ca/news/health/ca…
Hybrid immunity is played up and celebrated with no mention at all that to achieve it 20,000 Canadians had to die in 2022 (the deadliest year of the pandemic for 🇨🇦), 1.4 million Canadians have LC, and our hospitals had to learn to function in a permanent state of semi-collapse.
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Public health has changed a lot since covid. Here’s a really concrete example of that. In 2019, PH in Montreal published a really detailed list of places people were exposed to measles: bus routes, malls, walmart, etc. In 2024? The list is just healthcare, schools + the airport.
Why the sudden change in what information is made public? I highly doubt that *none* of these measles cases exposed people anywhere else. Did any of them go to a pharmacy or grocery store or coffee shop or hockey rink? And if so, why aren’t any of these locations being published?
Not publishing these locations means 1. people don’t have the opportunity to protect themselves and others post-exposure and 2. the fact that people are actively being exposed in the community (not just clinics and airports) is not being made explicit for the public.
@Penelope19920 @jvipondmd As soon as the IPAC email goes out letting everyone know they need to wear masks, everyone wears masks. If IPAC decides everyone has to wear respirators, then everyone wears respirators. This actually isn’t hard at all. Why leadership would make it seem like it is, is baffling.
@Penelope19920 @jvipondmd They lean on hand wave-y concepts like mask fatigue when I have never once received a survey asking me how I felt about masking. None of this is evidence based. Since 2022, they seem to be making decisions based on “feels”.
@Penelope19920 @jvipondmd Do you know what happens in hospitals when HCWs get hand washing fatigue? They hire people to patrol the wards and make sure we’re washing our hands when we’re going in and out of patient rooms. They don’t give us hand washing breaks and just let c.diff run wild for a while. 😒
StatCan just dropped a bombshell report on LC. This is the most important figure. It highlights that the risk of long term symptoms is cumulative, it increases with increasing number of infections. By 3+ infections, 38% report long term symptoms — that’s 1 in every 2.6 people. 🤯
Right now 1 in every 9 Canadians has long covid. 80% have symptoms for longer than 6 months and 50% just never recovered.
We’re in our *3rd* post-lockdown viral respiratory season and admissions for viral resp illness+pneumonia are 6 standard deviations above the historical average. I do not understand how so many reasonable people haven’t figured out that the “immunity debt” scapegoat is disinfo.🧵
It’s not the lockdowns, it’s the covid. Covid damages immune systems. Catching covid makes people more susceptible to catching other infections. Immunity theft, not immunity debt. A thread of evidence:
This study found that the risk of RSV infection needing medical attention was 40% higher in kids that had covid vs those that didn’t. Both in 2021 and 2022. Yes they checked twice.
“We report a consistent increase in the risk of persistent symptoms after reinfection compared to first infection. All post-acute symptoms mentioned in the WHO clinical case definition appeared more common after reinfection than after a 1st infection”
‘RoBuSt HyBriD iMmuNiTy’ 🤪
Yet another study showing that more infections = more morbidity. Can we like warn people maybe? Feels like something people might want to know. nature.com/articles/s4146…
“Escalation of commitment: A human behavior pattern in which an individual or group facing increasingly negative outcomes from a decision, action, or investment nevertheless continue the behavior instead of altering course.”
I’m very optimistic that vaccine/treatment breakthroughs + better air hygiene standards will change the game at some point. But I’d also like to point out that preserving one’s short and long term health is an endgame in and of itself. It’s the endgame for so many things we do…
The endgame of exercise? Health.
The endgame of limiting alcohol? Health.
The endgame of treated tap water? Health.
The endgame of tossing spoiled food? Health.
The endgame of cooking meat to temp? Health.
The endgame of washing your hands? Health.
The endgame of screening and checkups? Health.
The endgame of carseats and seatbelts? Health.
The endgame of helmets? Health.
The endgame of brushing your teeth? Health.
The endgame of condoms? Health.
The endgame of indoor smoking bans? Health.