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in reply to @actuallyalys's post:

Ooh, a misinformation tag! I haven't gotten one of those before!

Oh, actually, um. That sounded really bitchy. Let me try that again?

It's honestly cool to see somone calling out and calling attention to this sorta stuff!

I'll probably be rushing around too much tomorrow to scratch up the citations from my notes/bookmarks, but maybe I can address some of your concerns now and later this weekend share some of the relevant literature I'm pulling from.

Firstly, let me just say up front that the covid vaccines are great and awesome and holy fuck do I wish they were more accessible and available on a consistent basis that actually accounted for the steep drop-off of protection over the course of several months. I'm really hoping that I can get another booster soon, and that I can actually find a Novavax poke this time. VACCINES GOOD.

That said, the current vaccines don't prevent transmission, and the overwhelming mainstream position of "vaxxed and relaxxed baybeeee" is incredibly harmful. That's one of the big things I'm writing against.

My statements are intentionally hyperbolic. I don't dwell on the nuance of medical complexities. Instead, I'm favoring punchy statements that can be shouted in response to the mainstream messaging published by government health supremacists & pushed by eugenics for profit.

I'm approaching this from a place of kinship for the queer & marginalized people that came before me; those who fought for their survival against the whole rest of the world that wanted to ignore their dying breaths. When I write, I'm coming from the position of an activist & an agitator. I prioritize words that are memorable over those that are comprehensive & scientifically sound.

But this doesn't mean that I'm ignoring the science to say whatever sounds good. When I write:

There is no immunity. You can get infected again and again and again.

I'm pulling from the truth that SARS-2 reinfections are happening with few weeks in between each illness. That common assumptions about having "immunity" are unreliable when living in a society flooded by the variant soup of ~6 distinct dominant strains at any time that ALSO refuses to implement measures to mitigate further spread & mutation.

oh wow that took me waaaay past bedtime jeez

Ok I hope that this kinda explains where I'm coming from here! I'm also open to dialogue about this and what is effective. I write to process & express my feelings, but I share that writing for anyone who might find meaningful resonance in my words.

Though I'm not a scientist, and I'm not a writer.
I'm just one girl who is really fucking pissed off watching my friends get disabled & die while the rest of the world convinces others to pretend that the danger is gone.

thank you for being gracious (and I hope that doesn't come off as bitchy).

for what it's worth, i come at this from the background of a journalist and technical writer. often my writing is about issues affecting marginalized people for the marginalized people themselves, but i probably wouldn't be considered an activist (although i think there is overlap between advocacy and journalism).

i realize that slogans are going to be necessarily simplified, but i think saying "there is no immunity" undermines another goal, which is to encourage people to get vaccinated. i also think it may lower credibility when people have heard about studies showing immunity in the past. their understanding may not be correct, but "there's no immunity" isn't really correct either. i also feel like helping people understand immunity better will help prepare them for future outbreaks of other diseases.

I'm pulling from the truth that SARS-2 reinfections are happening with few weeks in between each illness.

do you mean rebound infections? (a frequent example being someone on Paxlovid who tests negative for a few days, then starts testing positive again) otherwise I am not aware of any evidence that suggests this is happening at all frequently. i cited some studies showing there's some immunity to infection, although it's not something you can rely on. i'm not sure it makes sense theoretically, either. i've seen epidemiologists argue that you wouldn't see waves if there wasn't some immunity since recovered people would immediately be vulnerable again.

i also agree that, societally, there's a depressing reluctance to implement measures, even measures that would reduce infections diseases as a whole. there's also been a lot of flaws in taking long COVID seriously by researchers, medical practitioners, and the general public.

(i realize you might be planning to address some of these questions when/if you come back, but those are my initial thoughts.)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts as well!

No, I'm not referencing the "rebound" effect as seen with the shorter courses of PAXLOVID.

I mean being infected with SARS-2, surviving the acute phase of COVID, and then being infected with SARS-2 again shortly thereafter.

Even the loathsome CDC acknowledges that this happens within 90 days:

Reinfection with the virus that causes COVID-19 occurs when you are infected, recover, and then get infected again. You can be reinfected multiple times.

I don't disagree that there is some level of immunity within the population. I don't disagree that partial immunity is important to consider in terms of risk reduction. The vaccines are so very important because of this.

But, that's not how these vaccines were sold, and marketed. That's not how I see them discussed and referenced by the general public.

Outside of COVID-conscious spaces, the narrative I see about COVID vaccine immunity treats them like a tetanus or rabies shot. That, when vaccinated/boosted, COVID isn't something to really worry about so much. That masks are only important for "the vulnerable." That the "immunity" from vaccination is an exemption from the danger.

I think that this narrative is described well in this article, Let Them Eat Plague!

The idea that you become immune to COVID after getting infected or vaccinated is based on the concept of immune memory. ... If the exact same pathogen shows up again, the immune system already knows what to look for. This is the key behind vaccination: expose your immune system to a harmless piece of the virus, and it’ll remember it when it encounters the real thing.

Except this isn’t even close to the whole story. For one thing, the snapshot stored in your immune memory is just a physical piece of the pathogen, and viruses evolve very quickly. As the virus changes, the real thing starts to resemble the record being kept by your immune system less and less, and it becomes easier and easier for new variants to evade adaptive immunity.

Vaccines are important for reducing severe illness and death in the acute phase of COVID... for a while.
Being vaccinated does not prevent SARS-2 infection.
Being vaccinated does not prevent SARS-2 transmission or further mutation to evade immunity.
Being vaccinated does not prevent the danger of lingering, cumulative damages of COVID.

The vaccines are important. But they do not provide a path out of this pandemic hell.

Mitigating transmission to halt this cycle of mutation involves more robust measures. One such measure that is simple to implement is prioritizing clean air: both at the source (respirators), and in the environment (air filtration units).

I don't see that message as incompatible with the truth about vaccines as an important tool to reduce death.