While not wrong in itself, your comment epitomizes everything that has been wrong with our public health response. Trying to manipulate populations into a desired behavior by lying to them is, as you point out, counterproductive in the long run.

Past covid gives antibodies that are superior to two shots of Pfizer.

https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...

So yes, it IS just as good as the vaccination and should be treated as such. Vaccinating people for the sake of vaccinating them is illogical here.

And don't even get me started on vaccine passports, which are completely unnecessary. If a place of employment absolutely needs proof of vaccination, like the NICU at the hospital or a nursing home or a college dorm, that information can be relayed via existing protocols. We don't need a "papers please" society where paper shufflers and bureaucrats can arbitrarily gate access to society this way.

Europe (or Germany at least) accepts natural immunity in lieu of vaccination. As far as I've heard, no one has been getting covid on purpose as a result.

Crying wolf repeatedly to cajole and coerce people is not a good long run strategy.

From the article’s conclusion:

‘For Memoli, this reflects a bygone paternalism. “I always think it’s much better to be very clear and honest about what we do and don’t know, what the risks and benefits are, and allow people to make decisions for themselves.”’

hasn't it blown up in their face everytime the authorities tried to be strategic with their messaging (a nice way to say play silly games)?

> a huge segment of the population [might just] get infected purposefully

This made sense as a fear before vaccines were available. If immunity passports existed, and the only way to get one was to be infected - sure some people would do they.

Howver now it would be much easier to get vaccinated than finding an infection and get it registered. The policy would save a bunch of people from a couple of vaccine induced sick days without any reasonable downsides. Seems like an easy decision to make.

Natural immunity isn’t a singular binary consistent thing: it varies greatly in duration and effectiveness. You have some natural immunity for some amount of time after you get COVID, but that is nowhere consistent as can a vaccine will give (and its much easier to track vaccine effectiveness, adjust as needed, then each individual’s natural immunity response). And vaccine are still beneficial to those who have natural immunity.

Authorities aren’t trying to “trick people”, they are manage an epidemic with more of a sure thing (vaccines) rather than something that is much less reliable.

Your first paragraph is correct, but you seem to think it's a problem that people might choose to be naturally infected. That's a valid choice people can make. I believe most people who aren't vaccinated are doing so on purpose. Delta has actually been helpful towards getting herd immunity because is it so contagious but far less lethal than the earlier strains.

We can reach herd immunity with a combination of vaccines and natural immunity. You will not be able to vaccinate everyone.

Deliberate infection (or deliberate infection risk-taking) can be a valid concern, but I believe that validity depends a lot on the spreading characteristics of the virus in question. For SARS-COV-2 ca June 2020 I'd fully support the argument (the virus that was so bad at spreading from human to human that we thought that washing hands would make a meaningful difference). But with "chicken pox fast" delta, I doubt that it would make much difference. Anti-vaxxers will go through their first contact infection pretty soon wether they try or not. Just like the vaccinated. Or rather: in a very different way, rarely but still too often.

How can getting the vaccine be the appropriate course of action when 4,000 people have died from it, according to the CDC themselves?

I am talking specifically about people who already have been infected with the virus and have survived.

It seems like the best solution, if you're a healthy adult, is to get vaccinated then expose yourself to a variant better tolerated by the vaccines.

I think this is mostly correct but the distrust was partly earned and vaccine mandates don't really help here.

We can test whether someone has natural immunity.

As we saw when mask mandates were dropped for the vaccinated, the unvaccinated just lied and said they were. Same here - everyone who has neither been vaccinated nor infected will just claim they’ve had Covid. That is, unless we start testing everyone for antibodies.

> Which leads to more deaths and outbreaks.

Worse, it leads to

1. new COVID variants, some of which will be worse than what we have,

2. more deaths from people who had some other health emergency while unvaccinated idiots are slowly dying in the hospitals taking valuable beds, and

3. to more burned out, dead and PTSD suffering healthcare personal.

I would recommend everyone to browse [1] and [2]. Not being vaccinated if you can, is truly disgusting, selfish and stupid choice.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/ [2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/nursing/