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> Saying “vaccines are safe” is like saying “drugs are safe”. Without qualification it’s a lie. Drugs tested to be safe are safe. Vaccines tested to be safe are safe.

> The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.

> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.

> BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.

It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.

> Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown

The mortality rate for healthy people is incredibly low.

For example Singapore has had ~54,000 cases with a death count of only 27 since it was mostly young healthy people who got it.

Likewise there has been basically no excess deaths in many European countries for <65 years olds.

This is not at all how the media is treating covid.

The mortality rate may be low over the long run. But certainly over the short run, it was very very high. It is not a normal thing for city morgues to run out of room such that they need to truck in refrigeration units to hold dead bodies. This has happened in multiple American cities. That cannot be called a low rate by any stretch of the imagination, unless taking an average over a very long length of time.

Where "a very long length of time" = "more than a couple of weeks"?

> But certainly over the short run, it was very very high.

So what? If you're alive now, if you survived the initial wave of the virus, the risk to you, now, of getting the virus is much less than it was back in March.

And if you're trying to figure out if the risk of the vaccine is worth it to you later this year, you have to weigh it against the risk of dying from covid-19 at that point in time, not what the risk of dying from it was back in March.

> But certainly over the short run, it was very very high

Was it very very high in the <65 not obese, not diabetic group?

We know it is dangerous to the old and some cities did a horrendous job of looking after their elderly.

What about the countries that did have a lot of excess deaths in the 25-44 and 45-64 age ranges? Like the US for example?

You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.

Since it's highly unlikely that the lethality of the virus depends on which continent it's on, a more likely explanation is that people in the US are more likely to belong to any of the risk groups by being obese or by having diabetes.

Check the number of deaths by age group at EuroMOMO: https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps

The total number of covid-19 dead that were younger than 45 in the countries that EuroMOMO covers is in the low thousands, while the total number of covid-19 dead is in the low hundreds of thousands. That's two magnitudes lower risk compared to the general lethality.

Every individual has to do their own risk analysis, and see if they belong to any of the risk groups for covid-19, because that changes the individual equation.

Or the US bungled the response leading to massive infection rates.

That doesn't affect mortality, except that the more a country gets infected the better mortality will look since susceptibility to infection just happens to correlate to susceptibility to severely bad outcome

> You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.

Is the data random? Would it really cluster like that across countries?

I don’t think your statement makes a lot of sense.

> Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real

If you're a healthy adult, your risk of dying or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+ or have any of the comorbidities.

I am a healthy adult, I am neither obese nor a diabetic, I don't smoke, I don't belong to any of the risk groups. For me, the risk of dying of covid-19 is in the ballpark of 1:100000, and decreasing, because we're getting better and better at treating the disease. If I catch the virus, I am overwhelmingly likely to suffer as much as I would of a common cold.

Those are the numbers that any vaccine has to beat in order for me to consider getting it. Provably beat. I'd rather wait until you and a couple of million people have had the vaccine before even thinking about getting it, thank you very much.

It's not the death rate that's worrying for most age groups, it's the health effects.

It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates but early estimates from the Chinese data suggest it's 4.25% for people in their 40s[0].

If you get hospitalised (or even if you don't) you have a significant chance of long-term health problems.

I don't know if that estimate has come down since we've not had to rely on filtered China data but a 1-in-20 chance of hospitalisation seems worrying enough for individuals and a huge problem for society if you let the virus get out of control.

> or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+

What data are you basing this on?

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

> It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates

Here's data for Sweden:

https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...

Total number of confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU, and 44 ended up dead.

Since the number of actual cases is higher than the confirmed cases, the 2% hospitalization rate the above numbers result in is an upper bound.

And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate for people in their 40's is probably somewhere around 0.2%. That's 1-in-500, not 1-in-20.

Note that these numbers completely ignore risk factors. There's also this page with data about risk factors for patients in Sweden: https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/

Scroll down to "riskgrupper", and you can see that for men between 40 and 59, 22% were diabetic, 31% suffered high blood pressure, and 11% had some kind of chronic lung disease, for example.

So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups, the risk of you suffering long-term health problems from the virus is even lower than 1-in-500.

> confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU

I can't understand the language (Swedish, presumably), but the ICU percentage is not the hospitalisation rate. Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised.

If 2% are needing ICU treatment, 4.6% needing oxygen in hospital sounds plausible if not an underestimate.

> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases

That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now, and estimates of asymptomatic cases vary but seem to hover around 40%.

> So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups

Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.

> Rather more people than need ICU are being hospitalised.

True, but being in an ICU in Sweden also doesn't mean you're necessarily hooked up to a ventilator. You'll be hooked up to the machine that goes bing, and you'll probably be hooked up to oxygen. It's a pretty iffy proxy measurement for the amount of people who will suffer long-term health effects, but it's probably in the same ballpark. And we haven't quantified the severity of those health effects. For some it means getting winded more easily for up to a year after being sick, and for others it means having to amputate a limb because you developed a blood clot while in a ventilator coma. One of these is not like the other.

>> And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases

> That (probably) isn't true, or at least is not confirmed. I would expect most symptomatic cases to be tested now

Ok, doing the numbers for July for Sweden which is when testing finally reached acceptable levels:

10487 new confirmed cases.

62 new ICU patients.

Assuming the age distribution is the same as for the full period, people in their 40's make up 16.7% of the cases and 11.2% of the ICU patients. That's 1751 cases and 7 of the ICU patients, which results in a hospitalization rate of 0.4%.

That's a lot closer to my estimates than yours.

> Being male is also a risk group. If you're a man, most stats look worse compared to women at a ratio of about 2-1.

Fair enough, and it's actually 3-1 for Sweden. Still, that doesn't bring the number anywhere near 1-in-20. 1-in-100, tops.

> It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.

On the contrary, those talking of "lifelong complications" and "long haulers" are ideologically motivated. I have looked at the actual research, as well as thought deeply from a more theoretical standpoint, and have found the risks to be entirely overblown, particularly with respect to my risk category.

> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.

Do you have data to support these two claims?

Edit: I am not sure why I have been downvoted for requesting support data regarding two quite strong claims. Someone, even if it's not the downvoter, care to explain?

Do you have data to support these two claims?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vacci...

This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects

I suppose you will call me an anti-vaxxer but why would a company want to avoid liability if its products were safe? Note that they will gladly take all the profits.

No, seriously, do you have any data to support your claims that it is riskier to get the vaccine than to get infected by the virus in the wild?

No, seriously, do you have any data to support your claims that it is riskier to get the vaccine

Since I don't have a crystal ball to see 4 years into the future, when this executive predicts the negative side effects will emerge, presumably based on experience with other vaccines, no. By all means, volunteer to be amongst the first to test it, and be sure to let HN know.

Perhaps you could provide some data on how normal it is for companies to disclaim liability before a product is even launched?

So you don't have any data to make those claims as if they were facts. Thank you.

Nice casuistry you got there.

The fact is that you don’t have any evidence that the vaccine doesn’t have side effects four years out and that’s precisely the point the OP is trying to make.

> Nice casuistry you got there.

No, he's the one making claims without supporting data or evidence.

He said, textually:

(About the virus) "for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low"

(About the vaccine) "Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally"

You can tell he's passing opinions as facts the moment he feels guilty and adds "personally".

The fact that we don't know if there could be long term side effects with the vaccine doesn't mean it is not a calculated risk. The fact that we haven't waited for 4 years doesn't mean the scientists behind it do not fully understand how the vaccine works and what are the potential risks. It's not a blind gamble.

That's why I think it is important, if you're in for a serious discussion and not for anti-vaxxer histrionic propaganda, to make sure we support wild claims with strong evidence.

Clearly, a company looking to evade responsibility of long-term effects is an admission there is a non-negligible risk. And weighed against personal risk, at least in the US, it makes sense for a lot of people to not even take the long-term gamble to potentially save an 85-year-old.

Maybe tons of people if not the majority don’t care or would happily take the vaccine - let them!

But it seems far too short-sighted to discount all the people that wouldn’t want to take an incredibly quickly developed vaccine (with debated and unproven benefit - does it provide immunity? how long?) for a disease that seems mild for most people.

This is much less clear cut than you’re letting on, while being obstinate about data which we don’t have.

Yeah then explain all of the people with months long symptoms like reduced lung capacity, fogginess, loss of hair, weakness, headaches, and all of these symptoms rotate and coalesce in variant ways. This is reported in otherwise healthy 20-50 year olds that haven't been able to shake the consequences of catching the virus.

You throw IMO around like it matters what your opinion is to the rest of the world. I'll take empirical evidence, known post-virus complications, and scientific research over you opinion any day.

There are all kinds of horror stories one can imagine from a new type of vaccine like the Moderna one, but enough humans won't need it to balance out the risk of those that do.

There's no good answer. We either vaccinate or we let millions of people suffer and die. It's not a good choice...but it's one we have to make.

I'm moderately high risk and if all goes well with the trials and there are no significant mutations that the vaccine can't address, I'll be first in line.

I think in all of this, the number one fear is a mutation like the 1918 flu. It went from killing very young and very old to killing everyone. From a V to a W. Covid-19 is mostly a hook pointing at the very old. Let's hope it stays that way.