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Comment by Wintamute | Hacker News Reader

The vaccine candidates are promising.

But you don't need to be anti-vax to understand the game theory implications of neither vaccine undergoing a normal longitudinal study (waiting >1 years for side effects to develop), and both being based on new mRNA vaccine tech. Better for you and your family not to take the vaccine in the short term, and benefit from people around you taking it. I understand that is anti-social, but the logic cannot be denied if you're interested in optimising risk for you and yours.

Taking a vaccine that no trial volunteers have lived with for more than a year is a _substantial_ risk whichever way you slice it.

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If your game-theory is correct, we are dealing with a tragedy of the commons like game. These types of games have highly un-optimal Nash-equilibria. Hence, it makes sense to take collective measures to prevent that Nash-equilibrium.

Such collective measures would either be 'a sense of duty' or 'mandatory vaccination'. People ignoring the first option are kind of asking for the second option.

What's the normal timeline for a new vaccine? How many years does the testing usually take?

I don't have an answer, but the normal timeline should depend on the size of the population that you intend to vaccinate.

Testing a vaccine for 6 months and then deploying to hundreds of millions... seems short.

We are just going to have to prevent people who do not take the vaccine from mixing into society until they do or the pandemic is gone. Bars, restaurants, plane flights, etc.

The choice is between having to be quarantined or taking the vaccine.

I hope you never get near the levers of power

Ahh, I am glad I live in the United States, where that sort of response is clearly illegal as it is a violation of multiple rights recognized as natural rights. Rights not granted by the government, but recognized as inherent to being human.

Private parties can discriminate like this, and for better or worse air travel is essentially a private party allowing someone onto their private property, but no law can or should be enacted by the federal government allowing discrimination based off vaccination.

If such a state does enact a law (similar to some states prohibiting religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements), I would be surprised if it didn’t end up being heard in front of the Supreme Court. The one now with a solid majority of constitution originalists.

So, if we were in a situation where a virus was 90% lethal and could spread easily, you wouldn't mind people walking around spreading it because otherwise we would be infringing on their natural rights?

It's like free speech - you either support it whether or not you strongly disagree with the speech in question, or you give up the right.

Edited to change wording to be more nuanced and convey my actual beliefs.

And by my example you don't see the flaw in your logic?

Plus, you are now switching to free speech. That is a false equivalent because your speech cannot inherently harm someone (we aren't talking about hurt feelings here, I mean physically injuring/killing someone).

To sum: supporting 100% free speech no matter what is "fine" because it does not affect anyone else (aside from hurt feelings, so let's ignore that). Supporting 100% free movement no matter what cannot be compared to freedom of speech because you can literally harm/kill other people by your actions.

Ok, the right of assembly, or the right of privacy. They all work equally well to push back against government mandated widespread medical intervention.

You sure know how to beat around the bush.

Let's just be perfectly clear- if there was a virus that is 90% lethal and easily air-borne transmittable.. you are OK with infected people having "the right" to go anywhere they want in public and transmit the virus to others?

It's a silly question because if the virus was 90% lethal, people wouldn't just walk around. It's a self solving problem. We wouldn't be discussing lock downs, because everyone would lock down without being told they should lock down.

The virus we are talking about, COVID-19, is incredibly low risk for 90+ percent of the population. I don't think we should enact policy that infringe on freedoms, so that vulnerable people can move around freely. Or rather, it's important to balance the two. Mask mandates are a reasonable compromise, but an immunization mandate isn't. Focus policy making on vulnerable people - give them wage replacement to not go out in public or to their job if they are overweight, have diabetes, if they are elderly, immunocompromised, etc. But, don't mess with our natural rights. Do not trade liberty for safety, do not build the social will and legal foundation for future erosions of liberty, regardless of the purity of the motive today.

Edited to clarify mask vs immunization mandate above.

>It's a silly question because if the virus was 90% lethal, people wouldn't just walk around. It's a self solving problem. We wouldn't be discussing lock downs, because everyone would lock down without being told they should lock down.

No, it's not a silly question. You are making the ASSUMPTION that people will make the best decisions for everyone (including themselves). I don't think you have been paying attention this year.

And you didn't even answer the question- would you be for forced lockdown if it was that lethal? Saying "it's not even a question" is skirting the issue. Because what about 70% lethal, or 60%, or 50%.. maybe even down to 10%. If your view is there is NO level that liberty can be sacrificed- then prove it by thinking about this simple situation and saying it.

I do agree with your general sentiment. However you are acting as if there is NO situation in which limiting liberty is the right choice. And I am arguing that is simply not true by giving you some extreme examples.

>Mask mandates are a reasonable compromise

Yeah, and people can't even follow THAT. It's arguments like yours that people are like "A mask!? what about MY FREEDOM!". Your freedom becomes less relevant when it DIRECTLY IMPOSES ON THE SAFETY OF OTHERS.

>But, don't mess with our natural rights. Do not trade liberty for safety

Buzz. Wrong. Your natural rights don't give you the right to harm others.

Think of risk vs response to that risk as a sliding scale. Right now with COVID, the risk is low, so we don't have anywhere near a universal response to that risk. But, as you slide right along the risk scale toward "really risky", you'll see more and more of the population self-selecting to not play the risky game. I am merely proposing that people be able to choose their responses based off their risk tolerance. The problem with doing anything else, is that you make policy that will have winners and losers. A good example is the current school shutdown. We have millions of families with two working adults that rely on the school system in the United States to both educate and to supervise their kids while they are working. Those kids are now self-educating using remote learning techniques while parents are at work. When viewed in aggregate, that cohort of kids are just about guaranteed to have a lower overall outcome in life compared to the cohort where the family earned enough income to have one parent stay home.

Rushing school closures is one thing (it's a policy that when made early in a pandemic with unknown risks, can be reversed once risk factors are more understood). Rushing novel vaccines out is another, it's not something that can be reversed.

Life is risky. I am not trying to argue that COVID isn't real, that masks infringe on my liberties, etc etc. I am just trying to say that there are direct and indirect consequences to policies, and a general rule of thumb that I and millions of your fellow citizens use when developing our opinions on topics, is that personal liberties are a fantastic tiebreaker.

What about the morality of the situation? From a purely self-interested perspective I think its pretty obvious there is limited benefit given the risk. But if you are relatively young and healthy, expecting others to get the vaccine so you can benefit seems immoral.

Not taking the vaccine is a substantial risk. I thinks it’s irresponsible to casually discourage people from taking vaccines.

It depends on the poster's age group. If they're not elderly or obese, getting the virus is no more dangerous than commuting to work daily or giving birth, which wouldn't normally be described as a "substantial risk".

Giving birth doesn't risk killing others and commuting to work by driving requires a license given the risk of killing others.

If you want to risk your own life in a way that doesn't risk other's, fine by me.

But don't equate that to an activity that also risks the lives of others.

If you want to get natural immunity without risking the lives of others, I could imagine a service where you quarantine at home after intentionally being infected with the disease, but even then, there is the negative externality that a certain percentage of young people will need medical care, resulting in increased risk of spread and reduction of healthcare capacity.

Please don't pretend like you live in a vacuum.

When the person I was responding to said "Not taking the vaccine is a substantial risk", I believe they were referring to the risk to the person not taking the vaccine.

That aside, driving a car, even with a license, is a non-trivial risk to others, possibly the greatest chance the average person has of killing somebody, so I don't see how they're not comparable. Moreover air pollution kills seven million people worldwide each year, which everyone contributes to when they drive, and that's way more than covid19's killed.

No, I was talking about the risk to you and everyone around you.

You're right, but I'm not really convinced that a vaccine with a few months of safety testing behind it is a substantially larger risk. If I've gotta take a small but nonzero risk either way, I might as well pick the one with prosocial advantages.

1) You're talking about risk of death, right? Have you met one of the many people with "long haul" symptoms? I really don't want that! 2) You did not include the risk of sickening friends, family, and those around you.

I'm not discouraging people from "taking vaccines" in general. My 2 year old daughter is fully vaccinated. I'm just indicating that in the current scenario, where the vaccines on offer haven't undergone any longitudinal trails is extremely unusual and the usual calculus where people may weigh up the balance of risk does not apply.

I beg you to at least talk to your doctor before making decisions about whether or not a medication is safe.

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