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Comment by thelean12 | Hacker News Reader

Not to take away from the argument that we should vaccinate everyone (we should, at least adults. not sure if this vaccine will be approved for kids, which usually requires more stringent approvals), but your argument isn't a good one.

Covid has killed 42 people from age 5-14 in the US according to the CDC, for example. That alone is really not something we should be making huge policy decisions around. It's sad, of course, but it's extremely isolated. All it does is distract us from making good policy decisions.

If I was making policy decisions I'd order vaccine rollout as follows:

Essential workers => 80+ years old => 70+ => 60+ => etc. as we produce and distribute the vaccines.

At some point we might look at the data and say "that's good enough, we can resume normal activities while we work to vaccinate the rest of the population".

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Oh, I'm with you that vaccines should be triaged by risk factors, and that reopening should be guided both by % of high-risk population vaccinated and case statistics. I was responding to OP's assertion that we shouldn't bother to vaccinate "healthy" people at all.

IIRC the IFR is ~0.2% for people in the 20-39 age bracket. I still find that risky (though I'm risk-averse), but the better argument is the lingering effects of moderate/severe cases, which I'm not sure is counted.

Also, I assume your policy decision would include younger people with risk factors like heart disease and diabetes, rather than going strictly by age. I'm chronically ill and I want my vaccine.

Sure, throw in risk factors. My lack of completeness is why I shouldn't be the one creating this policy :)

My main point is that there are sub-populations that have a small enough risk that we shouldn't stress over them too much. And talking about them is a distraction.

I would expect that reopenings wouldn't be based on vaccinated percentage, but caseloads, just as they are now. Once more people are vaccinated, however, those will decrease.

>Not to take away from the argument that we should vaccinate everyone.

I'm not sure if this is a concession for argument's sake, but imo it does take away from it. Why do you think it doesn't?

It doesn't take away from it because it's never been a good argument. x - 0 still equals x.

There are plenty of valid arguments to vaccinate everyone we can.

I'm not sure what you mean by x-0, but if there is no risk for young healthy people, then they don't need the vaccine? I understand there are other arguments to be had but this 100% invalidates at least on of them

EDIT: After re-reading I understood the sentence, my bad.

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