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Comment by spaceman_2020 | Hacker News Reader

spaceman_2020

Serious question: if you're a young person with no health issues, should you even get the vaccine?

Yes, There are two primary things to consider the Risk/Benefit to yourself and the Risk/Benefit to those around you.

The answer is still yes for both cases, long term covid damage is bad at any age and so is taking out a grandparent, co-worker you like.

the Risk/Benefit to those around you

But there is a limited supply. At least in the short-term, if I get a dose, that means someone else doesn't get one.

If someone around me is at risk, then they should get vaccinated and I should defer if my risk is low.

Generally it isn't on the individual to try to weigh something like that up. Here in the UK, at least, the Vaccine will be offered to people in order, so if you are offered it, there would be no reason to defer—others who need it more should have been offered it before you and you accepting won't deny them anything.

This is why countries and public health departments are discussing and agreeing on who gets a vaccination first - people in care homes, front-line health workers, or perhaps even young, healthy people because they heavily drive the spread. I don't think there's a situation anywhere where it's a free-for-all.

Personally, I will take the vaccine as soon as it's made available to me. Even if my risk is perhaps low (which may or may not be true), taking the vaccine reduces the chance that I would spread COVID to someone else. It's a collective effort to reduce the spread, not an individual or selfish one.

We don't yet know whether the vaccines prevent infection and transmission AFAIK.

it would prevent infection and transmission as much as any other vaccine would. you're just priming your immune system to handle something its not actually seen before. you can still get the virus, it will still affect you, but your immune system will recognize and deal with it much much faster. thinking logically, if you are given the virus, your body will still make copies for a short amount of time and you would still be able to give it to someone else. getting the vaccine makes the window of opportunity much smaller and dramatically lowers the risk that you will die from it.

I was going by this paper in the Lancet, where they note that it's not clear if the vaccines will provide sterilising immunity in the upper airways:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

This is from September, though, so maybe more is known about that now. I haven't seen news about that, however.

Yes we basically need everyone to get it who is willing to get it because we want to eradicate as much of the virus in the population as possible.

Also as a society we need to encourage everyone to get the vaccine and do whatever possible to suppress anti-vaccine hysteria, you know the conspiracy theories are already going to go crazy over this I'm sure.

Is there any evidence that the vaccine reduces your risk of getting and spreading the disease? I’ve only heard that it decreases the severity.

There is significant evidence that it prevents you getting the disease. That's the 95% efficacy everyone is talking about. Whether or not it fully prevents spreading has not been tested yet, but early signs sound positive.

The BioNTech/Pfizer press release mentions a reduction in confirmed cases (8 vs. 162), not in severity. There is no good reason why such an effective vaccine should not reduce the risk of spreading the disease. However, even a large phase 3 trial doesn't have enough statistics to answer this question.

Assuming you're somewhere between 20 and 30, your risk of dying when contracting COVID-19 is somewhere around 0.01%, so 1 in 10,000. I'm not including the chance for severe side effects, hospitalization here (I don't know a good data source for those that is age-specific).

That's a lot lower than the risk for older people, but it's still a somewhat high absolute risk.

Personally, I'd get vaccinated. The risk even for young people is still there, and it's not that low.

The source for these numbers is the following paper, specifically figure 2a:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2918-0

> I'm not including the chance for severe side effects, hospitalization here (I don't know a good data source for those that is age-specific).

From the Scottish Government figures.The hospitalization to confirmed cases breaks down like this for age:

    Age      Cases     Hospitilizations
    0-4      1417       77   (5.4%)
    5-14     3933       44   (1.1%)
    15-19    7766       46   (0.5%)
    20-24    9035       79   (0.8%)
    25-44    28690      867  (3.0%)

Everyone should get the vaccine.

That's confirmed cases so take these figures with a grain of salt. E.g. those are (probably) upper bounds

EDIT: Here are the stats for the seasonal flu: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html tldr: 1-2% hospitalization average

Yes, but as with all of these things, if you're nervous have a chat with your GP.

Yes.

Even a doctor can't answer that without having access to your medical documents.

So get advise from your doctor. Perhaps it depends on your "health issues". And, don't look for an answer from the internet anytime soon.

I assume it depends on your condition. If you are lucky, they have tested it on people with similar conditions and there is data for it. Otherwise, they may still be able to measure the risk. If your doctor suggests that there is a risk because of your condition, then you have to calculate the risk of not taking it as well. How much risk is there for you with the vaccine? How long can you keep yourself safe from COVID19. That depends on your interactions with other people, your job, and people around you etc.

Serious answer: yes!

if you're a young person with no health issues you probably won't be on the list for getting the vaccine first (it's at risk groups and healthcare workers first)

Also importantly and slightly paradoxically, if you are a young person who would eagerly volunteer to get a vaccine, it's likely that you are diligently compliant with all the other necessary rules like hand washing, masks, social distancing, and so the need for a vaccine would be even lower!

Identifying those who would most benefit is hard. Those who would most benefit is not the same group as those who would jump at the chance of a vaccine.

Yes, if you don't the virus you can't infect someone else. Vaccines are the quickest way to herd immunity, which is the safest layer of protection against the virus.

Yes, some young people with health issues can’t get vaccines of various kinds and they rely on herd immunity. One of the really sad things about the anti-vaccine movement is the people who are now at risk for things that they can’t get vaccinated against through normal fault of their own because herd immunity is reduced.

No. You cannot seriously belive such a rushed vaccine has been tested properly.

If you're young you will get natural immunity from it sooner or later.

No young person had any issues.

More young people will be hurt by the vaccine than COVID.

> No young person had any issues.

This isn't true. In my country we've had 25-35 deaths in people under 45 from Covid-19. So the death rate is very very small, but its not zero.

Including deaths of people under 25. These people may have had existing co-morbidities of course, but not all of them might have known they had those co-morbidities.

A lot of hospitalizations of people under 45 too.

Of course.

There are loads of young people with the weirdest post covid complications.

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/covid-long-haulers-60-minutes-...

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