In the former case, you're definitely causing excess infections (some of which might die, directly due to you).
What if it's having a small but non-zero probability of killing 1 person, who understands and accepts the risk, vs waiting for thousands to die who really don't want to?
Also, I think the number of total deaths in both branches are about the same, as they're only waiting for 100ish people to get infected on either arm.
Also, I think the number of total deaths in both branches are about the same, as they're only waiting for 100ish people to get infected on either arm.
When you (entirely unreasonably) restrict your analysis only to the experiment subjects, it is true. However, the vaccine trials cannot be analyzed in a vacuum: the whole reason why these are even a thing is the raging pandemic that kills thousands of people every single day. To put it in a trolley analogy, the decision is not between high speed and low speed trolley that will end up rolling over the same number of people. Instead, in the other branch, in addition to one slow speed trolley, there are also thousands of extra trolleys that you just aren’t explicitly aware of, but they will roll over their victims nonetheless.
That may be a good enough to nix development for common cold vaccine, but how can one argue that it’s serious enough problem to cancel vaccine for disease that kills thousands of people every single day? This is another example of how “safety” and “ethics” regulations have little to do, and in fact are counterproductive to achieve safety and ethics in real world.
In the UK we've restricted the activity of healthy individuals for about 11 months now - the latest episode being an approximately 3 month period within which it's illegal to meet anyone else within your own home.
Psychological trials, even trivial things like filling in surveys or taking reaction speed tests are carefully monitored for ethical concerns, lockdown we just went all in on with no cost-benefit analysis.
It seems bizarre to me that in that context we should be worrying about the ethics of a challenge study with a few hundred or few thousand volunteers.
Loads of people I know have _already_ volunteered themselves for it in the outside world with no compensation and with no benefit to science because they're not able to mentally handle indefinite restrictions.