I know I do, on what basis would you justify not preferring the mRNA one?
The strong anti-British sentiment is also better explained by the false and demeaning rhetoric coming out of the UK directed at the EU. People in the EU like the EU. People in the UK seem to have an irrational hate for it.
Given the option, sure. But, that option doesn't exist today due to limited availability of all vaccines.
The option is really 70% (AZ) vs 0% (nothing) vs ??? (unknown chance of mRNA jab in the near future). Any rational person would prefer 70% today.
And that's completely ignoring the severity. As far as I've been able to tell, all the current vaccines provide near 100% protection from severe cases of COVID.
HN is meant to be a space for discussion but with no disrespect this is the most infuriating statement I read all day. First off you are basing yourself on bad info [0]
Even still if your fears were true, any rationale person under 85 years old would still take a 70% protection now (which by the way is untrue) [0] that you can distribute over a large section of the population over a >90% protection for a vaccine that we might be able to role in large quantities by summer time. Even if a vaccine gave you a 60% protection as long as you can massively vaccinate fast it would be extremely effective.
Everybody is massively overlooking the logistics of the -60 Celsius freezing and the short hours of vaccine viability after thawing the pfizer vaccine from deep freeze.
Your scenario is not a valid discussion point in the real world.
The most important aspect is to get as many people vaccinated as fast as possible with anything safe that can protect us at a rate higher than our own immune system. For anyone not immunosuppresed, decelerating community spread is far more important than whatever individual benefit you are atributing to the efficacy statistics.
I didn't mention any other factors one would weigh in such a decision, but a rational person would indeed take those into account, as you mention.
But outside of those factors, and any others you could think up, it would be irrational not to prefer the more effective product.
Most people (like me) are not going to get any vaccine for months, and have not had any vaccine for a year since the start of the pandemic. We've been taking precautions, as have other people, such as wearing masks and social distancing. But as the vaccines roll out and become widespread and time passes, those measures will fall away or be reduced and mostly you'll be left with the vaccine for protection.
Given that it's not hard to argue for preferring the mRNA shots.
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-oxf...
[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-mod...