The pandemic has made me believe we need to be greater consiquentalists in our polices. It's pretty obvious that on the whole the AstraZeneca vax will save more people than are killed from the side effects. We don't not live in a 0 risk existence.
You can't make the same decisions about risks when you have one side so skewed by age. There is absolutely no guarantee that side effects from vaccination would be a preferable risk for younger populations or that vaccination side effects would have comparable age-related effects.
Covid response isn't a religion, it's not "we have to do everything" or "we shouldn't do anything", responses need reason not gut reactions.
It is 0.58% of all deaths being caused by covid. As in 994 out of 1000 people under 18 died in the same period from other things.
Compared to people who are alive covid killed 0.000288% (or 1 in 350,000) under 18s.
30 in 17M is too few to have a reliable statistic, but that comes out to 1 in 567,000.
If that holds, is age invariant, etc. etc. and ignoring the time-based nature of the covid deaths, taking that vaccine would represent a *50%* increase in death risk for under 18s, which is just absurdly high. (it doesn't matter that that 50% isn't exactly right, anything remotely close is an unacceptable risk)
Statistics is hard.
If the covid risk was flat over time, if you offered this vaccine yearly (quite possibly necessary) then you'd be saving ~90 lives in this age bracket per year. 10 would still die of covid, 100 would die from the vaccine, 90 whom would have died of covid would would instead survive.
It would be "better" depending on how you think about better. Telling people to throw away huge chunks of their lives to protect against a risk that you turn around and tell them they need to take a risky vaccine that's only half as bad... it isn't necessarily a good line. Especially because pandemic diseases tend to lower in their negative outcomes at time goes on, the vaccine will probably stay the same while the risk it prevents will get less and less threatening.
All of this based on statistics and assumptions that have a lot of uncertainty in them.
The bottom line is that in order to be a good idea, a vaccine needs to be much safer than the disease it prevents. Half as risky doesn't meet this mark; AZ would be fine for the oldest age bracket because the risk profile wouldn't change much, but the youngest age bracket there is a significant comparison between the two (and perhaps further unknown risks which haven't surfaced)
The challenge with COVID as always is that the risk of death is correlated across the population. So a 25 yo having COVID increases the odds that he dies and that everyone around him dies. But that’s a whole other discussion.
Neither of us was doing that so far. Case mortality seems to be the best basis, adjusted maybe for overall risk of infection when everything is opened up and nobody is using masks anymore. At which point any comparison most likely degenerated into guess work.
The main difference so is that vaccinations reduce the overall risk for the population. And we didn't even talk about severe long term effects of COVID.
That being said, we live with a lot of medications that have severe side effects in the 1/100,000 plus bracket without breaking a sweat.
By the way, I don't see how you come to the conclusion that the AZ vaccine is in any way riskier than COVID.
(I'm not commenting on how to solve this equation, just pointing out other factors)
Since everyone is expected to get the vaccine, it's not fair to compare COVID deaths / total deaths to vaccine deaths / total population, you need to compare COVID deaths / total population to vaccine deaths / total population.
In this case, assuming the numbers posted are remotely accurate, then this specific vaccine could end up being far more dangerous to people under 18 years of age compared to getting COVID and waiting it out for two weeks.
We don't know and I'm not asserting one way or another. I'm just saying that making comparisons is much more difficult and nuanced than the straightforward naiive approach.
Depending on the type of adverse reaction, it might be safer for young people to not get vaccinated at all or with a different vaccine. (For example if the adverse reaction affects mostly young people, while COVID affects mostly older people.)
Isn't that the case? At least in my country, there is no obligation to take the vaccine, and even incentives (e.g. being able to attend public events sooner) are seen very critically.
For my age cohort the chance of death from either is infinitesimal but because of Bayes it might make sense to continue to avoid both, but if I try to explain that to my peers they might think I'm a Trump supporter, and as everyone knows, Trump supporters should be shunned from polite society (especially since the "insurrection"), so I see this as a choice between social excommunication and a questionable injection I don't want
Fun times
More importantly it’s not just about avoiding death, a bad case of COVID is terrible even if you survive. On top of this you reduce the risk of spreading it to someone else.
To me, these vaccines have been as rigorously tested as they could be, and none of this was really ever about people in your health category anyways, so that seems irrelevant in the “utility of vaccination” argument.
I could be incorrect though, so I’m interested in your unease and rejection of what I find to be sound science.
>To me, these vaccines have been as rigorously tested as they could be
Not for me. The fact is, the vaccines have been pushed through faster than any vaccine before. Anything foreign entering the body should be tested and based on solid evidence. Doesn't matter if it's an artificial heart, stent, prosthetic, or a biological agent like a vaccine. If decades of medical research shows determining a vaccine's safety takes years because of ethical protocols, then it takes years. The present vaccination campaigns are performing more comprehensive stage 3 trials on the general population because the risks are deemed acceptable. As other people have said in this thread, a person under the age of 18 is 50% more likely to die of SARS-CoV-2 vaccine complications than from SARS-CoV-2. The risk isn't worth it at this time.
Additionally, the technologies being used for the vaccines is still deemed experimental, specifically the mRNA ones. No mRNA vaccines have been deployed before, but now it's being deployed on the general population without public knowledge of any potential risks of this unproven technology ("unproven" meaning lacking a prior real-world deployment effort; a rocket engine is only proven when it flies, not in simulation). One risk with the mRNA vaccines is that they need to be kept extremely cold to preserve the mRNA sequences [1]. If the dose warms, good mRNA sequences break down into junk mRNA, which for all intents and purposes are random nucleotide chains. That ties into an above point: no rational person wants random mRNA pieces put into their body. Again, while all risk is relative, for my age group, the risk is not enough.
If you're well-versed in the science, I recommend reading this complaint [2] filed with the EU regarding Pfizer trial safety.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-fact-check-mrna-vaccine-s...
[2] https://2020news.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Wodarg_Yeadon...
This pandemic was never about the risk to this cohort that continues to be brought up. The point is that taking the vaccines reduces deaths. In places where these vaccines have been deployed widely, you cannot refute that statement. Just because the people who are dying don’t look like you does not diminish the utility of the vaccine.
I’m so tired of hearing that young people shouldn’t take the risk of vaccines because the risk to them of the virus is less. That is not why anyone at all is urging you to get the vaccine, or why we did any of this at all for a year.
A society is built on mutual trust and actions and speech like this shatter it; the selfish arguments seem to know no bounds in this pandemic. I did not sit in my damned house for a year because I was afraid for my own safety!
Furthermore, The article linked claims PCR testing isn’t good enough for efficacy and from what I understood had nothing to do with safety at all. In fact, the title of that submission includes “... REGARDING CONFIRMATION OF EFFICACY” and no mention of safety, but maybe I’m not “well-versed in science” enough to understand it. Thank you for talking down to me though, we would not want me to leave this conversation with a sense of self worth.
It seems to me like you’re unintentionally spreading disinformation. I assume you don’t want to be doing that, so you should probably check your priors here, as they seem to be outdated.
I haven't had any luck with that. I assume these numbers are what the FDA is looking at. Possible side effects are documented in the packaging for a drug, but that doesn't qualify the risk without numbers. I'd prefer to know this for any drug I'd consider using. I find it strange that this data is so hard to find.
I ask because it sounds like you went pretty deep in the vaccine you mentioned, maybe you bumped into this.
I have no idea what OP means when he says “following it closely” as that’s impossible beyond press releases.
I believe it's likely that lockdowns may cause some deaths, or possibly even lots of deaths. However, they certainly help prevent the spread of deadly disease too and hence prevent many deaths. We can probably get fairly definite numbers on how many deaths lockdown prevents in a large population. I don't think we can get similar numbers on how many they cause. My gut says they probably prevent a lot more than they cause, but I'd like to see any studies on this, if anyone has a link to share.
"In summary, we fail to find strong evidence supporting a role for more restrictive NPIs in the control of COVID in early 2020. We do not question the role of all public health interventions, or of coordinated communications about the epidemic, but we fail to find an additional benefit of stay-at-home orders and business closures.
The data cannot fully exclude the possibility of some benefits. However, even if they exist, these benefits may not match the numerous harms of these aggressive measures. More targeted public health interventions that more effectively reduce transmissions may be important for future epidemic control without the harms of highly restrictive measures."
[1] https://pubpeer.com/publications/3D81CAC483C2021C00E27C8826D...
For a source https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
I don’t attempt to extend that to more developed countries however. And I can’t say they things wouldn’t be worse if they hadn’t locked down, but according to a family I know in Uganda, they were locked down before they had even one case. I haven’t done the research on whether that is true or not so take it or leave it.
It's pretty obvious there's a profound psychological, developmental (children), and economic toll of lockdowns.
For anyone that's below 60 or so, it's very clear they've got net negative effects on their life from draconian across the board measures that go on this long.
edit: wow immediately flagged? Is it verboten to mention the simple fact of economic trade-offs in any decision we make?
I'm not even saying that lockdowns are bad, I'm saying that they have profound consequences that can't be brushed away or ignored.
The fact that so many are reticent to even admit that is why I think it's so important to mention it.
I feel bad for people in countries where people are even restricted from being outdoors, despite hearing again and again that outdoors is the safest place to be.
Do not forget that these vaccines are still very new, plus there's the possibility of a production issue with the AZ vaccine that affects only part of the production; I wouldn't say it's "politically-motivated" or a dumb idea to pause AZ vaccinations until one does a deeper investigation; I personally chose to avoid AZ due to a history of strokes in my family, I preferred to reserve a spot on the Moderna list. Better safe than sorry.
There must be no doubts with vaccines, 100% trust in them is essential.
Completely unrealistic. Everything in life has associated risks, and vaccines do carry a (small) risk.
It would be better to educate people about understanding and balancing relative risks rather than sensationalising a few outliers. The main fault here lies with the lack of proper rational discussion in the media.
Pull the lever, and the lever might do things you didn't expect - like derail the last few cars. Don't pull the lever, and people die for sure.
If you derail the last car and don't try to put it back before the next train, you now suddenly have more folks that don't trust the lever and avoid all trains, not just the one you operate.
people are such cool "lever pullers" until that one person is themselves.
The most sensible thing is to investigate this, maybe more without the vaccine died from thrombosis, but need to see.
That doesn't work so great if you don't die and have lifelong complications, though. It doesn't work so great if you get it and kill your child/grandmother either.
It doesn't work so well if you have to catch the virus multiple times to have immunity either (folks aren't always immune after catching it). Not to mention the unknowns with mutations of the virus.
It is seriously much better to try to avoid catching the virus at all. The virus means you might be ok... or you might die, or you might have a lifetime of suffering that you wouldn't get with a vaccine.
https://qcovid.org/Calculation
eg. 30 year old healthy white male: 1 in 7,092 risk of hospitalisation, 1 in 250,000 risk of death.
By contrast the risk of death from anything for a 30 year old male in the UK is 1 in 1,215:
http://www.bandolier.org.uk/booth/Risk/dyingage.html
Even taking a healthy 80 year old male, the risk of death from COVID is 1 in 275, whereas the annual risk of death from anything is 1 in 15.
- Death is not the only bad outcome. Many otherwise healthy younger people have experienced months of debilitating sickness, in addition to weeks of the worst flu you've ever had.
- You can pass it on to people less fortunate than yourself, who can't take weeks off work, and (in some countries) may not have health insurance, and might be at higher risk of death or morbidity.
- You're burdening a stretched health system, literally preventing other people (or even yourself) from getting life saving treatment.
- You're stopping me and everyone else from going to the pub.
But it's not just about the risk to the individual. It's about the risk to the population as a whole. Both of these risks need to be balanced.
While the vaccine might not /appear/ to be worth it at a young age, by getting vaccinated and blocking the transmission of the virus you are protecting the population at large. From that perspective, not getting vaccinated is actually very selfish (using the exact meaning of the word).
People need to look at both the personal and societal aspects of the vaccination strategy. There will be social pressure to be vaccinated because it's not just about you, it's about everyone, and if we are to reopen society and get back to normal, then the expectation is that nearly all of us will need to get vaccinated.
The fact that we have insufficiently tested vaccines does make the decision harder.
The vaccine greatly reduces the chances that I have any of these things. Or heck, it even greatly reduces the chance that I'll have a week or two of misery.
Still, the consequences for those unfortunate riders can stay with them throughout life.
Ride safe.
From an article titled "Lab studies suggest Pfizer, Moderna vaccines can protect against coronavirus variant" I quote:
"While the blood serum samples produced less neutralizing antibody activity, it was still enough to neutralize the virus, they wrote in a letter to the journal. This is in line with other studies. And it's well within what is seen with other viruses, one of the researchers said." [1]
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+immunity+from+other+co...
[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/17/health/pfizer-vaccine-south-a...
The problem however is those with weak immune systems. In these cases, the vaccine is unlikely to help these people much, and they become breeding grounds for escape variants.
It's like taking a quarter dose of an antibiotic, against an infection of an organism that tends to mutate at a high rate. This places a large pressure on the organism for an escape variant.
This is exactly what Bossche warns of. Listen to minute 37 onward: https://www.brighteon.com/257797f0-06fa-4596-be69-af71bb3adc...
I watched enough of the video you sent to see what Dr. Bosche was saying - that vaccination immunity is more specific than natural immunity, and that may present problems down the road with variants. I also found this note/presentation/slides by him [0]. I read some of this to get more detail, video is kind of lame for relating so much information. I'm not a virologist. But I have read a bunch of this stuff. I thought what Dr. Bosche said was interesting. I had a few initial questions. I'd love to see more virologist's opinions on this.
He says "Covid-19, a highly mutable virus, only needs to add another few mutations in its receptor-binding domain". I didn't know that covid19 was considered highly mutable, like the flu. Is he hedging here, saying this might happen? I guess the specific proteins that the vaccines target would need to mutate. I wonder how likely this is. I assume there are lots of things that are "several mutations" away from killing us all. Papers I've seen early on said that left to its own covid19 had a 50/50 chance of mutating to become no more deaadly than the common cold (because it would spread better that way), or settle into something that flares up every few years, like a bad flu season. I took that to mean that there are also pressures to mutate to something less deadly. They think this is what may have happened in 1873 (if memory serves), a new coronavirus came on the scene, it looked like a very bad flu season at the time.
He mentioned several cases of young people dying from covid19 variants, and several cases of people shedding variants. "Several" is not a large number, especially considering how much we don't understand about the immune system. Typhoid Mary was shedding for years, and that had nothing to do with a vaccine. I don't know that I'd consider his several examples to be anything out of the ordinary out of a sample size of how many tens of millions.
He seems to be saying we'd be better off if we didn't proceed with vaccinations and allowed the population to reach natural herd immunity at this point, since covid19 has already spread to so many people. That people who caught it and got better on their own would be better protected. This reminds me of the virologist early on who recommended finding the least deadly variant and spreading that around on purpose.
It's an interesting topic, and I appreciate you bringing it up! I don't mean to argue over it, so much as relay my thoughts and left some of the details of what he's saying.
Do you think most of the people fearful of variants are on the same page with this guy? The news stories I see mentioning problems with vaccines and variants don't ever seem to have solid sources/studies backing them up, I've never heard this guy mentioned before, and he seems to be a relatively lone voice at this point. I'd like to think that the experts have had a chance to hash all this out amongst themselves, but I know things don't always work out that nicely.
[0] https://www.deblauwetijger.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Ge...
There's a lot of good reasons for choosing a vaccine even if the risk isn't strictly zero. And you also need to remember that receiving vaccination isn't mandatory. If you personally aren't comfortable with the risks you don't have to get vaccinated.
This makes me skeptical of the suspension, but I'm not an export on these matters and haven't done enough research to claim to have done my due diligence, so I'll refrain from either advocating for or against this step.