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Comment by jonplackett | Hacker News Reader

I just made this website to show you how really, really small the risks are, and how they compare to risks we happily take every single day.

whatoneinamillionmeans.com

If you're not willing to take 1 in a million chances, it's gonna be pretty hard for you to get out of bed today.

This vaccine seems to have about the same rate, which makes sense as I think it uses the same technology.

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I appreciate what you’re doing but I’m still avoiding the vaccine as long as I can. I’ve got a class 1 medical , a PPL and I hope [ha] one day to get paid to fly planes. I really don’t want another Pandemrix because with my luck I’d end up with the side effect. Also I’m MASSIVELY allergic to certain drugs and I get the NHS third choice for antibiotics and anti inflammatories.

Everyone should make their own decisions. I'm just trying to put out some truth about the risks so people can make informed choices.

TBH I've made this site for myself as much as anyone - I'm just under 40 so the risk/benefit is tight for me personally, but I want to do my bit for everyone else and stop the spread so I'll take any vaccine they'll give me.

Good luck with you flying dreams and say safe!

FAA mandates only a two day wait after vaccination. I suggest the risks from "long covid" should you recover from an initial infection are worse than most problems a vaccine could cause. I waited too, but after millions of okay doses of Pfizer I took one. I did suffer two days of 2nd shot malaise (fevers and lethargy) which is expected as my immune system ramped up to fight the mRNA "invasion" of the spike protein.

Thanks! Now I'm never leaving the house again.

Haha! This was not my intention! I deliberately tried to find things that you could not worry about. I'd already seen a lot of comparisons like 'don't worry about a 1/1,000,000 blood clot, you have a 1/100 chance of getting a brain tumour in your lifetime' and thought that would freak you out more.

(It's true though by the way, go enjoy the sun while you still can...)

That's a good website. I had a chuckle at some of those.

Thanks. It's been quite fun to research all the unlikely ways of dying!

I'll gladly accept additional micromorts (I do dangerous things often) but it must come with an appreciably worthwhile reward. My chances of dying from COVID (if you include the risk of catching it weighted by dying from it) isn't large enough to make the "gap" worth it. It may not be pro-social but there's no requirement in society to be pro-social.

"That’s the same risk as driving London to Liverpool"

This was the first one your website presented and I have no idea what it means.

Good point! I was focussing on the UK since that's where the majority of AZ vaccine users are, but you're right. I'll swap in a more international first risk!

Maybe tonight I can work out do an IP address lookup and personalise it for your locality ;)

They are 2 cities in the UK that are ~220 miles apart, so 1 in a million people die every 220 miles driven

Not to be rude, but are you aware that Liverpool (like London) is a city? I guess I'm unsure what the confusion is.

London and Liverpool are major cities in England. 200 miles, 4 hours drive time, roughly.

Similar distance/time as DC to NYC.

I guess you may be confused by the missing "from". It should be "driving from London to Liverpool", whereas the present phrasing suggests we move a city with millions of inhabitants.

That might actually be the problem - however, it's kind of a stretch to say it "should" be expressed that way. "Driving A to B" is a common phrase (as for whether it's technically correct, despite the ambiguity of meaning, I actually am not sure).

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