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Comment by underseacables | Hacker News Reader

My opinion is that a lot of Americans are uneasy about government, pharmaceutical, and the media, all pushing the same narrative over a virus that has a 99% survival rate. After decades of pushing drugs on us, and using the government to mandate vaccines like HPV, regardless of effectiveness, and the media manipulating us at every turn, trust in these institutions is less than rock bottom. If Americans are not getting vaccinated it’s not the citizens fault, its these institutions that suddenly want us to trust them. Personally I’m waiting as long as possible, let everyone else do the beta testing.

Edit: I have had Covid as-well as everyone in my family.

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> using the government to mandate vaccines like HPV, regardless of effectiveness

What concern do you have about HPV vaccine effectiveness? As far as I can tell this is a non sequitur — vaccination for HPV is effective and a positive health intervention:

> The HPV vaccine works extremely well. In the 10 years after the vaccine was recommended in 2006 in the United States, quadrivalent type HPV infections decreased by 86% in female teens aged 14 to 19 years and 71% in women in their early 20s.

My concern with HPV was that it was suddenly being mandated. For many years the drug companies saw vaccines as a money loser. Suddenly they had this HPV vaccine that had the chance to make a lot of money, but it wasn’t catching on. So the drug companies turn to the government to mandate it. It makes me uneasy when a drug company says we’ve got a drug you must take it, but if you don’t will have the government force you to take it. That goes back to my distrust of the drug companies. I don’t want vaccines to be seen as a profit center.

.. but that doesn't address the fact that it's actually effective and has public health benefits?

It makes no sense. It's like arguing against seat belts, just because they are mandatory! I have a family member who is like this: He agrees seat belts are important and save lives but won't wear his out of spite, purely because "I'm not going to let the government tell me what to do!" It is not logical.

Rugged Individualism in action. That idea saw broad promotion and acceptance.

The impact is a solid percentage of us basically unable to think in basic group, or class terms.

But if vaccines aren't a profit center why would companies make them?

Why would capitalism not apply to vaccines?

That’s a very good point. Drug companies had to be given immunity from civil suit in order to produce them. Look up the national vaccine injury compensation program.

"The government mandated it" is a pretty bold statement, when what you mean is the states of Rhode Island, Virginia, Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico require it (with many other vaccines) for public school attendance.

calling a government madate by that name is a bold statement?

are there other things you fear to say about your government?

Allow me to provide a source https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-gardasil-idUSN20225...

What country are you in (who is "the government" you're saying is mandating HPV vaccination?). In the U.S., the only mandates are at the state level, and only in Rhode Island, Virginia, and DC, aren't they?

Even if mandated, why wouldn't you want to prevent cervical cancer with such a simple intervention, and why shouldn't the manufacture be compensated for such a miracle?

> pushing the same narrative

Oh boy, what do you dispute? That covid is real? Do you dispute that over 600,000 Americans have died from covid? Those are only the ones we know about. And that's with our incredible luck to have lived in a time where we can develop a vaccine with incredible speed and effectiveness. And that's with all the measures we've taken to hold back the virus, with people like you kicking and screaming the entire way. Maybe you're hearing the same "narrative" because it's reality.

We know what would happen if we did nothing - see New York, Iran, Italy last year. I don't know what people like you want. Apparently you want to sit back and pout with your conspiracy theories while the rest of us do our part.

> using the government to mandate vaccines like HPV, regardless of effectiveness

It is worth noting that the HPV vaccine is effective: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/safety-effectivenes...

As far as I am aware, mandates have been implemented in only a few places, at the state and local level.

That is true, initially the drug companies were pushing it at the federal level, but there was such a backlash that they backed off and tried to go at it state by state.

This seems like goalposts being moved.

> That is true, initially the drug companies were pushing it at the federal level, but there was such a backlash that they backed off and tried to go at it state by state.

Do you have a source for some kind of proposed federal mandate (excluding DOA bills by a backbenchers, because those mean nothing)? As far as I know, vaccine mandates have always been a state/local thing, usually only tied school entry requirements.

> Personally I’m waiting as long as possible, let everyone else do the beta testing.

Technically that's what clinical testing is. Further we're long past beta testing with a large percentage of people being vaccinated.

Anti-vaxxers have done more damage to the country by scaring people from getting the vaccine without providing any serious proof.

Further we're long past beta testing with a large percentage of people being vaccinated

How is a large percentage of people getting the beta an indication that we're past beta testing? None of the vaccines have FDA approval.

Yes. Yes they have FDA approval.

So, for those of us who think the last state of play was that they did not have approval, can you point us to something official?

They have emergency approval. All major studies are completed, Clinical Study Reports are submitted with all evidence, Case Report Forms, datasets. It is important but largely a bureaucratic and scientific exercise at this point. These vaccines are safer and more effective, with less side effects, than the bulk of all medicines submitted last year. People have been working around the clock for the last 18 months on these treatments in an attempt to save more lives. If the propagandists cared a whit about humanity they would encourage everybody to vaccinate immediately. It is quite possible that a variant will be created by the unvaccinated that is resistant to the vaccines, one that is perhaps even more deadly, instantly turning the world back to lockdown for another year.

The COVID-19 vaccines are all "leaky" in that they don't really prevent infection and transmission but simply attenuate and reduce the severity of symptoms. Therefore, Sars-Cov-2 will continue to evolve in both unvaccinated and vaccinated populations, but the vaccine will put evolutionary pressure on Sars-Cov-2 in the vaccinated population that will select for fitter variants (this has happened before in other "leaky" vaccines, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marek%27s_disease#Prevention and https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...). I'd argue that fitter, more dangerous variants will probably evolve in the vaccinated population as opposed to the unvaccinated for this reason. Having said that, these new variants will mostly be a threat to the unvaccinated and, if so, I can see a future where we'll be vaccinating kids very early on to prevent serious disease.

While I hear what you're saying, were we all vaccinated, we would quickly reach herd immunity and the virus would stop bouncing around completely, thus rendered a historical footnote like Polio and Smallpox.

I had no problem running a Google search to find this.

https://www.fda.gov/emergency-preparedness-and-response/coro...

And if you care to read it, the decision memo is here.

https://www.fda.gov/media/144416/download

Granted that's the Pfizer vaccine. Google is your friend here for other vaccines approved by the FDA.

> How is a large percentage of people getting the beta an indication that we're past beta testing?

Because testing is giving it to people and seeing what happens. The more people you give it to, the more rare and unusual reactions you can find. IIRC, drug testing involves giving the drug to progressively larger groups of people, to mitigate the damage if there are serious adverse side effects.

> None of the vaccines have FDA approval.

While technically they don't have "full approval," they do have "emergency use approval." At this point, full approval is just a bureaucratic exercise, because the widespread emergency use rollout has tested these vaccines far, far better than any typical pharmaceutical testing program.

Per Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research#Ph...), a Phase III trial involves 300–3,000 test patients. About 50% of the US population has been vaccinated, so you can think of that as a test on 150 million people. That's 50,000 times more than in your typical drug trial.

At this point, refusing the vaccine because it hasn't been tested enough is like refusing a common drug like ibuprofen for the same reason.

> a virus that has a 99% survival rate.

It doesn't. The case-fatality ratio is 2.15%. And this is with preventative actions being taken which allow higher percentages of people to obtain healthcare. If treatment was even more scarce than it has been, the death rate would climb even more.

That’s it? So it has a 98.75% survival rate?

Yeah, "that's it". For context, that's:

* 215% deadlier than anthrax.

* 2150% deadlier than polio.

* about the same as the average death rate between the two smallpox strains, and on-par with the spanish flu

That's the CFR for cutaneous anthrax. Pulmonary and gastrointestinal anthrax CFRs are over 50%.

Smallpox, variola major has a 30% CFR.

Both are much worse than either covid or the flu.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_disease_case_fat...

I picked the specific comparisons I did because few would discount the concerns of a cutaneous anthrax infection or smallpox, variola minor. "Oh it's just a minor case of smallpox" said nobody.

Yes, bad cases of smallpox and anthrax are worse than COVID. And, the flu is pretty bad, but COVID is significantly more deadly than the Influenza A.

When it was new, the "Spanish Flu" (influenza A subtype H1N1) killed as many people as covid killed in 2020, in a far younger, healthier population. Now people have immunity, so even though H1N1 is still around, it's not as deadly as it was in 1918.

So while it's true that covid was more deadly than influenza in 2020, that's not because covid is inherently more deadly, but simply because people weren't immune to it yet.

Now that we have a vaccine, and a significant number of people who've had the disease, covid death rates are much, much lower. Currently about 250 per day in the US, an annual rate of less than 100k per year, not much worse than the flu.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-covid-deaths-7-day?...

This data probably doesn't include the delta variant.

New data coming out seems to show that the rate of hospitalizations and deaths are increasing with the Delta variant.

A troubling sign of what to come is the outbreak in Arkansas. https://arkansascovid.com/2021/07/covid-19-hospitalizations-...

CFR isn’t the same thing as “survival rate”, because the denominator only includes reported cases as opposed to all infections.

What you’re looking for is IFR, which by definition is a smaller proportion.

Anecdotally: my family all tested positive for COVID a few weeks ago via the Abbott at-home test. That test has a relatively large false negative rate (~15% IIRC) but a vanishingly small false positive rate. Of the four of us, I’m the only one who might have been reported to the CDC, because after about a week I called my doctor and asked for a prescription for inhaled steroids to ease my shortness of breath.

That's definitely true for my father. Over the past year he's seen media and government officials go from "masks are useless if you aren't sick" to "if you don't wear a mask you're risking the lives of everyone around you", and "Trump rushing vaccine production could be worse than COVID" to "if you don't get a vaccine, you're going to kill people that can't get vaccinated".

He's got no faith in the government any more, and would rather risk getting sick than try to keep up with whatever narrative is being pushed on any given week.

I think it s because people like your father (and mine), expect faith to guide their opinion of a government. But that sounds very silly to me: you can explain it with reason rather than a faith/betrayal fairytale.

The government is made of imperfect employees like you and me, imbued by a mission to transform tax money into social guidance. At first, there were no mask and no knowledge, they chose to avoid a mask rush that would have led nowhere while inventing excuses to explain it, or nobody would follow. But as everyone they slowly learn and as factories start building the masks, they get easier to enforce. It might yet be another mistake, if at an even deeper level masks are non beneficial, and they might yet change their mind.

You can absolutely just accept faith isnt our guide and follow the best effort estimate of the people we pay for producing it. Dont wear the mask when they think it wont work, wear it when they discover maybe actually it might, remove it when ... you get the point.

Nobody knows, the government is not trying to steal our money with vaccines: they already did with taxes.

That "inventing excuses to explain it" erodes trust in institutions, especially when the excuses are pretty transparently garbage.

It's only a narrative if you choose to believe what you want to while only scraping the surface. Masks were rationed at the beginning until there was supply. There were legitimate concerns about rushing the vaccine under Trump before testing was complete. Then many countries completed testing and approved the vaccine. This was/is basic stuff to anyone who makes an effort to inform themselves.

They were rushed. None of them have FDA approval. The FDA recommended for the JNJ vaccine to be pulled from the market.

Moderna, Pfizer, and J&J vaccines are all FDA approved. J&J was paused for a few days out of an abundance of caution due to an extremely rare (~1 in a million) potential side effect, an ordinary part of postmarketing safety monitoring. The FDA decided that the J&J vaccine was still safe and effective and resumed allowing its sale.

You're actively spreading misinformation, and it's disappointing.

No, the guy is actually correct. The vaccines have emergency use authorizations, not approvals. No credible health expert thinks there's anything wrong with the effectiveness or safety of the vaccines but it's still true that the FDA isn't willing to formally say that the vaccines are safe and effective which is causing a lot of problems even besides causing people to think there's something wrong with the vaccines, see

https://www.slowboring.com/p/vaccine-fda-approve

I've found the FDA's lackadaisical attitude towards vaccine approval pretty puzzling during the whole pandemic. Why couldn't they start analyzing the drug company's testing data even before trials completed? Why couldn't they find people to work full time on reviewing the drug approval applications once they were formally in? Moderna, Pfizer, etc were willing to spend extra money and modify procedures to speed up their data collection process so why wasn't the FDA willing to do the same to go over the data they collected more quickly?

They are approved in the real, English language sense of the word. They are actively monitored for safety. If the FDA did not believe they were safe and effective, they would be withdrawn from the market immediately.

The facts are not misinformation--it's the insinuation that because they are "experimental" or that they are not "approved," they are risky. That is the misinformation.

Same with the "99% survival rate" misinformation meme. Even if the fact were true, the insinuation is that a "99%" survival rate means the virus is no big deal, which is false.

The FDA recommended pausing J&J, not pulling it from the market. And they lifted that pause recommendation back in April.

> The FDA recommended for the JNJ vaccine to be pulled from the market.

They paused it while they investigated a rare side effect, then resumed a few weeks later with a new warning about that.

It's very much on the market (or would be if Emergent wasn't such a fuckup).

The issue is that politicians are better at the art of influence -- it's literally their job. Science is hard for some people to understand, nuanced, and it changes over time. Politicians, on the other hand, know how to harness the power of a strong and definitive statement. To someone who doesn't know better, the arguments that are easier to follow and understand are more believable.

I think part of the reluctance to get vaccinated also stems from the age-old "Americans have freedom" ideal, freedom to bear arms, freedom to refuse masks and the vaccine, etc.

Personally, I don't believe I would die from any of the variants. However, I got the vaccine because I don't want to become one of the infected with longer-term problems, including permanently reduced lung capacity.

Could you link to a single study that comes to the same conclusions about long term lung problems? Not an opinion piece, facts. Not Reddit/Twitter posts, an actual, scientific, study.

https://pubs.rsna.org/doi/10.1148/radiol.2021210033

How about a meta-analysis of several studies?

Respiratory function in patients post-infection by COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis

DOI: 10.1016/j.pulmoe.2020.10.013

It's so bizarre. Very few people would argue that they have the freedom to pump chemicals into the air that kill 1% of the population.

You have the freedom to do what you want with your body but when it impacts me then that freedom stops being absolute and becomes more nuanced. If you don't want to be vaccinated then that's fine, but you're not allowed to put me at risk with your choice.

I almost compare it to drunk driving laws. You can get as drunk as you want at home. But when you get into a car, your choices start to impact everyone else, and your right to get as drunk as you want and die in a single-car accident is trumped by my right to not be subject to undue risk when I'm in public. Even if the risk is low, maybe you've driven drunk 1000 times and never killed anyone, my right to be safe trumps your right to drive drunk.

> Very few people would argue that they have the freedom to pump chemicals into the air that kill 1% of the population

The cigarette industry argued this for years past the discovery of passive smoking.

In fact I'd say a large amount of 20th century industrial history has been discovering the long list of things that shave bits and pieces off the lives of people in aggregate and banning them - in the face of opposition saying they have a right to emit this and denying the harm.

> In fact I'd say a large amount of 20th century industrial history has been discovering the long list of things that shave bits and pieces off the lives of people in aggregate and banning them - in the face of opposition saying they have a right to emit this and denying the harm.

Serious movie spoiler alert: this is literally what Soderbergh's latest film is about

I'm afraid we're way past logic in this kind of debate. You can give facts and comparisons and numbers until you drop and the others will just say "nope" and won't even bother to argue - because they already know, mind you.

The age-old saying that "Freedom to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins" is something that Americans have a hard time with.

It's particularly difficult to reason about probability of harm versus the value of exercising their freedom - if they choose to bear arms, for example, and harm people through poor execution, accidental discharge, or kids hurting themselves with found firearms around the home. It's like swinging your fist into the other man's nose and answering "oops, I meant to stop a millimeter short". Maybe you shouldn't be pointlessly swinging your fist in the first place, go find a punching bag somewhere safe instead. It's even more difficult when you want to compel someone to take positive action instead of preventing them from doing something prohibited.

Personally, I don't believe I would die, either. I understand that the possibility of long-term problems is also low, though as an athlete I really value my lung capacity. However, I work with, am friends with, and am related to a lot of people who have far more risk. I believe I would be morally culpable if I failed to wear a mask, socially distance, or get the vaccine, and transmitted the pandemic to someone who did suffer from the illness.

> One in five Americans believes the US government is using the COVID-19 vaccine to microchip the population

I think people should get vaccinated, but admittedly there is a profound lack of trust in institutions these days. misconceptions like this microchip theory would be 100x less likely if the government wasn’t literally surveilling your every movement and communicated word with the help of big tech

The institutions behave in a profoundly untrustworthy way for generations, then people stop trusting them. Society breaks down. It’s that simple. In 30 years this will be amazingly worse unless things change

It doesn't help that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is indeed talking about "Surveillance".

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/our-work/programs/global-hea...

They funded the development of a quantum dot to track vaccinations. The distinction between that and a microchip to track people is difficult for many to understand.

It's surprising how clueless or indifferent they are about people's privacy concerns.

Having spoken with older generations, I can tell you their concrete concerns of seeing others die or become disabled from polio is 1 or 2 magnitudes more relevant than vague concerns of government or pharmaceutical industry.

Problem is, people today haven't seen the tough stuff. If every third person had Ebola you wouldn't have the luxury of opining on government unease, because your lived reality would look far different. We've had it good. Maybe people complaining about these things is a concrete sign of how much progress we've made.

I can't recall where I read/heard this, but someone posited that if covid impacted children the way polio did, the response would be different.

eropple nailed it with a comment the other day [1], that it's a breakdown of trust in societal fabric. Reading that comment was my "ah ha" root cause revelation moment. Everything else flows from that: vaccine hesitancy, refusal to wear masks, distrust in government, etc. And that distrust is being weaponized.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27911793

While you're waiting are you social distancing and wearing masks?

In my experience those claiming to "sit and wait" when poked will actually reveal they're the entire range of conspiracy theories, so to answer your question I'd dare to say "no they're not".

In my experience those claiming to "sit and wait" have all been vaccinated now. After they waited a month or two and saw minimal side effects.

Well this would be the real point of "sit and wait". Kudos to them, then.

Per https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

625k deaths in the US over 35147k cases, a death rate of 1.78%

Current US population is about 328M. 1.78% death rate across 328M is close to 6M.

actual infection rate is likely 3x that number.

deaths have also been likely undercounted a bit although 625k is a lot closer to the current 700k estimate of excess deaths than it used to be.

The reason the survival rate across all ages is so high is because the elderly are bearing the brunt of this. If I knew grandma and grandpa had basically a dice-roll's chance of dying from COVID I wouldn't be putting too much stock into that 99% number.

People are so scared these days. It is just few (2) shots. Do not take yourself so seriously.

99% survival rate is not comforting given the high transmissibility of the virus. For example India had almost 5 million excess deaths during the pandemic

Congratulations. You beat 100 to 1 odds that you will die.

Personally, I don't know why anyone would take that bet when they don't have to.

> After decades of pushing drugs on us

E.g. the US government had a role in the opioid crisis.

> Edit: I have had Covid as-well as everyone in my family.

Yeah, no surprise there lol

Thanks for beta-testing covid-19 for us though.

> all pushing the same narrative over a virus that has a 99% survival rate.

You talk like a 99% survival rate is pretty good and means it's not something to worry about. One percent of the US population is 3.28 million people. Which is oddly enough about the population of the entire metro area I live in.

So Russia could nuke my city and kill everyone, and the US would still have a 99% survival rate.

Cut the number of deaths in half, for a 99.5% survival rate, and you're still taking out a city like Milwaukee.

> and the media manipulating us at every turn, trust in these institutions is less than rock bottom

The media may be manipulating you, but the people who sell the media manipulation narrative are usually do so to manipulate you even more. It's like deciding to eat dogshit because there was a fly in your food. Yeah, there's a problem with the food, but it's still better than dogshit.

why aren't people boycotting insulin or lipitor from big pharma?

1% death rate is pretty bad for a single disease everyone is going to get eventually. And the hospitalization rate is much higher than 1%

Surely you jest. Insulin and Lipitor have been studied for decades, both for safety and efficacy. Both are proven life-saving drugs. But I’ll take your point seriously: perhaps in a few years when more studies have been done to show the same efficacy and safety for the vaccine, people might begin to trust it more.

> in a few years

Too late.

They should, especially because fixing type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol is a relatively easy with proper nutrition in just a few weeks.

muttantt says >"fixing type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol is a relatively easy with proper nutrition in just a few weeks."<

Leaving "high cholesterol" aside, everything I've read and seen indicates that "fixing type 2 diabetes" is extremely difficult, takes months to years rather than weeks, and is especially difficult to maintain. One of my friends is yo-yoing his weight right now (e.g., down 50 lbs, up 25, down 5,...) in an attempt to cease insulin. I had no idea someone's weight could vary so quickly. His daughter polices his diet carefully, he hides candy bars and other goodies, it's an amazing struggle.

Can you cite any studies that clearly state it is "relatively easy to fix type 2 diabetes"?

> 99% survival rate

The chances of getting in a car accident in any given trip is way less than 99%, that doesn't mean I'm not going to wear seatbelts.

That’s a strawman argument. A seatbelt is a physical device, you don’t inject it into your veins.

The vaccine isn't injected into the veins, it's injected into the muscle.

Tattoos are also injected into the muscles, and if you only had a 99% survival rate on those they'd be illegal and only the craziest of daredevils would risk them.

Anyway, my point is something with a 1% death rate is incredibly dangerous.

I don't think tattoos are injected into the muscles - they're only skin-deep!

But good on the 1%!

> I don't think tattoos are injected into the muscles - they're only skin-deep!

Well rats, there goes that analogy.

But I've got another one: maybe a decade ago I had to give a loved one IM injections regularly (there was a class at the hospital and everything), and if there had been a 1% chance of fatal results the drug wouldn't have made it out of the lab.

Insulin.

Imagine insulin with a 1% fatality rate.

National vaccination is at 49%.

Here's a bit of a thought experiment for you. Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump are vaccinated. Why would they tell you not to get vaccinated?

Well personally I don’t care what Donald Trump or Tucky Carson has to say. Make decisions for your health based on your understanding.

You are not their audience, who operates from a different mental model. Critical thinking is an essential skill, and not as prevalent as one might think. The flock deeply desires to be led from the pulpit.

They are now (maybe not Trump, but the rest of the republicans).

I don't know if they switched because they're concerned their voters are going to die or if they're worried about getting sued but there's been a sudden switch in their narrative, for whatever reason.

Maybe it's because their TV narrative is different than what they believe in their hearts?

Hang on a moment. Donald Trump has been telling people to get vaccinated both before and after he left office. Hell, endless column inches were spilled by respected publications about how early approval of the vaccines would be an evil conspiracy by Trump to inject the public with untested vaccines. Why do you think he told people not to get vaccinated? The only people I've found he opposes Covid vaccines for is children, and honestly that's well within the range of mainstream opinion despite the media hand-wringing over it; only some countries are planning on mass vaccination of children, and the evidence for the benefits to them outweighing the risks is iffy.

>Hang on a moment. Donald Trump has been telling people to get vaccinated both before and after he left office. Hell, endless column inches were spilled by respected publications about how early approval of the vaccines would be an evil conspiracy by Trump to inject the public with untested vaccines.

Correct.

Biden, Harris, and Pelosi all said they won't trust any Trump vaccine. (<https://www.newsweek.com/anti-vaccine-covid-trust-skepticism...>)

Exactly. I am not anti-vax at all, but I am not eager to take a new class of vaccine developed in less than a year. The state government here has been paying for TV and radio ads nonstop with various doctors talking about how the vaccine is “safe and effective”. Even though it has been beta tested on millions of people I don’t think we can draw any conclusions about long term safety at this point. I also think the effectiveness is highly questionable given the number of high profile people that have been vaccinated and still tested positive.

The new class of vaccine was developed years and years ago for SARS 1 fwiw, was tested and even approved. But by the time it was ready there was no demand. It's not actually new.

There is a big difference between being known about and tested in a lab and being mass produced, approved, and administered to millions of patients. The covid vaccines are the first of this class to be broadly rolled out.

>I also think the effectiveness is highly questionable given the number of high profile people that have been vaccinated and still tested positive.

Sure, the vaccine appears less effective to the delta variant. But that's not a reason to avoid it.

One of the long term effects of not getting the vaccine is death. The recent stories coming out of hospitals where people are dying even though there's a vaccine available is tragic. Let's hope it doesn't happen to you.

I now know 2 people who could have gotten vaccinated and did not, then died of covid. I know another who went to Florida on vacation, contracted covid, and is now stuck in a hotel room hopefully recovering (I wonder about hotel staff). It all seems so tragic and also so maddening, it could have all been avoided. The vaccine could also have prevented the pain and suffering of their remaining families.

Let’s be clear. There is a slim chance of death, particularly if you are younger and/or in good health. There is also a chance that you take the vaccine, get covid, and die anyway. Although I am extremely doubtful that those cases will be talked about very much.

The chance is not slim. It's a chance of 0.6-1%. That's worse than many wars.

Without vaccines you're basically guaranteed to catch it eventually.

The risk that you die while fully vaccinated is tremendously low.

Chance of death is recovered people / dead people. Outcomes, not cases in flight.

About 1 percent now. Was as high as 10 before our medicine improved.

Many are dividing dead people by infected people. This understates the risk due to infections in progress are not yet outcomes, which biases the risk assessment to the very best, idealized case. The assumption is nobody else infected will die, which is a false assumption.

With a vaccine on board, chance of death is a mere, small fraction of 1 percent.

For perspective, ask poker players how sure of a thing 1 in 100 is. That hits way more often than people think!

Definitely, 1/100 is an insane risk. No one on their right mind would take it.

Also, there is much more than 1% chance of very serious life long complications.

Great point! Numbers are hard to get on that, but 1/10 would not surprise me.

Slim = 1 / 100 unvaccinated.

Still want to gamble? I would never take that risk, unless forced.

And was. Caught covid when the chance of death was about 7 percent. Damn near ended up in a hospital. Scary shit. Chance of longer term symptoms is higher, 5 percent maybe?

Chance of death on a vaccination is much lower, 1 / maybe 100,000 very worst case?

Now, here is the hard part:

Chance of infection?

Well, if we vaccinated everyone, that will go to very good odds. Many may never be infected.

However, since we currently are not doing that, virus mutation means odds are great you will eventually get covid. And it could mutate into forms that are worse and or that nullify vaccinations and we start this crap over.

It is in the world now. We did not catch it in time.

More vaccinated people = less mutation = lower risk for all humans.

This is a when and what risk to take discussion. Very few will avoid this entirely. Odds are overwhelming that will not be you.

Good luck!

When you get covid, do you want to face it with or without the benefit of science?

It's interesting when people say "wait and see" about a tested (in tens of thousands of people), reviewed pharmaceutical product and prefer to take their chances with a random quantity of inhaled bat-poop virus.

Good luck then I guess.

relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/2397/

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