Could Vaccinating Young People Before Old People Save More Lives?
aidancooper.co.uk
aidancooper.co.uk
Theoretically it was an interesting idea but now we see that even in Israel where a big proportion of young people are now vaccinated, there still can be a great number of new covid cases. Fortunately hospitalizations and deaths are relatively very few but that's because the elderly have been almost 100% vaccinated.
The main issue is that transmission still happens with the vaccine which means that superspreading events will be less active but will still happen. If elderly were not vaccinated they would succumb to illness and death.
Maybe by QALY it would be net positive but I doubt even that.
In July 2021, supply far exceeds demand
Definitely the US, UK, and the whole EU have more vaccinations than people who want to get a vaccine.
this page might be helpful, too: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
This isn’t correct; while EU countries with low to medium demand have more vaccines than demand, countries with high demand still have a few weeks to go.
The three you mention bought billions, with intentions for any one of them to be enough for domestic use and still have enough for the third world. The UK has only ever used two. Supply of jabs in the country would be an interesting stat to measure, I'm pretty sure the UK was supply limited until recently.
Young people do not 'spread more than elder'....if thats what it looks like it's supposed to mean.
The article answers that as: to prevent them from spreading the disease to others who are more vulnerable to a bad outcome from the disease. I am safer because I am vaccinated. I am also safer when the people who I meet are also vaccinated and are less likely to spread the disease.
Another good answer is that young people too can have bad outcomes from the disease. At a lower rate, but a lower rate times a large number of people is still a lot of bad outcomes.
It seems a bit repressive.
It's simply up to the vulnerable populations to get the vaccine.
What point? I made no such point. Nowhere did I advocate for "restrictions". It's stone cold fact that "I am also safer when the people who I meet are also vaccinated" - if there's an implication from that, you go ahead and make it.
> but now placing the burden for other people's health on people who aren't vulnerable
Welcome to "living in a society" and "collective action problems". You are going to have to get used them.
> It's simply up to the vulnerable populations to get the vaccine.
It's simply up to smokers to refrain from smoking around the rest of us. it's simply up to drivers to not drive drunk. Again, welcome to living in a society. We can't "go it alone".
If you're vaccinated you have the same chance of getting infected whether the person you're talking to is vaccinated or not, within miniscule margins of error.
If we're going to argue about the miniscule margins of error then you might as well ban pharmaceutical medications as well because there's always a chance of adverse side effects.
My case is: An unvaccinated person is more likely to be infected, and more likely to shed lots of virus if infected.
Vaccinated people can become infected, albeit at a lower rate, therefor being around infected people is not safe, even if vaccinated. This is clearly a mainstream opinion, as masks are still recommended, even for vaccinated people, in many contexts.
None of these risks are "miniscule".
This diagram might help you understand the basics https://i.redd.it/km870p4xn1d71.jpg
Citation needed for your case.
Young people are getting much sicker with the new variants.
And, by not giving the vaccine to younger people, we are preferentially creating a subgroup which the virus will more likely evolve to infect. So, the longer the young group remains unvaccinated, the more likely that a variant that does real damage to younger people pops up.