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Comment by NalNezumi | Hacker News Reader

I have never ever on HN seen an argument about DNA and mRNA, but then again I don't follow the conversation too much.

As it seems like you know someone with correct background on the subject, so I wanted to ask you something I've always wanted to know as a young,(late 20s) healthy person with no existing risky precondition in this pandemic:

Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect. If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.

It's an genuine question, as I soon have to travel (to a country that still force quarantine even with vaccine) and have vaccine session booked by next month.

With my limited info the risk vs benefits of vaccine seems to solely end on "we know too little about the vaccine".

Edit: thanks for all the thoughtful replies. It's a hard question to ask (without anonymity) these days so all the sincere replies are much appreciated. I'll read through the given links (and credibility of the link) when I wake up

View on HN

The risk of suffering long-term damage from getting covid unvaccinated is way higher than the risk of any long-term side effects from the vaccine or getting Covid vaccinated. Even if the former is low, there's no downside to getting the vaccine anyways.

I can kind of understand if someone is avoiding the vaccine and also isolating themselves to protect against the virus, but I really just don't understand the risk-benefit analysis where the vaccine is too risky but catching Covid isn't.

Also, the risk of catching Covid unvaccinated may not be that low. But, the risk of any serious vaccine side-effects, or catching Covid vaccinated, is super low. IIRC Israel did a study and, the amount of breakthrough cases requiring hospitalization for under 40 was 0.3 per 100k, and the amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits, despite vaccinations being in the billions.

We know little about the vaccine, but we also know little about the effects of social media, random pollutants, etc. And that stuff is applied without your consent, and unlike the vaccine that stuff probably is harmful long-term.

> The risk of suffering long-term damage from getting covid unvaccinated is way higher than the risk of any long-term side effects from the vaccine or getting Covid vaccinated

Honest question, there were studies about the effect of the vaccine on hospitalizations. But is there any studies about the effect on long covid ? And especially is there studies showing that people under the age of 40 in healthy condition have any benefit regarding long covid by taking the vaccine ?

> I really just don't understand the risk-benefit analysis where the vaccine is too risky but catching Covid isn't.

Well, some people don't like to take drugs, so if they know that their immune system can cope with it (even if that means difficult time for a short time) they would prefer it. It is not risk-benefit positive. It is just more aligned with some people feelings. Some people make preventing death as the almost most important things in their life, so they will take drugs, be careful in life and so on. While some people are just ok dying in certain conditions, and are not willing to engage in risk-free life

I don't know of studies directly studying the vaccine for prevention of long covid, but most of the studies coming out seem to indicate that long covid is more likely in severe infections. So since we know the vaccine is good at preventing severe infections, it makes sense that the vaccine would be good at preventing long covid.

I get where you are coming from on the default being not taking medicine. But to me, I just don't see a vaccine as quite the same as medicine. It's basically a training program for your immune system. It tells your immune system what to look for and then when covid does enter your system, it is prepared and your immune system naturally fights it off the same way it always would. It just has a headstart in creating antibodies.

> And especially is there studies showing that people under the age of 40 in healthy condition have any benefit regarding long covid by taking the vaccine ?

If you mean risk of long-covid after getting covid with vs. without the vaccine: of course we don't know, but it's pretty likely the vaccine significantly decreases the chance of long covid. Since long-covid correlates well with infection severity, and the vaccine is particularly good at preventing severe infections.

If you mean the chance of people who already have long-covid recovering after getting vaccinated - it's pretty low.

> Well, some people don't like to take drugs, so if they know that their immune system can cope with it (even if that means difficult time for a short time) they would prefer it.

Ok. But still, "drug" is an arbitrary label, the vaccine consists of mRNA and other compounds which are in your body. I get taking risks and not being over-careful, like I definitely get why lockdowns / even masking in some situations is a bad idea. But the risk of not getting vaccinated is an unnecessary risk, kind of like driving without a seatbelt or riding without a helmet, except you only have to wear the helmet initially (idk I can't think of a better analogy).

> the amount of people suffering myocarditis and other vaccine complications is in the double-digits

This is not true, according to the CDC (as of August 18th) there at least 742 cases of myocarditis and myopericarditis associated with vaccination, potentially upwards of ~1,300 [1].

For males age 16-17 the reporting rate of myopericarditis after 2 doses of Pfizer is 71.5 per 1 million doses administered (0.0071%) [1].

Compared to natural infection, vaccination is likely still a favorable tradeoff for most people. However the tradeoffs are highly dependent on age, health, and gender. Stratifying by these factors is essential for any scientifically accurate discussion of risks.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-...

Personally, my heart & chest are still recovering from the second Pfizer shot, after having ECG, bloodwork and nearly going to the ER. Wont be getting a booster, thats for damned certain.

I suspect the number to be significantly higher than whats reported.

Literally billions of people around the world have been vaccinated against Coronavirus now. How high can the chance of serious short-term side effects be?

Again, depends on age, condition. I'm currently fighting long COVID symptoms that have showed up after vaccination. I never had COVID, but the vaccine has given me - chronic fatigue - chronic headaches - brain fog. From JJ vaccine.

If you look into the Australia, Canada and Norway data you see that the numbers are higher than initially expected. Serious side effects like TTS were thought to happen around 1 in 100k, but they now think it would be something like 1 in 20 000. Perhaps less, if you account for people that don't even realise they're getting it.

The vaccine are something like 5x reduction in mortality, but they are not perfect.

lol that's the same logic that resulted in 100M passwords and credentials being leaked....again and again and again.....

mistakes are normal, to assume none is truly unfathomably dense....

A large sample size provides more conclusive results than does a small sample size.

In the case of Coronavirus vaccines, the sample size is 1/3 the population of Earth.

If hundreds of millions of vaccinated people were developing heart problems it would be noticeable.

I note you conveniently left out "reported" cases from your sentence. You are citing numbers reported by VAERS which is not at all the same as confirmed cases. Please don't fear-monger on HN.

I cited numbers reported by the CDC who reviewed VAERS reports and determined that a subset met the CDC’s own criteria.

I accurately transcribed facts from an official CDC document, and even linked the source, nothing more. Do you really think that is fear-mongering?

The CDC is actively investigating many of the reports, dismissing them as not confirmed is a bit disingenuous at the very least.

I think parent is commenting here that the CDC is talking about self-reported data. We're not talking about a diagnosis from a doctor. Calling them "confirmed" is just as disingenuous, if I'm understanding the explanations in the slides you link.

Slide 11 appears to say that a large number of cases were hospitalized. If this interpretation is correct, we are talking about a diagnosis from a doctor, not self-reported data.

All the slides say is that there were 700ish reports that met case criteria as reported through VAERS, a self-reporting system. We are not told any information about which case criteria were met (objective vs subjective), comorbidities, reason for presentation (all vital information for a true diagnosis not report). We are not told about degree of hospitalisation or reason for hospitalisation. We are most certainly not given confirmed cases as GP claims, the stringent criteria for which are listed one link deep from the presentation. We are left with a misleading link to a scary-sounding number that is being posted by multiple accounts across HN with nebulous intent and in some cases history of posting blatant misinformation. I feel that calling this practice out when I see it helps if just a little bit.

In this case a look through GP's recent comment history reveals many comments with disinformation and fear-mongering.

Does the link https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/pdfs/mm7027e2-H.pdf on the same page 11 answer your concerns? That paper (from June) explains in some details what the CDC did, and I would assume that the slides are just an update of the numbers on the paper to a later date. At least the author of the slides was an author of the paper, so I would infer that they kept doing whatever they were doing in June.

One thing that the paper is pretty clear about is that in order to proclaim a "case", the CDC reviewed medical records and interviewed the healthcare provider looking for specific criteria. It seems like all criteria include at least one test, e.g. EKG, in addition to symptoms reported by the patient. It's not like they ran a SQL query over a bunch of dudes reporting chest pain---the CDC did their homework. If anything, I have more confidence in the CDC and the vaccines now than I had before reading these documents.

Of course I read through the link. It did not alter my reading of the slides in the slightest. The simpler tests recommended in the paper are not as objective as you might think. Again, the slides do not give us the information used and the interviews you mention did not happen for entire age categories. I'm glad you have confidence in the CDC and vaccines; GP does not and is actively trying to mislead users of HN. Appreciate the downvotes instead of discussion.

People have a right to take that risk!

The govt has the right to protect public health.

The government does not have rights. In the United States the power resides in the individual citizens. The "government" are individual citizens selected to do the paperwork. When their corruption exceeds our disinterest, they're done.

And yet the majority of those citizens agree with vaccine mandates among other public health measures https://news.uchicago.edu/story/most-americans-support-vacci...

It’s almost like the government is still fulfilling the will of the people!

The government is not meant to be majority rule.

It was explicitly created to prevent majority rule. The Senate acted as a longer term, more stable body to counteract the more popularist House. Originally citizens didn't even vote for Senators, they were appointed by the states themselves.

An entire set of explicit rules restrained what the majority could do (Constitution and Bill of Rights).

Majority rule has a long history of abuses. We shouldn't abandon our system of limiting majority power because of a virus.

lemmie guess... “America isn’t a democracy, it’s a republic” https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/yes-consti...

“The government wasn’t meant to fulfill the will of the people... it was meant to fulfill the will of my people!”

Minority rule has a much longer and more gruesome history of abuses, and it never ends well for the rulers.

What a straw man argument in that article. "not a democracy" simply refers to avoiding decisions based on the public opinion that sways in the wind, sometimes dramatically. See vaccine and mask mandates.

Umm.. this is why we need civics classes because people Don’t actually understand what the purpose of government is and what we rights we give up to be governed.

We do need much better civics and history classes. We don't "give up rights," and we're not "governed" in this country. Look at the wording of the bill of rights. It's a list of limits on the government.

I think the Supreme Court disagrees with you. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-04-20/government-...

I lack the background on biology, just a layperson take.

> Why should I take a vaccine, when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus, there's an almost neglible chance of side effect, and with no information about possible long-term side effect.

There's unknowns about the long-term effects of infection, too. Several viral infections result in prolonged symptoms or decades-later re-emergence.

Bottom line IMO - there's little/no treatment for the infection resulting from this virus. So the best solution medicine can offer is the vaccine. Safe vaccines have been designed and administered before, so I hope this is among the many safe vaccines. We know it's effective at mitigating symptoms and we know it's effective at reducing the spread.

I think taking the vaccine is the net least risk, but you're right that there's stuff that we just don't know.

So it just doesn't give any benefit. Reducing the risk of something which is already close to zero, is still 0. If we follow your argument, why not take the vaccine ten times ?

The excess mortality of people under 49 years in a country like france is zero in 2020 [0].

About long term effects of infections. Well the same can be said of the vaccine. In both case we have no idea

[0] https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/4493806?sommaire=449384...

>Well the same can be said of the vaccine. In both case we have no idea.

See https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...

   * History tells us that severe side effects are extremely rare, and if they if do occur, they usually happen within the first two months.
   * COVID-19 vaccine technologies have been studied for years and used in other treatments without issue.
   * The vaccine development process, from clinical trials to ongoing monitoring, helps to uncover and understand side effects.

The same can be said of unknown longterm side effects of covid

Covid is a virus, the effects of which are not comparable to a vaccine. There's a lot of past evidence (as mentioned in the article) for < 2 month indications of long-term side effects based on historical vaccine development. We aren't seeing any of those indicators for the covid vaccines.

Moreover, we already have clinical evidence that covid causes long-term side effects in up to a third of people infected. There is no such evidence for any covid vaccine.

Not really. There are multiple instances of viruses, such as HIV, Chickenpox, and HPV, which are known to cause increased health risks or outright disease years and often decades after the initial infection appears to fade.

There are also many instances of "long" Covid we are already seeing in which people struggle with lingering symptoms, sometimes severe, for months after initially getting ill.

And in children, the rare but serious phenomenon that's been called MISC, usually occurs weeks or months after the initial Covid infection has subsided.

You are right that we don't know the long term side-effects of Covid, or of vaccination, and won't for quite some time. But what evidence we do have based on previous experiences with vaccines and viruses, as well as what we have already observed in Covid infections and vaccinations, makes it clear that vaccines are a far less risky prospect than the disease is.

If I were in your shoes, the main thing I'd look into is not hospitalized/death, but "long covid".

Huge quality of life impact, way less understood. Estimates range from 6%-20%+ of people who get covid are still having symptoms 2 months or longer post infection. People who have symptoms two months after infection usually still are having side-effects one year later. Neurological, blood or organ impacts, but all very different and still not well understood.

So I both don't want to seem like I'm hyping it up either because again a lot is unknown it might not be a serious issue / concern.

The main point I'd say is if you're going to make a judgement based on risk make sure you're evaluating the situation completely. And for anyone looking at covid risks, they shouldn't be focused on solely death, but understand long covid as well. Current speculative thinking essentially believes it parallels either triggering auto-immune type issues, or dormant/re-emergent viruses (like chicken pox / shingles type of behavior).

A not very good article on it, but don't have time to find a better one:

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619941/

Thanks for the informative reply. Yes, I think my demographic group are way more concerned about the side effects/long term effects of vaccine/covid than hospitalizations or death. And covid is not "risk free" after a influenza like symptoms for weeks.

I know same age group friends that have had covid and "loss of taste" have been the most common experience I've heard. It's anecdotal, but also a good data point to me since I know these people's lifestyle / demographic a bit better than sweeping big stats.

I'll check out the link you gave regarding this specific topic about covid long term effects and compare it to what we know about the vaccine

> there's little/no treatment for the infection resulting from this virus.

This is not true. Since the beginning of the pandemic front line doctors have been successfully reducing hospitalization and death through early treatment with antivirals, corticosteriods, and antithrombotics.

[1] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

[2] Timing of Antiviral Treatment Initiation is Critical to Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/psp4.1...

[3] Clinical outcomes after early ambulatory multidrug therapy for high-risk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection https://rcm.imrpress.com/EN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?a...

[4] Early multidrug treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) and reduced mortality among nursing home (or outpatient/ambulatory) residents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03069...

[5] Multidrug treatment for COVID-19 https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ddt/advpub/0/advpub_202...

I guess a better way to phrase it is that there's no over-the-counter cure, and if you're at the point where a front line doctor is giving you steroids, things are already going worse than most people's vaccine side effects.

> there's no over-the-counter cure

All of those medications can be prescribed prophylactically (early in the symptomatic phase) by just about any clinic.

I'm not advocating against vaccination, just pointing out that early treatment with widely available and existing medicines has also proven to be effective in reducing severe outcomes.

I think he is talking more about long-covid and not the actual hospitalization. Since he is talking about symptoms and not hospitalization explicitly.

Even persons who don't end up in the hospital can have symptoms. I'm leaving up to the reader of these are ok or not.

[1] is an interesting lit review on what drug strategies have been tried where in the world.

None of these papers seem to present strong clinical evidence that these drugs have actually been effective, vs some hidden covariate or something. A couple include interesting small-sample observational studies, but as I understand it those haven’t panned out in follow-on randomized controlled trials that have been done.

There are also a couple essentially viewpoint articles that are interesting. [2] is basically a pharmacokinetic calculation motivating further study, but no clinical data.

[4] is a hypothesis piece about hydroxychloroquine that draws on nine other studies. Haven’t been able to evaluate those because [4] is not open access, but this is one of the drugs that has not lived up to expectations in various RCTs that have been completed…

Fair enough, here are some high quality RCTs that provide the strong clinical evidence you're looking for.

[1] Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline for treating COVID-19 symptoms: a randomized trial https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33983065/

[2] Fluvoxamine: A Review of Its Mechanism of Action and Its Role in COVID-19 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.6526...

[3] Baricitinib plus Remdesivir for Hospitalized Adults with Covid-19 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33306283/

[4] Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 - Final Report https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32445440/

> If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with

I just don't think this is true. Again, look at the states in the US with the lowest levels of vaccination. They are running out of ICU beds due to the amount of cases.

I'm not sure where you're located. Maybe there's a low amount of cases there, but in general, the risk of being hospitalized (and maybe not having a bed to go to) is rather high. The delta variant is also affecting young people more than other variants before it. I personally think getting the COVID vaccine is a smart choice.

In terms of vaccinated people still spreading the virus, the idea with vaccination is to reduce the chance of being hospitalized. That still seems like a big benefit to me.

It is true. There's an Oxford Covid risk calculator, and for an average 20 something person, the risk of hospitalization is ~0.002%.

https://qcovid.org/

Has this been updated for the delta variant which is estimated be twice as likely to cause hospitalization?

https://www.politico.eu/article/delta-coronavirus-variant-do...

So ~0.004% then. Are you suggesting that is statistically significant?

I'll get downvoted, but people keep forgetting that covid spread is exponential, not linear.

Ok, 0.008% if you want. Sure feels like an argument for argument sake. I can find a list of odds of things that will hurt/kill a 20-something where the percentage is greater than 0.008 if you'd like.

That calculator includes an estimate of likelihood of catching covid - so the actual risk of hospitalisation for someone who does catch covid is way, way higher - for a 25 year old man in the US it's about 1.6%.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort...

That calculator isn't telling you the risk of hospitalisation per case, but the risk of hospitalisation over a 90 day period during the first peak of the pandemic.

The two are very different. The calculated risk includes the fact that not everyone (or even most people) will get covid during that 90 day window. It's also based on the statistics for the original covid variant - by all accounts Delta is both more transmissible and more likely to cause hospitalisation.

The likelihood on a per-case basis is significantly higher. The Economist has a tool here: https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort...

For example, a 25 year old man with no co-morbidity who receives a positive covid test has a 1.6% chance of hospitalisation. Obviously not everyone with covid will receive a positive test (I've seen an estimate of 1 in 4 are tested) - so perhaps that rate is actually 0.4%. That's way, way higher than the 0.002% you said.

Ultimately if covid is endemic, you will get it. At that point, even as a 25 year old, you're risking hospitalisation.

Thank you for the rapid and informative reply. I appreciate it (esp when the topic is a bit politicized right now)

I'm not from US so I haven't checked the stats closely for those states. My current city of residence is Tokyo. Afaik right now hospitalization seems quite bad, and there's no strict lockdown. I'm trying to work from home and dodge rush hours as much as possible to reduce the risk for now.

Do you have any numbers of "old vs young" hospitalization in the majority unvacinated area? And stats such as "young vaccinated vs young unvacinated" would also be interesting to see I would guess.

I've heard about the delta variant being more dangerous to the young, so that's for sure a important point. But last I heard the vaccine is not that effective to Delta variant, and also the delta variant difference seems to not be that much bigger according to this[0] study I found Jeremy Howard link on Twitter (I've only read the summary so I might be wrong on this)

Edit: thanks for the link hackingforfun, I'll be sure to take a look at it (tomorrow as it's late night here right now)

[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

I don't have numbers on "old vs young" hospitalization. I'd have to do some more googling for that and I need to get back to work.

However, regarding efficacy on the delta variant, from here [1]: Data so far suggests efficacy rates of approximately 67 percent for the J&J vaccine, 66 to 95 percent for the Moderna vaccine, and 42 to 96 percent for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Seems like pretty good efficacy to me.

[1] https://www.healthline.com/health-news/heres-how-well-covid-...

Indiana currently has about 44% of overall population vaccinated (3.0M out of 6.8M).

Since January the state has recorded the following numbers of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths: [1]

    Unvaccinated  Vaccinated
  C      278,508       6,740
  H       16,322         226
  D        5,709          78

(The article did not provide a full breakdown by age, but did note that Indiana’s vaccinated population skews older and would have higher baseline risk for complications.)

[1]: https://www.kpcnews.com/covid-19/article_f0e9bff4-a968-56b3-...

I'm not trying to deny that the vaccine has a positive effect, but this data as presented (aggregated across the entire year) is extremely misleading. Here's why:

1) The infection/hospitalization/death rates were highest last winter, and relatively few people were vaccinated during the peak of the infection

2) A large proportion of the people in the Unvaccinated column here were infected long before we reached the current vaccination rate.

3) Therefore, suggesting that the numbers in this table represent the outcome of vaccination is simply not correct. This data is aggregated across the entire vaccination campaign and is completely confounded by the timing of waves vs that of vaccination rates.

If the goal is to build trust and present data transparently and fairly, why not show the same data with aggregation starting in July or starting AFTER reaching 40% vaccination rate?

More recent data would also be good for reflecting any impact from delta becoming the predominant variant.

That article only provides cases from the week of August 15:

    Unvaccinated  Vaccinated
  C       13,990       1,417

>But last I heard the vaccine is not that effective to Delta variant.

That's not exactly the case. Neutralizing antibodies created from the vaccines work about as well against delta as they did against alpha. The main differences are that delta:

  * Spreads more efficiently
  * Has a shorter incubation period
  * Produces a higher viral load in those infected

The incubation period being shorter means your T-cells have less time to ramp up in the case of naturally-waning antibody levels (which applies to people who were vaccinated at the beginning of the year), giving the infection more time to set in (remember, viruses grow exponentially). The higher viral load likewise means that the circulating antibody levels that were adequate for alpha may not be sufficient for delta. So we may see that people vaccinated with Moderna now have a better response against delta due to it creating twice as many antibodies.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2783797

> But last I heard the vaccine is not that effective to Delta variant.

It is not as effective as it was against earlier variants when it comes to preventing you from getting infected with COVID, but it is still very effective at preventing you from getting seriously ill or dying from COVID.

COVID is likely heading to endemic status where it is something we all get now and then, but we all have immunity from previous infections or vaccinations that largely protects us from serious illness when we do get it. In that world it is only your first infection that is dangerous for most people.

Vaccination essentially makes your first infection count as a second infection.

As someone going through a second infection now, I hope that’s not the case. It isn’t as bad as the first time so far but it’s still no fun. I’m a healthy 33 year old.

We should not consider the US to be a good sample, given the sky-high obesity rates.

> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus

Why wear your seatbelt if you can still die in a collision? Why bother with refrigeration when cold food can still rot?

You can't think of risk in terms of binaries; bad things are still possible with the best safety technologies, but that doesn't mean those technologies aren't worthwhile.

As an aside, the virus is actively changing over time, and delta variant is putting a lot more young people in the hospital.

> As an aside, the virus is actively changing over time, and delta variant is putting a lot more young people in the hospital.

If this is the case, this is not hugely more than the previous variants as we can't see it on hospitalizations charts

> Why wear your seatbelt if you can still die in a collision?

Why not wear a helmet in a car I'm sure it would help in some cases ?

Wearing a helmet in a car is a PITA. Getting vaccinated causes literally no ongoing inconvenience 24-36 hours later. It's effectively a cost-free intervention with enormous upside in terms of protection from death and hospitalization. Helmets are better compared to interventions like masks and social distancing, as they must be used constantly.

Edit: taking your analogy less literally, it seems the issue here is the socially acceptable level of risk. The health risks of covid are demonstrable and apparent. If we can mitigate those risks by ~90% with no ongoing cost, then that intervention makes sense. On the other hand, if additional interventions mitigate it by only an additional 5%, then those may not be worth the trouble.

I was comparing the helmet to the seatbelt. So the comparison between helmet an seat-belt is not ok, but the comparison between the seat-belt and the vaccine is ok ?

See my edit.

I think this is a good of example of why Scott Adams says this about analogies:

Analogies: Analogies are good tools for explaining a concept to someone for the first time. But because analogies are imperfect they are the worst way to persuade. All discussions that involve analogies devolve into arguments about the quality of the analogy, not the underlying situation.

https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/12/21/how-to-be-unpersua...

> Why not wear a helmet in a car I'm sure it would help in some cases ?

Race car drivers do wear helmets!

Risk-benefit is a simple matter of considering the relative downsides (costs) vs benefit (safety) of available options, and making some rational choices.

COVID is insanely dangerous. Even for young people, the dangers of COVID are directly comparable to professional car racing, base jumping, or similarly high-risk activities. For older people, it's comparable to being an astronaut. For people with co-morbidities, it's more risky than climbing Mount Everest!

Everybody undertaking all of those activities wears a ton of safety equipment. Did you notice?

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking has never worked for the general public, they always have to be dragged, kicking and screaming the whole way, every time.

My cousin drives his car with one hand past every traffic light with a safety camera, so that he can use the other hand to hold his seat belt near the buckle. This makes it look like it's clicked in securely, but obviously provide no safety beneft. This is insanely dangerous and much less comfortable than simply clicking in the seatbelt. (He drives a manual car, so he has to switch back and forth between the gear shift knob and the steering wheel rapidly!)

Why does he do this? Because "the man" is forcing him to wear the seatbelt, so it's a point of personal pride to refuse. "Gaming" the system by holding the seatbelt in the closed position without actually providing safety fills him with a sense of small accomplishment for having resisted the authorities.

I really wish I was kidding, but these are the kinds of thoughts that drive people to refuse to get vaccinated as well.

"No, I won't! The gubb'ment can fuck right off! I'd rather risk it and take Invermectin!" -- literally two of my friends, almost verbatim.

You are posting misinformation. I would encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can. But according to the CDC the fatality rate for people in the 18-49 age group is only 0.06%. And the deaths are mostly people with serious co-morbid conditions. The risk is nowhere near as high as BASE jumping.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2020.11.002

If you literally Google "base jumping risk statistics" it helpfully says, right at the top: "BASE jumping carries a 0.2-0.4% injury rate per jump, and a fatality rate of 0.04% per jump."

I'm saying 0.06% risk of death is comparable to 0.04% risk of death.

How exactly am I spreading "misinformation"?

Googling "everest climbers death rate" yields: "Interestingly, the death rate has decreased a bit, from 1.6 percent in the earlier period to 1.0 percent in the more recent period. That said, since the number of climbers has quadrupled, the actual number of deaths has increased."

Remind me what the CFR/IFR is for COVID for over-70s with co-morbidities again? I don't want to post "misinformation" here, so I'll let you do your own research.

This is a false dichotomy: low risk hospitalization vs unknown long term side effects of the vaccine. The correct choice is unknown long term side effects of COVID-19 vs unknown long term side effects of vaccine.

In other words: you will get your immunity either by becoming sick (and maybe get well known short term side effects of being sick, including hospitalization and death) or by getting vaccinated, with other set of short and long term known and unknown side effects. In the first case you will put more pressure to public health system (even by staying home and consuming self-prescripted basic drugs). Otherwise the choice is yours.

Think of it this way, you have two choices:

1. You have a 0.0001% risk of death, and a 0.001% risk of hospitalization, and will maybe spread covid to 5-8 people. Long term effects unknown.

2. You have a 0.00001% risk of death, and a 0.0001% risk of hospitalization, and will maybe spread covid to 1-2 people. Long term effects unknown.

Which choice would you take?

(note the 2nd option is a conservative estimate of the effects of the vaccine, and the odds are probably less than what I wrote)

you forgot to add an important argument: You forget to say that probably both are manmade.

Who do you trust more? 1) something probably created in a chinese lab? 2) something created by a list of different corporations and tested independently by at least 50 countries?

Lab released, maybe. Lab created, seems unlikely, although the line between lab released and created gets blurry. Genetically engineered (rather than created via "husbandry"), seems very unlikely given that nobody has noticed anything to suggest that it might be. So either it isn't, or China has gotten so good at it that we can't tell when they do it, which is terrifying!

The risk of hospitalisation for most people who get covid is way higher than 0.01% - it's about 1% for a 21 year old man, 2.7% for a 30 year old man and 8.5% for a 50 year old man - and only goes up from there.

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort...

I should've posted where I got the values for Covid risk, my bad. I used this: https://qcovid.org/Calculation and did it for a healthy 25 year old, and then rounded. I don't know exactly what the different between what I used and what the Economist used, but I'm guessing the Economist is using a dataset of people that skewed more symptomatic?

I wrote more in another comment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28391526

Basically the qcovid calculator tells you the overall risk during a specific period of the pandemic . Most people didn't get covid during that period, which makes the overall risk appear very low.

However, if you do contract covid (which seems inevitable if it becomes endemic) then the individual risk of hospitalisation is much higher - 1%+ for even young adults.

> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus

I imagine this is not binary but you are likely to be less sick and less contagious.

That's a good point. The article that mentioned it (I think it was based on study in Boston or Manhattan?) did mention that vaccinated people carried/spread it for _shorter amount of time_

Exactly. Getting vaccinated is not just about you, but everyone you come in contact with - especially those who may be at higher risk than you are. Maybe even people you care about?

I'm in my 30s and in good health. I've not been particularly concerned about dying myself from covid[0]. But I do have a mom and grandparents. I do have immunocompromised friends and family. How could I live with myself if I got one of them sick and hadn't taken even that simple step of a shot in the arm?

[0] though long-covid is another story, or even short-term "being sick for days/weeks" doesn't sound like a particularly good time.

Please circle back and post that article. That would be the first that I've heard of any difference in time between the two. Honestly it sounds suspicious.

Less likely to be sick and.. That's it. Equally as likely to spread the Delta variant if we're considering viral load as the metric. That's only compared to an unvaccinated person who has not previously had an infection (i.e. no natural immunity).

Let's put it another way: with Delta, the chances of you getting COVID are pretty high. If you do, the chances of you getting bad side effects may be low, but they're a few orders of magnitude higher than the vaccine.

In this case, why not take the vaccine?

1. even in your 20s, there's still risk to be sick in an unpleasant way 2. we've been using vaccines forever. I've been vaccinated maybe 10 times in my life. Why suddenly should I worry. RNA vaccines may be newer, but 100s of millions of people have been vaccinated, and side effects happen usually soon after the injection. You can also use the AZ vaccine which is more conventional. 3. you prevent other people from getting sick. Even though the vaccine doesn't totally prevent spreading the disease, it does to some extent. 4. Consensus about doctors is that ratio benefit/risk is favorable toward the vaccine for all age classes. I trust my family doctor with my health and follow his recommendation.

> Why should I take a vaccine

> when it is now known that vaccinated people can still spread the virus

Because just because you "can" doesn't mean that you're as likely to[1]:

> Fully vaccinated people with Delta variant breakthrough infections can spread the virus to others. However, vaccinated people appear to spread the virus for a shorter time […] This means fully vaccinated people will likely spread the virus for less time than unvaccinated people.

(—the CDC)

> If the chance of me getting hospitalized is so low to begin with, what's the benefit of the vaccine to me.

With what data exists, the chance of side-effects from the vaccine is many orders of magnitude less than the chances of any of suffering from COVID or even death from COVID.

[1]: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/delta-var...

I also don't think it is worth putting stock into fear of the unknown with this vaccine: scientists have developed vaccines before. If anything, the structure of this particular vaccine — an mRNA strand inside a lipid bubble — seems a lot safer and much less ad-hoc than what I understand of earlier vaccines; in fact, it seems like downright engineering, and to me, it is exciting that we've gotten tech for that at such a crucial time. My high-school level biology knowledge of how mRNA interacts with a cell makes me feel that part should be pretty safe; what side-effects the spike protein might have are, I suppose, an unknown, but without the virus, your chances of not getting infected, are, IMO, not good, and the virus will generate far more than just spike proteins, and in far greater numbers. We also know just as little about the long-term side effects of the virus, but thus far, the reports on side-effects from the virus are much worse than reports on side-effects from the vaccine.

That's also just assessing it from the standpoint of "me", but part of the other reason I got the vaccine is that, while I might be young and healthy and might be able to give COVID a run for its money (though honestly, the idea of a respirator scares me far more than anything about the vaccine) I have people around me who are not so young or not so healthy; while I might live, I do not want to transmit a a virus that could be potentially lethal to them.

The good outweighs the bad. (Very clearly, IMO.) Yes, there are some unknowns, but nothing in life is certain.

Hi thanks for the reply and the perspective.

>I have people around me who are not so young or not so healthy; while I might live, I do not want to transmit a a virus that could be potentially lethal to them.

This is also the reason I did sign up for vaccination,(traveling with work and all) but it also put a dent in the reasoning that the people I'll meet will highly likely be vaccinated due to their age.

>I also don't think it is worth putting stock into fear of the unknown with this vaccine

You have a valid point and I do trust the scientist to do their work well(although after entering research this year my trust for science have been slightly jaded), but trusting the vaccine means I have to trust not just the scientists but all entities involved along the line (mass production, distribution, quality control, government logistics, safe storage and transportation).

With the entire vaccine thing being so highly politicized and tribalized, having the (healthy) level of scepticism and trying to express it to inform myself through dialogue have been very hard, so I appreciate your comment a lot. I'll ponder a bit where my doubts are valid/not valid and what action is reasonable based on that

> but it also put a dent in the reasoning that the people I'll meet will highly likely be vaccinated due to their age.

Gotta stop thinking in binary terms.

Breakthrough cases happen though. So even if the people you're seeing are vaccinated, if they are unlucky they can still pick up the virus from you, and if they are even more unlucky they can still have a pretty bad infection from it.

Vaccination reduces spread, and reduces severity, but it doesn't just flip those from 1 to 0.

Vaxed you + vaxed them is less risk to them than unvaxed you + vaxed them.

The vaccine has an extremely low risk of side effects short term. There is no scientific reason to think there will be long term effects. What exactly are you concerned about? In terms of "we know too little about the vaccine", we know even less about "covid" itself.

The vaccine reduces the likelihood you will get severe covid and require hospitalization. It's like a 22x reduction in risk.

The vaccine reduces your infectious period if you do catch covid, this reduces R0 (R-naught) will help shorten the pandemic.

The delta variant is hospitalizing healthy and young people with no preexisting conditions. Future variants are likely to do so as well.

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