Hacker News Reader

Comment by matsemann | Hacker News Reader

If the consequence of not taking it is death, I think people would run to the front of the queue, though.

Soo, kinda like for a vaccine?

(And to clarify what I am saying, even though the vaccine does prevent death, there is still considerable push back. Not sure why it will be different for this drug)

From what I understand it's taken once an infection is already established. Maybe it's easier to convince the "skeptics" under those circumstances to take potentially life-saving medicine.

Sure, those same skeptics, once they're sick, happily line up for an hourlong infusion of experimental monoclonal antibodies, which have similarly unknown "long-term side effects" or whatever they're worried about.

It turns out that long-term side effects (which are a possibility with every livesaving medical intervention- what are the long-term side effects of CPR?) are a lot less scary compared to short-term death.

this drug (and all covid medicine) at this point is no longer about people hesitant to take the vaccine. this is about going back to a pre covid life. the vaccine does not protect you fully from covid 19. states in the u. s. and some eu countries have very high vaccination rates and still saw a wave of covid go through them, examples: vt, nh, de, nl. in all these places roughly 70% vaccination rate and many vaccinated people testing positive, some vaccinated dying.

when this happens governments get scared. they start doing mask and vaccine mandates. things shut down. what if you could still have these waves but nearly eliminate the chance of anyone dying? then we could start treating this like an endemic cold or flu. i think these waves in high vaccine areas show convincing “vaccine skeptics” is not the gate to get there. we could be 100% vaccinated in areas and still see covid waves. the question is can we make it less risky to the point where we can go back to where we were

Oh I think it will be gladly accepted by unvaccinated folk. The reason being is most unvaccinated people don’t believe it isn’t effective, they don’t like being forced to protect themselves by a bunch of moral busybodies.

I just accepted as soon as we saw that covid was spreading so quickly, welp I’m gonna get that. I figured I wouldn’t be that affected by it and wasn’t.

Our parents said, well if I get it I get it, and if I die, I die, now let me see my grandkids. When the vaccine came out they were like sweet I’ll get it, can we stop these stupid mask wearing and social distancing crap. No, we can’t. So now us younger folk who aren’t afraid of covid aren’t getting vaccinated because we’re being forced to, and they’re going to keep up all the stupid rules like wearing masks everywhere anyways.

An anti viral drug that is this effective gives even less reason to have any mandates around vaccines, so unvaccinated people will cheer this.

Nice story.

Meanwhile at least 5 million are dead - 750,000 in the US alone.

How does your story help their families?

I don’t think it helps their families. You know what does though, vaccines and this new anti-viral.

So can I live my life and worry about own family and not someone’s I don’t know?

> So can I live my life and worry about own family and not someone’s I don’t know?

Unfortunately, no. We live in a society where sometimes we have to take collective action to prevent collective harm. Taking personally inconvenient measures to help fight an epidemic is a prime example.

And when you give a central authority permission to dictate these "inconvenient measures" to the population, what is the recourse when those authorities act in a contradictory, dishonest, or incompetent manner?

In a democracy, voting.

In the two party system in the US, this isn't really a viable option. It's a strange place where you're not allowed to be both pro-choice and against intrusive government. It makes an even stronger case for reigning in the centralized power of federal and state bureaucrats because they're even less accountable.

Oh so you’re the one who insists we keep taking shoes off at the airport, and throw our toothpaste that might be a bomb into the trash receptacle next to the crowd of people.

Yes there are collective actions we take, and the first two weeks of covid response might’ve been justified. But nothing since then. Maybe having to get tested to get on a plane.

Natural immunity does lower your chances, but you’re saying nope for the collective good (the good you’ve decided on) you must do xyz.

Bull crap. The emperor has no clothes.

Help me understand the limiting principle in that logic. What prevents particularly egregious abuses of personal liberty using this as a pretext?

For example, people might get struck by lightning walking by your house, so we must force you to install a lightening rod on your house to protect the collective.

Where does it stop, and how do you make that determination?

The lightning example isn't really analogous. Sure, one or two people might get struck by lightning, but they're not then going to continue spreading lightning strikes once they leave my house. Moreso, those (non-existent) spreadable lightning strikes aren't going to mutate to get worse as they propagate.

There isn't an easy or obvious answer to where it stops and how to determine that, but that goes both ways. We can't just have zero laws for fear that the laws might overextend themselves.

Unfortunately, we have to deal with nuance either way.

Except, no.

Two important considerations:

1. The vaccine is extraordinarily effective at mitigating risk of hospitalization and death.

2. No current COVID vaccines are sterilizing. Vaccination confers only marginal reduction in ability to carry and transmit the virus (and even this, mainly due to duration, not due to viral load).

Taken together, the "get vaccinated to protect me" canard is insane. I don't care if other people are vaccinated or not, because I am. Any other position is political, not scientific.

There is a minor argument to be had over the (tiny) immunocompromised population, but it's important to bear in mind that this population already does conduct their lives with isolation, antiviral, antibacterial, and other safety protocols regardless of COVID. They did it before the pandemic, and they will after. Nothing changes for them regardless of vaccine uptake rates.

Important question:

Did they die from COVID-19 or did they with COVID-19?

Italy just revised their numbers and it’s quite a significant difference.

It's better to look at excess deaths since testing is so haphazard in much of the world. Current estimates are between 10-15m excess deaths world wide.

Excess deaths are not an anomaly to begin with. Year 2000 saw excess deaths, so did 2014.

Also, when you have deliberatly forced an additional 150 million people into extreme poverty to keep them healthy ( as it were ), you are bound to see a spike in deaths.

Frankly I am surprised the death toll of the brutal restrictions toward marginalized populations is not higher.

I suspect we will soon reap the dubious benefits of undoing 35 years of 3rd world progress in 22 months.

6 months ago I still cared. Now I am just numb.

Reduced from human being with rights, to a piece of diseased flesh that must be muffled, silenced, tested, regularily injected with one experimental drug after the other and preferably locked up for eternity.

To add to it, I must feel a sende of pride in partaking in this. Because it is the holy science.

My very existence is inconvenient to the experts.

Must be hard keeping your head up when you're swimming in such deep drama. You don't appear to understand what excess deaths mean; it means deaths over what previous trends would predict.

Here are some links to challenge your statements:

https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj-2021-066768

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-...

I would post more, but I'm sure that you're capable of using Google.

150m pushed into extreme poverty? If you mean the US, your facts are wrong. And then you pivot to the "death toll of brutal restrictions"? What is this nonsense?

You've been muffled - Oh wow, wearing a mask is just torture.

You've been silenced - Hmm, not sure what this nonsense is about.

Tested - Yup. As part of an ongoing pandemic, yup. If you can't live in civil society and agree to give up some small freedoms, buy land in Alaska and live in a cabin.

"regularily injected" - A) the drug wasn't experimental, and B) it was primarily two doses. That's not regularly...

"preferably locked up for eternity" - wow, that's exactly what my daughter said when I grounded her last week.

Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds to people? How absolutely childish and selfish? This is why a huge portion of the US is just fed up with anti-vaxxers.

>The reason being is most unvaccinated people don’t believe it isn’t effective, they don’t like being forced to protect themselves by a bunch of moral busybodies.

I think this is something that's very understated in public discussion around COVID-19, I got vaccinated because I weighed up the odds and thought it made sense from both a social and a personal cost/benefit perspective. I didn't get vaccinated because I was gaslit into it by the government's "nudges", nor did I get it because I was nagged or shamed into it by those who can't keep their noses out of other people's business. There's few things I dislike more in a person than a Puritan wagging finger, yet all the messaging around the pandemic was nothing but wagging fingers.

People don't like being manipulated, even if it's "for their own good" or even "for the greater good". People aren't stupid either, they know when authority figures aren't being entirely upfront with them. As well-intentioned as the measures were, the institutions who imposed them have burned up a lot of public trust in the process with the use of fear and coercion as a tool to manage the pandemic as well as being a bit economical with the truth instead of just saying "we don't know" where appropriate. I think the unfortunate persistence of the anti-vax movement is partially down to this instinct for authoritarianism and shaming people rather than extending an olive branch.

I do wonder if "vaccines mean we can permanently rid ourselves of masks, distancing, and other authoritarian restrictions" would have been more effective as a campaign than "get the vaccine or you're a horrible selfish piece of crap who probably wants to bump off grandma for her inheritence". Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but I think it would.

> vaccines mean we can permanently rid ourselves of masks, distancing, and other authoritarian restrictions

They said that, and it turned out to also be a lie. I got the vaccine because I was threatened with loss of employment if I didn't, and enticed by a promise that frequent testing, social distancing, and mask-wearing would not be required for the vaccinated. They pretty quickly reneged on that. To say that I am infuriated is putting it mildly. I obviously cannot undo the vaccine that I didn't want and was forced/coerced into taking.

They have destroyed any faith I had in their promises. I will most certainly now refuse any further demands along these lines, whether for flu shots, boosters, or whatever. Fool me once, shame on you.

They didn't mean that the restrictions would go away if YOU personally got vaxxed, only if a respectable number in the US did. And that still hasn't happened because people are stubborn and selfish.

No, my employer specifically stated that the vaccinated would not need to mask or distance at work. Then they walked it back.

The parent comment was talking about public discussion of how vax would allow a faster return to normal life. Your employer is perfectly entitled to tell you to mask or distance, or where a pink jumpsuit.

With people getting fake vax cards, etc, I can see some employers deciding to err on the side of caution. Especially since some workers can't get vaxxed at all due to medical conditions.

Except they made a big deal about the no mask, no distancing promise. It was a central theme of their "get the vaccine" campaign. Oh and also you won't get fired.

Then they reneged.

Thus, they have destroyed any credibility they may have had for future similar promises.

People are stupid. As a species, we've survived despite this, but as Carlin used to say; "“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”

People hold irrational beliefs (JFK Jr. is still alive), the earth is flat, on and on.

And America in many respects can be incredibly anti-intellectual. Being smart is often a negative in a lot of environments.

That quote never sit well with me. How about "Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize there is a 50/50 chance you are stupider than that."

Your version is less accurate in reasonable contexts. People at a Carlin show or on HN are not the average person.

Away from the debate about who will or won't take the vaccines and why, isn't this is a huge positive for the small (but not tiny) number of people for whom vaccines don't provoke immune response (severely immunocompromised, etc)? That group are also more vulnerable to bad outcomes from Covid.

That's one of my hopes. I don't know if this would have an adverse reaction for immunocompromised patients, but if not that would be fantastic.

It’s not really like a vaccine. A vaccine is almost more abstract. You’re not sick, and to continue not being sick, take these shots.

With this treatment, you ARE sick. To become well, take these pills.

There are a lot of hospital bed requests for the vaccine(1) from people who thought COVID wasn't a big deal. I'm fairly sure they'll take this drug once they experience the alternative.

1) Obviously, it's too late then. So it's only the most ignorant of people who changed their minds we have anecdotes of.

Sounds like the consequence of not taking it is a 0.5% chance of death, so probably not a lot of running for those who understand COVID death rates.

If the drug has got this far into testing, there is no chance in hell that it has >0.5% chance of death (or other awful side-effects) on ingestion. So it's an upgrade either way.

It seems to me that you're one of those not understanding COVID death rates, though.

Firstly, even though I doubt your number a bit, even a 1/200 chance of death is mighty high enough for most people to seek treatment for something.

Secondly, if you're already infected, the pill is probably less risky than those 1/200.

Thirdly, the chance of death isn't equal for everyone. A healthy young person might have a 10x reduced risk, while an older person with an existing condition a 10x increased risk. So at least for one of them the new medicine is clearly worth trying.

A 1/200 chance of death is gigantic.

So are the people who land in that numerator - a correlation that's not permitted in the public discourse apparently.

Right!

It floors me to see so many not internalizing what that means.

People think 0.5% is low, but e.g. JFK airport has about 500 takeoffs a day, if on average every day 2 or 3 planes that flew out of JFK crashed, how would they feel about air travel?

I think part of the problem is people see getting covid as something that will only happen to them once. So it is easy for them to think "well, if JFK had that many crashes, but I only had to fly once in my life, that's not so bad."

Realistically, re-infection is going to become more and more of a thing. Especially as it mutates.

> A healthy young person might have a 10x reduced risk

The risk doubles every 7 years so it's going to be ~18x between generations, and much greater beyond that. Those who are old and have existing co-morbidities are really pushing the difference as severity of disease is strongly correlated with number and severity of co-morbidities.

Edit: ~18x, not ~30x. It's late here, I can't calculate 2 to the power of 4 without a calculator until I sleep, wake up, and have a strong coffee.

GP stated that "the consequence of not taking it is death", which is demonstrably false, and specifically what I was referring to.

Also, the current mortality rate overall in the USA for Covid is less than 0.1% - in fact it's less than 0.02%. 46M confirmed cases, and 751k deaths (not all confirmed to be caused by COVID)...

The study was for patients “who were at high risk of progressing to severe illness”, where the hospitalization/death rate was 6.7% without it and 1% with. You probably wouldn’t give it out to everyone but that’s the kind of risk decision doctors make routinely.

The actual death rate for the trial cohort is close to 2%:

Pfizer said 0.8 percent of patients who got the drug combination within three days were hospitalized within four weeks — three out of 389 patients — compared to 7 percent of patients who got placebos, or 27 out of 385. And seven of those who got placebos died, Pfizer said. No one who got the treatment died within a month.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/11/pfizers-new-covid-pi...

If this drug is administered in the hospital, you already have a severe case and are far more likely to die.

If you watch the mass media, that's the impression they love to give, yup. :)

But that's just it, there's less than a 2% chance of dying even if you get COVID.

A 2% chance of death is actually very high risk for most people. Obviously with a name like dontcare007 I'm sure you've a huge appetite for risk that others don't.

There's a 40% chance Mr. Bond here would have died before his latest film "No Time To Die", if he had a 2% chance of death in each movie ;)

If 2% of domestic flights in the US crashed, that would be about 100 plane crashes. Per day.

An accident rate of less than 1% grounded the Boeing 737 MAX. In a study of the aircraft, the FAA estimated there would have been 15 crashes over 30 years. This was seen as unacceptable.

There is a much higher chance of dying when you're in the ICU with Covid and a doctor thinks it's appropriate to prescribe this new medication.

The trouble is that the new medications probably don't work by the time you're in the ICU with Covid. I'm not sure it was tested with this one specifically, but at least one of the recently-approved medications was previously trialled on ICU patients and showed no benefit - they had to do another study giving it to people who hadn't been hospitalized yet to get any useful reduction in deaths, and there's some reason to think this is an inherent limitation of drugs that try and reduce viral replication. This study only seems to cover patients who haven't been hospitalized at the point when they start the treatment.

The hospitalization rate of the control was over 6 percent. Most people want to avoid hospitalization.

I don't think you realize just how shitty those chances are.

The same people who take their chances with COVID have the same energy as those who play the lottery.

Statistically you won't die from Covid but that statistic may not apply to you.

It's much higher than that for easily identifiable subgroups -- elderly people and obese people being trivial examples.

The control arm of this study had a rate of "hospitalization or death" of 7% because they selected for subgroups at high risk.

It's fine to acknowledge that aggregate risk of Covid is low (and indeed, more people should acknowledge that fact), but we must also acknowledge that it is a serious risk for a large group of people.

Especially when we note that the clinic definition of obesity is much smaller than people think of, and 42% of Americans qualify.

That may be true, but it doesn't automatically mean that 42% of Americans are high risk. This is reflected in the aggregate statistics. Mild obesity is probably not a significant risk factor, whereas severe obesity is a big problem.

The BMI-based definition of "obesity" is a crude qualifier, and the vast majority of the affected will be in the smaller group that is both elderly and obese (esp. considering that age is, by far, the more important factor for serious outcomes.)

That's the problem - "even if you get COVID".

At the start of pandemic we could have hoped that it will pass in half a year, in a year or so. Now we know that it is probably here to stay.

So eventually you will get COVID.

Depending on how long has passed after your vaccine, what variation of virus you will get, how old you are and etc will depend if it is more like 5% or 1% or so.

In my office I have 200 or so colleagues. Imagine having 4-5 funerals at the company because of this illness.

> Depending on how long has passed after your vaccine, what variation of virus you will get, how old you are and etc will depend if it is more like 5% or 1% or so.

This is fear-mongering. There is no example of a risk of death post-vaccination that gets this high. The few studies that document a decline in efficacy show a modest decline, against symptomatic illness. The vaccines remain highly effective against severe disease and death.

https://archive.ph/5LWlK

Those statistics say nothing about the chances of going to hospital if you are vaccinated.

Currently, the deaths-per-100k of the unvaccinated vs vaccinated population is twelve times higher.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/28/us/covid-brea...

The article also shows that deaths-per-100k is highly dependent on age. "“Age is our top risk factor for vaccine breakthrough deaths,” said Theresa Sokol, the state epidemiologist in Louisiana, one of the jurisdictions that contributed to the C.D.C. data.". In 12-17 and 18-29, deaths-per-100k are essentially 0 for both vaccinated and unvaccinated. This is fantastic news for kids of grade school age: they can live their lives for the next 20 years without having to worry about covid medical risks.

The even better news is that by the time they're older, they'll probably have substantial immunity to it anyway.

It could also show age of patients.

There is no doubt about vaccine efficacy. However it all depends. On your age, on your illnesses, on strains of virus. Who knows what you will get in 2 years.

So people who say that "pfft it is only 2% chance and only if you get" are just denying it.

You will get COVID. Hopefully you get it after a few years when there are not only vaccines but drugs widely available.

This is meaningless without context. What percentage of the population is vaccinated? How old are the patients? What percentage of the hospitalized are extremely old/frail/comprosmised?

Remember: if 100% of your population is vaccinated, then 100% of your hospitalizations and deaths will be in vaccinated people.

https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...

When both the risks and vaccination rates are significantly different across demographic groups statistics for the whole population are often nearly useless due to Simpson's paradox.

Depending on how we define severe COVID you link is showing between 36% and 44% of the severe COVID patients at the hospital are vaccinated.

That's similar to what they have seen in Israel. As of about a month ago they were seeing about 60% of their severe cases were in vaccinated people.

Sounds pretty bad for vaccines, right? It does until you remember Simpson's paradox and take a finer look at the data [1]. It turns out that the Israel data showed in each age group efficacy against severe COVID ranging from 81.1% to 100%, with above 92% in all the 10 year age groups under 60 and still above 88% is the 10 years groups through 80.

It is very likely a similar thing is going on at the hospital whose data you linked to. That's been the case for every place I've come across in the US that published breakdowns of the stats by age group.

[1] https://www.covid-datascience.com/post/israeli-data-how-can-...

Unless you have a significant number of people working in your office over 70 years old, or if half of your colleagues are at least 60, it's more likely that nobody will die than 4-5.

A death rate of 4-5 per 200 workers is highly unlikely. According to CDC data the infection fatality rate in a mostly unvaccinated population was 0.06% for the 18-49 age group and 0.6% for the 50-64 age group. The majority of deaths have been among older age groups, who are mostly not working at companies.

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

Fortunately vaccination provides good protection against death.

If you die of Covid, your loved ones will not care if the chance of that happening was low. You won't care either, you'll be dead. All it really takes is that one previously-undiagnosed comorbidity to put you in the front of a the line for a casket-fitting even if you're young(-ish).

If you survive but get permanent damage e.g. due to the blood clots that a lot of COVID patients develop, or due to the side effects of medications and treatment e.g. (partial) blindness from high-dose steroids or reduced mobility up to no use in your limbs especially your legs due to ECMO, then I am pretty sure you won't be running around (in the latter example because you physically cannot anymore) telling people how COVID only kills so-and-so tiny percent of the population.

Even if you escape realtively unscathed, spending a month or two in the hospital followed by some weeks of recovery or in a rehab facility (e.g. to learn how to walk again after a few weeks of coma and maybe some ECMO hoses in your legs), then that probably still would be an experience you'd like to avoid.

And that isn't even yet considering what effects you may experience in the future, "long covid" and all that.

My teenage athlete nephew mysteriously developed heart problems right around after he got vaccinated, and now he can barely walk up a flight of stairs. No one is going to say the vaccine caused it, but the timing seems pretty damning. Meanwhile, if you look at the CDC stats, the risk of injury from covid for his demographic is at least an order of magnitude lower than his risk from riding in a car.

Personally I don't believe that we are living in a rational society right now. For the fun of it, maybe I'll figure out one of those browser plugins to replace the word "science" with "propaganda".

Perhaps he got the vaccine in the bloodstream as opposed to muscle tissue as intended.

There are reports now of injections done without pulling back to see whether the injection site is a blood vessel. How the drug performs is seriously different in blood stream vs muscle tissue.

The primary impact of blood stream doses appears to be heart related problems.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34406358/

TL;DR: The vaccine probably did not cause it. How it was administered could be the cause.

I mean come on, if the administration of the vaccine caused it, the vaccine caused it. If he hadn't gotten the vaccine, it would not have been (as conjectured) injected into his bloodstream.

Fact is, how it gets injected appears to have a very significant influence on it's impact to the patient.

There is a clear distinction here; namely, whether the vaccine was improperly used.

Taking too much Tylonol can cause liver failure. Too much Ibuprofen can cause renal failure...

In those cases, the drug was improperly used, but the cause analysis centers on improper use, because doing that multiplies the risk and symptom severity.

See how that all works?

Saying the "vaccine caused it" simply is not enough information, which is why I linked what I did.

It is important that we get these discussions right.

Edit:

In the interest of accuracy, note I did not say the vaccine did not cause the trouble. I said it probably did not cause it, and I said improper injection probably did.

Neither is an absolute. I did not intend, nor mean to imply otherwise. What I did intend was to improve on the clarity, scope and accuracy of the discussion.

Why bother?

Better discussion means more informed people taking fewer risks and or making more good choices, all of which will improve law, costs, outcomes.

Getting back to the matter at hand, when we factor the elements down, we see one thing we can do right away, and that is we make damn sure we are administering vaccines properly.

There are risks with the vaccine. They are small by percentage, but they are there. No argument from me.

Those risks go up dramatically with improper injection; namely, it being delivered directly to the blood stream, which is entirely avoidable.

That's a fair point. It seems to me like the government is pressuring people into taking a vaccine that isn't being properly administered en masse, and all the parties involved are both protected from liability and aren't being transparent about it, all to mitigate a trivial amount of risk.

I just saw an article yesterday talking about Pfizer making $36 billion on vaccines this year.

I see it that way too.

We do not have absolutes to work with here.

The damn Covid is novel, meaning we get our education together, the hard way and that sucks.

And that means being smart about probabilities and potential cost and risk outcomes matters a lot! Doing that is harder than necessary too.

A small investment in proper injection can seriously reduce vaccine risks, for example. That is real news as far as I am concerned and that should be acted on STAT. And you just gotta know the optics on all that complicate and likely bias action away from optimal too.

My own first injection was not done properly. (By that I mean the person doing it did not do a blood vessel check.)

I made sure the second one was done properly.

I very seriously oppose the blanket immunity myself for similar reasons.

The profit drive on this is pretty ugly too, and it is a complicated discussion. Very generally, I must say the problem is global and allowing profit to drive policy is not doing humanity any favors.

There is a whole lot to be said... but, maybe another day.

Really sorry about what happened too.

Sucks :(

Sure hope he improves and can get past it.

Frankly, our current body politic is very seriously ill.

Trust is low.

Because of all that, I personally am paying close attention to how I handle my part in it and am reluctant to judge anyone else.

I am usually reluctant anyway, because what I feel should be obvious reasons! But yeah, extra care is indicated right now.

Best move, in my view as a normie out there wanting to be a good human, is to try and understand one another better, avoid judgement and the usual fear, blame and shame, talk more and hopefully more of us make smarter choices and see lower risks and better outcomes more of the time as this all plays out.

Pretty sure that is as good as it all gets right now.

That's actually the theory I developed the first time myocarditis in skinny teenagers was reported many months ago. It just makes sense that spike protein mRNA is getting shotgunned into their heart muscle cells. So, I was rather disillusioned when I saw that theory finally pop up in the news in the last month.

Saying the vaccine didn't cause the myocarditis because it was "injected wrong" isn't a compelling argument to me, or likely to anyone that's thinking rationally.

I hear that. You are not wrong, in my view.

The discussion is complex and difficult enough as it is.

People struggling with it should be expected and handled with tact and candor far more than it is right now.

> Meanwhile, if you look at the CDC stats, the risk of injury from covid for his demographic is at least an order of magnitude lower than his risk from riding in a car

You have to look at the CDC stats and the vehicle fatalities to make this claim. "Risk from riding in a car" is extremely low. 0.008% of teens die annually (2400 out of 30 million, age 13-19) in car accidents.

Case fatality rates from COVID are an order of magnitude higher for that age group -- 0.04-0.06%, depending on your source -- so you'd have to believe case underreporting by 100x (impossible, since cases are > 1% of population everywhere) in order for risk from "riding in a car" to be "at least an order of magnitude" higher.

Okay. I already did that in recent memory, which is why I felt confident stating what I did.

Since you gave a statistic for car accidents, I'll do the same for the covid side: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm

Since the start of 2020, there have been 576 "All Deaths involving COVID-19" among people under 18 in the US. Compared to 60,811 deaths from all causes, that's slightly less than 1% of all child deaths.

The 576 covers almost two years, so let's call it 300 deaths/year. Not accounting for the slight difference in age ranges, that's 1/8 your number of 2400 deaths/year from car accidents. I'd call that roughly one order of magnitude lower. If you clump in children under 13 in your car accident statistic, I suspect it would fall below 1/10.

Is my math wrong or is your math wrong? If my math is wrong I would love to understand why.

I think your math doesn't distinguish between rates and amounts: indeed, if every kid in the US got COVID and only 600 died, then sure, you could make the claim that it's less risky than driving. (Also, the pandemic would be over, rendering this whole conversation moot.)

The truth is we don't know how many kids in the US have had COVID, but I'm pretty sure it's not 100% of them -- which is why the number I cite is the estimated case fatality rate and not just the total number of cases.

If you throw in an unknown scaler and fudge it, then yes you can make the statistic do whatever you want. I'd argue it's not a relevant or useful statistic, though. It's analogous to you telling me my risk of dying from a bullet to the head is near 100%. It's technically true, but I'm not going to super glue a kevlar helmet to my head.

What’s the unknown scalar? We know the case fatality rate.

Oh, my apologies, I originally misinterpreted one of your earlier messages when you brought up underreporting.

I understand where the 0.05% case rate number comes from (reported deaths divided by reported cases). I do personally think the reported deaths number is probably slightly over-reported and the reported cases is significantly underreported.

Even if the case fatality rate is accurate, I just don't think it's useful when assessing personal risk unless you routinely go out of your way to catch covid. If you start getting into that level of detail, you at least need to correct for comorbidities as well.

Specifically, when I say that it's an order of magnitude less likely for a teenager to die from covid than a car accident, I don't mean a teenager that caught covid or a teenager that was in a car accident. I mean a randomly sampled teenager out of the 60 million or so in the US.

I was thinking about it a bit more. Apparently the fatality rate of car accidents is 0.7%, so comparing that to a covid case rate of 0.06%, it seems like it's still an order of magnitude less fatal for a teenager to get into a car accident than to catch covid. It's been an interesting discussion, and I've enjoyed diving into the numbers more. Thanks!

You're ok with a 1 in 50 chance of dying?

I know that people can have difficulty interpreting probabilities, but given the outcome, you don't think those are really terrible odds? Of course the medicine also has a risk profile but it's clearly much, much lower.

Also it should noted that even when covid doesn't kill you it can have debilitating effects that linger or are permanent.

Would you get on a plane if there was a 1.5% chance of it crashing every time?

According to the CDC, the actual infection fatality ratio is 0.6%. Fortunately vaccination cuts that pretty close to zero.

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

> Fortunately vaccination cuts that pretty close to zero.

Unfortunately as can be seen in table 5 from the link below, vaccination does not bring the fatality rate close to zero. It brings it closer to zero depending on your age. Bearing in mind this applies to hospitalized patients only(therefore not exactly IFR), the rate of death was reduced by vaccination in people over the age of 50, but not in people under the age of 50. Vaccination helps in certain cohorts.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

There is free trial of World of Warcraft, download the game and make a warrior character.

You start with 5% critical strike chance, see how often that happens.

You will be seriously surprised.

2% is pretty damn high. Only 2.4% of allied troop that landed in France on D-Day died also.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com