I don’t want to file a religious or medical exemption because I don’t have one. I want to file a “I shouldn’t have to do this” exemption.
1. I understand getting the vaccine is unpleasant (personally I was knocked out for 36 hours after the second dose with a high fever and body aches), but the linked study showed that the booster lowered chances of death by 90%. Yes, things like age and underlying health have a big impact, but many seemingly healthy people have either died or been hospitalized from that. Forgetting about mandates for a moment, on a personal level, why wouldn't you want to get something that showed such high efficacy against death and hospitalization that had such a low, temporally finite cost?
2. Just wanted to comment that I do agree that employer-initiated mandates make no sense to me if you are fully remote. Sure, restrictions on coming into an office unless you've been vaccinated make total sense to me, but mandating for remote employees makes no sense from the perspective of the reality of how the virus is transmitted.
Because they've already determined that their current health is already highly effective at keeping them out of hospital and death.
So you want them decrease their risk from 0.2% to 0.1% and in exchange expose them to a vaccine that's:
- Expires in a few months
- They've already had a history of reacting to (further shots always worse)
- No one takes liability for
- Relatively has higher risk of side effects among their profile
- Unknown long term risk
It doesn't seem like a good deal
> So you want them decrease their risk from 0.2% to 0.1%
The linked study said those that had gotten a booster had 10% of the risk of those that didn't, so using your first number it would be like 0.2% to 0.02%.
> Expires in a few months
It's unknown how long the booster would last, or if after the booster the recommendation would be to move to something annual like flu shots.
> They've already had a history of reacting to (further shots always worse)
The person I responded to didn't say what their reaction was, or if it was time limited. Also, "further shots always worse" is demonstrably false, I know a couple people who had bad (yet, again very short term) side effects with the second dose and barely anything for the booster.
> No one takes liability for
The US government specifically runs a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html
> Relatively has higher risk of side effects among their profile
The person I responded to didn't mention this
> Unknown long term risk
Vs. the now well-known long-term risks of contracting Covid, which given its prevalence seems highly likely that your long term choices are (a) never leave your house, (b) reduce likelihood and severity of infection with a vaccine, or (c) get Covid.
It's well within reason to expect that it won't be longer than the 2nd dose.
> The person I responded to didn't say what their reaction was
I kind of extrapolated based on the parent's parent. I had a personal example in mind. Chest pains after first shot, heart palpitations after 2nd, checked at ER. These are myocarditis signs and a booster makes me very uneasy. This I would guess is the most commonly brought up examples of potentially serious side effects.
> Relatively has higher risk of side effects among their profile
Just generalising, assuming young healthy male with no underlying health conditions.
> Vs. the now well-known long-term risks of contracting Covid, which given its prevalence seems highly likely that your long term choices are (a) never leave your house, (b) reduce likelihood and severity of infection with a vaccine, or (c) get Covid.
It's inaccurate to have "Never leave your house" as an option, situations are different. Different case numbers based on location, different personal lifestyles. On the other hand, the vaccine risk is fixed, you either take it or don't.
I'm personally happy doing continuous risk assessment and acting accordingly and if I did catch Covid then so be it, risks are extremely low already.