Mandating that players who are in the highest risk group for myocarditis must be vaccinated had no good basis to begin with
Because that's one of the easiest arguments to dispel. No one should be avoiding the vaccine for that reason. Not even those who had the disease once or twice already.
He still faces the same risk in the future. He still has the same choice. It doesn't change because you are a healthy young person. The risk of this complication is higher from the disease than the vaccine in every group, (the male under 40 doesn't really make a big difference - there you have about a breakeven risk)
He surely has some immunity now, no?
They say natural resistance is better or equal than from the vaccine, everyone apart from anti vaxxers like Djokovic has had a shot or two or three, there's no herd immunity or herd protection
Can someone explain the math to me?
Also people said the regular flu does not exist anymore, give or take, because everyone is wearing masks. Nothing could be further from the truth, full family had flu twice now, me three times(never had that before in my.life, once a year max was normal) and I see the regular flu wave still existing. I haven't had covid that I know of, did tests and am vaccinated.
Who are "they" and what exactly are "they" saying? I think there is a consensus that even if you had the disease, it's wise choice to get vaccinated. Protection from vaccination and recovery is better than protection from only one of them, as far as I understand it.
> Can someone explain the math to me?
What math?
> Also people said the regular flu does not exist anymore
Seasonal flu will of course continue to be a thing. But restrictions obviously meant that last years flu season was kept low in many places around the world. This however means that there could be a worse wave coming this year (and it has happened too in many places - we are in the flu season in the wintery part of the world now). In places with good mask adherence, no big public events and so on, obviously ALL respiratory diseases will have a harder time spreading. But these restrictions are - hopefully - temporary, The flu will be fine.
I know lots of people who were sick but only tested for COVID. One of my friends was out of work for a month with a bacterial infection they missed for 2+ weeks because they only tested for COVID....
No, what I am saying is that mandating them is a stupid idea. Everyone should be free to do a personal benefit/risk assessment before undergoing any medical procedure. Politicians are no medical doctors and they should have no power to prescribe me a medical treatment. If you mix science with politics, you get politics.
I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
And I absolutely agree. Apart from specific situations (e.g healthcare workers) no one should be required to get the vaccine.
But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
> I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
I don’t think it’s pointless. Protection from vaccine helps even in the recovered, healthy and young. But whether he should get it or not isn’t really relevant, what’s relevant is that Australia required it and they can’t exempt him due to past infection (apparently).
Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
I don't think that makes sense. If you cannot see your family again without vaccination, that is a clear mandate to me. If it is not based on clear scientific evidence that shows that there was no better option, then the mandate is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are tyrannical.
If Djokovic only has the choice between getting vaccinated or to give up his title, and if that mandated choice was not justified on a scientific basis, then that mandate was arbitrary and hence tyrannical.
> Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
I think what we are experiencing right now, goes way beyond criticism. Instead of demonizing people with a certain belief (and treating rational critics as collateral), people should try much harder to demonstrate the benefits of the vaccine in an intellectually honest way. And they should be brutally honest regarding side effects. This is almost not happening, as far as I can see.
That makes it a bit of a gray area. "Mandated" as in "you have to take it" is one thing (which few states would hopefully ever try) or "Mandated to do X" is a different thing. Then how much overreach is involved really depends on what X is. Working in hospital? Very reasonable. Attending university? Well, that was always a thing. Crossing borders - this was also always a thing.
> If it is not based on clear scientific evidence that shows that there was no better option, then the mandate is arbitrary. Arbitrary mandates are tyrannical.
One can argue that almost all restrictions during the pandemic had to be based on very shaky science because there simply isn't time to first await the science and then make the decision. And there are surely a lot of restrictions that are much worse to have, than vaccine mandate for immigration. Shutting down schools or banning gatherings, for example.
> then that mandate was arbitrary and hence tyrannical.
Yeah I mean I don't necessarily agree with all the restrictions around the world and got knows Australia has the most shitty immigration politics on the planet - even outside the pandemic. But what I do think is that they should have the right to have whatever restrictions they want (even tyrannical ones) and there isn't much to do about it.
That's my point. People are basing a witch-hunt on unscientific thinking in 2021 on arguments that are not based on solid science. It does not look good and I think that historians will talk a lot about that.
Besides, it's not as if you ask scientists their response would always be "well our science won't say very much until a year from now, so of course we recommend the status quo until we know more!"
Scientific consensus and consensus among scientists can be two different things (i.e., scientists may well agree or even recommend politicians and authorities to do X, well in advance of science being clear).
I think that there is a witch-hunt against people who are considered to think unscientifically, but the hunters do not have a solid scientific basis for their battle calls themselves. I find that ironic and tragic at the same time.
People in this thread and elsewhere attacked Djokovic for avoiding the vaccine, but nobody was able to provide evidence that would explain why Djokovic needs to be vaccinated, given his condition and history. It boils down to "the rules are the rules" and "same rules for everyone". Read that with Hanna Ahrendt's voice. Pure ideology and decoupling from actual reasoning and common sense. We are supposed to base medicine on science, not on ideology, aren't we?
Novak is now in the former category, but he was in the latter - which is why I don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt any more.
And I absolutely agree. Apart from specific situations (e.g healthcare workers) no one should be required to get the vaccine.
But requiring it for crossing borders or playing in a tennis tournament isn’t a mandate. It’s a requirement for a very specific activity that people can just choose to not do. Sure, it’s his job - but such is life.
Remember that vaccines were always mandated for travel, going to university etc.
> I can see, how the vaccine may be utterly pointless for Djokovic, while it may be very important for others.
I don’t think it’s pointless. Protection from vaccine helps even in the recovered, healthy and young. But whether he should get it or not isn’t really relevant, what’s relevant is that Australia required it and they can’t exempt him due to past infection (apparently).
Also, one shouldn’t let an antivaxer free from criticism just because he got the disease and no longer feels he needs the vaccine. He was against it to begin with.
Anyway I want to say that as a matter of fact if a court allows him to enter and play he should be allowed. Not interfering with court decisions is much more important than whether or not a player plays tennis, I don't care if it's an important player on an important tournament, because for me it's not important. I think also he should not enter if he is not vaccinated but for me the "why" is much more important than the "what". We always ask politicians "what" are they going to do, not "why" and "how" and so we keep rewarding luck. So the thing is not if politicians did this or that when the pandemic started, the question is if they were motivated by political interest or followed doctors advice. In this case politicians should follow courts decisions.
He doesn't. He want's to avoid them. For males under 40 the risk for getting myocarditis is higher than for getting it from covid. That has been discussed on HN.
"Take this vaccine against a strain that is not spreading anymore, that you also already had, while we cannot really prove efficacy against the current dominant strain and where you have a higher risk of side effects than others, or just give up your title. Your choice."
They are blackmailing him.
Besides there are numerous other side effects from the virus than myocarditis. Focusinig on this particular one and ignoring all the others is pretty strange.
Relevant passage from the article I believe you are refering to shows that the disk is first of all extremely low in all groups, and second it's not very different in the younger group.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.23.21268276v...
In males aged less than 40 years, we estimated an additional 3 (95%CI 1, 5) and 12 (95%CI 1, 13) myocarditis events per million in the 1-28 days following a first dose of BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; an additional 14 (95%CI 8, 17), 12 (95%CI 1, 7) and 101 (95%CI 95, 104) myocarditis events following a second dose of ChAdOx1, BNT162b2 and mRNA-1273, respectively; and an additional 13 (95%CI 7, 15) myocarditis events following a third dose of BNT162b2 vaccine. This compares with 7 (95%CI 2, 11) additional myocarditis events in the 1-28 days following a positive SARS-CoV-2 test. In older males, we estimated 3 (95% CI 2, 4) and 73 (95% 71, 75) additional myocarditis events per million following a third dose of BNT162b2 and a positive SARS-CoV-2 test, respectively.
Not by official WHO definitions.
101 in a million is equivalent to 1.01/10,000. With 1/10,000 it falls into the bracket for the definition of "rare", not "very rare" or "extremely rare". I wish the media would use these official definitions.
https://www.who.int/medicines/areas/quality_safety/safety_ef...
This is why I think it's so weird to avoid the vaccine due to that risk. It's not like people taking the vax are spinning a roulette wheel with 1/10000 risk of complication, and if they reject the vaccine they don't need to spin it. If that was the case, then I'd understand it.
"The risk is about the same" is not even a good ratio to begin with, and it also does not match with what has been communicated to the public over and over - that the risks would be astronomically small, compared to the benefits. With the ratio that is currently known, the vaccines would have had a harder time to get approved. I don't think that mass vaccination mandates can be upheld as soon as the public becomes aware of the actual ratios.
Yes - as with any medication. But my point is, it's some times seen as being a roulette wheel with the vaccine but no one mentions the elephant in the room which is that the side effects are at worst much more common, and at best about equal, with infection. Basically if you don't get vaccinated, you are spinning a worse roulette wheel.
> The basis for these is even thinner, because especially since Omicron, the benefit/risk ratio is even worse. The risk has not changed, while the benefits just visibly decreased.
There are three levels of risk here. Individual risk, group risk (protecting people in a more vulnerable group, for example), and societal risk (preventing spread, or limiting the damage to publically funded healthcare by limiting your own risk). Now with omicron, the individual risk for a healthy 30 year old is obviously way down. The societal risk from the disease is very high due to infectivity (staff shortages etc), and the group risk is also rather high as the disease is still pretty bad for the oldest age group, especially without boosters.
But even so: vaccines aren't only about individual risk. And vaccine mandates aren't only acceptable when it's a net positive to the individual! On the contrary, when it's a net positive, they may not even be needed - people have incentive enough to get vaccinated anyway!
Mandating vaccines despite unclear individual benefit (and to be clear its STILL very much a solid benefit even for healthy recovered young people, but for the sake of argument) is no easy ethical problem. The answer to that has been different in different countries, or even within countries (e.g. some countries have had varying degrees of mandates for adult vaccine but not even approved it for healthy young chilren because the individual risk is too low).
So it seems like a good idea for vulnerable people to get boostered. People can protect themselves from severe disease with the vaccination. The evidence that others are protected through a vaccination is pretty much non-existent. A reduction of societal risk is not a strong argument in this case, because the absolute reduction of risk by the vaccine is very small. Below 3%. You need to vaccinate about 100 people in order to prevent one more case, based on data from before last April. I bet it is worse now with Omicron:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
No the evidence that it protects against severe disease is pretty strong. But there is no need to even go into that discussion.
The evidence that hospitals will be less stressed if more people are vaccinated, so that my risk of (say) getting care delayed for a heart attack or broken bone, is important.
> in order to prevent one more case
We aren't preventing nearly any cases now with Omicron. The protection is just too low. But the protection against severe disease and death is good. Everyone will get omicron (or a later even more infectious variant) eventually. The question is: how many of them will be severe? How flat will the peak be of severe cases?
Vaccinations at this point are about societal risk and severe disease. It's not about individual risk or preventing infection.