Meanwhile the US has had 6300+ Covid deaths for the ~46 million Americans aged 18-29.
Pretty easy to see the numbers favor taking the vaccine.
I am sure you can draw similar differences in risk of boarding a boeing plane vs an airbus plane (because so few events contribute to deaths and boeing had a few crashes recently). The reality is that either is a risk too small to worry about and it would be absurd to insist on one over the other.
Understanding statistics isn’t just about computing things, it is also about looking at the numbers.
2. I had side effects after both injections, including a day in bed with fever. This is not a candy.
For example, I know a guy that was a triathlete but a year after Covid still can’t breath well enough to run.
He is 19.
About 20% of young and 40% of adult people in the US are considered obese [1], which has been closely associated with more severe COVID-19 cases [2].
Additionally, even young and completely healthy people have parents and grandparents. While they themselves can be completely fine after a run-in with COVID-19, their family may not be... just look at your workplace and sick leaves. It's usually all the parents that call in sick at the same time because some wave of shit is sweeping through the schools, be it the regular common cold, RSV, flu, norovirus, whatever. The problem is, us humans have adapted somewhat to these viruses, but not against SARS-CoV-2... and now it spreads to the affected generations via the children.
Can you imagine just how horrible a 10 year old feels when he learns that the COVID infection he got at school killed off his grandparents?
[1] https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/obesity-a...
[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-covid-19-more-de...
The mRNA vaccines did reduce R below 1 in populations with reasonable vaccine coverage of the initial Wuhan strain, increasing to optimistic (but achieved in many countries) vaccine coverage with the "British" Alpha strain. And then becoming unviable to reduce R below 1 with Delta and later. But even then, vaccination reduced the average reproductive number, which from a public health perspective had great temporary value in buying more time for getting vaccines to all who needed and wanted them.
Europe will probably officially roll back its vaccine passport thingy soon, exactly due to this. Granted, that's a bit late, which is another example of not working based on the facts we have, but then again most countries have practically ignored these rules for more than six months already.
I do have sympathy for the arguments around bodily autonomy/coerced vaccination/violation of fundamental democratic right of travel and so on, but it's a question with a bit of nuance to it.
Instead we have absurd covid policies. France for instance treats double jabbed but not boosted people as unvaccinated. Whatever was the short term effect expected from the booster in Dec last year, it is long gone now, and the omicron wave never translated in a meaningful increase in hospitalisations, booster or no booster. Health authorities are applying moronic policies. My patience with this absence of common sense has evaporated.
It could have been the case, but it was “all going to blow over” and “not a big deal”.
And hence the US became an infection vector for the whole world.
> France for instance treats double jabbed but not boosted people as unvaccinated.
So?
> the omicron wave never translated in a meaningful increase in hospitalisations, booster or no booster.
Pure disinformation.
“During the Omicron-predominant period, overall weekly adult hospitalization rates peaked at 38.4 per 100,000, exceeding the previous peak on January 9, 2021 (26.1) and the peak rate during the Delta-predominant period (15.5).”
It’s been more than two years. Disinformation such as yours is transparent by now.
Just admit that it’s political - e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23405649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22614676 - and save all of us some time.
French authorities are corrupt morons, but there are countries in the world that largely do evidence-based health policy once they get around to it. Norway’s did very good, in general. Including cancelling AstraZeneca, which made everyone get up in arms about how irresponsible they were.
The mRNA vaccines don’t stop the spread of COVID.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.12.30.21268565v...
But you know this, right? After 2+ years?
At this point, it’s one side of the aisle cherry-picking pre-print, non-peer-reviewed papers to justify their not getting vaccinated because they bought in 100% to the narrative that it’s not a big deal and will blow over.
Everyone knows this by now.
The people you’re conversing with simply don’t care if they kill someone.