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Comment by rtlfe | Hacker News Reader

> In the US, roughly as many vaccinated people in the US die from COVID every day as there are total deaths across the country in motor vehicle accidents.

It's truly shocking that we're not doing more to reduce car dependency.

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So here's what the pandemic should've made patently clear: people weigh up human lives against inconveniencce all the time. What is wearing a mask? it's an inconvenience. It clearly reduces transmission rates and would thus save lives but many don't want to be inconvenienced.

Even taking the vaccine is merely on the level of inconvenience. After billions of dollars, the scaremongering horror stories about "side effects" and "long term effects" have of course never eventuated.

Road deaths? We choose the convenience of driving (sometimes at unsafe high speeds, sometimes drunk) over the deaths that result.

Even guns. The very idea that someone with mental health issues shouldn't be able to just go and buy a semi-automatic assault rifle is an inconvenience deemed too onerous.

Gambling? For a small segment of the population gambling addiction is really devastating. Yet we're OK with casinos.

Same for alcoholism.

But 3,000 Americans die in a terrorist attack and we collectively absolutely lose our mind, launching two wars, directly and indirectly killing hundreds of thousands and spending trillions of dollars in the process.

3,000 people is about the peak of how many were dying to Covid every day during the height of the pandemic.

Think about that.

>After billions of dollars, the scaremongering horror stories about "side effects" and "long term effects" have of course never eventuated.

Never eventuated, like you mean Astrazeneca was never suspended in eighteen countries on three continents? and Nordics never suspended Moderna?

That never happened in your reality? Wild.

Yes, suspended, but then resumed once it was determined the risks were very low and suitable techniques were established to handle the adverse reactions.

False.

Moderna remains banned in the Nordics for boys/men under 30. NHS does NOT give AZ boosters, only mRNA. NHS will not give AZ for those under 40, only mRNA.

[1] https://thl.fi/en/web/infectious-diseases-and-vaccinations/w...

[2] https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/coronavir...

Neither of those links back up your claims. The pause on administering Moderna was originally set to expire December last year - I can't find any suggestion it was extended after that (wikipedia claims it's still restricted in Finland, but the source is an article from December). At any rate the risk was identified as extremely rare, and I'm yet to see any indication it has caused deaths in anyone under 30 in the many countries it's definitely used. Use of AZ as a booster I understand to be unadvised due to efficacy concerns.

Why are you reading Wikipedia instead of the official government data that I linked?

Directly from the Finnish and British governments.

First link. Click on “vaccines for young people”: Moderna is still banned for boys/young men in Finland. They’ll only give you Pfizer.

The NHS link states exactly what I wrote in my comment too.

Why are you denying the official government sources? Follow the science and advice of competent authorities.

Ok so one country has chosen, for whatever reason, not to administer Moderna to men under 30, presumably on the basis that they feel other alternatives are safer (with an explicit note that the guideline is a temporary precautionary measure). That's hardly proof that vaccines are harmful. All medical treatment carries risk. But the risk of refusing it vastly outweighs that.

PS. I still don't see anything on the NHS site indicating there's any concern that AZ is harmful to those under 40.

>Ok so one country has chosen

FALSE. 20+ countries.

You apparently simply refuse to follow the science from credible authorities.

>But the risk of refusing it vastly outweighs that.

FALSE. Again, why are you refusing to follow the science?

UK's JCVI which is the official scientific body advising the UK govt, and staffed by internationally renowned immunologists and infectious disease specialists, recommended against universal vaccination to 12-15 year olds.

It was specifically due to the risk-benefit consideration, because the benefit is marginal and risks of infection in that age category are very low. [1]

This is the list of the prominent scientists who made those calls.

  Professor Andrew Pollard, Chair (University of Oxford)
  Professor Lim Wei Shen, Chair COVID-19 immunisation (Nottingham University Hospitals)
  Professor Anthony Harnden, Deputy Chair (University of Oxford)
  Dr Kevin Brown (Public Health England)
  Dr Rebecca Cordery (Public Health England)
  Dr Maggie Wearmouth (East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust)
  Professor Matt Keeling (University of Warwick)
  Alison Lawrence (lay member)
  Professor Robert Read (Southampton General Hospital)
  Professor Anthony Scott (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
  Professor Adam Finn (University of Bristol)
  Dr Fiona van der Klis (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Netherlands)
  Professor Maarten Postma (University of Groningen)
  Professor Simon Kroll (Imperial College London)
  Dr Martin Williams (University Hospitals Bristol)
  Professor Jeremy Brown (University College London Hospitals)

>I still don't see anything on the NHS site indicating there's any concern that AZ is harmful to those under 40.

on the NHS website I linked: "if you're pregnant or under 40 you'll usually be offered appointments for the Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna vaccines"

Notice how AZ is NOT offered first to those under 40. Did you expect something like: "WARNING. AZ WILL KILL YOU"?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/joint-committee-on-vacc...

Again, absolutely none of that demonstrates vaccines being harmful, only that certain institutions have taken a particular position out of an abundance of caution. Elsewhere in the world literally billions of people in all age groups have received vaccines of all types. If significant numbers were dying or suffering severe long term side effects from said vaccines, we'd know.

FALSE. We do know.

That's why certain vaccines are NOT given to certain populations. That's precisely why JCVI declined to recommend, it was based on RISK vs benefit considerations.

Because we know. In an emergency, in a global pandemic, a recommendation AGAINST universal vaccination isn't taken lightly, and you seem to imply you know better than JCVI?

lol.

Where did I say I was recommending universal vaccination?

The benefit-to-risk ratio may well be quite low for particular vaccines with particular age groups. Again, that's not the same as saying particular vaccines are "harmful". By any reasonable definition all the vaccines we have are extremely safe, and for anyone with a typical chance of contracting COVID and having it develop into a serious illness, I can't see why you wouldn't choose any of them.

I know you were referring to using cars less but

- you need a license - you usually need insurance - there are a large amount of laws dedicated to driving - there are often dedicated police to enforce those law - cars themselves have a huge number of mandated safely systems Etc

It's normal that something causing so much death would have a large amount of regulation

Increased popularity of WFH probably helps a bit. You can order groceries to your house pretty easily as well.

Do they magically appear at your house with no addition driving involved?

(Sorry, that came off snarkier than I intended. Online ordering of food just kind of outsources the driving, doesn’t reduce it. Different maybe for delivery trucks that serve multiple houses per trip.)

Not magically, but if you have one delivery vehicle making a route by n addresses, could that not be more efficient than n independent round trips?

It can be more efficient but the question remains if it's more likely to kill than otherwise (not all travel miles are equal).

In one state 34% of traffic fatalities involved alcohol. So Uber may do more for that than grocery delivery.

Grocery delivery drivers may also be better drivers because drive more often. Or, they may be overworked and rushing to complete deliveries.

Stats on % of car accidents (esp. fatalities) involving delivery vehicles would be good to see actually, they must be available somewhere?

The DOT almost certainly tracks "real" delivery drivers (think: semi trucks, etc), but who knows how much gets reported from fly-by-night outfits like Uber and Doordash.

https://cdan.dot.gov/query could probably return something useful if poked long enough.

could be, isn't though.

So what's your plan then for groceries to magically appear in someone's house without driving or delivery?

And if you say walk or bike or bus you clearly have very different shopping than I do - let me see you carry 2 cases of 15 bottles of seltzer, and a cart full of groceries on any of those.

When a supermarket is only a 10 minute walk away (20 minutes round trip), you just go more often and carry smaller amounts. Even if you suddenly needed 30 bottles of seltzer in the same day, you can just walk there and back twice.

If the supermarket is only 0.5 miles away, it's going to be quite small.

Normal sized supermarkets are in the range of 5 or so miles apart.

I am not interested in living in a place where tiny stores are my only option.

Also, why would I want to waste my time walking 20 minutes multiple times a week, plus time in the store? That sounds dreadful, why would you want that?

Also, there’s more distribution costs and more distribution driving for numerous small stores Vs big stores.

I don’t really have a plan, just pointing out how it just moves around who is driving. One option is to buy in bulk vast majority of stuff to make fewer trips and then have delivery trucks do fresh/perishable groceries, like the ol’ milkman. Which, of course, is already a thing but a bit different from the newer grocery delivery model.

Also, while I like the sidewalk robot pod things and flying delivery drones, I legitimately like the idea of delivering stuff with PVC pipes and little electric pods. A little on the small side for groceries, but seems pretty doable without adding congestion or noise (to surface streets or the air). https://i.pipedreamlabs.co/

Traffic deaths went up during the pandemic, so unfortunately WFH is not effective at impacting traffic deaths.

https://www.gao.gov/blog/during-covid-19-road-fatalities-inc...

Definitely not what happened in Australia! But lockdowns and travel restrictions here were much stricter.

or to make working public transportation a norm across the country and interstate travel

These are not mutually exclusive, reducing car dependency requires massive investment in public transit.

That's my point, if you had better transportation system it'd reduce car dependency, but you can't create economically viable public transportation system for suburbs, which were designed to maximize roads. Not be pessimistic, but it'd take efforts along the line of fighting a new world war to fix this. People who live in suburbs suffer with a form of stockholm syndrome and really thing they are living the best life. Yet they end up spending most of their lives isolated and in traffic. Cities should be designed that things you need daily/weekly/monthly are close to you. Let's see what do I need, or have needed in last two weeks: Pharmacy, medical specialists, grocery stores, hardware store, barber shop, food shops, accountant, library, park... and I've walked to all of them. For each one of these I'd have to make potentially a separate trip in a car, if I was living in suburbs.

I'm well aware of that (and have written at length about that on this site in the past). Your comment just seemed like it was saying "you can either reduce car dependency OR have good public transit, not both," which was probably a misreading on my part.

Please see comment on why this won't happen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31894308

that's hilarious.. but here is a thing lot of people grew up entirely dependent on cars in suburbs, so they think that's the best. They really have no other perspective, only context they have is really bad buses in really bad neighborhoods. And obviously if you are drawing your conclusion based on that limited experience you will conclude that I'd never pick to be in there. Same with suburbs, people who were born there, grew up there and now are living there will come up with bunch of reason why it's SOO GOOD to be there. But they don't know the ease of being in walking distance of doctors, pharmacy, gym, grocery stores, chain food stores, public transportation, parks, school, etc. I who has lived in NYC, had to live in a suburban area due to job for a year. And I finally understood things about USA culture that I couldn't get before..

- Why in movies college is seen as peak of life? Because if you live in a suburb that's the last time you are going to be around new people in general. Rest of your life is going to be in isolated house, isolated car, and some workmates.

- Why car was/is seen as a symbol of freedom? Need to buy milk? drive 10 miles in that direction, need to go to gym? drive 8 miles in that direction.

- Why guns are so valuable? If you live in middle of nowhere cops aren't coming on time..

- Why going to church is so big? Well that's the last place left to socialize after college, that and walmart.

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