Ask HN: Do you regret getting the Covid-19 vaccine?

No, CNN, WebMD, etc. are fixated on the layperson because the general public is their target audience. And it is the general language of that audience that determines the proper usage of phrases like “100% effective”. You can’t unring that bell, or say after the fact that it was actually a bird song. It was journalistic malpractice.

If there actually was a confusion between the medical and common usage of the term (that I strongly doubt), the medical professionals that use “efficacy” in a different sense have the duty to correct the popular media when they misuse the language. The miscommunication lies either with the mass media itself, or jointly with the medical community. Not the audience. (And I doubt the medical community had anything to do with this. I don’t remember reading in BMJ, Lancet, NEJM, etc. anyone claiming “100% efficacy” of, well, anything ever.)

However, a more relevant linguistic issue arose within the medical community itself when using the word “case” in COVID reporting. Epidemiologists are fine with a “case” that shows no symptoms, whereas a clinician on the front lines expects to see a symptom or two before writing up a “case study”. An asymptomatic person is not a “case” to ER physicians, because there isn’t a medical symptom for which a person (at this point not a patient) has asked, or blatantly needs, diagnosis and treatment. Trolling for potential diseases a person might have (calling everyone a “case” for something) is frowned upon by medical ethics boards and insurance companies. (Pharmaceutical firms, on the other hand, just love that sort of behavior…hypochondria is quite profitable.)

>>> It was never sold as "you'll be immune".

> THE NEWS HASNT BEEN TELLING EVERYONE FOR THE PAST YEAR THAT VACCINES COMPLETELY PREVENT THE DISEASE

We're not talking about the past year. We're talking about if they were ever claimed to be 100% effective. Don't move the goalposts. Also, dude, chill out. And anyway, who said they're still claiming 100% efficacy? The anti-vaccine crowd has been mocking the media and Fauci for continuously decreasing the % efficacy claims. (Not that it's a legitimate criticism, since with a leaky vaccine it's to be expected: but if you overpromise at the beginning, you lose your credibility, and then you get cheap shots.)

> We soon discovered they didn’t last and the virus mutated.

There were plenty of people who saw that coming, but they were dismissed as 'anti-vaccine' and 'anti-science'. Why are you surprised by basic virology?

> We skipped the long-term studies.

Yep. Sure did. Wonder what else we're going to find.