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Comment by mattivc | Hacker News Reader

That is not quite the whole story. They are making it available for anyone in Oslo, at least. [1] I live in Oslo and have an appointment to get a booster tomorrow. I have multiple friends and family members in the healthcare sector, and they are all warning me that we are likely to see a significant spike in the winter. At the same time we are seeing more and more sign that each repeated infection has increased risks. [2]

- [1] https://www.oslo.kommune.no/english/coronavirus/corona-vacci...

- [2] https://time.com/6232103/covid-19-reinfections-effects/

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That's not what the paper cited by Time says. It is a study in the US veteran population, whose health condition is much poorer than the general population. Secondly, the study is set up to pick up bad outcomes. Third, the people compared are those with 1 and 2 infections after the second infection, rather than seeing the effect of each infection. Fourth, the paper is pre-Omicron.

There is also far more than that. The press spun it quite a bit, in a different way.

Personally, all my family members and myself have had a contact with SARS-CoV-2 within the past months. It wasn't particularly pleasant, but certainly not a "deadly virus" (prior vaccination helps, but I'm not a person at risk anyway). It will be the first of many. I stopped caring after I got my second dose, and there's no way I will care now.

> It wasn't particularly pleasant, but certainly not a "deadly virus"

I know somebody who contracted Malaria and lived. It wasn't particularly pleasant but certainly not a "deadly disease".

Malaria is not an infection by a coronavirus (I do know one person too, FTR, my grandfather during the Albanian campaign in WWII). And it is not age stratified like a SARS-CoV-2 infection. And there's no 95% seroprevalence like with SARS-CoV-2 in most regions that had surges.

It might not be a deadly virus now but it certainly was in mid 2020. And things mutate. Flu is harmless as well, except for the years when it isn’t. Minimizing risk for others is a positive human trait.

Flu is not harmless. Not at all. It is a bad disease when symptomatic (30-40% cases may be asymptomatic). In particular for young children and the elderly.

Flu for me was way worse than a SARS-CoV-2 infection (think 40C fever).

SARS-CoV-2 was deadly for a specific part of an immuno naive population (60+). The age stratification was known since February 2020 (first Chinese paper on that from the Wuhan data). My country had zero excess deaths in the 0-50 range since the start of the pandemic.

EDIT: Anti-SARS-CoV-2 vaccines do not block transmission, certainly not now. And as thus, their protection is primarily for one's own benefit.

"making it available" and "mandate" are not the same thing.

I would drop out of Harvard if I was young and was being told to get this vaccine knowing the risks/benefit of the vaccine in young men.

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