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Comment by Mikeb85 | Hacker News Reader

> but aren't the side-effects of covid well established, on average more severe, and much more common?

You forgot to account for the risk of getting the virus. If you choose to get the vaccine, the probability is 1. But what's the probability of getting Covid? Definitely less than 1.

For certain age groups (young men), the risk of complications * probability of getting the vaccine (1) was more than the risk of complications from COVID * the probability of getting it (let's say 0.25 or so).

Remember, COVID hasn't been shown to be particularly dangerous to young people...

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> Remember, COVID hasn't been shown to be particularly dangerous to young people...

Having seen the impact of covid on young family members and others in my extended social circles, I believe that there's a long tail of effects that we won't be able to see the full picture of for years to come. There's a lot more that should be considered in the decision than just risk of death.

But the vaccine does not help with those effects, and importantly it doesnt prevent infection.

I'm a numbers guy. I happened to just stumble onto this article [0], summarizing a study on the vaccines and long covid:

> Compared to an unvaccinated individual, the risk of long Covid in a fully vaccinated individual was cut by only about 15 percent, the study found.

> Dr. Greg Vanichkachorn, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Covid Activity Rehabilitation Program in Rochester, Minnesota, who was not involved with the new study, said the results were not “too surprising.”

> “We know that the majority of folks with long Covid have not had severe infections,” he said.

Not very much help against long covid on average, nothing like the protection against hospitalizations in vulnerable populations.

[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/vaccines-offer-li...

Something I've been wondering about: has anybody tried to separate out the effects of the pandemic itself from the symptoms of long covid? So many of the symptoms of long covid are incredibly nonspecific. I believe there was a study on long covid patients that found that the only long covid symptom that had a significant correlation with actually having tested positive for covid was loss of smell and taste. There is a lot of evidence that social isolation and sedentary lifestyles are detrimental to our health and we now live in a world where loads of people barely left the house or spoke to anyone other than their immediate family members for the better part of two years. We're seeing widespread effects throughout society in everything from education to crime to the amount of violent incidents on airplanes. It's likely that millions of people who do not have long covid are currently in some form of mental health crisis related to the pandemic. Overdose deaths and suicides are up. I wonder how many people started the pandemic with no major covid risk factor and now have a risk factor such as obesity or diabetes that can be directly linked to the psychosocial effects of the pandemic.

I'm not suggesting that long covid doesn't exist, but I wonder how much of that long tail of effects can actually be causally linked to covid infection (obviously not talking about things like lung damage, though I do wonder if stress and isolation could have affected previously healthy people's immune systems). My personal experience with mental health issues suggests that they can have severe and wide-ranging physical effects that are as bad as any disease.

I don't have links handy, but I remember seeing studies that show brain aging on the order of ~10 years in long covid patients reporting brain fog. That could also be a result of sedentary living as a result of the lockdown, it seems unlikely that it'd be that severe given the length of time involved.

As far as I know the leading theory is that damage to the circulation systems of some covid patients is causing a reduction in the quality of bloodflow in the brain which has obvious negative impacts on neurons.

If you're concerned about an unproven long tail of effects from the virus, you should be equally concerned about the same from the vaccines. They haven't even been around as long as the virus.

From OC:

> wouldn't you need to balance the risk of death / complications from the vaccine against the risk of death / complications from covid multiplied by the risk of getting covid?

For certain demographics the probability of getting infected might be that low, but at least in every social young adult I know, the risk is averaged to well over 1.0. I've been infected twice, before and after the jab, and in both cases the infection was worse (months of recovery, VO2Max reduction) than the acute vaccine side effects (weekend of feeling shitty). Pre-vaccine I'd say it took around 5 months to fully feel recovered, e.g. able to run a 4-miler without feeling like passing out, where-as post-vaccine and prior infection I was well recovered at the 6-week mark.

Wow that’s so scientific considering those are completely different strains of Covid and one infection you got immune naive and one you got after an infection and a vaccination. It’s so clear as mud

> but at least in every social young adult I know, the risk is averaged to well over 1.0.

But the rate of being vaccinated is also over 1.0, since people keep getting boosters.

It's been only 3 years and basically everyone I know has had COVID, some more than once. I don't think it's significantly less than 1.

Given there is likely a correlation between behaviors to reduce likelihood of infection (avoiding crowds, properly wearing effective masks) and willingness to get vaccinated, I would wager the odds of catching covid at least once would be elevated among people opposed to vaccination.

https://time.com/6170735/how-many-people-have-had-covid-19/

It's 60%. Probably.

Meanwhile most vaccinated people have had 2-4 shots. Also keep in mind immunity doesn't last forever, so you need to balance the risk of the shot within a certain timeframe versus the risk of Covid times the risk of complications within the same timeframe. You also can't compare the lifetime risk of Covid versus only 1 shot, both occur within a timeframe since immunity from the shot isn't forever.

60% of the population over a 5 month period had detectable levels of antibodies in their blood, so it's at least 60%. IIRC they are only detectable for a few months (but that maybe also depend on the way of testing I don't know) which would means it's closer to 100% than to 60%.

The risk comparison is indeed not trivial, but I think it's a safe bet that you're going to get covid.

> but that maybe also depend on the way of testing I don't know

There's ~3 possibilities after an infection happens:

* A person's innate immune system quickly fights off the virus. This is a generic set of defenses in our bodies that are always active, and if they succeed then you don't create antibodies in the first place.

* Detectable antibodies, meaning your innate immune system wasn't enough and your adaptive immune system took care of it.

* Antibodies have faded and are no longer detectable. You can still do a T-Cell test (more costly, may take longer?) to find out if you can rapidly create new antibodies, which would mean you're still good despite no longer having antibodies.

There's also the issue of the type of antibodies. The mRNA vaccines are only coding for the spike protein, so your body only learns to fight that - but the virus has mutated away from what's currently in the vaccines. Natural/recovered immunity creates a variety of antibodies that work against different parts of the virus, so that's still effective even against "vaccine escape" variants.

COVID is much less dangerous to younger people but there are still very real risks involved, especially non-lethal ones. Assuming a 25% probability of catching it, how are you coming to the conclusion that the risk of the vaccine is higher?

> risk of the vaccine is higher?

I said within a certain demographic... For old people, the vaccine is obviously worth it. Boys/men from age 10-30, probably not. Hell, a bunch of EU countries literally stopped giving young people the Moderna vaccine:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2021/11/10/germany-f...

Yes, I'm asking within the demographic of say 20-50 how are you coming to the conclusion that the risk is not worth it?

The same way multiple European governments determined the risk isn't worth it...

> COVID hasn't been shown to be particularly dangerous to young people...

In the short term yes, in the long term, that is not known.

In addition, ask any young person involved in sports how catching COVID has affected their training and performance. For mostly sedentary people it might feel like catching a bad cold and then recovering. If you're actually consistently pushing your lungs to their max there's definitely long-lasting (maybe not long-term) damage there.

Covid hasnt infected the lower respiratory tract since what Delta? come on keep up with the strains.

>>In the short term yes, in the long term, that is not known.

Same can be said about the vaccine. The full story has not been written yet.

Investigate everything, make it available to the public, let people decide for themselves what to put in their body.

You forgot to add in the risks of getting COVID and being vaccinated. Every time anyone "does the math" on this somehow they count the vaccine as having 100% efficacy, which is an obvious lie.

Also, if you choose to get the vaccine, then the multiplier for vaccine risks isn't 1, it's 2, or 4, or 6, however many times you get the vaccine.

Yes and it shouldn't just be risk of getting the virus, as it looks like the ability of the virus to migrate to the heart also matters.

With environmental infections, it's possible that most people fight the virus within other parts of the body, with the vaccine it looks like the immune response occurred in the heart for many in this study, specifically right heart, possibly due to proximity or accidental intravascular injection:

>we recorded inflammatory foci predominantly in the right heart, which may suggest a gradual blood-stream derived dilution effect and based on this finding it is at least tempting to speculate that inadvertent intravascular vaccine injection may be contributive

> let's say 0.25 or so

Where did you get this data?

> Remember, COVID hasn't been shown to be particularly dangerous to young people...

What are the top 3 leading causes of health-related deaths in your choice of demographic (15-24? 25-49?) in your choice of 2020 or 2021?

> What are the top 3 leading causes of health-related deaths in your choice of demographic (15-24? 25-49?) in your choice of 2020 or 2021?

Covid was only #3 for all age groups in the USA during the pandemic (and remember, old people are the mostly likely to die at any given point, because, well, they're old). https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm

Meanwhile, Covid is far behind accidents, suicide, drug overdoses and homicide for young people:

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/levels-and-...

I apologize, when I said your choice of demographic I meant your choice of demographic that encompasses "young" as per the topic of your original comment.

Yes, when including the elderly, cancer and heart disease are greater causes of health-related deaths. Is COVID-19 not the #1 health-related cause of death for "young" people?

> accidents, suicide, drug overdoses and homicide

Not long ago this discussion was about health risks, such as infectious diseases or medical complications. But yes, young people can be pretty reckless.

We were doing arithmetic, such as multiplying the risk of myocarditis and hitherto uncorrelated medical complications by 1.0, and then a number that is likely several orders of magnitude larger (death by COVID, not even the much, much more likely disablement of "long covid") by a number you erroneously claimed was 0.25 and was perhaps around 0.6 almost a year ago (anti-body study, 9/2021-2/2022).

> Remember, COVID hasn't been shown to be particularly dangerous to young people...

I have friends in their early 30s who still haven't recovered their sense of smell. Knoew a 25-year-old who spent 4 weeks with terrible symptoms. I'm a marathon runner and lift and in my early 30s and this disease kicked the shit out of me and had 4 with reduced physical function.

It is very obviously worse than the worst flus almost everyone had and the flu is sufficiently dangerous that it has a nontrivial effect in human quality of life.

> If you choose to get the vaccine, the probability is 1

Curiously, probability of what specifically is 1 in that case? I am assuming by 1 you mean 100%, right?

SMH

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