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Comment by throwntoday | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how anyone can deny the risks inherent to getting a shot. However insignificantly low you can demonstrate the possibility of side-effects from the vaccine are, the risks associated with actually getting covid were just as low.

Given the vaccine isn't even preventing covid now, you're only compounding your risk by getting it. This is undeniable no matter what you think about vaccines, mandates, etc.

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Can't believe we're still having this debate. There are indeed risks to the vaccine. There are also risks to covid (both immediate and longer term). My understanding based on the research is that for the vast majority of the population the sum of the risks of vaccine plus (usually) a milder case of covid are materially lower than the risks of getting covid if you're unvaccinated.

A vaccine doesn't have to stop you getting something to reduce your risk of serious illness, death and possibly long covid.

"Going back at least as far as the polio vaccine, which was widely released to the public in the 1960s, we’ve never seen a vaccination with long-term side effects, meaning side effects that occur several months or years after injection."

https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/covid-19-vaccine-long-ter...

I think the risks of lying in a hospital, strapped to a ventilator were a lot higher with Covid than with getting the shot. To be honest I would recommend the shot even if just to prevent potential month-long loss of smell, as I experienced it (I think that symptom is less prevalent with recent variants though, but I could be mistaken)

> I think the risks of lying in a hospital, strapped to a ventilator

Being managed by medical professionals with no experience or training on said ventilator or enough personnel to accurate monitor the ventilators or even put the right people who actually need a ventilator and not just everyone that walked in the door.

Yes, hospitals were woefully unprepared in many cases, and there certainly were errors in proper care. That doesn't mean though that all or even most uses of ventilators were wrong.

Even with the shots I had 2 weeks where I could not smell.

Definitely one of the strangest things I've had happen to me.

To be honest I'm actually not sure what the numbers are when it comes to preventing that particular symptom. It was just the most annoying one to me personally. In case the vaccines don't prevent it in any meaningful way after all I simply recommend them to prevent, unlikely but possible, severe cases and death.

I think the use of ventillators was deemed overzealous and reactionary before we even had a vaccine rollout.

Covid gave me a fever for two days. The vaccine gave me a fever for two days. I don't see how either was better/worse than the other in my case.

The people who couldn't breathe certainly appreciated the ventilators. Possible that some were hooked to them unnecessarily, but certainly not all of them.

Do you think that your personal experience of covid automatically means that everyone else's was, is, and will be, exactly the same? Or can you accept that there is a bell curve distribution of possible physiological responses to a covid infection?

Perhaps society should consider homelessness a solved problem because you personally have a home?

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