> Saying “vaccines are safe” is like saying “drugs are safe”. Without qualification it’s a lie. Drugs tested to be safe are safe. Vaccines tested to be safe are safe.
> The problem with the whole anti-anti-vaxxer thing is that any nuance gets lost. I’ve been called an antivaxxer (on the internet) for stating that I don’t want to take a poorly tested vaccine candidate.
> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
> BTW, because both the mortality and unproven (and imo nonexistent) “long term impacts” of COVID-19 are so dramatically overblown, the threshold for “this vaccine is safe” will be very loose IMO. Especially simce you can argue that the societal benefit of the vaccine means it’s worth more risk than the risk of COVID infection.
It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.
> Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown
The mortality rate for healthy people is incredibly low.
For example Singapore has had ~54,000 cases with a death count of only 27 since it was mostly young healthy people who got it.
Likewise there has been basically no excess deaths in many European countries for <65 years olds.
This is not at all how the media is treating covid.
The mortality rate may be low over the long run. But certainly over the short run, it was very very high. It is not a normal thing for city morgues to run out of room such that they need to truck in refrigeration units to hold dead bodies. This has happened in multiple American cities. That cannot be called a low rate by any stretch of the imagination, unless taking an average over a very long length of time.
Where "a very long length of time" = "more than a couple of weeks"?
> But certainly over the short run, it was very very high.
So what? If you're alive now, if you survived the initial wave of the virus, the risk to you, now, of getting the virus is much less than it was back in March.
And if you're trying to figure out if the risk of the vaccine is worth it to you later this year, you have to weigh it against the risk of dying from covid-19 at that point in time, not what the risk of dying from it was back in March.
> But certainly over the short run, it was very very high
Was it very very high in the <65 not obese, not diabetic group?
We know it is dangerous to the old and some cities did a horrendous job of looking after their elderly.
What about the countries that did have a lot of excess deaths in the 25-44 and 45-64 age ranges? Like the US for example?
You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.
Since it's highly unlikely that the lethality of the virus depends on which continent it's on, a more likely explanation is that people in the US are more likely to belong to any of the risk groups by being obese or by having diabetes.
Check the number of deaths by age group at EuroMOMO: https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
The total number of covid-19 dead that were younger than 45 in the countries that EuroMOMO covers is in the low thousands, while the total number of covid-19 dead is in the low hundreds of thousands. That's two magnitudes lower risk compared to the general lethality.
Every individual has to do their own risk analysis, and see if they belong to any of the risk groups for covid-19, because that changes the individual equation.
> You are just picking and choosing random data points to make very broad statements.
Is the data random? Would it really cluster like that across countries?
I don’t think your statement makes a lot of sense.
> Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real
If you're a healthy adult, your risk of dying or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+ or have any of the comorbidities.
I am a healthy adult, I am neither obese nor a diabetic, I don't smoke, I don't belong to any of the risk groups. For me, the risk of dying of covid-19 is in the ballpark of 1:100000, and decreasing, because we're getting better and better at treating the disease. If I catch the virus, I am overwhelmingly likely to suffer as much as I would of a common cold.
Those are the numbers that any vaccine has to beat in order for me to consider getting it. Provably beat. I'd rather wait until you and a couple of million people have had the vaccine before even thinking about getting it, thank you very much.
It's not the death rate that's worrying for most age groups, it's the health effects.
It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates but early estimates from the Chinese data suggest it's 4.25% for people in their 40s[0].
If you get hospitalised (or even if you don't) you have a significant chance of long-term health problems.
I don't know if that estimate has come down since we've not had to rely on filtered China data but a 1-in-20 chance of hospitalisation seems worrying enough for individuals and a huge problem for society if you let the virus get out of control.
> or being affected by any long-term effects of the virus is about two magnitudes less than the risk for people who are 70+
What data are you basing this on?
[0] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...
> It's strangely difficult to get up-to-date information about hospitalisation rates
Here's data for Sweden:
https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6...
Total number of confirmed cases for people in their 40's: 13687. Of those, 282 ended up in the ICU, and 44 ended up dead.
Since the number of actual cases is higher than the confirmed cases, the 2% hospitalization rate the above numbers result in is an upper bound.
And since the number of actual cases is probably at least a magnitude higher than the confirmed cases, the hospitalization rate for people in their 40's is probably somewhere around 0.2%. That's 1-in-500, not 1-in-20.
Note that these numbers completely ignore risk factors. There's also this page with data about risk factors for patients in Sweden: https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/ https://www.svt.se/datajournalistik/corona-i-intensivvarden/
Scroll down to "riskgrupper", and you can see that for men between 40 and 59, 22% were diabetic, 31% suffered high blood pressure, and 11% had some kind of chronic lung disease, for example.
So if you don't belong to any of these risk groups, the risk of you suffering long-term health problems from the virus is even lower than 1-in-500.
> It's statements like this and the one above why you get called an antivaxxer i suspect. Both the mortality rate and the long term impacts of COVID19 are both real and have not been overblown, there is a lot of evidence out there, but you just need to talk to any medical professional who has worked in the hospitals that treated patients to hear how bad this virus is. But it sounds like you have made up your mind already even though you say they are unproven (which they are not) , so you I guess you're making this assessments based on idiology not evidence.
On the contrary, those talking of "lifelong complications" and "long haulers" are ideologically motivated. I have looked at the actual research, as well as thought deeply from a more theoretical standpoint, and have found the risks to be entirely overblown, particularly with respect to my risk category.
Yeah then explain all of the people with months long symptoms like reduced lung capacity, fogginess, loss of hair, weakness, headaches, and all of these symptoms rotate and coalesce in variant ways. This is reported in otherwise healthy 20-50 year olds that haven't been able to shake the consequences of catching the virus.
You throw IMO around like it matters what your opinion is to the rest of the world. I'll take empirical evidence, known post-virus complications, and scientific research over you opinion any day.
There are all kinds of horror stories one can imagine from a new type of vaccine like the Moderna one, but enough humans won't need it to balance out the risk of those that do.
There's no good answer. We either vaccinate or we let millions of people suffer and die. It's not a good choice...but it's one we have to make.
I'm moderately high risk and if all goes well with the trials and there are no significant mutations that the vaccine can't address, I'll be first in line.
I think in all of this, the number one fear is a mutation like the 1918 flu. It went from killing very young and very old to killing everyone. From a V to a W. Covid-19 is mostly a hook pointing at the very old. Let's hope it stays that way.
> Personally I am not afraid of SARS-CoV-2, for someone in my risk category the risk of bad outcomes is vanishingly low. Whereas a rushed out novel vaccine - which by definition cannot be tested for long term effects - is much more risky, personally.
Do you have data to support these two claims?
Edit: I am not sure why I have been downvoted for requesting support data regarding two quite strong claims. Someone, even if it's not the downvoter, care to explain?