Thanks for responding, I am genuinely curious if my math is wrong so appreciate the discussion. First, regarding "worst case side effects", I am willing to acc

Thanks for responding, I am genuinely curious if my math is wrong so appreciate the discussion. First, regarding "worst case side effects", I am willing to accept your premise that elevated rates of narcolepsy was in the 2009 A(H1N1) vaccine was worse, and do some math based on that. Looking solely at deaths (let alone potential long term health risks of contracting covid). The IFR for those over 75 is about 4.6% now https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v7 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.23.20160895v.... If you assume that people had a 10% chance of contracting the disease, you can say that those over 75 would have approximately a 0.46% chance of dying (4.6 in 1,000 dead) if they don't get the vaccine. If they do get a vaccine, that turns out to be as bad as Pandemrix (I believe your example of the worst case side effects), then you would expect 1 in 18400 to get narcolepsy. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandemrix). So if you are a regulator looking at the elderly population, and you assume this is tied for Pandemrix, then for every 18,400 people you would assume 1 case of narcolepsy if you give the vaccine, and 84.64 dead. (85x by volume). I don't know your opinion of "how much worse is death versus narcolepsy?". If you believe death is 10x worse than narcolepsy, then by severity and volume, taking a vaccine with the worst side effects ever would seem about 850x better than not taking it (in elderly populations). Earlier in the pandemic, when IFRs were over 2x as bad, this was well over 1,000x better. If you are getting different math, please let me know, because even using Pendemrix, I cannot seem to justify banning vaccines on utilitarian grounds. Now I do agree that moving responsibility from drug companies to the government is fine, but I think that can be addressed directly if that is a concern. If the argument is "without government assuming responsibility they would be too expensive", I don't think we have any proof of that, not enough for a ban.