3 ms·

I’d probably be careful using this as a public health communication tool; you’re comparing these risks to things like flying, which people are viscerally afraid

by hyko 5y ago

I’d probably be careful using this as a public health communication tool; you’re comparing these risks to things like flying, which people are viscerally afraid of. Not to mention that the CVST issue is a poorly understood and evolving picture, so it’s hard to confidently assert that the risk is actually a micromort. The perceptive gap between zero risk and extremely small risk is enormous. If I’m young and healthy, I can easily avoid the additional 1 micromort risk of taking the vaccine by simply not taking it. Now what?

jonplackett 5y ago
That is of course true, and you're free to weigh up the risks however you like. Also true that there are unknowns. But the benefits of the vaccine are known too, and the risks of COVID include death and long covid, which also has unknowns and does not look nice. Let me try one more way I have been thinking about it. I'm also weighing up whether I should get the vaccine and TBH made this site as much for myself as anyone else. The point of the site is really to show the fallacy of there currently being zero risk in your life. Comparing 'none' to 'additional' isn't really what is happening. You have risks in your life every day, every time you do anything. On any given day you already have about 1 Micromort's chance of dying from any unnatural causes. So that's 365 a year. So getting that vaccine puts it up to 366. That's an increase in risk of just under 0.3% for the year, from an already pretty low baseline of likelihood of dying that we enjoy these days. This way of thinking helps me. I'm hoping it might help some others too.