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I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Even if vaccinated people could get COVID (which they can) and could get sick (which they currently do, to some ex

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion. Even if vaccinated people could get COVID (which they can) and could get sick (which they currently do, to some extent) - the question is ultimately whether or not vaccinated people die at the same rate. As long as Rate of Death for Vaccinated < Rate of Death for Unvaccinated + Rate of Death for taking Vaccine; you should be vaccinated, regardless of age.

standapart 5y ago
I'm not sure how you came to this decision rule. There are plenty of things which strictly decrease my mortality rate, by some non-zero amount, which I do not do and are not recommended for me.
- hnzix 5y ago
  20-somethings are at a lower risk for mortality, that doesn't mean they won't suffer long COVID symptoms like arthritis and reduced lung function. And also infect more vulnerable age groups.
  - standapart 5y ago
    True. However, because viral fatigue and related complications are generally present among symptomatic people (and 20-somethings are less symptomatic than other age-cohorts) it might well be that your risk of these things is also lower-- even if, conditioned on being symptomatic, the risk of "long-COVID" in 20-somethings is higher. I think the jury is still out regarding risk ratios for long-COVID, however-- partly because the pathology is rather ill-defined and still developing. The more important point is just that viral fatigue and respiratory complications are not new things. They are present for a range of viruses. The mere existence of these factors is not pertinent to the "public good" point that the original comment centered on.
Zpalmtree 5y ago
But his point was on that of getting vaccinated as a "public good" - not on the vaccinations impact on your personal risk from covid. Excluding your personal risk, getting the vaccine does not prevent you spreading covid. Probably, it reduces your spread, as you have less symptoms, though.
- standapart 5y ago
  Thanks, yeah. It is completely plausible, I think, that vaccination for any cohort of subjects could reduce their infectivity. The decision rule, however, is never the existence of a non-zero number. It is always a question of magnitude and whether that magnitude has meaningful impact. Just to clarify this point: if you experiment with some simple SIR or SIRS models (which are not useful in modern epidemiology, but I digress) you will observe threshold phenomenon. This means that there will be broad ranges where perturbations of parameters (for instance, R0) have little meaningful effect on the progression of the outputs (for instance, the number of infected). Then there will be very small intervals where slight perturbations of parameters have a very meaningful effect on the outputs. For instance, there's not that much difference between R0=5 and R0=6, but there's quite a lot of difference between R0=0.999 and R0=1.001. This is just to say that: it's plausible that vaccination has little to no impact on actual spread of Covid variants in the global population. I'm not saying this statement is true, I'm just saying that this statement is far from being disproven. There's just not enough evidence to call covid vaccination a "public good" and care about whether the low-risk get it.
bronzeage 5y ago
It's Rate of death for vaccinated * probability of catching covid < Rate of death of vaccinated * probability of catching covid-19 + probability of dying from vaccine. As probability of catching covid-19 decreases, it makes less sense to vaccinate, and if the probability of catching covid-19 is 1%, the vaccine death rate needs to be 100 times smaller than the reduced covid-19 death rate. For young people I think the numbers are against the vaccine. If it significantly stopped spread that would be different - but the new variants statistics make it pointless at 39% only efficacy. At this point the numbers are just sadly against vaccines. I'm saying this as a disappointed vaccinated young person. I wouldn't have taken it with the currently known numbers.
ekianjo 5y ago
Except that Rate of Death for taking Vaccine is completely unknown and under-reported by authorities who have a vested interested in getting everyone vaccinated.
Izkata 5y ago
> regardless of age Age is a very important factor; high risk is heavily weighted towards the elderly for infection, and so far side-effects seem to hit all age groups for vaccination, possibly even weighted slightly towards the young due to an overreaction from a stronger immune system.

standapart 5y ago

I'm not sure how you came to this decision rule. There are plenty of things which strictly decrease my mortality rate, by some non-zero amount, which I do not do and are not recommended for me.

hnzix 5y ago
20-somethings are at a lower risk for mortality, that doesn't mean they won't suffer long COVID symptoms like arthritis and reduced lung function. And also infect more vulnerable age groups.
- standapart 5y ago
  True. However, because viral fatigue and related complications are generally present among symptomatic people (and 20-somethings are less symptomatic than other age-cohorts) it might well be that your risk of these things is also lower-- even if, conditioned on being symptomatic, the risk of "long-COVID" in 20-somethings is higher. I think the jury is still out regarding risk ratios for long-COVID, however-- partly because the pathology is rather ill-defined and still developing. The more important point is just that viral fatigue and respiratory complications are not new things. They are present for a range of viruses. The mere existence of these factors is not pertinent to the "public good" point that the original comment centered on.

Zpalmtree 5y ago

But his point was on that of getting vaccinated as a "public good" - not on the vaccinations impact on your personal risk from covid. Excluding your personal risk, getting the vaccine does not prevent you spreading covid. Probably, it reduces your spread, as you have less symptoms, though.

standapart 5y ago
Thanks, yeah. It is completely plausible, I think, that vaccination for any cohort of subjects could reduce their infectivity. The decision rule, however, is never the existence of a non-zero number. It is always a question of magnitude and whether that magnitude has meaningful impact. Just to clarify this point: if you experiment with some simple SIR or SIRS models (which are not useful in modern epidemiology, but I digress) you will observe threshold phenomenon. This means that there will be broad ranges where perturbations of parameters (for instance, R0) have little meaningful effect on the progression of the outputs (for instance, the number of infected). Then there will be very small intervals where slight perturbations of parameters have a very meaningful effect on the outputs. For instance, there's not that much difference between R0=5 and R0=6, but there's quite a lot of difference between R0=0.999 and R0=1.001. This is just to say that: it's plausible that vaccination has little to no impact on actual spread of Covid variants in the global population. I'm not saying this statement is true, I'm just saying that this statement is far from being disproven. There's just not enough evidence to call covid vaccination a "public good" and care about whether the low-risk get it.

bronzeage 5y ago

It's Rate of death for vaccinated * probability of catching covid < Rate of death of vaccinated * probability of catching covid-19 + probability of dying from vaccine. As probability of catching covid-19 decreases, it makes less sense to vaccinate, and if the probability of catching covid-19 is 1%, the vaccine death rate needs to be 100 times smaller than the reduced covid-19 death rate. For young people I think the numbers are against the vaccine. If it significantly stopped spread that would be different - but the new variants statistics make it pointless at 39% only efficacy. At this point the numbers are just sadly against vaccines. I'm saying this as a disappointed vaccinated young person. I wouldn't have taken it with the currently known numbers.

ekianjo 5y ago

Except that Rate of Death for taking Vaccine is completely unknown and under-reported by authorities who have a vested interested in getting everyone vaccinated.

Izkata 5y ago

> regardless of age Age is a very important factor; high risk is heavily weighted towards the elderly for infection, and so far side-effects seem to hit all age groups for vaccination, possibly even weighted slightly towards the young due to an overreaction from a stronger immune system.