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logicalmonster 5y ago

> COVID-19, on the other hand, has an overall 1.66% chance of killing someone (38,043,754 cases, 629,644 deaths). An honest, apples to apples statistical comparison here would compare 18-24 year old death rates to 18-24 year old heart problems risk, not lumping all deaths regardless of age together. > I would rather take a 0.002% non-fatal risk than a 1.66% fatal risk. Statistical problems aside, I’m happy if you take a vaccine or boosters that you feel is necessary for your health. I think all the unvaccinated want is the same absolute right to decide the same for themselves.

jyounker 5y ago
The unvaccinated are volunteering themselves as breeders for the next stronger and nastier version of covid, and they pose an active danger to those who cannot be vaccinated.
- munk-a 5y ago
  And, honestly, those who have been vaccinated. Covid-19 has been observed to spread more easily in populations with large unvaccinated proportion and end up infecting (and killing) a larger number of vaccinated people. Additionally, I am extremely concerned that their irresponsible actions are going to let Covid-19 mutate enough that it can work out a variant that the vaccine will be ineffective against.
- strenholme 5y ago
  Agreed. The main COVID-19 mutations of concern right now are happening in other countries where the vaccine is not widely available yet. The Delta variant was first seen in India, the Beta variant was first seen in South Africa, and the Gamma variant was first seen in Brazil. We need to make sure the entire world is vaccinated to stop these mutations from coming out of the woodwork. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2 for sources and discussion)
- incrudible 5y ago
  This is speculation. I might as well speculate that a vaccine that does not prevent infection or spread, but also puts selective pressure on the virus to escape vaccine immunity, is likely to lead to a vaccine-escape mutation when administered to a large population. This mutation then poses a risk to those who would need the vaccine that has now become ineffective. The fact that we currently see mutations coming out populations that aren't vaccinated is a number's game. Most of the world population is not vaccinated. Vaccinating the last 30% in developed nations will not change that.
  - logicalmonster 5y ago
    Speaking of speculation, I would strongly speculate that the vaccine will greatly increase the spread of illness. If the vaccines dull the symptoms to the point that vaccinated people don't readily know that they're sick, then vaccinated people aren't going to be staying home when they're carriers. In contrast, it seems far likelier that unvaccinated people will feel ill and stay home.
    - munk-a 5y ago
      That is a very real danger with constant medication and vaccination - however the observed effect has been the opposite. The lowered impact of sickness leads to shorter periods of contagiousness which has lowered the spread rate. The vaccine is effectively lowering the r-value. A large proportion of unvaccinated persons is strongly correlated with higher case rates.
      - incrudible 5y ago
        > the observed effect has been the opposite Did you really observe that? There's many highly vaccinated countries that have seen spikes with extremely high r-values.
strenholme 5y ago
That was a reasonable back of the envelope calculation, and I notice that the criticism of my figures was done without providing better figures. However, I am willing to come up with more suitable figures. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... says there have been 2,630 deaths from COVID-19 for 18-29 year olds (never mind the suffering COVID-19 causes people in this age range). Something that causes 2,630 deaths is more risky than something causing 229 non-fatal hospital visits. > I think all the unvaccinated want is the same absolute right to decide the same for themselves. In terms of freedom of choice, I think we would be a lot better off just giving our extra vaccines to Mexico until that have a higher vaccination rate; Mexico has, last time I looked, a 25% vaccination rate compared to the 50% vaccination rate in the US. Once Latin America is well vaccinated, we can circle back to the vaccine hesitant here in the US. There was recently a rather morbid conversation on Reddit speculating about how much vaccine hesitancy might help Democrats in future elections: https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/pbeigk/desantiss_poll_numbers_plummet_as_florida_deals/habvbcj/ https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/pbeigk/desantiss_... Not to mention this graph: https://i.redd.it/4o4i7arucpj71.png https://i.redd.it/4o4i7arucpj71.png (Discussion: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pbzaeg/oc_usa_covid_cases_per_100k_stratified_by_county/ https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/pbzaeg/oc_... )
- incrudible 5y ago
  I have remarked upon your numbers in another comment. Why do your own math based on outdated newspaper articles and statistics websites when there are scientific publications and FDA documents to draw upon? Calculating the crude chance of death based on population averages is misleading, because those will have risk groups massively over-represented.
  - strenholme 5y ago
    The CDC figure for number of COVID-19 deaths among 18-29 year olds is 2,761. https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex-and-Age/9bhg-hcku/data https://data.cdc.gov/NCHS/Provisional-COVID-19-Deaths-by-Sex... So, guess what, those “newspaper articles and statistics websites” have the same general numbers as more official sources like the FDA; indeed, the CDC’s own numbers are higher than the number I used for COVID-19 deaths among young adults. (And, oh, if you think the CDC’s figures are faulty, I have nothing more to say to you; you’re not looking too good after insinuating that https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998 https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998 didn’t attempt to measure total COVID-19 infections, when, in fact, a cursory reading of the paper shows they did) With something as fast moving as COVID-19, the press often times gets accurate figures before they’re formally published. If you want to convince me the numbers I used are wrong, please give me up to date numbers from reliable sources which contradict my figures. Not estimates from a paper written a few months ago. Finally, I need to flat out ask you: Have you gotten the COVID-19 vaccine yet? I got mine months ago. I will not respond to you again until I know your vaccination status.
munk-a 5y ago
> I think all the unvaccinated want is the same absolute right to decide the same for themselves. And I, personally, refuse to grant them that courtesy. If you want to smoke twelve packs a day (while living in a country with no healthcare) then feel free buddy - but not getting vaccinated effects everyone - including those who choose to help move us past this pandemic by getting vaccinated. This isn't a question of individual rights vs. the authoritarianism in the same way that wanting to be a thief isn't an individual decision. You can't be a thief without stealing from other people so we've agreed as a society to make it illegal - the same goes for vaccination. The US is currently tip-toeing on a knifes edge trying to avoid an open revolt of stupid people while also trying to make the vaccine mandatory - that open revolt would result in a severe jump in case count... but the government is facing facts that simply coddling people won't make the pandemic go away.
- incrudible 5y ago
  Poor analogies and collectivist arguments aside, from a medical ethics standpoint, if my personal risk from being vaccinated outweighs the personal risk of infection, you do not have a right to impose it on me. Despite this being parroted as obviously true, these analyses at this point are based on statistical modeling and conjecture with no regard to personal disposition beyond "age cohort"[1]. [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download (Page 24)
- logicalmonster 5y ago
  > And I, personally, refuse to grant them that courtesy. Inalienable human rights are not a courtesy for you to grant.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    Refusing vaccination is not an inalienable right in America - the Supreme Court has ruled many times that compelled vaccination is perfectly legal for the government. In fact the anti-vax crowd isn't particularly new in the US - it was present when both polio and MMR were being removed as common causes of death. The only real difference this time around is that anti-vax is considered a political tool by one of the US parties and thus has garnered a false legitimacy.

criticaltinker 5y ago

> COVID-19, on the other hand, has an overall 1.66% chance of killing someone (38,043,754 cases, 629,644 deaths) What you calculated is the case fatality rate (CFR), but the infection fatality rate (IFR) is a better representation of risk from SARS-COV-2 infection. The global average IFR is recently estimated to be ~0.15% [1], which is extremely skewed by age. All estimates of age stratified IFR show a gradient that decreases by orders of magnitude with age - we're talking IFRs below 0.003% for healthy young adults and children [2][3]. Furthermore, there is substantial evidence that the CFRs & IFRs are significant overestimates [5]. This completely changes the risk-reward tradeoff for many people. I am not advocating against vaccination (it is a powerful tool that saves lives) - just spreading knowledge and illustrating the fact that everyone has a different risk-reward profile based on their age and health, and should make personal health decisions accordingly. [1] Reconciling estimates of global spread and infection fatality rates of COVID- 19: An overview of systematic evaluations https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/eci.13554 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/eci.13... [2] Infection fatality rate of COVID-19 inferred from seroprevalence data https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7947934/ [3] COVID-19 antibody seroprevalence in Santa Clara County, California https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/50/2/410/6146069 https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/50/2/410/6146069 [4] Model-informed COVID-19 vaccine prioritization strategies by age and serostatus https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/371/6532/916.full.pdf https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/371/6532/916.full... [5] Evaluating the massive underreporting and undertesting of COVID-19 cases in multiple global epicenters https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S253104372030129X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S253104372...

strenholme 5y ago
I addressed the gist of your concerns elsewhere in the thread. There have been 2,630 deaths from COVID-19 for 18-29 year olds (never mind the suffering COVID-19 causes people in this age range) in the US. Something that causes 2,630 deaths is more risky than something causing 229 non-fatal hospital visits (the heart condition which has gotten far too much attention). In terms of IFR vs. case fatality rate, the most comprehensive metastudy you cite, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/eci.13554 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdfdirect/10.1111/eci.13... estimates that we only have 1 case per 10 infections (the Lau 2021 paper which claims we only have 1 case per 50-100 infections is obviously not true in the United States, since the cumulative COVID-19 case count is over 10% of the US population; don’t put too much faith in and do not cherry pick an individual study). Assuming an IFR 10x the CFR, we have a 0.16% IFR rate, which is still orders of magnitude larger than the 0.002% rate we are seeing with people who get that non-fatal heart condition after getting the vaccine (and there’s evidence that they are more likely to get the heart condition from an actual COVID-19 infection than from a vaccine)[1]. Before you repeat the “but young people” argument, an order of magnitude more young people have died from COVID-19 than have gotten that generally non-fatal Myocarditis heart condition after being vaccinated. So we know the risk factor of getting a vaccine is lower. [2] Critical thinking is one thing, but there are a lot of bad faith actors in the “COVID skepticism” movement. Roughly speaking, vaccines have a near-zero chance of having averse side effects, a significant chance of reducing spread of COVID-19 (I myself am still skeptical about the studies which claim vaccinated people still spread the virus to unvaccinated people, since we’re generally seeing an exponential decrease in COVID-19 cases in places where a higher percentage of people are vaccinated), and greatly reduce hospitalizations of people who get COVID-19 [3]. It’s well known that, in the US, skepticism of vaccines and public health measures, unfortunately, have a political bias, and, lo and behold, people with a “COVID denial” (deny that masks help [4], refuse to take the vaccine, refuse to avoid large indoor social gatherings, etc.) political bent are much more likely to get a case of COVID-19 significant enough to report: https://i.redd.it/4o4i7arucpj71.png https://i.redd.it/4o4i7arucpj71.png A lot of this “skepticism” I am seeing reminds me of the young earth creationist arguments which I have seen over the years; they will take any evidence for a young earth, no matter how tenuous, and pretend it’s the one truth while ignoring all of the extensive evidence for an old earth. It’s bad faith arguing; young earth creationists and anti-vaxx “skeptics” do not argue in good faith. This bad-faith skepticism -- which usually consists of poorly researched nonsense like claiming Myocarditis is a real concern if someone gets the vaccine -- is putting people in hospitals and bad-faith skepticism is killing people. I am having to avoid certain family members because they have drunk the kool-aid and refuse to vaccinate. [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998v... [2] To address the “Rambo” argument that young people who do not have co-morbid conditions are unlikely to die from COVID-19, their chance of getting any adverse side effects from the vaccine is also very very low. See https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2021-06-18/pfizers-covid-vaccine-in-teens-and-myocarditis-what-you-need-to-know https://health.wusf.usf.edu/health-news-florida/2021-06-18/p... [3] https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5Qts7/9/ https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/5Qts7/9/ [4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7393808/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7393808/ shows that masks do help

incrudible 5y ago

Please read my post again carefully, because your reply does not address my argument at all. > There have been, from the total of 12,910,312 18-24 year-old people vaccinated, [2] about 229 cases of this rare heart disease (and, in almost all cases, the person was discharged from the hospital the same day with a clean bill of health) That means the vaccine has under a 0.002% chance of causing a very rare but not fatal heart condition. The FDA has recorded[1] a rate of 0.0065% of Myocarditis cases and further estimates[2] a rate of up to 0.02% cases after vaccinations with the Pfizer vaccine, in the 16-17 male group. That risk appears to halve by age 25[3]. The rates with the Moderna vaccine may be higher still[4]. The common misrepresentation of Myocarditis as "mild" is concerning. In many cases, it leads to permanent heart damage, which in turn can lead to cardiac arrest later, significantly increasing mortality risk[5]. When undetected, acute Myocarditis can lead to cardiac arrest under stress, which is the leading causes of death in young athletes[6]. > I would rather take a 0.002% non-fatal risk than a 1.66% fatal risk This is a population average, including co-morbidities, which is highly misleading. The CFR for males under 30 without co-morbidities in high-income countries has been estimated[7] at 0.0003%. At the other end, you have 80+ year males with co-morbidities at 20.08%. [1] https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download (Page 23) [2] https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download https://www.fda.gov/media/151733/download (Page 24) [3] https://www.dicardiology.com/article/overview-myocarditis-cases-caused-covid-19-vaccine https://www.dicardiology.com/article/overview-myocarditis-ca... [4] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-probing-moderna-vaccine-increased-heart-inflammation-risk-washington-post-2021-08-20/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-probing-moderna-vaccine-... [5] https://jcmr-online.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1532-429X-13-S1-M7 https://jcmr-online.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1532-... [6] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sudden-cardiac-arrest/in-depth/sudden-death/art-20047571 https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/sudden-cardia... [7] https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/predicted-covid-19-fatality-rates-based-age-sex-comorbidities-and-health-system-capacity.pdf https://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/predicted-covid-19... (Page 6)

strenholme 5y ago
>your reply does not address my argument at all Yes, it does. I pointed out that the chance of getting Myocarditis is 0.002%, i.e. near zero. I also pointed out, and I repeat myself, that there have been 2,630 deaths from COVID-19 for 18-29 year olds (never mind the suffering COVID-19 causes people in this age range) [1]. Something that causes 2,630 deaths is more risky than something causing 229 non-fatal hospital visits. I also observe you’re quoting stuff which uses estimated risks. The 229 number is a real risk: That’s the number of people who actually got Myocarditis after being vaccinated, a fact you conveniently ignored. To argue that a theoretical risk buried in a report (which correctly felt the risk was very small and approved the vaccine) trumps a real world figure we now have is downright disingenuous bad faith arguing. Going back to your parent post, you allege that the pre-print paper https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998 https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.07.23.21260998 doesn’t “consider that actual COVID infections may be undercounted [sic]” (your words). Did you even read the paper?? Let me quote it: “In the United States, there is no national data on infection rate by age. According to a systematic review and the working assumption of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children may have infection rates similar to adults, with younger people having more mild or asymptomatic cases. Accordingly, we used the estimated 9.2% population infection rate for April 2020 - March 2021.” In other words, no they didn’t just look at case numbers, they made a reasonable estimate of actual infection figures, and based on those estimated figures said that one is six times more likely to get Myocarditis from COVID-19 itself than from a vaccination. Now, it’s possible that a random Ycombinator poster has a better estimate for the number of total COVID-19 infections than a team of scientists writing a paper about COVID-19 and submitting it to peer review, but I’m not holding my breath here. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-from-covid-by-age-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...

I don't know - I consider getting vaccinated to be a matter of common courtesy to those you're going to be interacting with now. I don't feel like thanking fol

I don't know - I consider getting vaccinated to be a matter of common courtesy to those you're going to be interacting with now. I don't feel like thanking fol