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The vaccine can 1) hurt me with probability p1, and 2) help me with probability p2, in case I get COVID later in a few-month-window after the vaccine when it is

• edmundsauto 5y ago
  Transmission to others is still an issue in the un-vaccinated. Your logic doesn't make sense. You absolutely can choose to not get the serious covid version that hospitalizes you: by getting the vaccine! By socially distancing, and not hanging out with people who don't take very basic precautions. Even your second sentence: "COVID may hurt me either way" doesn't reflect reality - it's MUCH MUCH MUCH more likely to hurt you if you are unvaccinated. And while personal details may vary, we can estimate covid risks pretty well with the population base rate, sliced by a few basic dimensions (age, BMI, smoker status). We also have a pretty good idea of vaccine risks - almost none. We may not know vaccine side effects long term, but we also don't know the effects of long term covid. We do know that short term, the disease is way worse than the vaccine, and the more people that have it, the more chance it gets worse. Look, I'm all for people making their own choice when it comes to the vaccine. Similarly, I think it's fair that society have a say about when unvaccinated people are allowed to participate in society.
  • effie 5y ago
    > You absolutely can choose to not get the serious covid version that hospitalizes you: by getting the vaccine! By socially distancing, and not hanging out with people who don't take very basic precautions. That is not strictly true. Vaccination decreases the chance of bad COVID, but it does not eliminate it. This benefit is working for some people, but it is not for some other people (bad breakthrough cases, people with weak/no immune response to the vaccine who later get COVID). Limiting contact with strangers via distancing and masks is a sensible strategy for someone afraid to get bad COVID. Except for intoxicating with CO2/H20 and being short on O2, there are little risks to this so I do practice that. > it's MUCH MUCH MUCH more likely to hurt you if you are unvaccinated Yes but both numbers are too small for me to care enough to risk the vaccine. This isn't the first week of the pandemic - we got more than a year and in this time people around me are still completely fine living their life, the virus has literally no impact where I live. It is different for other people who knew people who died from COVID, so they think COVID is much more scary. But numbers are clear - COVID isn't a plague-level problem and not everybody needs to get vaccinated for their benefit. > the disease is way worse than the vaccine, and the more people that have it, the more chance it gets worse. That is not obviously true. There is a competing opinion that it is not good policy to mass vaccinate with too leaky a vaccine, because there is the dire possibility that it will put pressure on the virus evolution so it gets better at evading this kind of vaccine. I am not saying one or the other is obviously the correct one, but I do not think anybody can say with certainty. > Similarly, I think it's fair that society have a say about when unvaccinated people are allowed to participate in society. Society has a discussion - and there is still no clear consensus on what to do. Different states/countries do different strategies. I think that is a good thing - in case some policy turns out to be quite bad, at least it won't kill everybody.