5 ms·

> Something like 1% of people receiving inoculation would develop full-blown smallpox. No vaccine courts for those folks. They at least got the benefit of bein

> Something like 1% of people receiving inoculation would develop full-blown smallpox. No vaccine courts for those folks. They at least got the benefit of being inoculated against a virus which would have a 30% chance of killing them. This made it very likely for the inoculations to be positive risk tradeoff for all the troops who were ordered to get them. The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. Another point of contrast is that smallpox inoculation was sterilizing and prevented the inoculated from being able to spread the disease.

mullingitover 5y ago
> The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. True, if you only narrowly focus on the immediate benefit to the individual there are head-spinning number of laws and rules that don't make sense in civilization.
- nojokes 5y ago
  You do not get a flu shot to not get killed by flu. Nobody really expects that it would be likely. You take it to not get a bad case of flu. Well, bad case of COVID-19 is worse than bad case of flu. This alone should be enough to get vaccinated but there is more: you may also develop long lasting symptoms (aka long covid) or get some more serious complication like myocarditis (more likely than from a vaccine).
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  What other sort of benefit is there supposed to be? The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. If we're acknowledging that the immediate risk tradeoff might be negative, these would be the first vaccines in history that people were widely expected to take on those terms.
  - nuerow 5y ago
    > The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. In case you are unaware, reducing the spread of a virus also lowers the odds of sparking new variants, not to mention the fact that limiting or eliminating the spread of a virus also contains and limits the risk posed by new variants.
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      I hear this point raised often with no scientific evidence ever offered to back it up. Actually, some recent research found that the vaccinated were more likely to host antibody-resistant escape variants (in this case Delta): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v... A similar effect has been observed for leaky vaccines in chickens, where for Marek's disease they actually encouraged the breeding of hotter and more virulent strains. In terms of playing host to new variants the biggest risk may be the immunocompromised, who are not able to be vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompromised-patients-covid-variants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompr...
      - nuerow 5y ago
        > I hear this point raised often with no scientific evidence ever offered to back it up. Oh really? In that case I'm sorry to tell you that you are totally oblivious to how very basic princples of biology work. Here's a helpful reading. https://now.tufts.edu/articles/how-viruses-mutate-and-create-new-variants https://now.tufts.edu/articles/how-viruses-mutate-and-create... It's litteraly the first search hit from a very basic google search, which goes to show how well informed is your remark on "no scientific evidence".
        AndrewBissell 5y ago
        This isn't scientific evidence, it's theoretical discussion and a priori reasoning.

mullingitover 5y ago

> The same is not necessarily true for a healthy 19 year old without comorbidities who is forced to get a Covid vaccination to attend college. True, if you only narrowly focus on the immediate benefit to the individual there are head-spinning number of laws and rules that don't make sense in civilization.

nojokes 5y ago
You do not get a flu shot to not get killed by flu. Nobody really expects that it would be likely. You take it to not get a bad case of flu. Well, bad case of COVID-19 is worse than bad case of flu. This alone should be enough to get vaccinated but there is more: you may also develop long lasting symptoms (aka long covid) or get some more serious complication like myocarditis (more likely than from a vaccine).
AndrewBissell 5y ago
What other sort of benefit is there supposed to be? The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. If we're acknowledging that the immediate risk tradeoff might be negative, these would be the first vaccines in history that people were widely expected to take on those terms.
- nuerow 5y ago
  > The reduction in infection and transmission risk for Delta from the vaccines is marginal at best, wanes quickly, and might well be defeated completely by future variants. In case you are unaware, reducing the spread of a virus also lowers the odds of sparking new variants, not to mention the fact that limiting or eliminating the spread of a virus also contains and limits the risk posed by new variants.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    I hear this point raised often with no scientific evidence ever offered to back it up. Actually, some recent research found that the vaccinated were more likely to host antibody-resistant escape variants (in this case Delta): https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262139v... A similar effect has been observed for leaky vaccines in chickens, where for Marek's disease they actually encouraged the breeding of hotter and more virulent strains. In terms of playing host to new variants the biggest risk may be the immunocompromised, who are not able to be vaccinated: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompromised-patients-covid-variants/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/03/11/immunocompr...
    - nuerow 5y ago
      > I hear this point raised often with no scientific evidence ever offered to back it up. Oh really? In that case I'm sorry to tell you that you are totally oblivious to how very basic princples of biology work. Here's a helpful reading. https://now.tufts.edu/articles/how-viruses-mutate-and-create-new-variants https://now.tufts.edu/articles/how-viruses-mutate-and-create... It's litteraly the first search hit from a very basic google search, which goes to show how well informed is your remark on "no scientific evidence".
      - AndrewBissell 5y ago
        This isn't scientific evidence, it's theoretical discussion and a priori reasoning.