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Yes. Any day, and twice on Sunday. If 90% of COVID deaths in the US could have been prevented (in fact, many could have been)[0][1], that cuts this whole thin

Yes. Any day, and twice on Sunday. If 90% of COVID deaths in the US could have been prevented (in fact, many could have been)[0][1], that cuts this whole thing down to a very bad flu season, comparable to the 1957 flu pandemic [3]. Would you rather not cut your risk by 90%? Edit: Incidentally, I have been hit by cars while walking 3 times. No injuries, luckily, since they were very low speed impacts. Why are you seemingly advocating against something (getting a booster shot) that's also extremely unlikely to harm you? --- [0]: https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/coronavirus/new-study-finds-that-40-of-covid-19-deaths-could-have-been-prevented https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/coronavirus/n... [1]: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/covid-19-continues-to-be-a-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-u-s/ https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/covid-1... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%931958_influenza_pandemic#By_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957%E2%80%931958_influenza_pa...

timr 5y ago
> Would you rather not cut your risk by 90%? Depends entirely on the cost vs. the benefit. As I said, a 90% relative reduction is meaningless without knowledge of the baseline risk. And once you know the baseline risk, you can do the math instead of just reacting emotionally.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  Well, let's see: cost, $0, and a few minutes. Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects. Benefit... better immune response to the nasty virus going around. Let's also not forget this doesn't benefit just you; it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus. No emotion involved, at least not from me. Seems clear enough to me. You seem to be the one having an emotional response here.
  - timr 5y ago
    > Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects. How tiny? It matters. Your risk of a bad outcome from Covid-19 is extremely tiny. (Also, by the way: the costs are greater than what you pay for the shot. Miss a day of work? Spend a day in bed? That's a cost.) > it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus. We have no evidence of this, nor do we have any reason to believe elevated antibody levels will continue indefinitely. Antibodies from the third shot will wane, just as the antibodies from the second shot waned, and antibodies always wane after antigen exposure. It's how our immune systems work.
    - actually_a_dog 5y ago
      I'm really starting to wonder what your issue is. Clearly, with the amount of effort you're putting in to obscure the issue, you've got to have some sort of emotion-driven agenda. And your attempts are so plainly transparent, I'll just come out and say it: I don't think you know what you're talking about. People who know what they're talking about don't obfuscate the way you are. Turn your calculator off, and close your spreadsheet. I'll break it down in even simpler terms. The vaccine has been approved by the FDA. They approved it because the costs and benefits of getting the vaccine outweigh the costs and benefits of not getting it. Same with the booster, if you're currently over 16. As for missing work, spending a day in bed, that's not particularly relevant. We're discussing the booster, which means the only people who are relevant are those who have already had 2 doses of the vaccine. These are people for whom that cost is clearly not that significant, because they've already paid it twice. But, if you're making this decision for yourself, this isn't a thought you're going to have, because you already know that. Regarding not infecting people, again, we know the vaccine is effective. It's effective in reducing hospitalization, severe disease, and against getting the disease in the first place. Again, this is why the vaccine got approved. If you don't get the disease, how many people do you think you'll infect, hmm? And, if you have a lower probability of getting the disease if exposed, if you get the shot, does it or does it not mean you will infect fewer people if you get the shot? Simple logic. The rest of what you've written is just some straw man bullshit I didn't say, which, again, I believe you wrote because you have some emotionally driven agenda here. There's no other logical explanation for why you'd want to obscure the issue, when it's so dead simple. It doesn't take 30 minutes of googling and plugging numbers into an Excel sheet to figure out that getting the shot is the best option on a cost/benefit basis. Any questions?
      - nkurz 5y ago
        > Any questions? I'm not timr, but I share a lot of his concerns, so I'll try to answer. I think your model of how he is thinking is probably wrong. Some people (including me) care tremendously about the truth of an argument, independent of whether making that argument leads to a desirable social outcome. His "agenda" is likely a strong philosophical belief that it's more important to base policy on a solid scientific foundation than to reach an apparently preferred conclusion, because this is more likely to reliably reach a long term positive result. At least, that's what it feels like internally for me. Despite your claims, the situation is not simple. Take this paper for instance. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that it is irredeemably flawed. That is, while boosters are probably a good idea for most people, I don't think it will be the case that greater than 1% of the doubly vaccinated but unboosted population will die of Covid in the next year. I think there are methodological problems with their approach that make their specific conclusions mostly meaningless. Unfortunately, despite these flaws, this is probably a higher quality study than most that are being relied upon to make policy. For context, understand that I've been laid out in bed for most of the last week recovering from my recent Covid booster. I still believe that for me, taking a Covid booster probably was a better choice than not taking one. I don't currently believe that it produces the best health outcomes for a 14 year old boy, but I'm open to the possibility that it's best for society as a whole to put young males at slightly greater risk for the benefit of the rest of society. Please consider that you might be overconfident in how obvious the answers are.

timr 5y ago

> Would you rather not cut your risk by 90%? Depends entirely on the cost vs. the benefit. As I said, a 90% relative reduction is meaningless without knowledge of the baseline risk. And once you know the baseline risk, you can do the math instead of just reacting emotionally.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
Well, let's see: cost, $0, and a few minutes. Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects. Benefit... better immune response to the nasty virus going around. Let's also not forget this doesn't benefit just you; it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus. No emotion involved, at least not from me. Seems clear enough to me. You seem to be the one having an emotional response here.
- timr 5y ago
  > Extremely tiny risk of serious side effects. How tiny? It matters. Your risk of a bad outcome from Covid-19 is extremely tiny. (Also, by the way: the costs are greater than what you pay for the shot. Miss a day of work? Spend a day in bed? That's a cost.) > it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus. We have no evidence of this, nor do we have any reason to believe elevated antibody levels will continue indefinitely. Antibodies from the third shot will wane, just as the antibodies from the second shot waned, and antibodies always wane after antigen exposure. It's how our immune systems work.
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    I'm really starting to wonder what your issue is. Clearly, with the amount of effort you're putting in to obscure the issue, you've got to have some sort of emotion-driven agenda. And your attempts are so plainly transparent, I'll just come out and say it: I don't think you know what you're talking about. People who know what they're talking about don't obfuscate the way you are. Turn your calculator off, and close your spreadsheet. I'll break it down in even simpler terms. The vaccine has been approved by the FDA. They approved it because the costs and benefits of getting the vaccine outweigh the costs and benefits of not getting it. Same with the booster, if you're currently over 16. As for missing work, spending a day in bed, that's not particularly relevant. We're discussing the booster, which means the only people who are relevant are those who have already had 2 doses of the vaccine. These are people for whom that cost is clearly not that significant, because they've already paid it twice. But, if you're making this decision for yourself, this isn't a thought you're going to have, because you already know that. Regarding not infecting people, again, we know the vaccine is effective. It's effective in reducing hospitalization, severe disease, and against getting the disease in the first place. Again, this is why the vaccine got approved. If you don't get the disease, how many people do you think you'll infect, hmm? And, if you have a lower probability of getting the disease if exposed, if you get the shot, does it or does it not mean you will infect fewer people if you get the shot? Simple logic. The rest of what you've written is just some straw man bullshit I didn't say, which, again, I believe you wrote because you have some emotionally driven agenda here. There's no other logical explanation for why you'd want to obscure the issue, when it's so dead simple. It doesn't take 30 minutes of googling and plugging numbers into an Excel sheet to figure out that getting the shot is the best option on a cost/benefit basis. Any questions?
    - nkurz 5y ago
      > Any questions? I'm not timr, but I share a lot of his concerns, so I'll try to answer. I think your model of how he is thinking is probably wrong. Some people (including me) care tremendously about the truth of an argument, independent of whether making that argument leads to a desirable social outcome. His "agenda" is likely a strong philosophical belief that it's more important to base policy on a solid scientific foundation than to reach an apparently preferred conclusion, because this is more likely to reliably reach a long term positive result. At least, that's what it feels like internally for me. Despite your claims, the situation is not simple. Take this paper for instance. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that it is irredeemably flawed. That is, while boosters are probably a good idea for most people, I don't think it will be the case that greater than 1% of the doubly vaccinated but unboosted population will die of Covid in the next year. I think there are methodological problems with their approach that make their specific conclusions mostly meaningless. Unfortunately, despite these flaws, this is probably a higher quality study than most that are being relied upon to make policy. For context, understand that I've been laid out in bed for most of the last week recovering from my recent Covid booster. I still believe that for me, taking a Covid booster probably was a better choice than not taking one. I don't currently believe that it produces the best health outcomes for a 14 year old boy, but I'm open to the possibility that it's best for society as a whole to put young males at slightly greater risk for the benefit of the rest of society. Please consider that you might be overconfident in how obvious the answers are.