3 ms·
> There are three levels of risk here. Individual risk, group risk (protecting people in a more vulnerable group, for example), and societal risk (preventing sp
by ls15 5y ago
> There are three levels of risk here. Individual risk, group risk (protecting people in a more vulnerable group, for example), and societal risk (preventing spread, or limiting the damage to publically funded healthcare by limiting your own risk). Now with omicron, the individual risk for a healthy 30 year old is obviously way down. The societal risk from the disease is very high due to infectivity (staff shortages etc), and the group risk is also rather high as the disease is still pretty bad for the oldest age group, especially without boosters.
So it seems like a good idea for vulnerable people to get boostered. People can protect themselves from severe disease with the vaccination. The evidence that others are protected through a vaccination is pretty much non-existent. A reduction of societal risk is not a strong argument in this case, because the absolute reduction of risk by the vaccine is very small. Below 3%. You need to vaccinate about 100 people in order to prevent one more case, based on data from before last April. I bet it is worse now with Omicron:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00069-0/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5...
- alkonaut 5y ago> The evidence that others are protected through a vaccination is pretty much non-existent No the evidence that it protects against severe disease is pretty strong. But there is no need to even go into that discussion. The evidence that hospitals will be less stressed if more people are vaccinated, so that my risk of (say) getting care delayed for a heart attack or broken bone, is important. > in order to prevent one more case We aren't preventing nearly any cases now with Omicron. The protection is just too low. But the protection against severe disease and death is good. Everyone will get omicron (or a later even more infectious variant) eventually. The question is: how many of them will be severe? How flat will the peak be of severe cases? Vaccinations at this point are about societal risk and severe disease. It's not about individual risk or preventing infection.