6 ms·

Here are some numbers in a similar direction: * Eight deaths out of 13 million doses is 0.6 micromorts from getting the vaccine, about equivalent to driving 15

by jefftk 4y ago

Here are some numbers in a similar direction: * Eight deaths out of 13 million doses is 0.6 micromorts from getting the vaccine, about equivalent to driving 150 mi. * For a 35-year-old man in the US, risk of death if you're diagnosed with covid is 0.1% [1] or 1000 micromorts. [1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mortality-risk-estimator https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/covid-pandemic-mort...

__turbobrew__ 4y ago
IF you are diagnosed with covid, which ignores all those who have minor or asymptomatic symptoms and never get diagnosed skewing the stat to those who had worse symptoms.
- jefftk 4y ago
  Adjusting for that would bring us from ~1000 micromorts to ~250: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34138781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34138781
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
areyousure 4y ago
And how does the probability of getting diagnosed with Covid change if you get the AstraZeneca COVID‑19 vaccine?
- jefftk 4y ago
  Expected number of future infections goes down a bit, and risk of death conditional on a given number of infections goes down a lot.
bluejekyll 4y ago
I was unfamiliar with the term micromort, it’s basically one a million chance of death: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
- shagie 4y ago
  The advantage of using micromorts is that they're units that can be added and directly compared. As a populace, we tend to be rather bad at doing fractions and percents - things like mpg - going from 34 to 50 mpg is less of a savings than having a vehicle go from 18 to 28 mpg for the same distance traveled. Consider the problem: you must either do X (1/200 chance of death) or YZ (Y has 1/300 chance of death, Z has 1/300 chance of death). Reworded this becomes: you must either do X (5 micromorts) or YZ (Y is 3.3 micromorts, Z is 3.3 micromorts). And now you've got things that are easier to compare and work with in a scale that we can think about. Most people are doing things on the scale of 0 to 20 micromorts. The more adventurous are doing things that get up to 100 or so. The thrill seekers go up from there. This is also a concept in insurance - https://www.insurancethoughtleadership.com/six-things-commentary/micromorts-new-way-talk-about-risks https://www.insurancethoughtleadership.com/six-things-commen... Cambridge University - Professor Risk https://youtu.be/a1PtQ67urG4 https://youtu.be/a1PtQ67urG4 A previous discussion on it from 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462
teraflop 4y ago
Those numbers aren't really comparable, because the meaningful decision you can make is between "getting vaccinated" and "not getting vaccinated". If you don't get vaccinated, you still might not contract COVID, and if you do contract it, the chances are pretty good that it won't be severe enough to ever be diagnosed by a doctor. So that 1000 micromorts is estimated from a subset of people whose outcomes were significantly worse than average. I still think it's almost certain that, for a typical healthy person, getting the vaccine is by far the safer choice. (And that's before we even start worrying about non-fatal outcomes such as long COVID.) But the difference is probably a lot less than the 3 orders of magnitude you're suggesting.
- jefftk 4y ago
  > If you don't get vaccinated, you still might not contract COVID My understanding is at this point very nearly everyone has either contracted COVID or been vaccinated? And that your chances of never getting COVID if you remain unvaccinated are extremely low? But even if this was 75%, it only changes you from a 1000 to 750. The denominator in my statistic I don't think was diagnosed by a doctor, it was just having a positive PCR test, which could happen through regular surveillance. But I agree that that's something we need to adjust for if we want things to be directly comparable. The CDC estimates this is about a factor of 4 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...), bringing the 750 down to 190. Still much larger than 0.6!
  - landemva 4y ago
    > your chances of never getting COVID if you remain unvaccinated are extremely low That is right. And some get infected without suffering harm, as was known by early reports from the quarantined Diamond Princess boat. Passengers in a cabin with infected mates sometimes had no medical issues. It is important to consider how certain groups such as children had nearly zero negative outcome from the virus while developing robust antibodies and this without the shots. For children the vaccine risks outweighed gains that may have been helpful to those in high risk categories (older compromised lung capacity obese).

by jefftk 4y ago

__turbobrew__ 4y ago

IF you are diagnosed with covid, which ignores all those who have minor or asymptomatic symptoms and never get diagnosed skewing the stat to those who had worse symptoms.

jefftk 4y ago
Adjusting for that would bring us from ~1000 micromorts to ~250: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34138781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34138781
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

areyousure 4y ago

And how does the probability of getting diagnosed with Covid change if you get the AstraZeneca COVID‑19 vaccine?

jefftk 4y ago
Expected number of future infections goes down a bit, and risk of death conditional on a given number of infections goes down a lot.

bluejekyll 4y ago

I was unfamiliar with the term micromort, it’s basically one a million chance of death: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort

shagie 4y ago
The advantage of using micromorts is that they're units that can be added and directly compared. As a populace, we tend to be rather bad at doing fractions and percents - things like mpg - going from 34 to 50 mpg is less of a savings than having a vehicle go from 18 to 28 mpg for the same distance traveled. Consider the problem: you must either do X (1/200 chance of death) or YZ (Y has 1/300 chance of death, Z has 1/300 chance of death). Reworded this becomes: you must either do X (5 micromorts) or YZ (Y is 3.3 micromorts, Z is 3.3 micromorts). And now you've got things that are easier to compare and work with in a scale that we can think about. Most people are doing things on the scale of 0 to 20 micromorts. The more adventurous are doing things that get up to 100 or so. The thrill seekers go up from there. This is also a concept in insurance - https://www.insurancethoughtleadership.com/six-things-commentary/micromorts-new-way-talk-about-risks https://www.insurancethoughtleadership.com/six-things-commen... Cambridge University - Professor Risk https://youtu.be/a1PtQ67urG4 https://youtu.be/a1PtQ67urG4 A previous discussion on it from 2013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6266462

teraflop 4y ago

Those numbers aren't really comparable, because the meaningful decision you can make is between "getting vaccinated" and "not getting vaccinated". If you don't get vaccinated, you still might not contract COVID, and if you do contract it, the chances are pretty good that it won't be severe enough to ever be diagnosed by a doctor. So that 1000 micromorts is estimated from a subset of people whose outcomes were significantly worse than average. I still think it's almost certain that, for a typical healthy person, getting the vaccine is by far the safer choice. (And that's before we even start worrying about non-fatal outcomes such as long COVID.) But the difference is probably a lot less than the 3 orders of magnitude you're suggesting.

jefftk 4y ago
> If you don't get vaccinated, you still might not contract COVID My understanding is at this point very nearly everyone has either contracted COVID or been vaccinated? And that your chances of never getting COVID if you remain unvaccinated are extremely low? But even if this was 75%, it only changes you from a 1000 to 750. The denominator in my statistic I don't think was diagnosed by a doctor, it was just having a positive PCR test, which could happen through regular surveillance. But I agree that that's something we need to adjust for if we want things to be directly comparable. The CDC estimates this is about a factor of 4 (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burden.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...), bringing the 750 down to 190. Still much larger than 0.6!
- landemva 4y ago
  > your chances of never getting COVID if you remain unvaccinated are extremely low That is right. And some get infected without suffering harm, as was known by early reports from the quarantined Diamond Princess boat. Passengers in a cabin with infected mates sometimes had no medical issues. It is important to consider how certain groups such as children had nearly zero negative outcome from the virus while developing robust antibodies and this without the shots. For children the vaccine risks outweighed gains that may have been helpful to those in high risk categories (older compromised lung capacity obese).