3 ms·

Repeat after me: Any medical intervention has a cost/benefit analysis.

by simianparrot 1y ago

novemp 1y ago
So what's the downside of the covid vaccine? A little arm pain for a day or so?
- beeflet 1y ago
  There is no downside to taking any vaccine. I've taken 4 different covid vaccines alongside all their associated boosters when they were available for free. For anyone that isn't afraid of needles and a little arm pain, it's worth it for the peace of mind alone.
  - ifyoubuildit 1y ago
    > There is no downside to taking any vaccine. This is just wrong. Go figure out which vaccines you haven't had, and then figure out why they haven't been prescribed to you. (Hint: It's not because your doctors are anti-vax)
    - croon 1y ago
      While you are technically correct, my charitable interpretation of GP is "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)". It's hard to exhaustively list all qualifiers to statements in short form communication.
      - ifyoubuildit 1y ago
        Still false. Maybe if you qualify it further to currently prescribed vaccines (e.g fda certified ones that haven't been taken off the market for whatever reason, or just superceded by newer better vaccines), you'd be closer, but some of those vaccines still wouldn't be recommended to certain people for certain reasons (say after a certain age, or maybe if they're pregnant, or if they have certain conditions, etc, etc, etc) I don't think it's being particularly pedantic to say "there is no downside to any vaccine" is just wrong, and not really something that should be repeated. It's more of a religious statement than anything else, and it's the exact kind of thinking that comes out of the insane pressure put on people during covid.
        croon 1y ago
        Just so I don't misinterpret your meaning, what specific examples of vaccines are you thinking of? I'll address one as an example, and you tell me if/how I'm wrong: LAVs, like the MMR vaccine, specifically the Rubella portion is contraindicated in pregnancy for the risk of CRS (in the fetus) and recommended instead after pregnancy. But that is because the risk of contracting it is low enough to not warrant immediate protection. But it is recommended both for the adults and children. It's a temporal recommendation, not against. You are not weighing it against getting Rubella itself, so it falls under the conditional "illness you are likely to come in contact with".
        ifyoubuildit 1y ago
        > It's a temporal recommendation, not against. Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it. I'm not claiming any expertise here, but some examples: The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind) HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV. Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples, but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to.
        novemp 1y ago
        > Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples Oh, you're one of those.
        croon 1y ago
        > Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it. No it isn't. Getting rubella while pregnant would be much much worse for the fetus, while likely mild for the woman. > The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind) Ergo: The Jannsen vaccine is better than getting covid without it. > HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV. It is blanketly recommended before coming in contact with HPV. > Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples Ok, if you're open to explore, keep them coming. > , but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to. Vaccines are better than the illness they're protecting from. That's the arguement: > "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)".
- 4gotunameagain 1y ago
  The downsides of a very new, experimental vaccine that the covid vaccine is, have not been clearly established yet. Partially due to tribal, adherent behaviours like the one you are displaying right now. I think it is a reasonable point of view to not want to be the testbed for vaccines that were also rushed to the market to reap the profits, let me remind you. Oh and, I've gotten the vaccine. I'm just not tribal about it.
  - novemp 1y ago
    How long is the covid vaccine going to be "new" and "experimental" for?
    - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
      Until people with your mentality allow proper, unbiased science to tell us the facts. Are you suggesting that you are certain that the covid vaccine is entirely safe, and the benefits outweigh the risks ? And what are your credentials ?
      - novemp 1y ago
        If you're implying there's evidence the covid vaccine is harmful, by all means, share it.
        4gotunameagain 1y ago
        It seems like I'm talking to a wall. Goodbye.
        novemp 1y ago
        I literally said I was willing to hear evidence, and somehow that was enough to make you walk away? Amazing.
      - atoav 1y ago
        So of the 13.84 billion doses administered how many people have seen serious harm and why did I never hear of them? Note that 13.84 billion is a huge number, if every dose was a powerball lottery ticket we should see around 64 jackbot winners. That means nearly every weird thing that can happen by chance, will happen. And since people were on the edge every weird thing will be reported. But even these reports are all like "yeah that person eas already on the verge of dying or had some other weird medical condition and we can't really establish a clear chain of causality". Maybe I am a bit allergic to a generic anti-modern-medicine stance, since my neighbour (my best friends mom), died of a preventable disease because she didn't want to get the known-safe medical remedy and spent a fortune on shamans and other greedy healers instead. She wanted a natural thing and died (as was natural before the advent of modern medicine).
ZeroGravitas 1y ago
So minimize the risk, not the number of vaccinations. Decisions that take you in opposite directions.
allan_s 1y ago
Everything has risks, every time you go out of for a run you can injure yourself, fall badly on the head and die. Nearly all Life decision are about risk/benefits
atoav 1y ago
Yes, but as the pandemic has shown people are phenomenally bad at guesstimating the risk of vaccinations. The cool thing about medicine is that we get pretty good numbers pretty fast for everything. So in the end that choice would just be about knowing the numbers and picking your poison. But that isn't how people make these choices. They will say "it is unnatural to stick a needle into a child" and then have their child infect half of their school plus the parents with measels. The cost/benefit analysis of that hypothetical case is a damn no-brainer for the vaccination, yet that isn't how people act. Meaning if we talk about regular vaccinations (flu, corona, measels, tetanus) just getting all of them is the better choice for the society and yourself. Unless those are crazy expensive for some reason in your place. Where I live all of those are free and take at max 20 minutes for me to get including the walk to the doctor's office. Not having the flu in the winter season is cool, because lying in bed for a week sucks more than a little sting of the needle with no noticable side effects.

Repeat after me: Any medical intervention has a cost/benefit analysis.

novemp 1y ago

So what's the downside of the covid vaccine? A little arm pain for a day or so?

beeflet 1y ago
There is no downside to taking any vaccine. I've taken 4 different covid vaccines alongside all their associated boosters when they were available for free. For anyone that isn't afraid of needles and a little arm pain, it's worth it for the peace of mind alone.
- ifyoubuildit 1y ago
  > There is no downside to taking any vaccine. This is just wrong. Go figure out which vaccines you haven't had, and then figure out why they haven't been prescribed to you. (Hint: It's not because your doctors are anti-vax)
  - croon 1y ago
    While you are technically correct, my charitable interpretation of GP is "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)". It's hard to exhaustively list all qualifiers to statements in short form communication.
    - ifyoubuildit 1y ago
      Still false. Maybe if you qualify it further to currently prescribed vaccines (e.g fda certified ones that haven't been taken off the market for whatever reason, or just superceded by newer better vaccines), you'd be closer, but some of those vaccines still wouldn't be recommended to certain people for certain reasons (say after a certain age, or maybe if they're pregnant, or if they have certain conditions, etc, etc, etc) I don't think it's being particularly pedantic to say "there is no downside to any vaccine" is just wrong, and not really something that should be repeated. It's more of a religious statement than anything else, and it's the exact kind of thinking that comes out of the insane pressure put on people during covid.
      - croon 1y ago
        Just so I don't misinterpret your meaning, what specific examples of vaccines are you thinking of? I'll address one as an example, and you tell me if/how I'm wrong: LAVs, like the MMR vaccine, specifically the Rubella portion is contraindicated in pregnancy for the risk of CRS (in the fetus) and recommended instead after pregnancy. But that is because the risk of contracting it is low enough to not warrant immediate protection. But it is recommended both for the adults and children. It's a temporal recommendation, not against. You are not weighing it against getting Rubella itself, so it falls under the conditional "illness you are likely to come in contact with".
        ifyoubuildit 1y ago
        > It's a temporal recommendation, not against. Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it. I'm not claiming any expertise here, but some examples: The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind) HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV. Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples, but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to.
        novemp 1y ago
        > Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples Oh, you're one of those.
        croon 1y ago
        > Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it. No it isn't. Getting rubella while pregnant would be much much worse for the fetus, while likely mild for the woman. > The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind) Ergo: The Jannsen vaccine is better than getting covid without it. > HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV. It is blanketly recommended before coming in contact with HPV. > Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples Ok, if you're open to explore, keep them coming. > , but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to. Vaccines are better than the illness they're protecting from. That's the arguement: > "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)".
4gotunameagain 1y ago
The downsides of a very new, experimental vaccine that the covid vaccine is, have not been clearly established yet. Partially due to tribal, adherent behaviours like the one you are displaying right now. I think it is a reasonable point of view to not want to be the testbed for vaccines that were also rushed to the market to reap the profits, let me remind you. Oh and, I've gotten the vaccine. I'm just not tribal about it.
- novemp 1y ago
  How long is the covid vaccine going to be "new" and "experimental" for?
  - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
    Until people with your mentality allow proper, unbiased science to tell us the facts. Are you suggesting that you are certain that the covid vaccine is entirely safe, and the benefits outweigh the risks ? And what are your credentials ?
    - novemp 1y ago
      If you're implying there's evidence the covid vaccine is harmful, by all means, share it.
      - 4gotunameagain 1y ago
        It seems like I'm talking to a wall. Goodbye.
        novemp 1y ago
        I literally said I was willing to hear evidence, and somehow that was enough to make you walk away? Amazing.
    - atoav 1y ago
      So of the 13.84 billion doses administered how many people have seen serious harm and why did I never hear of them? Note that 13.84 billion is a huge number, if every dose was a powerball lottery ticket we should see around 64 jackbot winners. That means nearly every weird thing that can happen by chance, will happen. And since people were on the edge every weird thing will be reported. But even these reports are all like "yeah that person eas already on the verge of dying or had some other weird medical condition and we can't really establish a clear chain of causality". Maybe I am a bit allergic to a generic anti-modern-medicine stance, since my neighbour (my best friends mom), died of a preventable disease because she didn't want to get the known-safe medical remedy and spent a fortune on shamans and other greedy healers instead. She wanted a natural thing and died (as was natural before the advent of modern medicine).

ZeroGravitas 1y ago

So minimize the risk, not the number of vaccinations. Decisions that take you in opposite directions.

allan_s 1y ago

Everything has risks, every time you go out of for a run you can injure yourself, fall badly on the head and die. Nearly all Life decision are about risk/benefits

atoav 1y ago

Yes, but as the pandemic has shown people are phenomenally bad at guesstimating the risk of vaccinations. The cool thing about medicine is that we get pretty good numbers pretty fast for everything. So in the end that choice would just be about knowing the numbers and picking your poison. But that isn't how people make these choices. They will say "it is unnatural to stick a needle into a child" and then have their child infect half of their school plus the parents with measels. The cost/benefit analysis of that hypothetical case is a damn no-brainer for the vaccination, yet that isn't how people act. Meaning if we talk about regular vaccinations (flu, corona, measels, tetanus) just getting all of them is the better choice for the society and yourself. Unless those are crazy expensive for some reason in your place. Where I live all of those are free and take at max 20 minutes for me to get including the walk to the doctor's office. Not having the flu in the winter season is cool, because lying in bed for a week sucks more than a little sting of the needle with no noticable side effects.