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All I'm saying is if you sum up the time (between vaccine release and today) that a person was strongly protected from covid infection and transmission, it's a

All I'm saying is if you sum up the time (between vaccine release and today) that a person was strongly protected from covid infection and transmission, it's a relatively small portion of that time. Thats my pushback against gp's argument that you have to give this thing to your young kids to protect me.

estearum 2mo ago
I suspect that you and GP and GGP are talking about different time scales. Vaccinating your children for COVID during peak COVID was the right thing to do both for them and for the adults they interact with. Vaccinating your children for COVID today is much lower ROI for them and anyone around them. Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them. I struggle to think of a decision or conversation where the relevant metric is "what % of time from vaccination until today were you protected" and I doubt that's what GP was discussing either.
- ifyoubuildit 2mo ago
  > Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them. Isn't this kinda like saying medicating your children in general is very much the right thing to do? Like it's obviously one of those things that everyone expects you to just agree with directionally, but the actually correct answer is no, there is no in general. All drugs have a context where they make sense. E.g. you're probably not vaccinating your kids for rabies, unless you live in an animal sanctuary or something. MMR, sure. It actually seems pretty questionable to me that it was ever a net benefit to your average young kid to get the covid shots.
  - estearum 2mo ago
    No there actually is in general and it's the same exact way in which there's generally good guidance for medicating your children: they're called evidence-backed guidelines. The contexts in which drugs make sense is captured by the clinical guidelines. And sure, it is arguably questionable whether there was ever a net benefit to an average young kid to get a COVID vaccine. However that is a distinct claim from "it never made sense to give kids COVID vaccines." There was certainly a point in time in which a logical interpretation of the information available at the time indicated that kids should get vaccinated. The risks were (correctly) understood to be near-zero and the benefits were (arguably incorrectly) understood to be significant. Someone who, in early 2021, decided against vaccinating their children was making a decision that was not indicated by the best-available information at that time. Someone who bets on Red doesn't get to claim they were "correct" in betting on Red even if Red comes up, and certainly not if Green comes up (arguably neutral outcome).
    - ifyoubuildit 1mo ago
      This is the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" argument. It works in a world where you have trustworthy institutions and its safe to just outsource your decision-making to the authorities. Your interpretation of events might be that a collective of all well meaning people just got it wrong, and that's your right. A lot of people ended up with different conclusions, like the machine did what it does and made a lot of money, the truth be damned.
      - estearum 1mo ago
        Not really. It's the "making decisions based on best-available evidence is good, even if every once in a while it leads you astray." You're more than welcome to read the evidence they use to create their policies. If you have evidence that is of higher quality than that which "the authorities" are using, then you should depend on that! But... you almost certainly don't have higher quality evidence than they do. That's the fundamental problem. If you think that you do, then you too could actually make a fuckton of money with that information. But again: you don't have superior information. I don't think people even got it wrong. They got it correct with the information available, and they for the most part got it right even in retrospect.
        ifyoubuildit 1mo ago
        I did read a lot of evidence available at the time. It's why I opted to skip the vaccine for myself given that I had already recovered shortly before the shots were available. That decision was very at odds with authoritative guidance at the time. You'd think I was a damn leper, yet that decision seems to have held up pretty well. I also frequently tested before any gatherings, and avoided contact when I had any kinds of symptoms, test or not. I saw plenty of people figure they had gotten the shots so why not go out with the sniffles? "Best information" and what was blasted out of the TV or considered "common sense" at the time I think have quite a bit of daylight between them.
        estearum 1mo ago

estearum 2mo ago

I suspect that you and GP and GGP are talking about different time scales. Vaccinating your children for COVID during peak COVID was the right thing to do both for them and for the adults they interact with. Vaccinating your children for COVID today is much lower ROI for them and anyone around them. Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them. I struggle to think of a decision or conversation where the relevant metric is "what % of time from vaccination until today were you protected" and I doubt that's what GP was discussing either.

ifyoubuildit 2mo ago
> Vaccinating your children in general is very much the right thing to do, both for them and for anyone around them. Isn't this kinda like saying medicating your children in general is very much the right thing to do? Like it's obviously one of those things that everyone expects you to just agree with directionally, but the actually correct answer is no, there is no in general. All drugs have a context where they make sense. E.g. you're probably not vaccinating your kids for rabies, unless you live in an animal sanctuary or something. MMR, sure. It actually seems pretty questionable to me that it was ever a net benefit to your average young kid to get the covid shots.
- estearum 2mo ago
  No there actually is in general and it's the same exact way in which there's generally good guidance for medicating your children: they're called evidence-backed guidelines. The contexts in which drugs make sense is captured by the clinical guidelines. And sure, it is arguably questionable whether there was ever a net benefit to an average young kid to get a COVID vaccine. However that is a distinct claim from "it never made sense to give kids COVID vaccines." There was certainly a point in time in which a logical interpretation of the information available at the time indicated that kids should get vaccinated. The risks were (correctly) understood to be near-zero and the benefits were (arguably incorrectly) understood to be significant. Someone who, in early 2021, decided against vaccinating their children was making a decision that was not indicated by the best-available information at that time. Someone who bets on Red doesn't get to claim they were "correct" in betting on Red even if Red comes up, and certainly not if Green comes up (arguably neutral outcome).
  - ifyoubuildit 1mo ago
    This is the "nobody got fired for buying IBM" argument. It works in a world where you have trustworthy institutions and its safe to just outsource your decision-making to the authorities. Your interpretation of events might be that a collective of all well meaning people just got it wrong, and that's your right. A lot of people ended up with different conclusions, like the machine did what it does and made a lot of money, the truth be damned.
    - estearum 1mo ago
      Not really. It's the "making decisions based on best-available evidence is good, even if every once in a while it leads you astray." You're more than welcome to read the evidence they use to create their policies. If you have evidence that is of higher quality than that which "the authorities" are using, then you should depend on that! But... you almost certainly don't have higher quality evidence than they do. That's the fundamental problem. If you think that you do, then you too could actually make a fuckton of money with that information. But again: you don't have superior information. I don't think people even got it wrong. They got it correct with the information available, and they for the most part got it right even in retrospect.
      - ifyoubuildit 1mo ago
        I did read a lot of evidence available at the time. It's why I opted to skip the vaccine for myself given that I had already recovered shortly before the shots were available. That decision was very at odds with authoritative guidance at the time. You'd think I was a damn leper, yet that decision seems to have held up pretty well. I also frequently tested before any gatherings, and avoided contact when I had any kinds of symptoms, test or not. I saw plenty of people figure they had gotten the shots so why not go out with the sniffles? "Best information" and what was blasted out of the TV or considered "common sense" at the time I think have quite a bit of daylight between them.
        estearum 1mo ago