I thought about writing this when the vaccine trials were wrapping up, but was slow, and by the time I had it ready, I saw SSC say the overwhelming majority of people in this sphere were vaccinated so I figured it would be a waste of time.
I didn’t get one of the three vaccines available in the USA, if I were in a higher risk demographic/lifestyle/less lazy, I would have made the radvac. I would be willing to get novavax or soberana. I have no needle anxiety (if it’s relevant). I have studied this stuff on my own since well before the pandemic and am decent enough in the lab that I could probably do a lot of the work of making a recombinant vaccine with the correct equipment
I tried the inside view/outside view method of forecasting and am satisfied with the result.
Some things I view as the outside view:
-early years of mass vaccination campaigns are usually associated with disasters (1850-70s cowpox campaign, cutter/wyeth during polio, swine flu in the 70s, pandemrix in 2009, many others)
-the FDA is bad at evaluating new technology (they approve things that shouldn’t be, and block things they shouldn’t); as an example, it took five years to pull thalidomide.
-vaccines are safe drugs not because of anything inherent to the class, but due to the stringent standards to which they’re usually held
I saw nothing inside this situation which gave me unusual confidence about this particular mass vaccination campaign. I did see an apparent relaxation of the stringent standards usually applied to vaccine approvals.
I figured I’d wait a month, and if anything unforseen happened, I’d wait another month, looking for signs of toxicity of the payload, toxic vehicle effects, OAS, ADE, and more data on the estimated risk to me from catching covid. I saw the j&j pause for VITT, the pfizer data on ‘it has more of an antibody response than we expected’, then later the aspiration studies, the legislation making it hard to get side effects compensated (if it were safe, there would be the opposite, and people with visible side effects would be celebrated as heroes), the pulling of medical licenses of doctors who were public about the side effect risks...eventually I was just out, I’m not expecting data on booster #4 to persuade me to start the potentially multi year course of treatment for a pandemic that may be mutating away from them or winding down.
My standard for ‘this vaccine is safe enough’ is ‘more safe than the windrawn limerix vaccine’, which was pulled in part due to a 1/25000 probability of cardiac issues, and in part due to lack of success in the market (I’d have taken it). I’d view something with a side effect profile as bad or worse than that as unacceptable to me. I believe that there is enough data suggesting that the side effect profile of most of these is at least that bad, and that the true safety state is obscured by rigid suppression of negative information in the western world. I know it isn’t great, and assess that it’s probably worse than it looks.
I have plenty of reasons which have strengthened my opinion that not getting one of the three available shots was the correct decision, though I have some doubts about my laziness about making the radvac.
All in all, I’m not expecting to change my opinion, or regret my decision. I fully expect governments to back off the mandates and for side effects to get just as much public attention as the cancers SV40 contamination of 1960s polio vaccines caused, meaning zero.
I’d love for someone to tell me why my reasoning sucks, I’ll freely admit that I’m probably overly conservative about side effect risk, but for my demographic and lifestyle (I haven’t caught any of the strains yet and don’t expect to), I think that conservative approach makes sense.
Edit 2023: I am more, not less confident in my decision, I have not had covid symptoms or a positive rapid test at any point, and am not restricting my lifestyle in the least. I did not get any vaccine.
“My standard for ‘this vaccine is safe enough’ is ‘more safe than the windrawn limerix vaccine’, which was pulled in part due to a 1/25000 probability of cardiac issues, and in part due to lack of success in the market (I’d have taken it). I’d view something with a side effect profile as bad or worse than that as unacceptable to me. ”
This implies a way less than 1⁄30,000 risk of actual death from the vaccine. I don’t think that anyone looking forward from May 2021 who had not yet gotten covid could reasonably predict less than a 1⁄30,000 lifetime risk of death from the pandemic if they resume normal behavior. And the odds, even for a young woman in their twenties, would probably still be higher than 1⁄100,000 for death from covid looking forward from that point than, even if she never resumed normal life.
The relative risks of bad things less than death are similarly lopsided, and it is unlikely there is a death rate for healthy young adults from the vaccines of more than 100k hiding in the data. At the 1⁄40,000 rate, if it existed, it would show up as unusually high summer 2021 age specific excess mortality rates.
But that is a long way around to say: you can’t do a cost benefit calculation by only putting in the numbers on one side of the column. Come up with explicit numbers for the benefits of the vaccine, and put them in your explanation of why you think it is a bad idea to get it.
Thank you for taking a shot, unfortunately, I’m not moved.
My answer to your argument is that risk to me of damage from covid must be multiplied by probability of getting covid before being compared to the side effect risk of getting the vaccine as a healthy person.
If I thought that number was high enough to drive action, I’d have made the radvac and taken it by now. I tracked microcovids early in the pandemic, but my habits haven’t changed, and my risk profile was extremely low (lockdowns did not affect my life much, so I’m an unusual case, there were lengthy periods in 2020 and 2021 where my risk was ‘zero’ rather than ‘effectively zero’). If you’re assuming that the probability of getting an infectious exposure is 1, then the vaccines and NPIs will all look much better.
I’m willing to concede that I might be underestimating the risk of covid to me. Once I make that concession though, I would then need to be convinced not to a) make the radvac or b) seek access to one of the vaccines I view as having a nicer side effect profile (novavax, soberana, some others, I’ll likely get sanofi-gsk when it releases). So even if I accept your argument that I should have some sort of vaccine, I’m far from sold on the ones readily available in the USA.
I haven’t gotten any of the strains, so my approach has worked out thus far.
I mean if your risk was zero, and you don’t care about the downsides of having a risk of zero, go for it. Though I suspect there are mortality risks in being that isolated that are on the order of 1⁄30,000 a year too.
Also, if you want to get a different vaccine, go for it. My wife’s boyfriend got his first two as sinopharm, just get an extra shot or two, and the inactivated vaccines are probably as strong as the mrna, with a more established technology.
Also if you are socially interacting with people in closed spaces more than maybe once a month, I suspect your odds of getting some exposed to some form of covid sooner or later are still probably close to 1.
Though I suspect there are mortality risks in being that isolated that are on the order of 1⁄30,000 a year too.
For some reason, I find this implication particularly irksome. First of all, it’s borderline non sequitur speculative analysis. Second, it’s broadcasting contempt for an elective lifestyle, which seems to be the whole motivation for including it. Unless you really think this sort of statistical prestidigitation supports the point you’re trying to make(?)
Would you accept a similar argument based on how fucking dangerous people are to each other? Going outside to touch grass, breath fresh air and get a little sunshine might have associated health benefits, but there’s also traffic, radiation, wild animals and muggers depending upon where you live. All this epidemiology is a massive headache; just try establishing a baseline and see how well you think that data reflects on you, personally.
The average American has $130k in debt, watches 33hr/wk television, spends 2hr/day on social media, 5hr/day on their cellphone, consumes 11 alcoholic beverages weekly and exercises only 17m/day. And you want us to evaluate associated comorbidities of an introverted lifestyle against that?
I apologize for the rant. I know that everybody has a different bright line for this sort of thing, but at some point playing with numbers and interpreting data slips into the realms of less-than-helpful intellectualizing and this… well, it just felt over the line to me.
Yeah, but I read somewhere that loneliness kills. So actually risking being murdered by grass is safer, because you’ll be less lonely.
I think we agree though.
Making decisions based on tiny probabilities is generally a bad approach. Also, there is no option that is actually safe.
You are right that I have no idea about whether near complete isolation has a higher life expectancy than being normally social, and the claim needed to compare them to make logical sense in that way.
I think the claim does still make sense if interpreted as ‘whether it is positive or negative on net, deciding to be completely isolated has way bigger consequences, even in terms of direct mortality risk, than taking the covid vaccine’ - and thus avoiding the vaccine should not be seen as a major advantage of being isolated.
the FDA is bad at evaluating new technology (they approve things that shouldn’t be, and block things they shouldn’t); as an example, it took five years to pull thalidomide.
The FDA never approved thalidomide, so that doesn’t seem like an applicable example?
if it were safe, there would be the opposite, and people with visible side effects would be celebrated as heroes
I’m not sure that I follow the logic here. Are you taking the “safe” condition to mean that we would know exactly when some side effects are due to the vaccine, and when they are just coincidental (so there would never be any arguments over that)?
Strictly speaking, thalidomide was only authorized for some testing in the US and never received full approval, but there were thalidomide babies born in the US. There are plenty of examples of drugs and devices which were approved and later pulled. My favorite story in recent memory is the ‘Essure’ device, which was only pulled after a pressure campaign by facebook mom groups (you know, the kinds of purveyors of medical misinformation who get censored for antivax misinformation)
A more articulate thing to say on the second point would would be as follows: The US government passed laws to ensure that damages would absolutely never be paid out for a ‘false positive’ vaccine injury, likely at the expense of ‘true positives’ not getting justice, a better approach would be something loose like the paycheck protection program (which was gamed), where the standards for getting a payout for a vaccine injury are low enough that people considering taking the drug are fully confident that if they have medical bills due to side effects, the government will cover them. At present, I believe the opposite, and anecdotally, I know someone who had a heart attack within a week and a half of his shot; his medical bills are in the process of slowly destroying his life.
The presence of socialized medicine in other countries and the us military I think explains part of the higher vax rates in those places. If a socialized health system or the military medical system tells you to take something, it is implied that they have ownership of future medical problems related to it.
The presence of socialized medicine in other countries and the us military I think explains part of the higher vax rates in those places.
Germany has the same number of first vaccination doses as the US does but more people with two or three doses. California has more people who received the first vaccine dose than Germany does. Within the US Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate and is at the same time one of the most conservative states. Vermont is a very blue state and has the highest vaccination rate.
While there will certainly be some people for whom not having access to free healthcare services for vaccine side effects is a major issue but it doesn’t seem to explain the pattern. To me, trust in the establishment seems a more likely explanation.
I thought about writing this when the vaccine trials were wrapping up, but was slow, and by the time I had it ready, I saw SSC say the overwhelming majority of people in this sphere were vaccinated so I figured it would be a waste of time.
I didn’t get one of the three vaccines available in the USA, if I were in a higher risk demographic/lifestyle/less lazy, I would have made the radvac. I would be willing to get novavax or soberana. I have no needle anxiety (if it’s relevant). I have studied this stuff on my own since well before the pandemic and am decent enough in the lab that I could probably do a lot of the work of making a recombinant vaccine with the correct equipment
I tried the inside view/outside view method of forecasting and am satisfied with the result.
Some things I view as the outside view: -early years of mass vaccination campaigns are usually associated with disasters (1850-70s cowpox campaign, cutter/wyeth during polio, swine flu in the 70s, pandemrix in 2009, many others) -the FDA is bad at evaluating new technology (they approve things that shouldn’t be, and block things they shouldn’t); as an example, it took five years to pull thalidomide. -vaccines are safe drugs not because of anything inherent to the class, but due to the stringent standards to which they’re usually held
I saw nothing inside this situation which gave me unusual confidence about this particular mass vaccination campaign. I did see an apparent relaxation of the stringent standards usually applied to vaccine approvals.
I figured I’d wait a month, and if anything unforseen happened, I’d wait another month, looking for signs of toxicity of the payload, toxic vehicle effects, OAS, ADE, and more data on the estimated risk to me from catching covid. I saw the j&j pause for VITT, the pfizer data on ‘it has more of an antibody response than we expected’, then later the aspiration studies, the legislation making it hard to get side effects compensated (if it were safe, there would be the opposite, and people with visible side effects would be celebrated as heroes), the pulling of medical licenses of doctors who were public about the side effect risks...eventually I was just out, I’m not expecting data on booster #4 to persuade me to start the potentially multi year course of treatment for a pandemic that may be mutating away from them or winding down.
My standard for ‘this vaccine is safe enough’ is ‘more safe than the windrawn limerix vaccine’, which was pulled in part due to a 1/25000 probability of cardiac issues, and in part due to lack of success in the market (I’d have taken it). I’d view something with a side effect profile as bad or worse than that as unacceptable to me. I believe that there is enough data suggesting that the side effect profile of most of these is at least that bad, and that the true safety state is obscured by rigid suppression of negative information in the western world. I know it isn’t great, and assess that it’s probably worse than it looks.
I have plenty of reasons which have strengthened my opinion that not getting one of the three available shots was the correct decision, though I have some doubts about my laziness about making the radvac.
All in all, I’m not expecting to change my opinion, or regret my decision. I fully expect governments to back off the mandates and for side effects to get just as much public attention as the cancers SV40 contamination of 1960s polio vaccines caused, meaning zero.
I’d love for someone to tell me why my reasoning sucks, I’ll freely admit that I’m probably overly conservative about side effect risk, but for my demographic and lifestyle (I haven’t caught any of the strains yet and don’t expect to), I think that conservative approach makes sense.
Edit 2023: I am more, not less confident in my decision, I have not had covid symptoms or a positive rapid test at any point, and am not restricting my lifestyle in the least. I did not get any vaccine.
Edit April 2023: https://twitter.com/US_FDA/status/1648315659825160192 my choice was the correct one, the vaccine was not necessary for my situation.
My attempt at why your reasoning sucks:
“My standard for ‘this vaccine is safe enough’ is ‘more safe than the windrawn limerix vaccine’, which was pulled in part due to a 1/25000 probability of cardiac issues, and in part due to lack of success in the market (I’d have taken it). I’d view something with a side effect profile as bad or worse than that as unacceptable to me. ”
This implies a way less than 1⁄30,000 risk of actual death from the vaccine. I don’t think that anyone looking forward from May 2021 who had not yet gotten covid could reasonably predict less than a 1⁄30,000 lifetime risk of death from the pandemic if they resume normal behavior. And the odds, even for a young woman in their twenties, would probably still be higher than 1⁄100,000 for death from covid looking forward from that point than, even if she never resumed normal life.
The relative risks of bad things less than death are similarly lopsided, and it is unlikely there is a death rate for healthy young adults from the vaccines of more than 100k hiding in the data. At the 1⁄40,000 rate, if it existed, it would show up as unusually high summer 2021 age specific excess mortality rates.
But that is a long way around to say: you can’t do a cost benefit calculation by only putting in the numbers on one side of the column. Come up with explicit numbers for the benefits of the vaccine, and put them in your explanation of why you think it is a bad idea to get it.
Thank you for taking a shot, unfortunately, I’m not moved.
My answer to your argument is that risk to me of damage from covid must be multiplied by probability of getting covid before being compared to the side effect risk of getting the vaccine as a healthy person.
If I thought that number was high enough to drive action, I’d have made the radvac and taken it by now. I tracked microcovids early in the pandemic, but my habits haven’t changed, and my risk profile was extremely low (lockdowns did not affect my life much, so I’m an unusual case, there were lengthy periods in 2020 and 2021 where my risk was ‘zero’ rather than ‘effectively zero’). If you’re assuming that the probability of getting an infectious exposure is 1, then the vaccines and NPIs will all look much better.
I’m willing to concede that I might be underestimating the risk of covid to me. Once I make that concession though, I would then need to be convinced not to a) make the radvac or b) seek access to one of the vaccines I view as having a nicer side effect profile (novavax, soberana, some others, I’ll likely get sanofi-gsk when it releases). So even if I accept your argument that I should have some sort of vaccine, I’m far from sold on the ones readily available in the USA.
I haven’t gotten any of the strains, so my approach has worked out thus far.
I mean if your risk was zero, and you don’t care about the downsides of having a risk of zero, go for it. Though I suspect there are mortality risks in being that isolated that are on the order of 1⁄30,000 a year too.
Also, if you want to get a different vaccine, go for it. My wife’s boyfriend got his first two as sinopharm, just get an extra shot or two, and the inactivated vaccines are probably as strong as the mrna, with a more established technology.
Also if you are socially interacting with people in closed spaces more than maybe once a month, I suspect your odds of getting some exposed to some form of covid sooner or later are still probably close to 1.
For some reason, I find this implication particularly irksome. First of all, it’s borderline non sequitur speculative analysis. Second, it’s broadcasting contempt for an elective lifestyle, which seems to be the whole motivation for including it. Unless you really think this sort of statistical prestidigitation supports the point you’re trying to make(?)
Would you accept a similar argument based on how fucking dangerous people are to each other? Going outside to touch grass, breath fresh air and get a little sunshine might have associated health benefits, but there’s also traffic, radiation, wild animals and muggers depending upon where you live. All this epidemiology is a massive headache; just try establishing a baseline and see how well you think that data reflects on you, personally.
The average American has $130k in debt, watches 33hr/wk television, spends 2hr/day on social media, 5hr/day on their cellphone, consumes 11 alcoholic beverages weekly and exercises only 17m/day. And you want us to evaluate associated comorbidities of an introverted lifestyle against that?
I apologize for the rant. I know that everybody has a different bright line for this sort of thing, but at some point playing with numbers and interpreting data slips into the realms of less-than-helpful intellectualizing and this… well, it just felt over the line to me.
Yeah, but I read somewhere that loneliness kills. So actually risking being murdered by grass is safer, because you’ll be less lonely.
I think we agree though.
Making decisions based on tiny probabilities is generally a bad approach. Also, there is no option that is actually safe.
You are right that I have no idea about whether near complete isolation has a higher life expectancy than being normally social, and the claim needed to compare them to make logical sense in that way.
I think the claim does still make sense if interpreted as ‘whether it is positive or negative on net, deciding to be completely isolated has way bigger consequences, even in terms of direct mortality risk, than taking the covid vaccine’ - and thus avoiding the vaccine should not be seen as a major advantage of being isolated.
The FDA never approved thalidomide, so that doesn’t seem like an applicable example?
I’m not sure that I follow the logic here. Are you taking the “safe” condition to mean that we would know exactly when some side effects are due to the vaccine, and when they are just coincidental (so there would never be any arguments over that)?
Strictly speaking, thalidomide was only authorized for some testing in the US and never received full approval, but there were thalidomide babies born in the US. There are plenty of examples of drugs and devices which were approved and later pulled. My favorite story in recent memory is the ‘Essure’ device, which was only pulled after a pressure campaign by facebook mom groups (you know, the kinds of purveyors of medical misinformation who get censored for antivax misinformation)
A more articulate thing to say on the second point would would be as follows: The US government passed laws to ensure that damages would absolutely never be paid out for a ‘false positive’ vaccine injury, likely at the expense of ‘true positives’ not getting justice, a better approach would be something loose like the paycheck protection program (which was gamed), where the standards for getting a payout for a vaccine injury are low enough that people considering taking the drug are fully confident that if they have medical bills due to side effects, the government will cover them. At present, I believe the opposite, and anecdotally, I know someone who had a heart attack within a week and a half of his shot; his medical bills are in the process of slowly destroying his life.
The presence of socialized medicine in other countries and the us military I think explains part of the higher vax rates in those places. If a socialized health system or the military medical system tells you to take something, it is implied that they have ownership of future medical problems related to it.
Germany has the same number of first vaccination doses as the US does but more people with two or three doses. California has more people who received the first vaccine dose than Germany does. Within the US Alabama has the lowest vaccination rate and is at the same time one of the most conservative states. Vermont is a very blue state and has the highest vaccination rate.
While there will certainly be some people for whom not having access to free healthcare services for vaccine side effects is a major issue but it doesn’t seem to explain the pattern. To me, trust in the establishment seems a more likely explanation.