I jumped at the chance to get J&J even though I’m not a essential worker or anything. I think the disconnect between our intuitions is here:
People who can easily continue to guard against significant COVID risks for several weeks without much downside other than quality of life should wait several weeks for Pfizer or Moderna.
As was discussed a bunch in my post on lockdown, the quality of life & mental health impact can be really massive. A marginal month may not seem like a lot if you are really just doing totally fine in lockdown and don’t have anything in particular you want to do, but if you are actively suffering all the time, another month feels like forever. Also, for me, waiting a month would mean that I would see my niece for the first time at 3 months old rather than 2 months, which is quite a big difference at that age.
Furthermore, I’m young and healthy, so getting a slightly less effective vaccine probably just shouldn’t matter to me that much, when my risk was already so low to begin with. And I wouldn’t be surprised if people who get J&J now can get moar vaccinated later (either a J&J booster shot or stacking an mRNA vaccine on top of J&J), so I’m not convinced that the choice I make right now matters that much.
Also I’m pretty skeptical that J&J provides 100% protection at any point, and your source did very little to convince me. 0 and 1 are not probabilities?
Reasonable; looking at it again, ‘0 and 1 are not probabilities’ was not my true rejection at all. Mostly I was just surprised to see such an extremely good result from the vaccine that everyone seems to agree is worse.
Thanks, that makes sense. Sorry to hear lockdown was so rough for you, and glad you were able to get the J&J!
I’m kind of the opposite on both pieces, I think: I’m faring pretty pleasantly under lockdown, but for me, the main things I’m yearning for are relatively high COVID risk—partner dancing with acquaintances or strangers indoors, and dating people I didn’t previously know (and for some reason I keep matching on dating apps with a disproportionate number of people who work in direct patient care roles, haha). So for me it makes sense to delay a bit to get a higher level of protection, and abstain from the riskier activities in the meantime.
I jumped at the chance to get J&J even though I’m not a essential worker or anything. I think the disconnect between our intuitions is here:
As was discussed a bunch in my post on lockdown, the quality of life & mental health impact can be really massive. A marginal month may not seem like a lot if you are really just doing totally fine in lockdown and don’t have anything in particular you want to do, but if you are actively suffering all the time, another month feels like forever. Also, for me, waiting a month would mean that I would see my niece for the first time at 3 months old rather than 2 months, which is quite a big difference at that age.
Furthermore, I’m young and healthy, so getting a slightly less effective vaccine probably just shouldn’t matter to me that much, when my risk was already so low to begin with. And I wouldn’t be surprised if people who get J&J now can get moar vaccinated later (either a J&J booster shot or stacking an mRNA vaccine on top of J&J), so I’m not convinced that the choice I make right now matters that much.
Also I’m pretty skeptical that J&J provides 100% protection at any point, and your source did very little to convince me. 0 and 1 are not probabilities?
I think “100%” in this context means “close enough to 100% than we can’t detect the difference”.
Reasonable; looking at it again, ‘0 and 1 are not probabilities’ was not my true rejection at all. Mostly I was just surprised to see such an extremely good result from the vaccine that everyone seems to agree is worse.
Thanks, that makes sense. Sorry to hear lockdown was so rough for you, and glad you were able to get the J&J!
I’m kind of the opposite on both pieces, I think: I’m faring pretty pleasantly under lockdown, but for me, the main things I’m yearning for are relatively high COVID risk—partner dancing with acquaintances or strangers indoors, and dating people I didn’t previously know (and for some reason I keep matching on dating apps with a disproportionate number of people who work in direct patient care roles, haha). So for me it makes sense to delay a bit to get a higher level of protection, and abstain from the riskier activities in the meantime.