Supposing hypothetically that those 1400 deaths were all caused by the vaccines—wouldn’t the math still be on the side of getting one? (Of course, most likely the relationship is not causal, as discussed by the CDC link below, as well as Zvi’s reply, but hypothetically assuming it was.)
“Over 92 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through March 8, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 1,637 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Chance of death from COVID for young healthy people is probably somewhere between 0.05% and 0.1%. (CFR seems to be around 0.2%, but IFR is lower. I’m eyeballing from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1 .) For older people it can be as high as 10-20%. Even if you are in the youngest, healthiest group, making the most optimistic assumptions about the danger of COVID, and the most pessimistic assumptions about the danger of the vaccine, that it caused every single death reported after receiving it—it seems to me that COVID would still be at least 20x more dangerous. And realistically the difference is much higher than that, and for older people it’s going to be orders of magnitude higher.
Of course, if you think you can perfectly avoid exposure to COVID, then you could declare any amount of risk from the vaccine to be too much. But I think most people are both unable and unwilling to do that, and I suspect that most people who ARE able and willing to completely avoid exposure are also more likely to be getting the vaccine, not less.
One objection to that is that one must not just compare between vaccinating and getting Covid. One must also strive to pick the safest vaccine.
Rotashield, the first rotavirus vaccine only caused one bowel obstruction in 20,000 vaccinated children, yet it was pulled from the market after a year because there were already vaccines 5 times safer.
If there is a large safety gap between different available vaccines, least safe must be declined in favor of most safe.
Another objection is that long term effects of any covid vaccine are not yet well-studied and there could be plausible mechanisms by which some of the vaccines could cause long term damage for example due to cumulative effects.
One objection to that is that one must not just compare between vaccinating and getting Covid. One must also strive to pick the safest vaccine.
Well, as to the vaccines available right now, I’m not aware of any evidence for one of them being more or less safe than another, so your choices seem limited to “vaccine” or “not”. But even if they were different—getting the safest one is only a usable strategy if it’s available, i.e. there is not a vaccine shortage, which there currently is. If your choices are “get whatever vaccine is on offer” and “nothing”, you should get whatever vaccine is on offer as long as the expected value of doing so is better than the risk of COVID exposure if you do nothing.
Another objection is that long term effects of any covid vaccine are not yet well-studied and there could be plausible mechanisms by which some of the vaccines could cause long term damage for example due to cumulative effects.
This is definitely the scariest hypothetical, IMO, but I’m not aware of any evidence for it, only a lack of long-term data. How you weigh “unknown unknowns that are hard to measure” against the risks of COVID seems like a very personal choice. (I’m not aware of any past vaccines having hidden long-term side effects that didn’t appear at all in trials or early use.)
This is because little evidence is available. You are looking at vaccination as an urgent matter. But your average chances of getting infected are only one in 4 in a given year. That is an average exposure of about 250,000 microcovids per year. Since average chance also includes people who make very little precautions against infection, it is likely that your personal chances are better than average. There are some people here whose personal chances are an order of magnitude lower than average. If you calibrate it by 3-4 months it will take for vaccines to become abundant in US and coincidentally to add 3-4 months of safety data, you might conclude that rushing vaccination with whatever is available is not necessarily the safest strategy.
As for unknown unknowns, this where more data helps. mRNA vaccines with lipid nanoparticle delivery mode are not like any previous vaccines so one might want to discount any experience obtained with past vaccines.
Supposing hypothetically that those 1400 deaths were all caused by the vaccines—wouldn’t the math still be on the side of getting one? (Of course, most likely the relationship is not causal, as discussed by the CDC link below, as well as Zvi’s reply, but hypothetically assuming it was.)
from https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html:
“Over 92 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through March 8, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 1,637 reports of death (0.0018%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Chance of death from COVID for young healthy people is probably somewhere between 0.05% and 0.1%. (CFR seems to be around 0.2%, but IFR is lower. I’m eyeballing from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1 .) For older people it can be as high as 10-20%. Even if you are in the youngest, healthiest group, making the most optimistic assumptions about the danger of COVID, and the most pessimistic assumptions about the danger of the vaccine, that it caused every single death reported after receiving it—it seems to me that COVID would still be at least 20x more dangerous. And realistically the difference is much higher than that, and for older people it’s going to be orders of magnitude higher.
Of course, if you think you can perfectly avoid exposure to COVID, then you could declare any amount of risk from the vaccine to be too much. But I think most people are both unable and unwilling to do that, and I suspect that most people who ARE able and willing to completely avoid exposure are also more likely to be getting the vaccine, not less.
One objection to that is that one must not just compare between vaccinating and getting Covid. One must also strive to pick the safest vaccine.
Rotashield, the first rotavirus vaccine only caused one bowel obstruction in 20,000 vaccinated children, yet it was pulled from the market after a year because there were already vaccines 5 times safer.
If there is a large safety gap between different available vaccines, least safe must be declined in favor of most safe.
Another objection is that long term effects of any covid vaccine are not yet well-studied and there could be plausible mechanisms by which some of the vaccines could cause long term damage for example due to cumulative effects.
Well, as to the vaccines available right now, I’m not aware of any evidence for one of them being more or less safe than another, so your choices seem limited to “vaccine” or “not”. But even if they were different—getting the safest one is only a usable strategy if it’s available, i.e. there is not a vaccine shortage, which there currently is. If your choices are “get whatever vaccine is on offer” and “nothing”, you should get whatever vaccine is on offer as long as the expected value of doing so is better than the risk of COVID exposure if you do nothing.
This is definitely the scariest hypothetical, IMO, but I’m not aware of any evidence for it, only a lack of long-term data. How you weigh “unknown unknowns that are hard to measure” against the risks of COVID seems like a very personal choice. (I’m not aware of any past vaccines having hidden long-term side effects that didn’t appear at all in trials or early use.)
This is because little evidence is available. You are looking at vaccination as an urgent matter. But your average chances of getting infected are only one in 4 in a given year. That is an average exposure of about 250,000 microcovids per year. Since average chance also includes people who make very little precautions against infection, it is likely that your personal chances are better than average. There are some people here whose personal chances are an order of magnitude lower than average. If you calibrate it by 3-4 months it will take for vaccines to become abundant in US and coincidentally to add 3-4 months of safety data, you might conclude that rushing vaccination with whatever is available is not necessarily the safest strategy.
As for unknown unknowns, this where more data helps. mRNA vaccines with lipid nanoparticle delivery mode are not like any previous vaccines so one might want to discount any experience obtained with past vaccines.