I’m in the “won’t get vaccine until legally obligated” group. Since a lot of people seem to think this is baffling, let me explain my reasoning.
The main reason why people my age want to get the vaccine is to be able to resume their ordinary lives. This does not motivate me, because I already resumed my ordinary life nine months ago. I was completely WFH before the pandemic ever started, and my kids have been homeschooled for years, so I experienced no substantial disruption on those fronts. Like everyone else, I spent much of March and April completely confined to my house, but over the summer I gradually came to realise the following:
The risk of death or serious to someone of my age and health was 0.1% at most, and probably less
The per-weekly risk of catching COVID given my usual mix of activities was 1% at most, and probably less
And then I multiplied those two numbers together and realised that it wasn’t worth it to do any more than the easiest and most obvious things to reduce COVID risk. And so I’ve lived the period since then doing exactly the same kinds and number of activities that I would have before the pandemic, modulo some masks and temperature checks at grocery stores.
Under these conditions, what exactly is the benefit to me of getting vaccinated? I’d still have to mask in public, and my preferred restaurants still wouldn’t open for indoor dining. Save my dose for the people who are actually at risk. I won’t bother until there’s something I want to do that actually requires it.
The benefit is that regardless of your personal risk tolerance you’re part of a dynamic system where every individual’s risk is a multiplicative factor towards the population risk. It’s more irresponsible , not less, for you to avoid it given your chosen priorities.
If you are truly staying in your house, and not going indoors anywhere with people from outside of your household (ordering grocery delivery, working from home, etc.) then I can see avoiding the vaccine until later, as you wouldn’t really be a risk to anyone else. But if you are still grocery shopping, or running any other errands inside or stores, then every time you do so you are putting everyone at some level risk.
On a related note, I find it strange that many of the groups hardest hit by COVID are also the groups least likely to get the vaccine. If anyone has any insight into why this is the case I would love to hear it.
But if you are still grocery shopping, or running any other errands inside or stores, then every time you do so you are putting everyone at some level risk.
A fairly cruxy upstream belief here for me is how often vaccines go to waste. My impression is that while there’s a lot of screwed-up-ness with the vaccine rollout, vaccines that do get produced basically get snatched up immediately by someone. So it’s not obvious that jaspax getting a vaccine actually reduces the amount of people contributing communal risk while grocery shopping.
(Some vaccines get thrown out and unused, but it seems like it’s fairly hard to find those)
We’re always putting others at some level of risk when we go out in public—in fact in some cases we might say we’re putting them at some risk if we don’t for say people with medical and emergency skills that might just happen to be in the right place at the right time. So I think the question here is what is the marginal risk we’re adding given the adjustments in behaviors nearly everyone has adopted while out in public.
It is also probably worth factoring in that for the grocery store it’s also highly unlikely that we are now introducing (at least directly) any additional level of risk to those there than they are comfortable exposing themselves to.
I do agree that there is an element of risks are clearly better understood from a system and not individual level analysis. But at this point, and for the example, I’m wonder just how much error and bias we introduce with the simple individual level argument compared to the complex system level argument.
Externalities are a thing, and are the main reason why I’m taking any precautions at all. Nonetheless, the same factors which make my own risk small also make my ability to pass it on to others small. This risk is pretty far below the threshold at which I feel obligated to make extraordinary efforts to drive a small risk down to zero, especially as vaccination of the highest-risk populations continues. (I might pass it to someone at the grocery store, but the odds that I give it to someone who suffers serious consequences goes down as the most vulnerable people are vaccinated.)
As others have pointed out, there is definitely some risk, which I don’t deny. The question is: how much? And how much is it worth it to avoid that risk? My answer is “very little” and “not worth the trouble.”
I’m in the “won’t get vaccine until legally obligated” group. Since a lot of people seem to think this is baffling, let me explain my reasoning.
The main reason why people my age want to get the vaccine is to be able to resume their ordinary lives. This does not motivate me, because I already resumed my ordinary life nine months ago. I was completely WFH before the pandemic ever started, and my kids have been homeschooled for years, so I experienced no substantial disruption on those fronts. Like everyone else, I spent much of March and April completely confined to my house, but over the summer I gradually came to realise the following:
The risk of death or serious to someone of my age and health was 0.1% at most, and probably less
The per-weekly risk of catching COVID given my usual mix of activities was 1% at most, and probably less
And then I multiplied those two numbers together and realised that it wasn’t worth it to do any more than the easiest and most obvious things to reduce COVID risk. And so I’ve lived the period since then doing exactly the same kinds and number of activities that I would have before the pandemic, modulo some masks and temperature checks at grocery stores.
Under these conditions, what exactly is the benefit to me of getting vaccinated? I’d still have to mask in public, and my preferred restaurants still wouldn’t open for indoor dining. Save my dose for the people who are actually at risk. I won’t bother until there’s something I want to do that actually requires it.
The benefit is that regardless of your personal risk tolerance you’re part of a dynamic system where every individual’s risk is a multiplicative factor towards the population risk. It’s more irresponsible , not less, for you to avoid it given your chosen priorities.
If you are truly staying in your house, and not going indoors anywhere with people from outside of your household (ordering grocery delivery, working from home, etc.) then I can see avoiding the vaccine until later, as you wouldn’t really be a risk to anyone else. But if you are still grocery shopping, or running any other errands inside or stores, then every time you do so you are putting everyone at some level risk.
On a related note, I find it strange that many of the groups hardest hit by COVID are also the groups least likely to get the vaccine. If anyone has any insight into why this is the case I would love to hear it.
A fairly cruxy upstream belief here for me is how often vaccines go to waste. My impression is that while there’s a lot of screwed-up-ness with the vaccine rollout, vaccines that do get produced basically get snatched up immediately by someone. So it’s not obvious that jaspax getting a vaccine actually reduces the amount of people contributing communal risk while grocery shopping.
(Some vaccines get thrown out and unused, but it seems like it’s fairly hard to find those)
We’re always putting others at some level of risk when we go out in public—in fact in some cases we might say we’re putting them at some risk if we don’t for say people with medical and emergency skills that might just happen to be in the right place at the right time. So I think the question here is what is the marginal risk we’re adding given the adjustments in behaviors nearly everyone has adopted while out in public.
It is also probably worth factoring in that for the grocery store it’s also highly unlikely that we are now introducing (at least directly) any additional level of risk to those there than they are comfortable exposing themselves to.
I do agree that there is an element of risks are clearly better understood from a system and not individual level analysis. But at this point, and for the example, I’m wonder just how much error and bias we introduce with the simple individual level argument compared to the complex system level argument.
Externalities are a thing, and are the main reason why I’m taking any precautions at all. Nonetheless, the same factors which make my own risk small also make my ability to pass it on to others small. This risk is pretty far below the threshold at which I feel obligated to make extraordinary efforts to drive a small risk down to zero, especially as vaccination of the highest-risk populations continues. (I might pass it to someone at the grocery store, but the odds that I give it to someone who suffers serious consequences goes down as the most vulnerable people are vaccinated.)
As others have pointed out, there is definitely some risk, which I don’t deny. The question is: how much? And how much is it worth it to avoid that risk? My answer is “very little” and “not worth the trouble.”