Most people in this thread seems to be forgetting that second part.

Yes, but, given my age/health, wouldn't the people already at risk already have been offered the vaccine? And if they opted against it, they also made their choice?

And for the people that are unable to get the vaccine for whatever reason, isn't that a scenario in which I feel it's either me putting my safety at risk instead of them putting theirs?

I am sympathetic towards people that are allergic or for whatever other reason cannot get the vaccine, but in the same way that they opted to not take the vaccine to protect their health, is that not exactly what I'm suggesting? I do not feel the vaccine is verified safe and am attempting to protect my health?

Curious what you think.

A better approach to the safety of the vaccine is to ask whether it's safer to take it or to abstain, and who bears the risk in each case. I accept that the numbers won't be the same for everyone: they depend on age, sex, gregariousness, medical condition, culture, job, and perhaps (I don't know) ethnicity. However, people I know who've had Covid-19 say it's brutal: even if it doesn't kill you, it can give you a really rough time. I know of four friends of friends who've died of it, including one in his twenties. And let's not forget long Covid, which can strike at any age. Set against that the clinical trials that the vaccine has undergone, with trials halted if even one person became seriously ill. Finally, there seems to be at least a reasonable possibility that being vaccinated will reduce a person's ability to infect others.

All in all, any of the leading vaccines available in the West look like a better bet, for me and the people around me, than just crossing my fingers and hoping.

Should I take it now or wait? There seems little doubt that vaccines will be refined over the coming years. A vaccine taken in 2023 will probably be safer, and certainly better understood, than one taken in 2021. But someone who waits two years has endured two extra years' risk of suffering, spreading and possibly dying from Covid. You would have to think that vaccines are much more dangerous than I do for that to be a reasonable trade-off.

> I think that this vaccine is a choice, and once it's readily available it is still a choice. If you choose not to get it, you are accepting the possibility that you might get COVID and die.

Generally, a whole lot of the reasons why we take vaccines is to provide collective protection. E.g. it's not critical that I be vaccinated for pertussis because of my own risk of whooping cough.

> But we've bounded the risk to be much, much less than COVID in almost all populations.

Are you sure? And by sure I mean, there is enough data to prove this statement to be true? How?

> Generally, a whole lot of the reasons why we take vaccines is to provide collective protection.

This makes, sense, but is "collective protection" a right now thing? Or is collective protection the goal of a vaccination program over the course of 5-10 years? If the latter is true, is the stance of "I will wait 1-2 years until there is actual data" even at odds with this idea?

Reasonably sure. Even looking at the low death rate 25-34 population, deaths have been about 4 per 100,000 population with only 15% infected so far; a natural trek to herd immunity will presumably kill 6-12 more per 100k. There will be even greater amounts of morbidity and hospitalization, too, than outright death.

Compare to ~22000 dosed in trials; two of the vaccinated died from causes that don't look related to the vaccine, and four of the placebo group died. This mostly lets us exclude a high death rate from the vaccine. Several in the placebo group ended up hospitalized from severe COVID; none in the vaccine group ended up hospitalized from COVID or vaccine related side effects.

Indeed, the entire judgment call made in emergency use authorization is exactly that: the benefits of the vaccines appear to conclusively outweigh the risks.

> This makes, sense, but is "collective protection" a right now thing? Or is collective protection the goal of a vaccination program over the course of 5-10 years?

It's a "right now" thing. We can get all the way there in 6 months, and get significant benefit in 3 months. To be clear, the former doesn't mean "cases knocked down to zero", but instead infections knocked down by >95%.

How frequently are vaccine side effects measured 1-3 years out? How frequently do vaccines present side effects on the 1-3 year timeframe?

> Indeed, the entire judgment call made in emergency use authorization is exactly that: the benefits of the vaccines appear to conclusively outweigh the risks.

Had that judgement call not been made in one of the least competent governments in US history, I think it might carry more weight, no?

> the benefits of the vaccines appear to conclusively outweigh the risks.

I would challenge this statement in that I don't believe it possible to fully understand the risks yet. Is 22000 over ~three months the normal amount of time a vaccine trial runs (I am asking somewhat rhetorically, in that we've heard time and time again that this is not the case)

Basically never: negative effects are overwhelmingly weighted to close to administration. This could, of course, always be the first vaccine to really do this. Indeed, most childhood vaccine trials have been about a year long.

Much more interesting / troublesome is what immunogenicity is at 1 years / 3 years / 5 years. That's why vaccines have failed at the end of their trials: efficacy isn't durable enough, not that too many people get side effects 2.5 years in.

There's a fair chance we'll find that these vaccines don't offer great long term protection. So far protection seems to be holding up OK... But that's next year's problem.

> Had that judgement call not been made in one of the least competent governments in US history, I think it might carry more weight, no?

We have plenty of other competent regulators making the same choice, and the review process followed seems reasonable. The pressure from the top to speed it up further is yucky, I admit.

> I would challenge this statement in that I don't believe it possible to fully understand the risks yet.

Well, sure. We can't know exactly the probability that it will turn us all into vampires a year from now. We can't exactly know the risks from letting COVID-19 doing its thing unimpeded, either. But the former risk looks pretty small and the latter risk looks pretty big, and it's not like we've not studied both pretty extensively.

Really? We've got a lot more data on COVID than we do on the vaccines.

Sure, but we don't know much about long-term morbidity tied to COVID infection, or exactly how many people it will get in the end. Even if I've got it all wrong--- the vaccine is riskier than our current data implies in the age 24-30 group, and fewer people from age 24-30 will get it because things burnt themselves out earlier-- what about the risks of long-term morbidity from COVID-19 infection in this group? Even that alone dwarfs likely vaccine risks. A whole lot of people are getting hospitalized, and even only 5% of them ending up with some degree of long term disability is daunting.

There's big error bars all around, but they largely don't overlap, and COVID has profound downside risks.

I would say the same about the vaccines though. It seems like a lose/lose but one of which has a much greater sample.

At risk populations have the same choices I have. I will choose to wait because I am not at risk. The risk level is obviously a factor that should play a part in making an individual's choice.

Now, for the people that _cannot_ get the vaccine for whatever reason, ultimately my decision is definitely more selfish, in that I am taking precautions in favor of my own safety as opposed to theirs. I guess I don't think this is unreasonable though?