If I had to argue against your assessment of the risk, I would reframe or reiterate part of my premise which is really that you cannot measure the risk of what you don't know.

That being said, if I'm a betting man, I suspect someone strictly avoiding vaccines through my original line of reasoning would end up like a prepper who never lives through doom's day.

While my personal energies are geared towards physics, there are some underlying mechanisms in biology we collectively do have a solid grasp on. We're far away being from always being able do the X that results in Y, but we are getting to the point where we can rule out some actions. Like if you drive a ford pinto into a tree, it might crumple, it might combust, but it will almost certainly not undergo nuclear fission.

Since we're not replicating the entirety of the virus, just a segment with a particular geometry, we can say with some confidence what kinds of things it /can't/ do.

Yes but what is known is the number of deaths from covid, currently standing at 4.4 millions worldwide and 600k and counting in the US vs. very few if any attributable to taking the vaccine.

So I would argue any reasonable measure of risk is pointing to the vaccine being absolutely the safer alternative (also taking into account that vaccines have been around a very long time, the long term risk is not likely to be high).

And thats is before taking into account the fact that no matter how isolated you are, unless you never interact with anyone, you will likely come into contact with the virus sooner or later.

Are you claiming the vaccine has zero known risks? Surely not.

What are the risks? The only ones I know are some thrombosis risk which is tiny for the traditional Astra Zeneca vaccine in the UK. Can you list any serious risk for the mRNA vaccines that has been demonstrated or revealed?

>1 As of 4 April 2021, a total of 169 cases of CVST and 53 cases of splanchnic vein thrombosis were reported to EudraVigilance. Around 34 million people had been vaccinated in the EEA and UK by this date. The more recent data do not change the PRAC’s recommendations.

How many lives should we estimate those 34 million doses saved? This is simple math. Thrombosis sounds scary but what is more scary and mathematically favored is my unvaccinated family member whose lungs are bricks right now, alone on a ventilator with a 10-15% chance to live.

There is a potential rate of 1-3000/1-6000 getting myocarditis for young males after the second dose [0]. The CDC says the chance of being hospitalized for COVID is 1-2 in 100,000 [1]. Other doctors are saying one dose may be adequate [2] for those in this age range. As someone who falls in this age group, after evaluating my risk factor, it seems logical to not get the vaccine, or potentially get 1 dose. Am I wrong for thinking this?

0: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/06/israel-reports-link-... 1: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7023e1.htm 2: https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/second-opinions/93340

So, there you have it, there's a known risk. Now how about unknown risks, which is what the original commenter was talking about?

My point is simply that lying and saying there are "no risks" to the vaccine is a recipe for disaster. Let's tell the truth.

Nobody has said the risks are comparable.

There is no such thing as zero risk. With anything. But you can compare risks with the alternative (not getting a vaccine).

There’s already been billions of doses administered and millions of Covid patients. We know risks pretty well.

Not over the long term (multiple years, decades), we don't.

What are you talking about now? The vaccine or the virus? Because that's literally true for both! And the mRNA vaccine has a fraction of the code compared to the full virus.

You have been infected with Coronavirus before.

Coronavirus causes the common cold, and has been around for at least 10,000 years. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus#Origin

You seem quite confused. Nothing you say is relevant. Also many different viruses cause the common cold. Several are not coronavirus.

I agree with you. The one thing I will say though is, it is necessary to look at the vaccines more in depth to make a judgement.

For example, I would vastly prefer the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA based vaccines over the AstraZeneca DNA based vaccine.

That is because the AstraZeneca vaccine uses a "harmless" carrier virus to carry the DNA. The problem I see with that is that your immune system also builds resilience against said carrier virus, rendering future shots of the vaccine more ineffective. Because of that, they might have to "update" the vaccine if more booster shots in the future are required.