> there's little/no treatment for the infection resulting from this virus.

This is not true. Since the beginning of the pandemic front line doctors have been successfully reducing hospitalization and death through early treatment with antivirals, corticosteriods, and antithrombotics.

[1] Multifaceted highly targeted sequential multidrug treatment of early ambulatory high-risk SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) https://scholarlycommons.henryford.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?a...

[2] Timing of Antiviral Treatment Initiation is Critical to Reduce SARS-CoV-2 Viral Load https://ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/psp4.1...

[3] Clinical outcomes after early ambulatory multidrug therapy for high-risk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection https://rcm.imrpress.com/EN/article/downloadArticleFile.do?a...

[4] Early multidrug treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection (COVID-19) and reduced mortality among nursing home (or outpatient/ambulatory) residents https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03069...

[5] Multidrug treatment for COVID-19 https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/article/ddt/advpub/0/advpub_202...

I guess a better way to phrase it is that there's no over-the-counter cure, and if you're at the point where a front line doctor is giving you steroids, things are already going worse than most people's vaccine side effects.

> there's no over-the-counter cure

All of those medications can be prescribed prophylactically (early in the symptomatic phase) by just about any clinic.

I'm not advocating against vaccination, just pointing out that early treatment with widely available and existing medicines has also proven to be effective in reducing severe outcomes.

[1] is an interesting lit review on what drug strategies have been tried where in the world.

None of these papers seem to present strong clinical evidence that these drugs have actually been effective, vs some hidden covariate or something. A couple include interesting small-sample observational studies, but as I understand it those haven’t panned out in follow-on randomized controlled trials that have been done.

There are also a couple essentially viewpoint articles that are interesting. [2] is basically a pharmacokinetic calculation motivating further study, but no clinical data.

[4] is a hypothesis piece about hydroxychloroquine that draws on nine other studies. Haven’t been able to evaluate those because [4] is not open access, but this is one of the drugs that has not lived up to expectations in various RCTs that have been completed…

Fair enough, here are some high quality RCTs that provide the strong clinical evidence you're looking for.

[1] Ivermectin in combination with doxycycline for treating COVID-19 symptoms: a randomized trial https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33983065/

[2] Fluvoxamine: A Review of Its Mechanism of Action and Its Role in COVID-19 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2021.6526...

[3] Baricitinib plus Remdesivir for Hospitalized Adults with Covid-19 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33306283/

[4] Remdesivir for the Treatment of Covid-19 - Final Report https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32445440/

I think he is talking more about long-covid and not the actual hospitalization. Since he is talking about symptoms and not hospitalization explicitly.

Even persons who don't end up in the hospital can have symptoms. I'm leaving up to the reader of these are ok or not.

So it just doesn't give any benefit. Reducing the risk of something which is already close to zero, is still 0. If we follow your argument, why not take the vaccine ten times ?

The excess mortality of people under 49 years in a country like france is zero in 2020 [0].

About long term effects of infections. Well the same can be said of the vaccine. In both case we have no idea

[0] https://www.insee.fr/en/statistiques/4493806?sommaire=449384...

If I were in your shoes, the main thing I'd look into is not hospitalized/death, but "long covid".

Huge quality of life impact, way less understood. Estimates range from 6%-20%+ of people who get covid are still having symptoms 2 months or longer post infection. People who have symptoms two months after infection usually still are having side-effects one year later. Neurological, blood or organ impacts, but all very different and still not well understood.

So I both don't want to seem like I'm hyping it up either because again a lot is unknown it might not be a serious issue / concern.

The main point I'd say is if you're going to make a judgement based on risk make sure you're evaluating the situation completely. And for anyone looking at covid risks, they shouldn't be focused on solely death, but understand long covid as well. Current speculative thinking essentially believes it parallels either triggering auto-immune type issues, or dormant/re-emergent viruses (like chicken pox / shingles type of behavior).

A not very good article on it, but don't have time to find a better one:

https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/619941/

Thanks for the informative reply. Yes, I think my demographic group are way more concerned about the side effects/long term effects of vaccine/covid than hospitalizations or death. And covid is not "risk free" after a influenza like symptoms for weeks.

I know same age group friends that have had covid and "loss of taste" have been the most common experience I've heard. It's anecdotal, but also a good data point to me since I know these people's lifestyle / demographic a bit better than sweeping big stats.

I'll check out the link you gave regarding this specific topic about covid long term effects and compare it to what we know about the vaccine

>Well the same can be said of the vaccine. In both case we have no idea.

See https://www.muhealth.org/our-stories/how-do-we-know-covid-19...

   * History tells us that severe side effects are extremely rare, and if they if do occur, they usually happen within the first two months.
   * COVID-19 vaccine technologies have been studied for years and used in other treatments without issue.
   * The vaccine development process, from clinical trials to ongoing monitoring, helps to uncover and understand side effects.

The same can be said of unknown longterm side effects of covid

Not really. There are multiple instances of viruses, such as HIV, Chickenpox, and HPV, which are known to cause increased health risks or outright disease years and often decades after the initial infection appears to fade.

There are also many instances of "long" Covid we are already seeing in which people struggle with lingering symptoms, sometimes severe, for months after initially getting ill.

And in children, the rare but serious phenomenon that's been called MISC, usually occurs weeks or months after the initial Covid infection has subsided.

You are right that we don't know the long term side-effects of Covid, or of vaccination, and won't for quite some time. But what evidence we do have based on previous experiences with vaccines and viruses, as well as what we have already observed in Covid infections and vaccinations, makes it clear that vaccines are a far less risky prospect than the disease is.

Covid is a virus, the effects of which are not comparable to a vaccine. There's a lot of past evidence (as mentioned in the article) for < 2 month indications of long-term side effects based on historical vaccine development. We aren't seeing any of those indicators for the covid vaccines.

Moreover, we already have clinical evidence that covid causes long-term side effects in up to a third of people infected. There is no such evidence for any covid vaccine.