> Why not wear a helmet in a car I'm sure it would help in some cases ?

Race car drivers do wear helmets!

Risk-benefit is a simple matter of considering the relative downsides (costs) vs benefit (safety) of available options, and making some rational choices.

COVID is insanely dangerous. Even for young people, the dangers of COVID are directly comparable to professional car racing, base jumping, or similarly high-risk activities. For older people, it's comparable to being an astronaut. For people with co-morbidities, it's more risky than climbing Mount Everest!

Everybody undertaking all of those activities wears a ton of safety equipment. Did you notice?

Unfortunately, this kind of thinking has never worked for the general public, they always have to be dragged, kicking and screaming the whole way, every time.

My cousin drives his car with one hand past every traffic light with a safety camera, so that he can use the other hand to hold his seat belt near the buckle. This makes it look like it's clicked in securely, but obviously provide no safety beneft. This is insanely dangerous and much less comfortable than simply clicking in the seatbelt. (He drives a manual car, so he has to switch back and forth between the gear shift knob and the steering wheel rapidly!)

Why does he do this? Because "the man" is forcing him to wear the seatbelt, so it's a point of personal pride to refuse. "Gaming" the system by holding the seatbelt in the closed position without actually providing safety fills him with a sense of small accomplishment for having resisted the authorities.

I really wish I was kidding, but these are the kinds of thoughts that drive people to refuse to get vaccinated as well.

"No, I won't! The gubb'ment can fuck right off! I'd rather risk it and take Invermectin!" -- literally two of my friends, almost verbatim.

You are posting misinformation. I would encourage everyone to get vaccinated if they can. But according to the CDC the fatality rate for people in the 18-49 age group is only 0.06%. And the deaths are mostly people with serious co-morbid conditions. The risk is nowhere near as high as BASE jumping.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsams.2020.11.002

If you literally Google "base jumping risk statistics" it helpfully says, right at the top: "BASE jumping carries a 0.2-0.4% injury rate per jump, and a fatality rate of 0.04% per jump."

I'm saying 0.06% risk of death is comparable to 0.04% risk of death.

How exactly am I spreading "misinformation"?

Googling "everest climbers death rate" yields: "Interestingly, the death rate has decreased a bit, from 1.6 percent in the earlier period to 1.0 percent in the more recent period. That said, since the number of climbers has quadrupled, the actual number of deaths has increased."

Remind me what the CFR/IFR is for COVID for over-70s with co-morbidities again? I don't want to post "misinformation" here, so I'll let you do your own research.

Wearing a helmet in a car is a PITA. Getting vaccinated causes literally no ongoing inconvenience 24-36 hours later. It's effectively a cost-free intervention with enormous upside in terms of protection from death and hospitalization. Helmets are better compared to interventions like masks and social distancing, as they must be used constantly.

Edit: taking your analogy less literally, it seems the issue here is the socially acceptable level of risk. The health risks of covid are demonstrable and apparent. If we can mitigate those risks by ~90% with no ongoing cost, then that intervention makes sense. On the other hand, if additional interventions mitigate it by only an additional 5%, then those may not be worth the trouble.

I think this is a good of example of why Scott Adams says this about analogies:

Analogies: Analogies are good tools for explaining a concept to someone for the first time. But because analogies are imperfect they are the worst way to persuade. All discussions that involve analogies devolve into arguments about the quality of the analogy, not the underlying situation.

https://www.scottadamssays.com/2016/12/21/how-to-be-unpersua...

I was comparing the helmet to the seatbelt. So the comparison between helmet an seat-belt is not ok, but the comparison between the seat-belt and the vaccine is ok ?

See my edit.