The article specifically calls out this risk as "very low" and quantifies it as less than 1 in 50,000. The death rates from motor vehicle accidents in the US was ~11 per 100,000 people in 2019 [1].
I assume since you're that risk averse, you no longer drive?
This is a good example of how people are bad at risk assessment and also why people have a phobia about air travel but rarely about driving even though air travel is significantly safer.
So using the argument that there are risks with the vaccine is a selective argument that no one applies to virtually every other aspect of their lives and also misses the point: those risks are quantifiably tiny and need to be weighed up against the risks to themselves of NOT taking the vaccine, including hospitalization, death and long Covid as well as the impact that choice has on others, collectively.
> As a young man, who survived Covid, why would I risk heart complications to save some old people?
I actually can't tell if this is tongue-in-cheek or not. The optimist in me is choosing to believe it is.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
For my age/health group, I view this risk of Covid to be less than the risk of the known issues with the vaccines and the unknown long term risk factors that aren’t yet fully known.
Do you fly on planes with a known safe takeoff statistics but no one has ever landed it before? It’s hard to quantify unknown risk, and I don’t trust people that safe don’t worry about this shot and we aren’t liable if there are side effects!
And yes, I ride a bike and gave up driving!
1. If you extrapolate that out to everyone doing it, we have a ton more people die, many from things unrelated to Covid because hospitals don't have the capacity. That hasn't been factored into your risk assessment;
2. Even with highly-effective vaccines, the death count in the US is at least 700,000. That's likely underreported by a large amount. The absolute worst case for risks of getting the vaccine are orders of magnitude less than that; and
3. Your choices don't affect just you.
(3) is the big one for me. If the net effect of not taking a vaccine was that that person would simply be more likely to die with no consequences to anyone else, I'd just call that evolution in action and move on.
But that's not the case. And the impact on other people is seemingly given absolutely no weight into these anti-vaxx decisions, which is the selfish aspect I was referring to.
Further to that, we get this under control and the vaccinated and unvaccinated both get to share in the benefits of that so it's doubly selfish.
The worst part is this level of selfishness is dressed up as some kind of virtue.
> unknown long term risk factors that aren’t yet fully known
That's just the fudge factor of confirmation bias rearing its ugly head.
Do we live in a society where we use authority to enforce the “right choice “ or do we make information and education available for people to decide for themselves how they want to live?
I rather live free, even if some people make bad choices. The risk of central authority eventually turning evil is too high.
As a cyclist, I demand all ICE cease operations that are killing people and the planet by burning fossil fuels.
Because it’s ok to force people to do things because their actions have external risks on other people.
You ban all ICE cars and I’ll consider vaccinating myself.
Because old people in their SUVs are slowly killing me when I breathe the fumes.
To continue your analogy: even as a young and healthy man, the additional risk of you being choked by the seatbelt is still _very slightly smaller_ than the risk reduction from you wearing it. See e.g. tables 1-4 of https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/jcvi-statement-se..., which give the comparative risks in the 12-15 age group.
It is true that the difference in risk is very marginal, and so you might reasonably choose to "price in" some additional uncertainty around vaccine risks, and reasonably choose not to get it.
You do also mention that you have survived Covid. I don't have the figures, but I would suspect that also changes the risk calculation in your personal case, in favour of you not getting the vaccine.
But please, whatever you do, look at all the numbers before making a decision. Don't just pick and choose those that fit your case.
A wish to survive future infections? Solidarity?
Would you take a Covid vaccine if it was guaranteed to save your grandparents?
Can you meet the family of the old people you killed, look them in the eye and say ‘It was my right!’
Anyhow, the risk of catching and dying from covid is higher than the chance of heart complications at basically any age, so the fact that it helps other people is just a bonus.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114228
Solidarity? Haha, this is America
My grandparents are all dead, but I don’t think my grandparents who lived through the Great Depression would want me to take the risk of heart inflammation as a young man, so they could potentially live a bit longer. In fact my grandmas would probably take a bullet to spare me health concerns.
Should the young be sacrificed for the old? WTF!?
Given that burning fossil fuels is harmful, I demand that everyone stop burning fossil fuels because it kills some people! https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/vehicle-e...
That’s a misrepresentation. Should the young take a hit of -0.1 disability adjusted life years to give the rest of the population +1.0? Absolutely.
> Given that burning fossil fuels is harmful, I demand that everyone stop burning fossil fuels because it kills some people!
Good news. We’re working on this. Unfortunately it’s not as easy as giving everyone in the country two jabs.
Ban ICE engines today, make everyone buy a Tesla. It’s possible, just like you say it’s possible to force everyone to get vaccinated. There are costs to it, not everyone wants to pay those costs! But it can be done!
And yes, fossil fuels are a health issue. Combined with the massive climate effects, it's good reason to try to stop burning them.
I am very afraid that we are heading towards an authoritarian state that is the best (worst) aspects of the most terrifying ideological empires (Nazis and communists).
No, that's not true at all. You got it exactly backwards.
https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/s0806-vaccination-pr...
I wonder why you cherry-pick obscure sources from other countries while your own CDC quite clearly refutes your claims.
Moreover, you do not need to pick between either getting infected or taking the vaccine, so your whole argument makes no sense from the start.
It doesn't say anything about previously infected VS vaccinated but not infected (and there are studies that claim "natural" immunity is more effective; hell even original J&J trial data suggests that!)
Luckily for the CDC they just recently happened to get data proving that naive vaccinees are 5x better protected than recovered unvaccinated against infection. The study is horrible, with so many issues and conflict of interests... but who cares, the CDC published it, it even has a shiny banner for news media to share around!
Lazarus Long would have outlived the people who infringed his rights.
So then you're weighing the risks of vaccination against serious side-effects from the vaccine. According to (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-...) 4288 people in the 18-29 category have died from covid so far in the US, so even to young people , the risk is obviously not 0.
Logically unless deaths from vaccination in that age group are higher than that number (which AFAIK they're not) it would seem to make sense to get the vaccine.
Really? Link?
First of all, because if enough of us don't take the vaccine, we're all at risk from the virus continuing to spread and mutate.
Secondly, surviving Covid once doesn't mean you're immune from catching it (or a variant) again later on. That link you shared states a 1 in 50 000 chance of developing myocarditis from a COVID-19 vaccine. This recent study [0] finds a rate of reinfection among the surveyed population of 121 in 34 500 males and 148 in 31 697 adults aged 18-39. Either of those is more than 2 orders of magnitude higher than the risk of that heart complication. And catching Covid a second time can also leave you with further health complications.
Finally, I just want to point out that the article you linked literally has this citation from the study author: > He says the new studies clearly show that the benefits of vaccination against COVID-19 outweigh the risks of people aged 16 and older developing myocarditis. Previous research co-authored by Balicer found that in this age group, becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 made a person 18 times more likely to develop myocarditis — a much more significant risk than is observed following vaccination.
So if you're evaluating risk for potential heart complications, I'd think you still want to get the vaccine at the end of the day (barring any other, as of yet un-mentioned, health complications). [0]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8373524/
unfortunately, because the vaccine is leaky, it does little to nothing to stop the spread.
"Increases in COVID-19 are unrelated to levels of vaccination across 68 countries and 2947 counties in the United States … At the country-level, there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases in the last 7 days (Fig. 1). In fact, the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have higher COVID-19 cases per 1 million people."
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-021-00808-7
This is just straightforward fake propaganda.
He said he survived COVID therefore his immunity is very likely stronger (and longer lasting) than that from vaccines.
Seems some of the vaccines are resulting in heart issues for young, otherwise healthy men.
So would you wear a seatbelt if you had almost zero risk of dying from the crash but an very small chance the seatbelt might choke you while driving and lead to long term harm?
Would you take the risk, solely because the authorities say you must take the risk wearing a potentially unsafe seatbelt to save some old people?
You were saying something about people can’t evaluate risk.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02740-y
As a young man, who survived Covid, why would I risk heart complications to save some old people?