How tiny? It matters. Your risk of a bad outcome from Covid-19 is extremely tiny.
(Also, by the way: the costs are greater than what you pay for the shot. Miss a day of work? Spend a day in bed? That's a cost.)
> it benefits everybody you probably won't infect if you get exposed to the virus.
We have no evidence of this, nor do we have any reason to believe elevated antibody levels will continue indefinitely. Antibodies from the third shot will wane, just as the antibodies from the second shot waned, and antibodies always wane after antigen exposure. It's how our immune systems work.
I'm not timr, but I share a lot of his concerns, so I'll try to answer. I think your model of how he is thinking is probably wrong. Some people (including me) care tremendously about the truth of an argument, independent of whether making that argument leads to a desirable social outcome. His "agenda" is likely a strong philosophical belief that it's more important to base policy on a solid scientific foundation than to reach an apparently preferred conclusion, because this is more likely to reliably reach a long term positive result. At least, that's what it feels like internally for me.
Despite your claims, the situation is not simple. Take this paper for instance. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that it is irredeemably flawed. That is, while boosters are probably a good idea for most people, I don't think it will be the case that greater than 1% of the doubly vaccinated but unboosted population will die of Covid in the next year. I think there are methodological problems with their approach that make their specific conclusions mostly meaningless. Unfortunately, despite these flaws, this is probably a higher quality study than most that are being relied upon to make policy.
For context, understand that I've been laid out in bed for most of the last week recovering from my recent Covid booster. I still believe that for me, taking a Covid booster probably was a better choice than not taking one. I don't currently believe that it produces the best health outcomes for a 14 year old boy, but I'm open to the possibility that it's best for society as a whole to put young males at slightly greater risk for the benefit of the rest of society. Please consider that you might be overconfident in how obvious the answers are.
I don't disagree...but I think it's much more concrete than this. At the scale of 330M people (let alone 7 billion), tiny risks matter. The OP simply cannot see past the emotion of the debate to the idea that even a few hundred-thousandths of a percent of additional mortality risk means that 100 people will die in the US.
If those 100 people were otherwise healthy and at no risk from Covid, that's a disaster. If the OP wants to take the tiny risk, that's fine, but it's a different matter to encourage other people to do it without evidence.
If you're not going to trust the FDA, we don't have anything to say to each other, really, because that's what the FDA is for. They have a great track record on these things, with very, very few drug recalls happening due to unforeseen side effects. As far as government agencies go, when it comes to drug approval, the FDA is probably the most trustworthy and least politicized government agency we've got.
They've examined the data on myocarditis and recently approved boosters for people over 16. They haven't yet approved it for 14 year olds, so, yes, that is an open question. But, it's one which they're working to answer, and which it's essentially part of their mandate to answer.
It's also rational to hold a realistic prior, so, you should take all this into account. Mistrusting the FDA on this is literally irrational.
There is simply no evidence of this. None.
> It's effective in reducing hospitalization, severe disease,
The only evidence we have for this -- so far -- is for people over age 50. There's no evidence of reduction in mortality for younger, healthy people.
> and against getting the disease in the first place.
Our current evidence for this is limited to a few weeks after boosters, and again, it is expected that this will fade over time as antibody titers decline.
> And, if you have a lower probability of getting the disease if exposed, if you get the shot, does it or does it not mean you will infect fewer people if you get the shot? Simple logic.
Still waiting for you to answer the core questions: what is the risk? What is the benefit? Don't just wave your hands. Quantify the benefit.
To make it as clear as I possibly can: if there is a .0000000001% improvement in mortality risk from illness, and a .00001% mortality risk from the vaccine itself, then the logic is obvious: one should not get a booster dose. The risks of the booster dose are (hypothetically; I am making up numbers here) 10,000x greater than the benefits, even though both are quite small.
No emotion involved, at least not from me. Seems clear enough to me. You seem to be the one having an emotional response here.