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Re:United, Spirit offer higher pay to on board staff during ... by mlyle on Friday December 31, 2021 @06:06PM (#29753454)
Zero risk isn't. But the risk picture right now is crummy.

I'm a teacher and 42 years old. I think the risk, if I catch it, being vaccinated and fully boosted, is about 3x the risk from infleunza. And I have a substantially higher chance of catching it than influenza in any given timespan with how high case counts are.

But even more than that: I can shoulder that risk. But when you stack the risk of all the disruption that would come with a mild infection, things are really crummy now.

Then there's the worst thing: my dad is immunocompromised. He's vaccinated and boosted, but one can assume the efficacy is even worse for him. So, effectively, while I'm teaching and case counts are high, I can't see him.

Re:United, Spirit offer higher pay to on board staff during ... by eej71 on Friday December 31, 2021 @08:12PM (#29754386)
So I went rummaging around to see what the stats were for flu risk vs. covid-19 (w/ vaccine) risk.

Judging by the this website of historical data, looks like deaths per year seems to average around 15/100,000 a year. It's interesting to see how the number has come down quite a bit over the last 40 years. Check it out. Was quite a bit higher even in the late 90s!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/184574/deaths-by-influen...

Now onto the fatality rate for covid-19 for those who have been vaccinated. Judging by the CDC's table here, looks like it is around 35/100,000 after the 2nd shot. I do think (hope?) the number will improve a bit thanks to post infection treatment protocols.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm#T2_down

Re:United, Spirit offer higher pay to on board staff during ... by mlyle on Friday December 31, 2021 @09:31PM (#29754864)
> Judging by the CDC's table here, looks like it is around 35/100,000 after the 2nd shot.

Yes, so this is a different approach than I took, but it's yielding equivalent numbers. You have about 2x the risk of influenza after vaccination for the population as a whole. It's a bit worse at my age (influenza death rates don't rise much for age 42, but COVID death rates do a bit more). And now we have Omicron showing up and reducing protection from vaccination. So back of the envelope from these numbers it's reasonable to come up with an estimate of 3x, too.

Of course, this approach has myriad flaws-- better to take the conditional probability approach that I did and look at probability of infection and probability of severe illness given infection.

In any case: I can accept a 3x influenza risk. It's the cumulative effects of the others that is making me take every possible precaution. And even so, I can't really see my dad.