Thanks. It's surprising to me that this needs stating, but it apparently does, here on HN.

Exactly. This is the exact logic people fail at when it comes to medication side effects. Sure, the vaccine has a tiny chance for this and that negative side effect, but you are not choosing between getting the vaccine and gambling on the side effect, vs not taking any risk, but gambling on not taking a vaccine and having a higher chance of catching the virus which has orders of magnitude higher chance for way worse side effects. It is a tradeoff with a quite clear better shot (pun semi-intended)

I don't think your analogy is right.

A vaccine has a small risk that it can cause harmful effects to a small subset of the population. The predicted outcome is very positive.

Societal collapse and power vacuums in Iran and neighboring countries have a high risk of resulting in harm to a large population. The risk is very high and it has happened before -- in the same country, even!

Collapse and revolutions, unlike vaccines, are a high risk gamble. They can, for example, result in the Islamic Revolution, ISIS or who knows what.

So I don't think the analogy works at all.

My point was more regarding the zero sum nature of these problems. Of course the “weights” are way different, but one situation is something everyone have experienced, so I don’t think it is a bad analogy.