On 10/01/2021 22:08, David Higton wrote:
> In message 
>            Pancho  wrote:
>
>> On 10/01/2021 15:46, David Higton wrote:
>>> In message 
>>>             Pancho  wrote:
>>>
>>>> The risk of Covid for people < 30 is surprising low.  I've not seen any
>>>> testing that shows it is safer from them, in general,  to take a
>>>> vaccine.
>>>
>>> Not true.  The risk of Covid for them is very low, yes; and the risk from
>>> taking the vaccine is even lower.
>>>
>>
>> Just how would we know that? The IFR for someone less than 30 is <  0.01%.
>> For a healthy person under 30, even less. You cannot rely on  testing
>> 20,000 people for a few months to be confident of that level of  risk.
>>
>> Unless you have a cite, I'm going to assume you are just making it up.
>> Something which has plagued medical treatments throughout the ages.
>
> Something like 45000 people tested the Oxford vaccine before it was
> approved for general use.

No half of them were a control group, i.e. not given the vaccine. Hence
my 20,000 approximation.

[snip]

> So far we've had about 1.5 million people vaccinated, and that's all
> the problems.  Now do your arithmetic, and you'll see the risk of the
> vaccine is much less that 0.01%.
>

The AstraZeneca vaccine has been out for a week. Even with the Pfizer
one I would not expect problems to be reported promptly. Finally you are
still ignoring the time aspect, we do not know long term effects.

You cannot just wave your hands in the air and say it is safe.

>>> In any case, it's an indefensibly selfish viewpoint.
>>
>> I'm old and it seems perfectly defensible to me. Expecting perfectly
>> healthy people, at low risk, to take a poorly tested treatment just in
>> order to protect others seems a tad selfish to me.
>
> You've just stated something that is not true.  The vaccines (not a
> treatment, incidentally) have been tested just as well and as
> thoroughly as all previous vaccines.  Don't let the short timescale
> fool you.

This is not the case, the AstraZeneca vaccine testing was problematic in
that they messed up a lot of dosages. With a normal test they would
almost certainly have redone the messed up tests.

And finally you are again ignoring the fact that problems may not
manifest immediately and so a short time span is clearly less than
ideal. It is true that problems with vaccines tend to show up early, but
we haven't developed enough vaccines to extrapolate this with confidence
levels of risk < 0.01%.

So yes if you are old, with a clearly high risk from Covid and limited
years left anyway, taking the vaccine is a good bet.

What is not a good bet is immediately giving it to billions of people
under 30. Which would be necessary to achieve herd immunity, assuming
the vaccine does significantly prevent transmission, which we aren't
sure of.

[snip]

>  That's what has been done in the case of these vaccines
> - plus a great deal of pressure, in view of the 7-figure mortality.
>

You are again ignoring my point about the reasonable doubts of giving
the vaccine to young people. Giving the vaccine to the old is the best
way to reduce the mortality. That is why vaccine approval has been
rushed through as an emergency measure, quite sensibly in my view.
However, I would not believe medical professionals if they claim this
vaccine is as safe as other vaccines which have been tested over decades.

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