[nradov]

Every vaccinated person will not count towards herd immunity. Vaccines can be tremendously helpful in controlling infectious diseases, but not every person who is vaccinated will produce neutralizing antibodies. This is why it's important to vaccinate as many people as possible in order to surpass the herd immunity threshold.

At this time we don't know how effective any of the vaccine candidates will be.

[glofish]

in addition it is also not clear if the vaccine will have a lower incidence of side effects than the virus itself

kids and young adults have less than 1/100,000 chance of dying of COVID. The vaccine needs to be better than that. There is an ethical issue at hand of vaccinating people that are not at risk to save those that are at risk.

For reference after administering 3.1 billion vaccines the US paid damages in about 3,000 cases thus across all vaccines the rate of serious side effects is about 1 in a hundred thousand (considering about 10 vaccines per individual).

[greedo]

There is an ethical issue at hand when people are unwilling to protect 30-40% of the population because they fear a miniscule risk of vaccination.

[glofish]

I think you deliberately avoid taking an effort to appreciate the ethical side of the issue.

There is no vaccine that we currently mandate for the sole reason of protecting someone else.

The fundamental requirement of the Hippocratic Oath is "First, do no harm". If you are vaccinating someone, you better cause less damage to that person than the disease itself would do.

I have a kid, I am not an anti-vaxxer by any stretch of imagination: the whole family gets flu shots every single year.

But will I rush to get my kid vaccinated with a new thing rushed to market during a exaggerated hysteria, a vaccine not properly vetted for long term effects ... uhh most certainly not. I am going to wait a couple of years to see how others will fare.

(FYI I work in life sciences and I like to believe that I understand the inner workings of a living cell better than overwhelming majority of the population)

[greedo]

We impose many restrictions on individuals in the name of protecting others. Off the top of my head, my city doesn't allow driving under the influence, discharging firearms within city limits, public nudity, yelling fire inside a theater. We also vaccinate to build up community immunity, not just to address the health of an individual person.

And as far as COVID vaccinations go, you're trying to have your cake and eat it. Either COVID-19 isn't risky/dangerous for young people, (meaning we can safely vaccinate them), or it's dangerous to them. If you're trying to say that a vaccine for COVID-19 would have worse effects than the disease itself, I think this would be extremely unlikely, since it doesn't occur with other vaccines.

If a COVID vaccination has a 1 in 100K rate of deleterious side effects (up to and including COVID-19) in the general population, then vaccinating the US population (330M) would result in 3300 cases of COVID (or bad side effects). The benefit of this would be saving roughly 2M people from death, and countless others from hospitalization and long term complications.

[glofish]

Comparing vaccinating someone to driving under the influence makes no sense whatsoever.

As for the other content, it just shows you don't understand what kind of problems an insufficiently tested vaccine could cause. You should educate yourself better:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/dengue-vaccine-fiasc...

[greedo]

You're moving the goalposts. You originally were talking about the risks of vaccinating kids and young adults, and saying that the vaccine had to be better than 1/100k. Now you're saying concerned about insufficiently tested vaccines. These are completely different issues, but you're trying to muddy the water.

Of course no one wants to take a vaccine that didn't undergo proper clinical trials. The argument was whether a vaccine that had typical side effect ratios would be ethical.

[s1artibartfast]

You are correct that there is a utilitarian argument that vaccinations will save lives. You and the parent post disagree about the new vaccine risk level. Do you think that they should be compelled to vaccinate their child with the unproven vaccine. What if the risks outweigh the benefit for the child, but are positive for society at large?

[greedo]

I don't think anyone should be vaccinated with an unproven vaccine. Any vaccine issued should have cleared Phase IV, with minimal short-lived and long-lasting side effects. I won't take a vaccine, nor have my children vaccinated until then. I'm also looking at the current rush for a vaccine with a jaundiced eye. I think the likelihood of ever finding a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is small, however I hope we get lucky, and the tremendous resources being applied to finding a vaccine pay off.

I don't think we disagree about the new vaccine risk level, since we don't have a vaccine, nor know anything about its side effects.

If a vaccine is has differing risks based on age group, then I would hope that we vaccinate the lowest risk group; assuming the risk variance is significant.

As a society, vaccinations are naturally government infringement upon individual rights. But a well-functioning society routinely infringes on individual rights. We place children in protective services when their parents don't care for them properly (in the mind of the government). We (in extreme times) invoke a draft for military personnel. As my dad used to say, your right to swing your fist stops at my nose. Rights are not inviolable; though care should be taken to limit infringement.

As SC Justice Robert Jackson once said, the protections afforded by the Constitution "must not be discredited by an interpretation to mean liberty without law."