[gizmo686]

Covid isn't that bad when compared to the potential harm that a dangerous vaccine could cause when injected into billions of people. Particularly because deploying the vaccine would not immediately stop all the covid19 damage. Further, deploying a dangerous or innefective vaccine would also cause significant long term damage to public health by fueling doubt in healthcare; particuarly since antivaccers are already a growing public health concern.

If we want to rush the process safely, the way forward is a challenge trial; where we deliberatly expose vaccinated people to the virus to see if they get infected. If you cannot get that experiment passed an ethics review board, you should not be able to get widespread deployment of an untested vaccine passed.

[kurthr]

This is quite simply false based on a worst case scenario of a 1976 Swine Flue vaccine level fallout, which had <10ppm cases for those given the vaccine (of which ~50% had severe effects or died).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillain%E2%80%93Barr%C3%A9_sy...

Your chance of getting COVID over the next year is certainly greater than 1% even if you live in a fairly unaffected area of the US (and are likely closer to 10% without extreme measures), while your chance of dying is almost 1% and severe effects (hospitalization) are in the 3-5% range.

https://covid19-scenarios.org/

About 20 million people are expected to get COVID over the next year and over 500 people per day are expected to die every day in the US until there is a vaccine. That is with current economic closure, before schools reopen, and with some fraction of people wearing masks.

Even if you think your chances of becoming very sick from COVID are <1/1000 (no pre-existing conditions <30yrs old), and you think you are so very careful that your chances of illness are 1% , and you don't care about spreading to anyone else... you are better off taking the worst case vaccine we know of.

[ethanbond]

The worst case vaccine to ever hit the market which is a significantly different thing than the worst case vaccine we’ve ever developed.

Do you know how many failed drugs go into a successful one? The success rate is absolutely abysmal.

[kurthr]

Do you read Derek Lowe?

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/09/03/co...

If you don't, you should... and yes, I do. The swine flu vaccine was accelerated. Many drugs for cancer will literally kill you (slower than the cancer), so the safety of a drug needs to be measured against placebo and demonstrate significant improvement. First, do no harm.

[xnyan]

Are you arguing that the 1976 Swine Flue vaccine incident is the worst possible case or the worst possible case on record? If the former, then what is your evidence or reasoning for that? If the latter, how do we know that this is the worst case we can expect?

[kurthr]

Well, the worst case is that the vaccine is actually a highly contagious world ending bioweapon that causes the extinction of humanity, so the latter.

How do you know that the current death rate for COVID19 won't eventually be much higher for those who have "recovered"? Maybe all those asymptomatic youngsters are actually going to develop horrible debilitating lung and blood disorders? We work with the data we have, and nothing suggests the vaccines are worse than the virus or even 1000x less bad.

Of course we should test them and find the best one(s), and an extra month or three are worth the potential risk trade-off... waiting 3 years "to be sure" is just going to needlessly kill millions.

[xnyan]

It sounds like in judgment of which is worse: over or underestimating the risks of the virus versus taking additional time for more testing.

How many other nations are doing this besides Russia? Why not? If you’re asking me to make a bet, I’m going to side with the vast majority of nation-states. not a guarantee by any means, but the best choice unless I decide to go back to school to study viral infections.

[kurthr]

If the virus was 10x more deadly (if it was 10x more contagious we'd almost all have it by now), I'd probably advocate for even more accelerated testing and deployment (we're close to the edge for full deployment over the next 9 months even in developed countries as it is). It's a trade-off between deaths from the virus and from a vaccine... once the vaccine is 100x lower risk than the virus you start rolling out to high risk profiles (front line medical and essential workers along with 60+ / pre-existing) since they have disproportionate >10x risk of transmission & death... then as production and deployment catch up roll out to medium (30s-50s especially with kids) after another 3-6 months and eventually low risk profiles (those 20s and under without kids or pre-existing conditions). That extra 6 month delay balances some of the risk between virus and vaccine. Since we'll have several different vaccines to choose from we can also pick the most effective ones that have the lowest side effects for later inoculation, while higher risk groups just need some protection today.

[partyboat1586]

>How do you know that the current death rate for COVID19 won't eventually be much higher for those who have "recovered"? Maybe all those asymptomatic youngsters are actually going to develop horrible debilitating lung and blood disorders?

The same could be said about the vaccine since we will have no long term studies.

[s1artibartfast]

For what it's worth, The infection fatality rate 20-29 I have seen is about 7/100,000. I have seen many drugs with higher death rates form side-effects.

[tylerhou]

Deaths are not the only metric. We still don't know the potential long-term side effects of COVID, even for "low-risk" people.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haul...

[kurthr]

The death rate for GBS from the swine flu vaccine was considered horrific at ~5ppm. I don't wish that on anyone, but I'd note that its still 10x better than the COVID death rate for the cohort you've found (average 25), and I certainly hope they don't asymptomatically spread that disease to parents (50) or grandparents (75), which are orders of magnitude worse off.

[s1artibartfast]

Who considers it horrific and in what context?

Here are some common causes of death for ages 20-29 in the USA[1]:

Poisoning kills 460 ppm

suicide kills 336 ppm

Motor vehicles kill 331 ppm

Homicide kills 245 ppm

Heart disease kills 80 ppm

[1] https://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/leadcause.html

[shajznnckfke]

Given the way this story is going, I’m somewhat expecting a future where right-wingers refuse to wear masks but happily take the vaccine, while the left goes antivax and refuses to take it (because it was “rushed by Trump”) but continues to wear masks. Perhaps by our powers combined, we’ll defeat the virus!

[takeda]

That's why they want to absolutely make sure it won't cause a damage. The vaccine in 1976 was rushed for political reasons and that didn't end up well besides hurting many people it is also still used as an argument why you should not vaccinate.

[shajznnckfke]

I feel we are overweighting the importance of the political meta-game here and underweighting the real ongoing suffering caused by the virus (in terms of health, but also in economic deprivation).

But if we’re going to talk about the meta-game, I think a swift return to normalcy after the vaccine is distributed could do a lot for the public’s opinion of the importance of vaccination. It could marginalize the antivax movement for decades to come.

[takeda]

Vaccine won't restore normalcy at least not immediately.

> I think a swift return to normalcy after the vaccine is distributed could do a lot for the public’s opinion of the importance of vaccination. It could marginalize the antivax movement for decades to come.

A bad vaccine could absolutely cause havoc. And do the exact opposite, that's why they are being careful. If our president wouldn't politicize it, they wouldn't even have to say it.

[staticassertion]

Why would the people who refuse to wear masks take a vaccine? They think the virus is a hoax.

[codezero]

Not OP, and don’t feel strongly, but I’ll give my opinion on what might make that happen:

Mask is visible - sign of compliance. You can get a flu shot and not tell your ultra-right-wing friends. Even on the right there is a spectrum of course, and folks march to the beat with certain signals, masks seem to be one of them thanks to behavioral modeling from leadership.

[partyboat1586]

Right wingers who don't wear a mask are not motivated by their friends seeing them without a mask. They are individualists. They do it because they see it as resisting being controlled by anyone or subjugated. They are also heavily anti-vax for the same reason. The amount of pressure there is in public to wear a mask is enough that it selects for individualists as the people not wearing masks.

[shajznnckfke]

I think if Trump were to triumphantly and controversially announce approval of a vaccine, it would become a badge of honor among his fans.

[outside1234]

They think whatever Trump tells them to think. So if Trump tells them to take a shot, they will take the shot (FOR FREEDOM!).