[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