[silvester23]

What I fail to understand is how you seem to think that you can can assess the risks associated with contracting the virus better than the risks associated with getting the vaccine.

At this point, so many more people have received the vaccine than have contracted the virus that I think it's fairly safe to say that we know much more about how people react to the vaccine than the virus (which also keeps mutating unlike the vaccine).

It's true that we don't know the long-term effects of the vaccine but

1) my understanding is that medically speaking, a few weeks after the shot every trace of the actual vaccine is gone from the body and all that remains is that your immune system has learned how to fight the virus and

2) we certainly do not know the long-term effects of the virus either

So unless you are in a position where you can completely seal yourself off and be sure you will not get the virus, it's a choice between getting vaccinated and getting the virus. Considering what I wrote above, to me that is an obvious choice.

[bacro]

> What I fail to understand is how you seem to think that you can can assess the risks associated with contracting the virus better than the risks associated with getting the vaccine.

As I said, I cannot. Actually, nobody can. What I do know is:

- A vast majority of who gets the virus does not die or get any effects. - A lot of people who die of Covid-19 has a comorbidity factor of 4 (Which means suffers from 4 comorbidities). - I am 40 years old and no other comorbidities than a very light asthma. I eat well and try to do some exercise (but not as much as I would like, for sure). - There are no studies of long-term effects of getting the vaccines or getting the virus. - Anyone who took the vaccine can be infected and spread the virus just as someone who is not vaccinated. - Things that are made under political/financial pressure rarely get right the first time.

So, with this data, for me it is logical for people to wait if they can. If they have comorbidities or are old, then it is another story.

[bumby]

>A vast majority of who gets the virus does not die or get any effects.

To the OP's point, the same can be said about the vaccine. Their point being, because of the transmissibility of the virus, it's fairly safe to assume that most people leading normal lives will be exposed to the virus at some point so the choice is whether or not to be exposed while vaccinated or not. There seems to be less uncertainty around the vaccine than the virus, so the risks are better known.

[bacro]

Both of these scenarios are possible (among others, obviously):

- I take the vaccine and either die or have a side-effect for life because of some unknown related to my body. - I contract the virus and have no symptoms at all.

Nobody knows which one will happen to each individual. That woman that took the vaccine and died one day later? We will never know if she was better off without taking the vaccine and having the virus instead. Our body is too complex to predict that right now.

I find it particularly amusing that people that question the vaccines safety are being treated as idiots that know nothing about science. Like, never the scientists were wrong before or the big pharma/government never had their own interests in their mind. I guess it is easier to attack us than to have a rational conversation.

[wombatpm]

43 million US Covid cases to date 700k deaths

393 million doses of the vaccine have been administered in the US

I think the safety of the vaccine has been established. You are welcome to take whatever risks you want. Just because you have been lucky so far, doesn't make it the correct approach. If you really believed it was no big deal, you'd run out and get COVID. Instead, you hope your luck will hold. Thing about luck is that it always runs out.

[bacro]

How many of those 700k deaths are from people with 3 or 4 comorbities?

If you remove that from the equation, it would give a lot lower number I am sure. Now compare this with the flu. Would these people with comorbities die if they catch the flu? Do you absolutely know they wouldn't?

If you have comorbidities, by all means, take the shot. If you do not have comorbidities and want to take the shot as well, fine it is your body, you can do whatever you want with it that does not put me in danger. I, for instance, want to take the shot only when I know for sure it won't affect me. After all, the city where I live was one of the firsts that got Covid cases and it got so bad that the city was in complete lockdown and at the time there was no guidance for masks usage. So, I went to supermarkets, pharmacies, whatever at that time with no mask and if I had to bet, I would bet that I already got covid and was asymptomatic.

[wombatpm]

COVID has been fatal to people without comorbidities. The fact that you have a respiratory issues and want to take a chance with a respiratory disease shows you are just counting on your luck. I wish you well

[bumby]

I have no personal umbrage if somebody weighs the risk and decides against the shot. What's confusing is when people only acknowledge one side of the risk equation and couch it as some sort of risk-based decision.

>I, for instance, want to take the shot only when I know for sure it won't affect me.

That's fine. What's incongruent is when it's followed up with the sentiment below.

>I went to supermarkets, pharmacies, whatever at that time with no mask

I don't quite understand the logic. You don't want the shot because the risk uncertainty is too great. Yet you have no problem (likely, in your words) exposing yourself to the disease at a frame when there was little data about it and the uncertainty was also great. Now that there's more data, the uncertainty is even more in favor of the vaccine being safer than the disease.

Again, I don't really care if people don't want to get the vaccine on a personally level. But, absent of some grand conspiracy, don't try to rationalize that decision as some pragmatic risk-based analysis. If you do think its riskier due to some large conspiracy that, too, will need some data to back it up. Make peace with the fact its an emotionally based decision and not a data-driven one and move on.

[panabee]

it's reasonable to discount for comorbidities with covid deaths.

how many vaccine deaths occurred among people with 3/4 comorbidities?

assuming vaccine deaths are lower, and the long-term risks for the virus and vaccine are both unknown, why would a risk-based analysis suggest the virus is safer than the vaccine?

[bumby]

I don't think anybody is disagreeing here to the level insinuated. The OP's point wasn't that the vaccine has no risk. It's that both choices have risks, but since there's more data regarding the vaccine, there is less uncertainty about the risks.

With most of the population (possible exception being teenage males, the last I looked, regarding myocarditis), the same outcomes are prevalent regarding the virus as the vaccine, but at lower probabilities with vaccine. Since risk = severity x probability, that generally makes the risk of the vaccine lower.

Questioning a vaccine is prudent and doesn't make someone an idiot. But sometimes there does seem to be a conflation of ideas regarding risk, data, and uncertainty.