Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by WillSlim95 1702 days ago
Sure tell that to the families of those who died from COVID19. Getting vaccinated is a much better way to get protection from COVID. I knew quite some folks who were hit by COVID twice, tell them that they were better off suffering through COVID twice instead of relying on the vaccine.
1 comments
helloworld11 1702 days ago
If I told you that it's extremely unlikely that you would die by rhino attack while going on a vacation to southern Africa, and your answer to that was "tell that to the family of X random guy who got trampled to death", as a reason for why you think i'm insane for saying you shouldn't be paranoid about African vacations, your argument would be obviously derided for being obsessive about focusing on only one abnormal thing. But apply the same logic to COVID and suddenly you think it's perfectly valid. It isn't. The vast majority of people who get the illness recover completely, and if you exclude the elderly, the statistical odds of recovery increase immensely. For the very young, they really are in the range of hundreds of thousands to one against dying.
link
WillSlim95 1702 days ago
Yeah poor analogy here, you can choose to not go to Southern Africa, you cannot will for COVID to not infect you. Why should we not be eager for vaccines when they are available for such a highly infectious disease.

Flip the scenario, during the second wave in India, we were one of the few families in our neighborhood who were lucky that no family members caught COVID. All the local hospitals were filled, a large number of people we know survived but there were people who died around 4-5% of the people we knew who were infected and 40% who came very close to dying. The Delta variant arrived when a significant part of the elderly population had been vaccinated. You should recheck the your stats about the elderly, the second wave was brutal to under 40 folks as a good number of above 40 people had been vaccinated by the time the second wave hit.

Sure COVID might have a low fatality rate of 2-3% but 2-3% of a very huge population getting infected by a rapidly infectious disease is still a humungous number.

link
helloworld11 1702 days ago
I have no idea where you got your 2-3% fatality rate for COVID from but it's way off the mark. That is the CFR in certain high risk circumstances but the known IFR of the virus after nearly 2 years of study and data collation has been fairly reasonably established by multiple health agencies. Not surprised by the numbers you use though... CDC Best estimates as of March 2021, For all but the very oldest population segments it's well below 1% across all age groups that are not very elderly. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Or if you prefer Germany, where the most recently estimated fatality rate even for those 50 - 79 doesn't exceed 1%. It's much lower for those below this age range. https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s...

Many other sources back up these findings across multiple countries.

link