[unanswered]

For an individual, the antiviral is better because it means they don't need to take the vaccine with any possible risks, however small, up front. Yes once an individual become symptomatic with covid-19, they're forced to be exposed to one of the risks, but at that point the antiviral is the only choice. In short, it allows an individual to delay taking the unknown risk until there's an actual known downside to not taking it; i.e. unmitigated covid symptoms. Most people will never be exposed to that downside anyways.

[ralmeida]

From a "reducing my risk of dying" perspective, you'd have to balance the risk of dying from taking the vaccine vs the risk of dying from COVID with zero treatments, one treatment, or both treatments.

The numbers could lean either way and would be very sensitive to variations in the probabilities involved - I'm sure it would be very hard to reach any form of consensus on "probability of dying from taking the vaccine". It's also worth addressing wasn't even making the point of which (so-called) experimental treatment has a better likely outcome but rather addressing criticism at (so-called) experimental treatments in general.

From an "unknown risk" perspective, you'd also have to consider that COVID itself could have yet-unknown long-term risks.

[unanswered]

> From an "unknown risk" perspective, you'd also have to consider that COVID itself could have yet-unknown long-term risks.

That would not factor into a correct analysis: the unknown risks of covid are the same whether or not you get vaccinated (or any other treatment) because by definition the vaccine has not been shown to mitigate the unknown risks.