[ifyoubuildit]

> There is no downside to taking any vaccine.

This is just wrong. Go figure out which vaccines you haven't had, and then figure out why they haven't been prescribed to you. (Hint: It's not because your doctors are anti-vax)

[croon]

While you are technically correct, my charitable interpretation of GP is "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)".

It's hard to exhaustively list all qualifiers to statements in short form communication.

[ifyoubuildit]

Still false. Maybe if you qualify it further to currently prescribed vaccines (e.g fda certified ones that haven't been taken off the market for whatever reason, or just superceded by newer better vaccines), you'd be closer, but some of those vaccines still wouldn't be recommended to certain people for certain reasons (say after a certain age, or maybe if they're pregnant, or if they have certain conditions, etc, etc, etc)

I don't think it's being particularly pedantic to say "there is no downside to any vaccine" is just wrong, and not really something that should be repeated. It's more of a religious statement than anything else, and it's the exact kind of thinking that comes out of the insane pressure put on people during covid.

[croon]

Just so I don't misinterpret your meaning, what specific examples of vaccines are you thinking of?

I'll address one as an example, and you tell me if/how I'm wrong: LAVs, like the MMR vaccine, specifically the Rubella portion is contraindicated in pregnancy for the risk of CRS (in the fetus) and recommended instead after pregnancy. But that is because the risk of contracting it is low enough to not warrant immediate protection. But it is recommended both for the adults and children. It's a temporal recommendation, not against.

You are not weighing it against getting Rubella itself, so it falls under the conditional "illness you are likely to come in contact with".

[ifyoubuildit]

> It's a temporal recommendation, not against.

Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it.

I'm not claiming any expertise here, but some examples:

The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind)

HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV.

Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples, but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to.

[croon]

> Same difference. "There is no downside to any vaccine" means at any time, if you see a label that says "vaccine", it's never a bad idea for you to take it.

No it isn't. Getting rubella while pregnant would be much much worse for the fetus, while likely mild for the woman.

> The jannsen covid shot: you're likely to come in contact with covid, this one is only recommended for folks who can't do mRNA for whatever reason. (The same concept applies to any vaccine that isn't considered the best of its kind)

Ergo: The Jannsen vaccine is better than getting covid without it.

> HPV: not just blanket recommended to everyone, yet you are very likely to come into contact with HPV.

It is blanketly recommended before coming in contact with HPV.

> Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples

Ok, if you're open to explore, keep them coming.

> , but the concept is simple. Just because something is called a vaccine (or medicine in general) does not make it some kinda special power up that everyone should be maximizing their exposure to.

Vaccines are better than the illness they're protecting from. That's the arguement:

> "There is no downside (not grossly outweighed by the upside) to taking any vaccine (against an illness you are likely to come in contact with)".

[ifyoubuildit]

> No it isn't. Getting rubella while pregnant would be much much worse for the fetus, while likely mild for the woman.

Does the doctor give the pregnant woman that vaccine? (I meant same difference about "temporal recommendation" vs "recommending against")

> Ergo: The Jannsen vaccine is better than getting covid without it.

If you had already recovered from covid and were younger, the upside was negligible, so I don't think it would meet "grossly outweigh".

> It is blanketly recommended before coming in contact with HPV.

It seems to be recommended for ages 9 to 26, so presumably there is a downside for those younger than 9.

(https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/hpv/hcp/recommendations.htm...)

If you just compare the downsides of a successful vaccine (which is not all vaccines) to the downsides of the disease it targets, it should obviously always come out that the vaccine was a net win. But you can see how that gets pretty far from "there is no downside to any vaccine" right?

Chat gpt mentions oral polio. You're probably better off having had the oral polio vaccine if you are 100% going to be exposed to polio. But you wouldn't be doing a random first world resident a favor advising them to get the oral polio vaccine (which isn't suggested by "there is no downside to any vaccine")

So granted, you have an infinitely better argument than the original. And maybe that's the argument they meant to make.

[novemp]

> Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples

Oh, you're one of those.