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Comment by rataata_jr | Hacker News Reader

One death is too many. I can't imagine that being my mum / sister / kid.

You're a public official in Germany. You have a pandemic raging that already killed 75000 with at most 25% of population that had a disease. On the other hand you have a vaccine that kills 37 for 17 000 000 jabs provided (360 if scaled to 2 jabs to everyone).

One death is of course too many. 360 even more so. But if an alternative is an extra 75'000 I know which choice I would like my public officials to make.

Alternative is to extend the vaccination to younger or more willing crowds. It is basically win-win.

Everybody knows that the alternative is not an extra 75'000 deaths. Perhaps your implicit criticism of public officials is warranted, and I would love to see a well-reasoned argument -- but as it stands I think your comment is quite unhelpful.

Emotionally, this is true.

Literally, this is false in a way that harms our ability to handle disasters.

Would you rather your mum / sister / kid died of COVID? Because that's more likely.

Already had covid and they beat it in 10 days or so. So yeah, ready to take the chance as they are young and fit.

My point is that even a young and fit person has a higher chance of dying of COVID (10x or 100x higher) than by blood clots from the vaccine, given what we know about that risk.

The exact same argument can be applied to not vaccinating too.

That’s why you elect officials who are supposed to think in terms of statistics.

They do, but it’s too frequently: if I do this, how does that affect my chance to be re-elected?

Yep, doesn't help. France has a critical election next year. Germany has a couple this year, including a federal one. And sometimes I wonder whether politicians base COVID measures on their election chances or on effectiveness.

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