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"The risk for me is, in fact..."

In fact, the risk for you is that you infect someone you care about and they end up hospitalized or dead. That is a very real risk that has played out countless times during this pandemic and has cost thousands and thousands of lives.

It’s been over a year of explaining this to people. OP is a lost cause.

It's been way longer than a year for that concept. This concept has been around for other diseases, secondhand smoke, reckless/drunk driving, etc. Different people accept it to varying degrees, usually based on topic and personal beliefs.

Those vulnerable people are free to vaccinate themselves and be protected.

Protection isn't 100%, so the best way to protect the most vulnerable among us for everyone to get vaccinated. There are also a small number of people who cannot get vaccinated for medical reasons, and having as many people as possible vaccinated helps protect those people too.

"the refusal of the drug company lawyers to accept liability if something is wrong"

In theory the government is supposed to provide a settlement under the countermeasure version of the national vaccine injury compensation fund. I say in theory because the system doesn't work as well as it's marketed to (based on personal experience).

Also, I'm not sure why you are being downvoted. Maybe just an unpopular opinion or the inflammatory remark? I'm of a similar opinion. I don't go anywhere except the food store, have an N95 mask (owned prior to the pandemic), work from home, under 35 with no comorbidities, only elderly I have contact with are family who have already recieved their vaccinations. If they are saying that this might be an annual vaccine and I fit low risk profiles for attributes and actions, then I might as well wait until I'm forced to go back to the office to get it.

iirc these non-FDA-approved (instead, emergency-use-authorized) products use a separate compensation fund compared to the typical vaccine compensation fund. but having these compensation funds instead of allowing legal action against manufacturers of products is kind of ridiculous on its own, when you get down to it... but it's become highly uncool to question the motives of big pharma in the past year.

Yeah, that's why I said it was the countermeasure version. I just can't remember the actual name and am too lazy to look it up (or maybe too burnt out to care).

The purpose of the funds was good. It was supposed to provide an easy mechanism for victims to recover damages that would not be as arduous as traditional litigation. The purpose was to increase public trust in vaccines that are commonly required/pushed by the government. It does perform this for the common or known side effects listed in the compensation table. Although some of the amounts approved as caps may not take into account individual differences, and don't provide great flexibility.

It's extremely difficult if it's a rare issue or if the underlying mechanism is not known. This mechanism part is the real downside. You could be completely healthy, get a shot, and two days later be airlifted to the ICU with a heart issue that has no family history or even an explanation for the cause other than "some people just have this" (no genetics really identified yet either). How can you prove it was the vaccine if they don't know the factors that would normally cause it? There are other reports of the issue in VAERS, the patient is in one of the lowest risk populations for first time presentation, etc. Even if you don't have a conclusive underlying mechanism, there's no opposing theory for the "natural" mechanism that would normally cause it (even stuff like which genes cause it), but the special vaccine court will most likely say 'too bad, it might be a coincidence'. If they do that, this seems contrary to intended purpose of building public trust in vaccines and compensating victims in a less confrontational system. Now you don't fight a company, you have to fight the government.

it's too bad this post & the one after it go over the edge of acceptable discourse here, because a lot of people who read & post here agree with your overall analysis, even though they don't often speak up on these issues. you are definitely not alone in your frustration.

citation needed. Relatively few people in the HN demographic believe in this nonsense, as you can easily see in the data in the OP.

it's been over four years, how have we still not learned the number one lesson from the 2016 US Presidential Election: that highly-engaged views and opinions expressed online so as to create an outward appearance of nearly-uniform perspective, do not necessarily represent the views of the collective whole, because many people with the unpopular view/opinion will actively choose to not express it, for fear of ostracization? there are many people in tech who don't share the popular view/opinion on many different subjects, and instead keep quiet about it. sometimes they push back on things in very measured amounts here and there; other times, they make throwaways just to fire off a rant of their true feelings, knowing the throwaway will be banned. most of the time though, they just shut up.

it's true that there's a simmering underbelly of racist grievance and that it can be stoked and amplified, but let's check in in a few months and see if silicon valley is or isn't vaccinated before we start declaring that there's a broad silent consensus against scientific truths.

I wasn't aware that residing in SV was a prerequisite for posting to HN? especially after a year of increased remote work? I have little doubt that the vast majority of HN readers/posters who reside in SV are going to be vaccinated within a few months and will have zero qualms about it.

I would just add that in many subjects, the split between the dominant and secondary policy/idea/candidate is small, like 45% to 40%. That's not a lot of difference and leaves a fairly large minority feeling disenfranchised when the media paints whatever the subject is as closed/absolute/etc.

Everyone should take the vaccine, but:

> Also are you surprised that Black people in the South don't want this experimental vaccine after the Tuskegee Experiment?

Is a super important and valid point. Historically Black people have had their human rights violated in similar situations. Johnson and Johnson also knowingly targeted Black people with baby powder marketing after they knew it caused cancer. As much as I think it's important to get vaccinated, I wouldn't take the JJ vaccine on principal and personal fear that it's potentially not safe, just based on the company making it (rational or not).

Do you think there's anything J&J or the government could do to assuage this particular fear in the short-term?

they've already tried blatantly racist things like producing rap songs/videos promoting vaccination and offering VIP access to strip clubs for the vaccinated. seems like people are out of ideas.

For me? Honestly, no. I've been avoiding J&J products as much as possible (it's impossible to fully do it) for years.

I won't even say that the issues with the J&J vaccine are indicative or related to their past actions. But who knows? It definitely doesn't look good or assuage anyone's fears.