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Comment by lpolovets | Hacker News Reader

> that figure is already three orders of magnitude lower than the 1.6% (772,000)

I think the interesting ethical/moral/etc debate is what to do for people who are at lower or negligible risk of dying from COVID in the first place.

For example, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1191568/reported-deaths-... suggests that <20k people under 40 have died from covid over 2 years. There might be age groups or demographics where the risk of death from the vaccine is higher than from covid. (This is a statistics observation, not a political statement.) For those groups, what should be expected in terms of vaccination? E.g. what if for your demographic, the risk of death from the vaccine in 1 in 50k but the risk of death from covid is 1 in 200k?

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It seems like it could be a debate worth having. I'd love to see a similar breakdown of vaccine deaths by age (though I don't think there's an official count of confirmed vaccine deaths yet).

If a healthy under-40 individual had the same or slightly higher risk of dying from the vaccine as from covid, but a lower risk of passing it to their parents and any elderly person they come into contact with, should they prioritize their own small statistical advantage over the lives of those others? Should they also consider infections down the line, generated by the individuals they infected?

If someone were to present a convincing case that such a hypothetical were true, I might be forced to rethink some things. However, since the vaccine isn't mandatory, I don't see much in the way of actionable conclusions (other than posting the stats to the CDC website). Personally, I'd take on at least double the (low) risk to try and protect my family. But I'm also biased by knowing how shitty COVID can be, and preferring a quick death to a COVID death.

There is and never will be a definitive "morally right" answer for all situations. Also death is not the only metric people are scared form side effects that may not cause death. They probably should not be but most people simply cant do the research to "know" the real risks. So most people go by what they are told from someone they trust or they do the opposite of what someone they dont trust says (for example the mainstream media).

In the end the only acceptable "morally right" thing to do it to let people decide. This is how it was before covid and this is how it should be after. Will this lead to more death than enforced vaccination for everyone? Yes, it almost certainly will but that should not be the metric. Its an completely "invalid" argument that would never be used for any other similar topic.

You are doing your math incorrectly. The "0.0022%" number if for all age groups, so if you want to compare appropriately, you use the % for death via covid for all age groups, which is 1.6%. If you want to narrow it to age group, you need to find the death rate in VAERS by age group.

Furthermore, the 0.0022% is undoubtedly a gross exaggeration of death-by-vaccine, as VAERS is designed to capture nearly any result of death after a vaccination, including things like "got hit by a car" because drugs could cause drowsiness, for instance.

In fact, it seems that people that get the vaccine have a reduced chance of dying from non-Covid things.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7043e2.htm

if you go that far in your analysis, you should also include long covid in your risk assessment.

Mumps doesn’t cause infertility or brain swelling in all males but you’d still want to get vaccinated.

what demographic has a 1 in 50k chance of dying from the vaccine but a 1 in 200k risk of dying from covid?

Based on the link in my comment, 600 deaths from covid in the 17 and under bracket since 2019. ~70m people in that age group, so that's 1 in 200k per year for 2 years, roughly? The vaccine risk (1 in 50k) is based on the .0022% figure in the grandparent comment. Not sure how that varies by age.

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