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Comment by Synaesthesia | Hacker News Reader

Because they're safe and proven effective at reducing death and severity of the disease. Yes your anecdotal data is one thing, this still kills way more people than flu ever did, on a yearly basis.

Now it would be interesting if they mandated this vaccine but not N95 mask wearing, that kinda baffles me.

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Remember when the message they were safe and proven to prevent you from getting COVID?

No, I remember the scientists being “it’s amazing, we managed 90% effectiveness at preventing infections, and we would still have gone forward with this if it had only been 50%”.

Which scientists stated that? The vaccine clinical trials only measured rates of severe symptoms and death, and they did well at reducing those. But the initial trials didn't even look at infection rates as an endpoint.

Professor Jennifer Rogers. Here's the transcript of the podcast I listened to: https://www.numberphile.com/s/Statistics-and-Saving-Lives-wi...

Though I had misremembered, it was 95% effective and they would've been happy with 30% (the 50% was a slightly different claim right next to 30%).

There’s no death and severity for healthy young people. Only mild symptoms.

"no" deaths is definitely an overstatement (not hard to find deaths of healthy young people by Googling), but the overall point is valid. Severe consequences of Covid are very rare in the young, and many Western health authorities have found that booster vaccinations aren't warranted for young healthy people because the cost/benefit isn't there.

They can still transmit it. So, still a bad idea if the "healthy young person" has older relatives such as parents.

COVID is a problem for entire societies, tackling it in an individualised, atomised way is going to be super-ineffective.

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