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Comment by ifyoubuildit | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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> 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)".

> 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.

I think so, because it's generally a frustratingly frequent point having to be made to people still convinced that the covid vaccine(s, of different varieties) was somehow worse than just getting covid, which we were pretty much all guaranteed to get at one point or another.

If that was not what you were positing, I think the original poster thought you did. But we're veering far into speculation at this point. I'm happy to have explored the topic with someone equally curious at least.

> Chatgpt comes up with plenty more examples

Oh, you're one of those.

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