It seems like if you take everything into account, taking the vaccine might not provide any benefit from men under 30. Any medical intervention must be beneficial to justify the use. If it's so and so, or equal risk, then it's not done.
EDIT: The alternative is not stopping vaccinations. Men under 30 are given Pfizer.
Based on the data in the study linked below, the risk for myocarditis among COVID-19 patients is 0.146%, and 0.009% among people without COVID-19 (study was done pre-vaccine).
> During March 2020–January 2021, the risk for myocarditis was 0.146% among patients with COVID-19 and 0.009% among patients without COVID-19. Among patients with COVID-19, the risk for myocarditis was higher among males (0.187%) than among females (0.109%) and was highest among adults aged ≥75 years (0.238%), 65–74 years (0.186%), and 50–64 years (0.155%) and among children aged <16 years (0.133%).
The number of C19 fatalities under 30 in the US appears to easily exceed the number of vaccine-related myocarditis cases. The overwhelming majority of those myocarditis cases followed a benign course.
Later
Another thing to consider is that the myocarditis rate from C19 itself may exceed that of the vaccine, which would basically refute the argument against vaccination.
Even if the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for society you cannot make that calculation. You cannot administer a vaccine to a healthy person just because it doesn't increase their risk of dying as much as it decreases someone else's risk of surviving. Young healthy men should not be coerced into accepting an elevated risk because getting to herd immunity or whatever might save old and at risk persons.
For children and healthy young people below the age of 30, Covid is mostly harmless (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-57766717). The risk of vaccination may actually be higher since the vaccines currently used aren't fully researched nor fully approved yet. The situation is not black or white. Vaccination may be very useful for people aged 50 and above but at the same time counterproductive for children.
I don't think that's the right question or comparison.
If this young person below 30 gets a side effect from the vaccine, is that side effect worse than what they'd get by having the virus?
It should be clear that we aren't going to suppress or eradicate covid, so you shouldn't be comparing getting the vaccine or nothing happening, but getting covid with or without the vaccine
It doesn't matter if the virus is worse than the vaccine since the vaccine is intentionally administered. Someone who is cautious might attempt to avoid the virus altogether thus their risk might be much lower than the average.
Furthermore, there is no guarantee that Covid won't mutate so that you will have to refill your vaccination every year to stay immune like with vaccines against the flu. If so, mass vaccinations probably won't be employed again and we'll only vaccinate at risk groups.
Good luck with avoiding it. Scotland had no restrictions and when they opened schools, about 8% of 12-15 children got infected within first 5 weeks. Delta variant is so infectious that it will not disappear until about 90% of all the people are immune to it. For seasonal flu only 25% is required.
More precisely shouldn't we be comparing the number of life years lost. If for every young healthy person that develops myocarditis or increases his lifetime cancer risk by 1%, how many 84 year old getting to live another year, is worth the risk to the young healthy person.
There are additional questions here. How long does vaccine immunity last? How many shots do you need? Does the risk of side effects add up or is an absence of side effects indicative of further shots being safe?
With an endemic Covid, how often will people get an infection on average?
That number for under 30’s is full of people who are extremely fat or otherwise have preexisting health problems. If you’re under 30 and seemingly healthy your fatality rate is much lower.
Except the risk is not 0 if you don't have comorbidities.
People keep throwing this statement out as though somehow the risk of vaccination is higher then the risks due to viral infection. It is not.
The risks of adverse reactions to COVID infection is reduced across the board if you are fully vaccinated regardless of your health status.
Also worth noting: plenty of young people have comorbidities they don't know about yet, because they haven't found them. It is actually quite difficult to exclude yourself from the "has comorbidities" risk group apriori. A common one is in fact undiscovered heart conditions for people in their 30s, since they usually only become an issue later in life when symptoms are more likely to present.
>Another thing to consider is that the myocarditis rate from C19 itself may exceed that of the vaccine, which would basically refute the argument against vaccination
No, because you need to consider not just the odds of getting myocarditis from covid vs vaccine (Pc:Pv), but the bayesian probabilities of getting infected (Pi) or vaccinated (1) and then getting myocarditis, such that the full risk analysis would look more like Pi*Pc:Pv[1]. Point being when you are talking about vaccinating the entire population, you can easily end up in a position where there are more cases of heart inflammation from fully vaccinating the population than simply letting the virus run its course. I believe the term is relative risk reduction but don't quote me.
1. This isn't quite right, there should be a 1-x term or two in there somewhere to account for the probabilities of getting vaccinated/infected and not developing myocarditis, but its been a few years since my probability course...In any case the point still stands, that the vaccine may be less likely to cause heart inflammation does not imply that it would produce fewer cases overall if a sizeable proportion is vaccinated. To properly estimate that you need an accurate estimate for the myocarditis rate from both covid and vaccine, which I don't think anyone has.
This is true and if it was flu kind of virus with very low reproduction number, it would be right but Delta variant has very high reproduction number and it is guaranteed to infect eventually almost everyone who is without immune response against it.
There is also this fact that myocarditis has high prevalence among teenage boys (even CDC might underestimate it) and it looks like it is caused by some form of immune reaction and its occurrence is immune reaction size dependent (Moderna causes more myocarditis than Pfizer that causes more than AstraZeneca). It allows to postulate that it might be that the people who get myocarditis after vaccination have high risk of getting it after infection.
I mean, yeah. If vaccines don't protect against virus spread... Fuck it, let people decide. Either take a vaccine or risk getting Covid in the wild.
Just make it so you can't use a hospital bed in that case. It's only fair to people who are actually forced to go to the hospital, as opposed to gambling for it.
Smokers are routinely denied organ transplants if they refuse to quit. Same thing for alcohol.
"Heart and lung transplant candidates must be free of nicotine and tobacco use, including chewing tobacco, for six months prior to an initial listing."
If they overwhelmed the medical system to the detriment of others then yes. And this is coming from an ex smoker who knew it was bad for you when begun smoking. Now this is slightly different for other age groups that started their habit when the tobacco industry were paying doctors to promote smoking.
This line of reasoning goes to a dark place. You can't know what makes sense in someone else's life. A heroin addict self-medicating unbearable pain is, to me, a tragic figure deserving help. A morbidly obese person may be suffering from an undiagnosed underlying condition that makes diet and exercise impossible. A smoker may need the stress release.
Should we refuse to treat any injury sustained by the Wright brothers during their experimental flights? Surely that's highly dangerous highly voluntary stuff. Should we refuse to rescue hikers if they become lost or trapped? Should the coast guard never help recreational sailors? Should we have to submit to a proscribed diet exactly to prove we deserve medical care? Should we forgo treatment for tendonitis if it can be shown we ignored known warnings about typing too much?
To me, people are precious, and they lead messy, imperfect lives. They make bad decisions and good ones, and decisions I don't understand. They'll take risks I never would in pursuit of goals I don't see as valuable. Sometimes, when you really get to know someone, a decision that didn't make sense from a distance really starts to. And sometimes people are being self-destructive and there's no more to the story, and sometimes it's something they go through and come out the other side of.
My conviction is to love and help them no matter what.
Sometimes I can't, and that's a different thing, but deciding that someone doesn't deserve help is a level of judgement I don't want and can't justify. Maybe what they were doing really was worth it. I don't know. Even if it's not, it's essential to let people try.
I would find someone else trying to exert this degree of control over my life - requiring me to comply with their particular take on what risks were worth it - suffocating and unbearable. I am sure others feel the same way, about control in areas in which I wouldn't mind it because I happen to already be normal. So I am against it on principle. People need to be people, in all their messy glory. And we should help them if we can, regardless of how they got there. I think the only case in which I would act differently was if I thought letting someone suffer natural consequences was for their best - and I would have to be incredibly sure.
Leaving people to a fatal condition when we could help them is incomprehensible and inhumane to me, and represents a dangerous level of escalating disagreement into dehumanization.
I should clarify that I live in the free world, where healthcare is a right and broadly speaking provided by society. Additional helathcare is of course available on a pay basis. However, to clarify, my comment was in regard to this system.
> Should we refuse to treat any injury sustained by ...
You break it you buy it. Should the state and society in general be expected to shoulder the burdeon for people who chose to put themselves in danger, should 10 people be sent into danger to save the sailor who makes the choice to take on a hurricane?
Who do we save if we can only save 1 person, the heroin addict with a fatal condition we can probably save or the child that would be a flip of a coin?
> My conviction is to love and help them no matter what.
What of the children of the helicopter crew flying into the hurricane to save the lone sailor? No love and help for them? Or the person who doesnt get a bed because it is take up by others?
> I would find someone else trying to exert this degree of control over my life - requiring me to comply with their particular take on what risks were worth it - suffocating and unbearable?
Your choices are other peoples consequences. As a functioning member of society, philosophically you comply with these things on a constant basis, and no doubt demand it of others. It is not a matter of principle, it is simply a question of where the line is. If you have ever complained about anything you have exerted your control over someone elses life.
Sometimes you cannot help everyone and have to make hard choices, but be wary: atrocities don't happen in a vacuum. Behind every historical Red Terror or Holocaust is a narrative, and it almost always goes along these lines: they're a danger to us and they deserve it. Even the eugenicists had a (temporarily) convincing tale.
You cannot rely on "being right this time" to avoid participating in tragedy. The liars are too good. But you can refuse to hate and dehumanize those you are told to.
If you truly believe that medical care is a human right, then you should extend it to every human, regardless of how they wound up in the situation they're in. While you sometimes do have to choose, it is abhorrent to choose the rich over the poor, the socially well-adjusted over the outcasts, ideological friends over ideological foes. The standard we actually use is to do the absolute best you can for everyone you can.
You're right that it doesn't make sense to cause greater harm to avoid lesser, but rationing too quickly, especially from a place of moral judgement rather than medical triage, seems much more likely to be coming from a place of spite than a place of tragic necessity. We take care of enemy soldiers. We take care of people on death row. We take care of people who would see us dead, because this is what civilized and humane people do. If you are quick to deny care to people you perceive as not doing their part, you're coming from a perspective much, much darker than the general thought and ethics of this civilization.
I know everyone is angry and has suffered in the last couple years, and I know everyone wants to fight. There are people running around right now stirring up that anger and trying to direct it at their ideological enemies. By all means, fight for what you think is right. But if you find yourself indifferent to the death of your fellow man or even cheering for it, beware - it may make sense to you right now, but that will be no comfort in five or ten or twenty years if what you wish for comes to pass and you have to remember cheering for it.
Vaccines do protect against spread though. Not perfectly mind you, but the effect is still significant if a significant portion of the population is vaccinated.
EDIT: The alternative is not stopping vaccinations. Men under 30 are given Pfizer.