Benefits and Costs
All the data I’ve seen makes it clear that if you take a covid vaccine your chances of death or serious harm are very significantly reduced should you become infected with the virus. I accept this – but it is not the whole picture. These are the question that seem reasonable to ask:
1. What is the base probability (not compared with the vaccinated) of an unvaccinated person of my age and health profile becoming infected and seriously harmed by the virus?
This question matters because a reduction of risk from say 1% to 0.1% (for an older person) may feel substantial whereas a reduction of risk from 0.1% to 0.01% (for a younger person – figures only illustrative) feels less substantial.
We might add to this calculation the observation that a 70 year old has an optimistic 20 years of life to protect, while a 20 year old has an equally optimistic 70 years to look forward to.
If the vaccines were an unqualified good then of course no one would hesitate to take them whether they reduced risk from one in a hundred to one in a thousand or from one in a thousand to one in ten thousand. But they are not an unqualified good because these vaccines like any medical treatment carry with them some risk of harm. This leads to the second question:
2. What are the risks of these particular vaccines that should be weighed against their benefits? What efforts are being made to quantify such harms as are becoming evident?
and additionally:
3. What, particularly in the light of alleged toxcicities of vaccine induced spike proteins, can be said about the probabality of longer term harm from vaccines?I think that these questions are not only reasonable they are basic and they need to be address before people are advised, even compelled, to take the vaccine.
For some people there is no doubt whatsoever that everyone should take the covid vaccines. Even if they are personally harmed by ‘rare’ side effects they are still advocates. This is not bad. In a way I applaud this. If I am harmed by covid it will not stop me being sceptical … it will not stop me asking questions even as being harmed by an adverse effect has not stopped this Australian journalist giving answers.