BNT162b2 Vaccine Booster and Mortality Due to Covid-19

I'm really starting to wonder what your issue is. Clearly, with the amount of effort you're putting in to obscure the issue, you've got to have some sort of emotion-driven agenda. And your attempts are so plainly transparent, I'll just come out and say it: I don't think you know what you're talking about. People who know what they're talking about don't obfuscate the way you are.

Turn your calculator off, and close your spreadsheet. I'll break it down in even simpler terms.

The vaccine has been approved by the FDA. They approved it because the costs and benefits of getting the vaccine outweigh the costs and benefits of not getting it. Same with the booster, if you're currently over 16.

As for missing work, spending a day in bed, that's not particularly relevant. We're discussing the booster, which means the only people who are relevant are those who have already had 2 doses of the vaccine. These are people for whom that cost is clearly not that significant, because they've already paid it twice. But, if you're making this decision for yourself, this isn't a thought you're going to have, because you already know that.

Regarding not infecting people, again, we know the vaccine is effective. It's effective in reducing hospitalization, severe disease, and against getting the disease in the first place. Again, this is why the vaccine got approved.

If you don't get the disease, how many people do you think you'll infect, hmm? And, if you have a lower probability of getting the disease if exposed, if you get the shot, does it or does it not mean you will infect fewer people if you get the shot? Simple logic.

The rest of what you've written is just some straw man bullshit I didn't say, which, again, I believe you wrote because you have some emotionally driven agenda here. There's no other logical explanation for why you'd want to obscure the issue, when it's so dead simple.

It doesn't take 30 minutes of googling and plugging numbers into an Excel sheet to figure out that getting the shot is the best option on a cost/benefit basis.

Any questions?

> Any questions?

I'm not timr, but I share a lot of his concerns, so I'll try to answer. I think your model of how he is thinking is probably wrong. Some people (including me) care tremendously about the truth of an argument, independent of whether making that argument leads to a desirable social outcome. His "agenda" is likely a strong philosophical belief that it's more important to base policy on a solid scientific foundation than to reach an apparently preferred conclusion, because this is more likely to reliably reach a long term positive result. At least, that's what it feels like internally for me.

Despite your claims, the situation is not simple. Take this paper for instance. At this point, I'm pretty convinced that it is irredeemably flawed. That is, while boosters are probably a good idea for most people, I don't think it will be the case that greater than 1% of the doubly vaccinated but unboosted population will die of Covid in the next year. I think there are methodological problems with their approach that make their specific conclusions mostly meaningless. Unfortunately, despite these flaws, this is probably a higher quality study than most that are being relied upon to make policy.

For context, understand that I've been laid out in bed for most of the last week recovering from my recent Covid booster. I still believe that for me, taking a Covid booster probably was a better choice than not taking one. I don't currently believe that it produces the best health outcomes for a 14 year old boy, but I'm open to the possibility that it's best for society as a whole to put young males at slightly greater risk for the benefit of the rest of society. Please consider that you might be overconfident in how obvious the answers are.

> Regarding not infecting people, again, we know the vaccine is effective.

There is simply no evidence of this. None.

> It's effective in reducing hospitalization, severe disease,

The only evidence we have for this -- so far -- is for people over age 50. There's no evidence of reduction in mortality for younger, healthy people.

> and against getting the disease in the first place.

Our current evidence for this is limited to a few weeks after boosters, and again, it is expected that this will fade over time as antibody titers decline.

> And, if you have a lower probability of getting the disease if exposed, if you get the shot, does it or does it not mean you will infect fewer people if you get the shot? Simple logic.

Still waiting for you to answer the core questions: what is the risk? What is the benefit? Don't just wave your hands. Quantify the benefit.

To make it as clear as I possibly can: if there is a .0000000001% improvement in mortality risk from illness, and a .00001% mortality risk from the vaccine itself, then the logic is obvious: one should not get a booster dose. The risks of the booster dose are (hypothetically; I am making up numbers here) 10,000x greater than the benefits, even though both are quite small.

It is literally that simple. That thinking has already been done by the FDA when they approved the vaccine and when they approved the boosters. The FDA is very conservative when it comes to approving new drugs and therapies (perhaps too conservative, but that's another comment entirely).

If you're not going to trust the FDA, we don't have anything to say to each other, really, because that's what the FDA is for. They have a great track record on these things, with very, very few drug recalls happening due to unforeseen side effects. As far as government agencies go, when it comes to drug approval, the FDA is probably the most trustworthy and least politicized government agency we've got.

They've examined the data on myocarditis and recently approved boosters for people over 16. They haven't yet approved it for 14 year olds, so, yes, that is an open question. But, it's one which they're working to answer, and which it's essentially part of their mandate to answer.

Educated guess is a good start, that’s how you find what to work on. The important part is the work, you can’t suspect something and preach it as if it’s true. Most of the time these hunches are wrong.

Also, just as a good mechanic doesn’t necessarily make a good racer, knowing how to produce mRNA doesn’t mean that you know what it does and doesn’t do to humans. That’s completely different field.

The guy is a complete schmuck, if he had something he would have been working on it and publishing the results instead of using his CV to preach BS in the media.