By the time they would let me get it, it'll be the GOTY version with all the release day bugs patched.
Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
371–380 of 911 posts
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
And, of course the #1 reasons even in tech circles: ”BILL GATES IS GOING TO MICROCHIP AS ALL” or ”Covid is just a flu, it’s not going to affect me”
Please don't set up strawmen just to knock them down. It's too easy to cast everyone who has some rational scepticism as nutjob's, but that just alienates those who could otherwise be persuaded by civil discourse.
I'm not setting strawmen, this is my actual experience. Tech is not immune to this kind of conspiracies.
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#373Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The vaccine is not field tested what exactly would you call phase 3 trials for the various vaccines that were done on thousands/tens of thousands of people?
Not enough to know with absolute certainty what will happen when millions of people get it. Especially unforeseen reactions that take several years to appear. As much as you trust each of the (5?) vaccines, you yourself can not know for certainty.. there is some doubt. You may judge that that uncertainty and risk is minimal and well worth taking the vaccine, another completely rational person may decide that it is no…
You have a 0.5-1.0% chance to die from COVID-19, a higher chance to be hospitalized and experience serious consequences from that. And the chance to contract the disease is very, very high in many countries right now.
The vaccines have been tested in 30-40,000 people each. The typical serious side effects for vaccines are something like 1 in a million or 1 in a few hundred thousand. Even if the vaccine had an usually high level of side effects, odds are it's still far, far less harmfull than contracting the actual disease.
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#375[dead]
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#376I'll take it but only later in the year when it is more widely available. People at high risk should go first, then people who are super social (or stupid + spreading the plague). Especially younger people, they need to get pricked. Do you really think they're going to avoid drinking close physical contact in spring? Me neither.
needs an edit for the assumption. also, half of the planet is already in Spring
Geographically, yes. By population... not even close to half.
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#377Interesting to see the HN crowd poll more likely to take the vaccine (~85% at the time of this comment) compared to Americans polling at 60%. https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/11/10/harris-poll-co...
I am not American.
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#3781
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#379I'll take it, but still mostly isolate for a while. My infant son is likely to get a vaccine a year later in the best scenario, and I'm not about to expose him to this thing if at all possible.
Re: Poll: Will you take the Covid vaccine?
#380I'm surprised to see such a high percentage of "NO" responses. I'm genuinely curious to understand why
I will take it after a year or two. The US did a great job at politicizing the virus such that I don't really trust that pharma companies actually did their due diligence with regard to testing and safety measures. I accept that doctors and scientists will take it under the guise of them "knowing it's safe", and I accept that lots of people will say "If they're doing it, you should too", but I think this strategy jus…
I suggest that Western culture's understanding of risk is immature. Is it the case that driving at the speed limit is safe and driving 5% faster is dangerous? Of course not. Driving at any speed carries risk; driving faster, on a given road, in given conditions, is usually more dangerous; and society needs to decide the degree of risk it will accept. (This applies especially in cases such as driving, where the benefit of speeding accrues to the driver, but much of the risk is imposed on others without their consent.)
A better approach to the safety of the vaccine is to ask whether it's safer to take it or to abstain, and who bears the risk in each case. I accept that the numbers won't be the same for everyone: they depend on age, sex, gregariousness, medical condition, culture, job, and perhaps (I don't know) ethnicity. However, people I know who've had Covid-19 say it's brutal: even if it doesn't kill you, it can give you a really rough time. I know of four friends of friends who've died of it, including one in his twenties. And let's not forget long Covid, which can strike at any age. Set against that the clinical trials that the vaccine has undergone, with trials halted if even one person became seriously ill. Finally, there seems to be at least a reasonable possibility that being vaccinated will reduce a person's ability to infect others.
All in all, any of the leading vaccines available in the West look like a better bet, for me and the people around me, than just crossing my fingers and hoping.
Should I take it now or wait? There seems little doubt that vaccines will be refined over the coming years. A vaccine taken in 2023 will probably be safer, and certainly better understood, than one taken in 2021. But someone who waits two years has endured two extra years' risk of suffering, spreading and possibly dying from Covid. You would have to think that vaccines are much more dangerous than I do for that to be a reasonable trade-off.