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[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

There are more settled cases for flu vaccines because more people get flu shots than the others.

What we really need to see is the rate of injury per million vaccinations. If ten million people get the flu vaccine, and there are five serious adverse effects (rate of 0.5 per million), and a thousand people get another vaccine, and there is one serious adverse effect (rate of 1000 per million), its the second which is way more dangerous even though the raw number of injuries is less.

Without knowing the rate of injuries, the raw numbers are meaningless.

Also, keep in mind that vaccine compensation in the US is theoretically on a "no fault" basis, that is, you don't have to prove the vaccine caused the injury. The reality is not that good: vaccine compensation in the US is pretty ugly, with plenty of wriggle room for the authorities to deny compensation to those who genuinely deserve it. But better than, say, North Korea.

But to a first approximation, we can assume that in most of those cases, the person only needs to prove that

  1. an injury occurred;
  2. it occurred within some period of time after the vaccine; and
  3. its the kind of injury which could plausibly have been caused by the vaccine.

So not every compensated injury will have been caused by the vaccine. Unvaccinated people get diseases like Guillain-Barré Syndrome too.

Suppose that out of a million unvaccinated people, two will get GBS. And out of a million vaccinated people, three will get GBS. Then we can guess that two of those cases of GBS in the vaccinated people would have occurred regardless of the vaccine, but of course we have no way of knowing which two. So a "no fault" scheme will compensate all three, even though probably only one was caused by the vaccine.

It takes some really clever medical sleuthing to work out the rate of actual injuries caused by the vaccines, and the honest truth is that in most cases, we really cannot tell which injuries and side-effects were caused by the vaccine and which would have happened anyway. Medicine is not an exact science.

Here's an analogy for you: I buy insurance for my new home, and the very next day it burns down. Was it fraud? Just because my house burned down a day after I bought insurance, doesn't mean I was committing fraud. I just got unlucky.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Here's an analogy for you: I buy insurance for my new home, and the very next day it burns down. Was it fraud? Just because my house burned down a day after I bought insurance, doesn't mean I was committing fraud. I just got unlucky

You are talking about humans here, and the fraud in this case would be murder.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

A house burning down is murder?

Man, you're gonna hate to hear about all the pieces of paper I just shredded. What's that, genocide?

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You are talking about your analogy still?

No, the reality of the situation would be murder, not your shitty analogy.

[–]StillLessons 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

What we really need to see is the rate of injury per million vaccinations.

This is absolutely the numbers I want to see. Does anyone have a link to data of this type?

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's difficult to get hard numbers. For comparison, I found this summary of adverse effects involved with Hepatitis vaccines that suggests that serious (life-threatening) adverse effects are very rare, less than 1 in 60,000 (less than 0.002%). I would consider that "generally safe". Certainly I didn't hesitate to get my hepatitis vaccine shots when I needed them.

(Note that mild symptoms are absolutely normal and nothing to worry about -- that's just your immune system at work.)

Keep in mind that there are at least three major Covid vaccines in use in the West, and it is absolutely wrong to count them all together. But having said that, I'm going to do it anyway, because it's 2am here and fuck it.

Estonia found five serious adverse effects after 39,505 doses of two different vaccines were administered. That's about 0.01%. Nobody died out of the five. In comparison, the fatality rate for Covid is about ten times that, plus many more left with long-term damage. So on the very limited information I have now, I would say the vaccines are looking better than Covid as far as side-effects go.

(One in a ten thousand chance of a serious, but probably not fatal, adverse event, versus one in a thousand chance of dying, and about one in fifty chance of serious, long-term debilitating damage to lungs, kidneys, heart, nerves and other organs.)

The Smithsonian is reporting that up to 80% of people will have mild side-effects, but doesn't comment on the risks of serious side-effects.

The medical advice regarding the A-Z vaccine is constantly changing as new data comes in, but I think that people under 50 should probably avoid it. It seems to be broadly safe for the elderly. As for the others, Pfizer and Moderna, and the rest, a lot of it depends on where you are, how much community transmission of Covid there is, the availability of treatments (and the willingness of doctors to prescribe them), and whether or not you and your community is willing to use other preventative measures like lock-downs, stay-at-home orders, social distancing and masks to control the spread of the virus.

I am immune-compromised, but I live in a country with very little community transmission thanks to pretty good compliance with masks and lock-downs. So I'm lucky enough to have the luxury to take a "wait and see" attitude to the vaccines. But if my government is stupid enough to open the international borders, and we get an influx of Covid cases, I would have to seriously consider getting vaccinated as the "least worst" alternative.