
A quarter of Americans are hesitant about a coronavirus vaccine - nabla9
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-poll-exclu/exclusive-a-quarter-of-americans-are-hesitant-about-a-coronavirus-vaccine-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN22X19G
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legerdemain
Despite all the water cooler conversations about "immunity passports," their
usefulness is hard to envision for several reasons. It's a lot easier to
imagine institutions requiring employees to provide proof of immunization
instead.

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onetimemanytime
what's wrong with the other 3/4? Unless I was at major risk from Covid, I'd
never do it unless it was tested for many years. No, I'm not anti-vaccine

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credit_guy
I personally perceive vaccination as a moral duty. For many vaccines nowadays
(polio, chickenpox, diphtheria, rubella,etc), the chance to get the disease is
lower than the chance to have a severe allergic reaction. For example,
according to the CDC, the US has been polio free starting in 1979, but the
chance of a severe allergic reaction to the polio vaccine is about 1 in 1
million. Why would you take a 10^(-6) risk to counter a zero risk? Because if
you don't, and nobody else does, we lose the herd immunity and polio makes a
comeback, and we are all worse off. Classic prisoner dilemma. Nature's way of
solving prisoner's dilemma is morality. If something feels immoral to you,
it's an underlying evolutionary solution to a prisoner's dilemma problem.

So here we are. I will personally take the Covid19 vaccine when it becomes
available, knowing that I trade a smaller risk for a larger one, but also
knowing that if everyone does the same we are all better off.

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redis_mlc
Just commenting so people scanning don't miss the logical error.

You're comparing established vaccines with an untested one, so your argument
doesn't make any sense.

> Why would you take a 10^(-6) risk to counter a zero risk?

Nobody knows the risk of a new vaccine in advance.

We're more likely to reach herd immunity before a vaccine is approved, sooner
the better.

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credit_guy
> with an untested one

Not sure where you got the idea that the Covid19 vaccines will not be tested.
On the contrary, they will be the most tested and scrutinized vaccines in
history. Even now you can find countless articles/blog posts explaining every
little detail of the progress of the testing so far. In a few months there
will be even more. Then the FDA will give the Emergency Use Authorization, and
millions of people will be vaccinated under that. By the time the FDA provides
the actual approval, there will hundreds of times more testing data than for
other vaccines. There will be enough data to have statistical power to
identify side effects with a prevalence rate of 1 in 100k or 1 in 1 million.

>We're more likely to reach herd immunity before a vaccine is approved, sooner
the better.

That's possible. That doesn't mean we won't need a vaccine. Herd immunity
diminishes in time, and then you have new bouts of the disease. This virus
will not simply go away. The only way for it to be wiped out, like the
smallpox virus was, is to have a very determined vaccination campaign.

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redis_mlc
credit_guy: you're either a shill, or overly trusting.

There have been several medications in US history that turned out very badly,
like thalidomide.

And Emergency Use Authorization implies less testing, not more.

> The only way for it to be wiped out, like the smallpox virus was, is to have
> a very determined vaccination campaign.

I disagree. Around 5% of the population has had corona and survived. They seem
to be doing fine.

Sounds like you're one of those guys who believes everything you read, and
thinks hope is a strategy, and a short-term one at that. That's the second
epidemic - hope is not a strategy.

~~~
credit_guy
> either a shill, or overly trusting

Not a shill. A company that makes a successful Covid19 vaccine will make many
billions in profits. They don't need shills on Hacker News.

Overly trusting I may be. I am certainly an idealistic guy, who believes in
benefit of doubt, innocent until proven guilty, life, liberty, happiness and
all that.

> Emergency Use Authorization implies less testing, not more.

That's correct, I never said it implies more testing.

However, all vaccine companies will move to secure full approval after the EUA
phase. At that point, there will be tons of testing data available to the FDA,
data that's not normally available for other vaccines, for the simple thing
that the EUA concept exists only during emergencies like this one.

I don't think anyone should feel obligated to do the vaccine during the EUA
period, when the risk will arguably be higher. However, once the full approval
is granted, then the vaccine will be, if anything, safer than your annual flu
shot, for example.

Did you know that among the flu shots offered for the current season
(2019-20), one was approved as recently as 2017 [1]? For all I know in 2017 I
may have taken this then brand new vaccine. I didn't care to ask, and I won't
care to ask in the future. In my mind, if the CDC recommends the population to
get a vaccine, and the vaccine is available at my local pharmacy, then I'll go
ahead and just do it.

> thinks hope is a strategy.

This is a head-scratcher. What exactly made you believe I consider hope to be
a strategy? Advocating for a vaccination campaign is the opposite of "hope as
a strategy", wont' you think?

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/qa_flublok-
vaccine.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/prevent/qa_flublok-vaccine.htm)

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vmchale
that doesn't yet exist? lol.

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tinus_hn
Amusingly if Trump says it’s safe, less people are willing to take it.

