Product safety is more nuanced than simple statistics in aggregates. Assuming that Covid-19 has mortality rate of 2%, imagine if there was a medication that cures Covid-19 with 100% efficacy but has a side effect of causing immediate death for 1% of the patient who take this medication. One could argue that we'd be better off in aggregate but I hope you can see why this hypothetical medication wouldn't be approved.
Why wouldn't it be approved? vaccine 'side effects' might not sound serious but they are absolutely deadly to some if we were to give them to millions of people. For the elderly, a 1% risk of death might be far better than the risk of covid since mortality shoots up once you get older. Obviously you shouldn't give this vaccine for anyone whose risk of death by covid is less than 1%
I'm not referring to vaccine. Assuming you've been infected, if you have 98% change of surviving this disease, would you really be okay if you were forced to take a medication that has 1% chance of killing you?
Chemo is a good example. It's used in a situation of last resort where probability of dying is already very high and if I were in that situation, I would too.
If my options are to be forced to have the medication or prevented from having it, I’d rather be forced to have it. It reduces my risk by half so why not?
