Finally, if a hospital is ever faced with a triage situation they ought to boot unvaccinated Covid patients out of the IC regardless of other considerations like age, likelihood of survival, etc. Some consequences ought to be felt. — Benkei

Do you feel the same about all known risk factors for hospitalisation? Can we categorise risk factors into those we find acceptable and those we don't by any criteria (apart from the actual risk itself, as a crude number)?

I ask because @Srap Tasmaner and I are discussing just that question and I'm interested in the range of variables people might include.

Thanks, that certainly lends a bit more weight to it.

I was interested in the detail because cost-benefit analyses generally contain a ton of really interesting assumptions. The overwhelming majority I've read find measures to contain the virus to be cost effective when judged against a Value of Statistical Life, but obviously they all rely on these assumptions so you could quite easily get whatever result you want out of one, within reason.

To emphasize, the MP did not deny the existence of the cost-benefit analysis that was made - he just claimed to never have seen it. — Tzeentch

Ah I see. 'MP'? What country are we talking about?

The document can be found here, when the link to "2 MKBA versie 1 en 2.pdf" is followed, but it is not in English. — Tzeentch

That's a Google drive. Do you have any more official source? A journal or institution perhaps?

the question is whether if you were vaccinated, caught covid and survived you would still gain natural immunity as you would if unvaccinated. — Janus

Presumably, it's much harder to gain natural immunity if vaccinated (but experiencing a breakthrough infection), because there will already be binding antibodies in your bloodstream, so less presentation of antigen epitopes for the immune system to work on?

if I've understood this correctly, if you catch it and survive, you will have less chance of catching it again than those who are vaccinated have if getting it at all? — Banno

Yes, I think that's it. But it's only true of the Delta variant, though probably extends to other new variants. Importanly, it also doesn't include boosters or modifications to the vaccine which may make it more effective against Delta. And it's in preprint, so may be subject to methodological errors the authors didn't spot.

Don't forget though, that the vaccinated are highly likely to have caught it already too, prior to vaccination. This study eliminates those for accurate comparison, but when considering your own risk profile, you'd need to take that into account.

Not, by any means, a coup de grâce... but when all we've got is speculation, it provides some support if one were that way inclined anyway (as I am), but if not, I don't think it's significant enough to sway anyone yet.

A while back my government had a cost-benefit analysis done weighing the benefits of the Covid-19 measures versus the indirect consequences. — Tzeentch

...

the MP (predictably) denied ever having seen the analysis. — Tzeentch

Doesn't sound of much use here then? Is it just your word against his, or do you have some sources?

Interesting bit of ethics, related to cost benefit though...

The WHO usually use QALYs (quality adjusted life years) to assess how cost effective health interventions are (where 'cost' here is not just economic). They decided, for covid, to abandon QALYs, because the disease affected mostly the elderly and they felt it would be unethical. But QALYs were implemented entirely to prevent a bias in favour of the elderly (they suffer from more disease, generally). In the original documentation it was expressed as a 'right to reach and enjoy old age'.

Were they right to abandon QALYs? There's a healthy debate about that.

No data on those who were fully vaccinated. Not much use. — Banno

We conducted a retrospective observational study comparing three groups: (1)SARS-CoV-2-naïve individuals who received a two-dose regimen of the BioNTech/Pfizer mRNA BNT162b2 vaccine, (2)previously infected individuals who have not been vaccinated, and (3)previously infected and single dose vaccinated individuals.

What am I missing?

Many years ago I was peripherally involved in assessing the impact of some risk assessment. I won't say what it was in because it was quite specific, but they failed to include any relative risk information and used worlds like 'common' and 'danger' instead. My response was (in fairly strong language in fact) that they were effectively telling everyone they had a bomb in their basement which might go off any minute and they were asking me "how do you think people will react?" - how the hell do you think people are going to react?

I lost the contract...

Not very interesting outside of the realm of cognitive science though perhaps... — Isaac

Ought to add, this is why I've never got into phenomenology, despite the obvious overlap in views. It doesn't seem to me to be a very fruitful area for philosophy in those terms. I like the impact perceptive uncertainty has on matters like belief, I don't think it has much useful to do when it comes to ontology.

Could be. But local data says that unvaccinated vented patients have a 20% mortality rate. Vaccinated and vented have 0.02% mortality. — frank

Definitely. I think the general case that vaccines reduce disease severity is still very strong, even in spite of the few studies showing that natural immunity might be better against new variants. I wouldn't (if I didn't have other preferences in play) choose non-vaccination over vaccination on the odds alone. I think vaccination is the better bet at the moment.

But since when have we made all our decisions on the basis of which course of action leads to the least risk of adverse health outcomes, and nothing else?

I've been focusing on all the long-haul I see developing. It's rough — frank

I bet. Keep up the good work!

Have you seen the analysis from Austin I've used on this - must've spoken of it in your presence? — Banno

Probably, but I may have forgotten.

"Real " and "exists" get their worth form the things wiht which they are contrasted - it's real, not a forgery. It's real, not a mirage; it exists, it's not fiction. — Banno

I think that's kind of what I was saying...bout an invariance we expect or demand agreement on? A fiction, or a forgery, lack certain invariant properties. A fictional table won't hold my cup up.

The issue, for me, comes when the full list of those properties includes matters which modern cognitive sciences are showing us might not be so invariant after all. A 'real' table holds my cup, but is it's colour also 'real', it's edges, it's structure... these properties seem to (often) get included in the use of 'real', which, if we take your meanings, they should not be. much of you perception of the table is a fiction, you made it up, no less than you might make up a unicorn. In fact you use much the same brain regions to do both.

Not very interesting outside of the realm of cognitive science though perhaps...

Ok. You'll most likely be infected with the delta variant between now and October. As you say, most likely you'll be fine. — frank

Indeed. Might even be better off than you.

This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. — https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

...but I'm sure you'll be fine too.

The data you're using isn't for the delta variant. This is the problem with preferring data over the friendly voice. — frank

It is in terms of risk assessment. Since there is no evidence for the delta variant (the study is still recruiting https://www.ukri.org/news/examining-long-term-impacts-of-debilitating-lung-damage-from-covid/) there's a 50% chance it'll be worse and a 50% it'll be better, making the risk 0.5*0.0002 + 0.5*0.0002. Or you could even write a function for the Gaussian distribution of greater and lesser harms. Either way it's the same risk - at the moment.

The alternate is to suppose that there may well be a cause, but that what that cause is, is unknowable. — Banno

Yes, I think it's just unreasonable to assume there's no external cause (by 'external' here I mean external to the system doing the modelling, outside it's Markov Blanket). Phenomenologically, it feels like there are strong parameters restricting the models which work, one would have to have a very good reason for assuming an internal cause of those, and no such reason has been forthcoming - hence the assumption of an external cause seems warranted.

The trouble is with the words 'real' and 'exists'. What we use them for is to generate agreement about perceptions, not their causes. It's the table I call real, not the cause of my perception of the table. So what I seem to mean by 'real' is some perception I expect (or demand, even!) is relatively invariant between me and you, and everyone else. Hence a claim that table's aren't 'real' seems to be the fairly uncontroversial claim that these perceptions are not that invariant after-all, or not as invariant as we thought. I suppose once this (still fairly new) concept of the huge role perception priors pay in the product of those perceptions (the perceptive features), then the word 'real' will be used slightly differently (a wider parameter of invariability) and saying that perceptions aren't 'real' will sound a bit silly. Right now it still has impact though. Or at least, It seems to.

If a friendly voice says, "No really, go ahead and do it.", I usually do. — frank

Yes, but you were imploring me, not you. That you're swayed by the friendliness of the voice (seems a bit easily led to me, but, hey ho), why ought I be? Personally, I'm persuaded by the best available scientific data on the relative risk and my personal level of acceptable risk.

The evidence for these possible sequelae is largely derived from acute manifestations of covid-19, along with extrapolations from the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and data on acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). (https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3001)

This prospective cohort study has shown that 52% of [patients hospitalized with SARS infection] survivors had persistent impairment in DLco (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1440-1843.2010.01720.x - the study referred to by the BMJ article)

Since my risk of Cov-19 hospitalisation is 1 in 2778 (https://www.qcovid.org/) my risk, of even the relatively mild lung damage (impairment in DLco) is about 1 in 5000 lifetime risk.

Similar to riding a motorbike for a couple of days, a skiing holiday, commuting to work, eating bacon, living in a city centre...

I cant see how you avoid solipsism.

If all that is, is your perceptions, then other people are just your perceptions. — Banno

There's a distinction between the perception and the cause of the perception. My perception of this wooden, light-brown, medium-sized desk is caused by something external to the system being used to model it. That doesn't mean that the external cause is 'a desk', in fact it's very unlikely to be a wooden, light-brown, medium-sized desk, as we know for a fact that much of that perception was simply made up by my prior expectation of what I would see. Solipsism (if I've understood the position properly) would have there be no self-consistent external cause, that's not the same as simply claiming that whatever it is, it's not directly our perceptions.

You're risking long term loss of lung function if you don't get vaccinated. — frank

You take risks with your long-term health every day, do you mitigate them all?

What would you be approving of? — Srap Tasmaner

Their having chosen with integrity?

But again, someone choosing the non-favored option only means you require some explanation — Srap Tasmaner

But when we're talking about preferences (not facts), that starts to sound worryingly like a presumption of conformity. As if you owe someone an explanation just to be different. It's non-favoured for men to wear make-up, it doesn't require an explanation when they do.

I think I understand what you're saying about defaults, but I don't think it applies well here. I think a position where the default is to accept the prophylactic product of a "horror show" and an explanation is required to not, is a very dangerous precedent to set (or allow to continue). If we can't even say that the default position is to not inject ourselves with commercial products, then something's seriously wrong.

in some cases the scientist is wearing a public health hat with the lab coat, so I grandfather them in. — Srap Tasmaner

Could do, but public health officials tell what course of action would, for an average person, best balance the various objectives of their bosses (usually the government). It's still your decision as to what to do with those facts.

there's an armchair version of it that still rubs me the wrong way. — Srap Tasmaner

Likewise with me and public health institutions I'm afraid.

It still seems like a long way around to me — Srap Tasmaner

I've been too long in research. I never just ask.

Maybe there isn't a single premise everyone shares that carries more weight than all their other preferences put together. Maybe what we're looking at here is more of a "family resemblance" situation, lots of overlap and so on, but not one single most important thread. — Srap Tasmaner

That seems likely, yes. I don't believe it's impossible to learn though still, but people apparently aren't going to just say what it is (even after 200 pages of opportunity, it seems), and that makes it all the more interesting a question.

An alternative to your response would be to address the entire sentence. What color is your "Covid Passport" for internal travel within your borders? I don't have such a document and I doubt you do either. — Cheshire

https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-55718553

I'm seeing some accusations of hypocrisy (double standards) here, while at the same time committing a two-wrongs-make-a-right fallacy. — jorndoe

Not at all. Resources are limited. Where there are two wrongs you focus on the biggest.

What jurisdictions? — Cheshire

Fully mandated vaccination in Indonesia, and Turkmenistan; public sector workers in Canada, Fiji and Saudi Arabia and much of the US; large gatherings in the UK, and most of Europe; restrictions on travel in most countries. Mandates are in no way restricted to hospitals and nursing homes.

https://www.reuters.com/world/countries-make-covid-19-vaccines-mandatory-2021-07-13/

An alternative to wry incredulity is just to look stuff up.

the partitioning of the alternatives by naming a "favored term" -- only means I'll need an explanation to understand your choice. — Srap Tasmaner

Not sure I get this. Does 'unable to understand' really mean 'unable to approve'? I assume the bit I'm not getting is the explanation, but it seems to lack something. I mean, I can not understand someone's choice and yet still approve. I don't understand how people like brandy... You took an opportunity to present an example, but gave one for the exception (I don't know what you see in him...). What I could have done with was an example of the rule (I can't approve because I don't understand why you prefer...).

if men and women in lab coats hold press conferences and tell me they think I ought to do something, I'll need reasons not to — Srap Tasmaner

Really interesting you should say that. It crops up a lot in my field. Men and women in lab coats tell you what the odds ratios are - "you're 1.4 times as likely on average to get cancer if you spend more than eight hours sitting down..." type of thing - they can't tell you what you ought to do. Maybe you're happy with that risk, maybe you love sitting down and don't care about cancer... The scientists can only tell us what the facts are, not what we ought to do about them.

we'd have to add some premises to get it looking like an inference. I don't like the look of what we'd have to add, though: that's a lot of individuals with their own reasons and given their own circumstances. — Srap Tasmaner

I get that, but this is a discussion forum - is it not within reason to say "...and you can't say ..." with the expectation that someone might reply "I can to, because...". In other fields we don't couch our opening gambits in overly conciliatory terms, I've only just read you saying that indirect realism about patterns is 'horseshit', a strong opener, but I expect you expect people to come back at you nonetheless. I'm quite happy to have my assertion ripped to pieces if it's a non-sequitur, but I do expect that ripping to have some substance.

the goal is to compare what someone says about one thing with what they say about another. Even if I'm careful, and do the work, do I get anything better than plain "whataboutism"? — Srap Tasmaner

Well no, because whataboutism aims to shift the attention. I'm not shifting any attention, I'm enquiring about inconsistency. It's not a matter of saying "what about the obese" (don't look at me), it's saying "if you think this about me, why not the obese?" it's a question, not an avoidance strategy. If it's avoidance I was after, my consistent posting would be somewhat undermining that aim, no? I could have not mentioned it, no-one would have judged, no-one need know. I can't see this caricature having any merit.

That doesn't always matter, but explicitly here we're supposed to be interested in why people say one thing and another, and you've decided for them why they're saying what they do. — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting. I can't say as I'd heard many other options. The talk is all about the risk not vaccinating produces. I can see perhaps people may view vaccine hesitancy in terms of risk and smoking not, but then I'd want to know why - what justifies the categorisation for them.

Add the right premise or premises and their views might be perfectly consistent. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. It's those I'm after.

Obviously because they have other beliefs informing their views. Is that so strange? — Srap Tasmaner

Not strange no - absent. I want to know what they might be.

If the exercise is to have any point at all, it has to start by settling on shared criteria, our criteria. — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. I thought risk of burdening the healthcare services might be such a shared criteria, it seems popular and there's not been so much as a hint of anything else forwarded as a consideration. But if not that (or not only that), then what else? What could these additional factors be, and why have they remained hidden these last 200 pages behind a wall of talk about harms.

You have to admit that if, after 200 pages of talking primarily about the harms to society of non-vaccination, some other factor rears it's head only now, it'd be odd.

What I meant was this: suppose I did not avoid but preferred risks that were of my own choosing; or suppose I wanted to support the pharmaceutical industry; or suppose I generally approved of prophylactic medicine. Any such preference might even trump other views I have about risk in general, or about the risks of covid and vaccination in particular. But without knowing about those preferences, you might be hard pressed to make sense of my views -- that was the point. — Srap Tasmaner

Ahh, that makes sense now. Yes I agree. But here, I'm interested primarily in why people believe my actions are bad. Those reasons you gave (reversed), would explain why someone might consider their own actions justified, but I can't really tie them to a belief that my actions are wrong. Kind of like my preference for whiskey would explain why I'm drinking one right now, your preference for brandy would explain why you're not (but rather are having a brandy), but your preference for brandy wouldn't explain why you think my drinking a whiskey is wrong.

Having brought them up, however, I would be interested in what your preferences are, if you've a mind to say. What factors would you consider apart from health risk/benefit[/]?

If I held a position that could be summarized thus, warning bells would be going off that I had made some kind of mistake somewhere. — Srap Tasmaner

Could you explain why?

But from my side, there's a crazy patchwork of argument and obiter dicta with the actual structure obscured by a tangle of threads connecting everything to everything else. — Srap Tasmaner

So the main thread is the threshold of acceptable risk to your community's health services. I don't suppose anyone has something like a number in mind, but a rough idea of what is and is not acceptable. I expect a degree of consistency, and I don't think that's all that odd. We'd find it odd if someone who smoked like a chimney started complaining about the burden on the health service caused by meat-eaters. You'd find that odd no? But that's exactly what's happening here. People who take a reasonably large risk of burdening their health services are complaining about those taking a smaller risk. I'm trying to find out why.

Now NicK does not want to get vaccinated... — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Has he recently earned his PhD? You might be able to clarify something for us...

Just if it wasn't clear, in this context, speaking of harmless/harmful isn't the same as when speaking of Dihydrogen Monoxide. — jorndoe


Largest real-world study of COVID-19 vaccine safety published (Aug 26, 2021) — jorndoe

That hasn't made anything any clearer. You might want to to try stringing your media snippets together with actual words relating them to the topic at hand.

the comment was explicitly using broader categories: — jorndoe

Why?

Nope, I selected whatever demographics-related reports. — jorndoe

To comment on the PhD question... A question none of those reports addressed.

I didn't. — jorndoe

Did you select them accidentally then?

Just if it wasn't clear, in this context, speaking of harmless/harmful isn't the same as when speaking of Dihydrogen Monoxide. — jorndoe

Not clear what you're trying to say here. Is it addressed to me, or simply about my comment?

Yeah, most reports show that more education and vaccine acceptance (less education and vaccine hesitance) correlate. — jorndoe

No they don't. Not in the light of this latest one. With any evidence of a u- or j- shaped relationship, previous studies which lack sufficient granularity to pick up the apparent function simply lack adequate precision. You can't just go back to studies you know lack the granularity to show a variable effect and claim they prove a relationship which assumes it's absent. That's just deliberately selecting data at a granularity you know is going to avoid the relationship you want to deny.

I'm not saying such a relationship even exists, it may yet turn out to be absent. But studies which don't even look for it have no bearing on it's likelihood.

But I'm clearly right and you said exactly that: — Srap Tasmaner

My misunderstanding again. I thought you were referring to thresholds of risk in general (those thresholds, as in the one's to to with risk).

Normally, I don't like to get into this pointless back-and-forth about who said what, but it's oddly on point here. — Srap Tasmaner

I understand, good call.

You want them to apply (P) and find you blameless. Why should they do that? Is (P) the standard of risk of everyone you've interacted with here? — Srap Tasmaner

I couldn't say for sure, no. But remember the enormous gap in risk between (healthy) covid risk and average society risk. I can't be sure that my interlocutors are at (P), nor even (I), but for a moral judgement about non-vaccination to hold for my case, and be consistent they'd have to hold risk threshold (C - covid risk), which is very strict indeed. I already know you don't (you smoke), Hanover eats meat,... these people are not unknown to me, I've been here a good few years and read several hundred of their posts. I'm making assumptions, I'll grant, but I'm not plucking them from thin air, and no-one's declared I'm wrong about them. So the fact that I could be seems irrelevant.

I submit that a better starting point would be to assume, for the sake of investigation, that if someone's views appear inconsistent, perhaps it is because you don't fully understand their views. — Srap Tasmaner

Cuts both ways though. I disagree with the judgement I perceive on the grounds of inconsistency. Others vehemently oppose my even holding the opinion I do. If it's a lack of charitable interpretation that's bothering you, there's a list of posts ahead of mine need addressing. Your concern here seems a bit post hoc.

Reverse some of those and see if an inclination to get vaccinated, simply as a matter of preference, appears, notwithstanding any of someone's other views about risk. — Srap Tasmaner

I'm afraid I can't make sense of this paragraph.

And I just don't see that this is the course you've followed. What do you actually know about the views of anyone participating in this thread? — Srap Tasmaner

Seems an odd question. The thread's over 200 pages long. I think I know quite a lot. I didn't start this thread, I never start threads. I've responded to the views of others as they present them. What more could I do?

Could you make up a short list of preferences like yours above for anyone you've argued with here? — Srap Tasmaner

No. But I'm not questioning their choices, they're questioning mine.

For comparison, if you had not spelled them out, would it be perfectly clear to everyone here that you held the preferences you listed above? — Srap Tasmaner

No, I doubt it. Would it matter? I don't suppose anyone here is looking to get to know me better. All that matters for my argument is that I have preferences (against which to set any moral duties). Their content doesn't matter.

I think scepticism is given far more prominence than it deserves. A cultural extrusion form fablsificationism, itself an overrated notion. — Banno

I agree actually. The amount of stuff we can believe to be the case without any problems arising massively outweighs the amount of stuff about which some doubt is useful. As we've encountered before, I think, my job requires I have a model which allows for that level of uncertainty. otherwise our best models of cognition don't work. Day-to-day (and I suppose philosophically too), it might well be useless and better replaced with a model of naive realism with occasional exceptions.

Ah - OK, that's the easier question to answer.

The hesitancy to authorise the vaccine for children is very widely supported, most advisory bodies are either split or have actually come out in favour of not.

The reluctance to support boosters until the rest of the world has sufficient first doses is actually WHO policy, so plenty of support there.

The qualms about the efficacy are not so widely shared (though still a reasonable basis in qualified, respected experts - I don't do 'woo').

The belief in natural immunity was a fairly uncommon position, but is now (see the study above) becoming more common, still not a majority though.

The concerns about the pharmaceutical industry's practices in general are shared by a small but significant group of experts in the field.

As to the ethical stuff...

If papers in the Journal of Medical Ethics are a weathervane (I only really have time to keep up with one ethics journal, and they never make it into the mainstream news - poor ethicists!) then I'd say about 50/50 papers in favour of things like accepting a variable response and directed approach vs papers which think that won't work socially and we need to scare the bejeezus out of everyone just to get a 70% take up.

Yes, that's my understanding of what the experts are saying too, but note

Versions of the virus that make their host very sick (are highly virulent) are generally selected against. This is because people would be more likely to die or be isolated, lowering the chance of the virus transmitting to others.

SAGE thinks this process is unlikely to cause the virus to become less virulent in the short term, but this is a realistic possibility in the long-term.

Hence Professor Pollard's notion that it still all comes down to flattening the curve to reduce the burden on health services - even with variants - it's a matter of surviving long enough to get to the point where the virus has settled down. Until then...

we can expect an arms race between vaccine developers and the virus, with vaccines trying to play catch up with viral evolution. This is why we’re likely to see us having regular booster shots, designed to overcome these new variants, just like we see with flu booster shots.

...But this raises a new potential problem. Flu shots were never given to the healthy. For this very reason.

The problem I see with this is not the scope so much as the "really".

Take it out and the statement is clearly wrong: "Nothing is 'true', except this statement. — Banno

Ah, yes. I really only put that in as an example - to say that I didn't (contrary to a lot of arguments I've read) find anything wrong with the form of the proposition.

As to it's content...well I agree, my inverted commas are doing a lot of work there. As you may recall (I believe we've discussed this before?) I come from an entirely linguistic approach to truth - 'true' is just a word and it's meaning varies depending on the use it's put to in various language games. So here it's being applied to the state of the world (by which I mean all that is the case) and being used to denote uniquely high confidence, wherein there is only one thing of which we can be absolutely confident, and that is that the world is such that we cannot be absolutely confident about any of its states (except that one). Perhaps "Nothing is certain" might have been a better choice.

Isaac; do you think that your view is the consensus amongst epidemiologists? — Banno

'My view' is a rather broad term so it's difficult to answer that question. I don't want to go off on some long spiel only to find you meant some quite specific aspect of it. Which part of 'my view' are you asking about - or do you actually mean my entire response in this thread?

Some consensus widely reported down here last week was that the virus would more likely take advantage of the unvaccinated, mutating so as to infect the easier target. — Banno

Yes, I think that's true too. I interpreted Professor Pollard as saying that it would get to the vaccinated eventually, rather than that a variant would target them over and above the unvaccinated. It's more just the inevitability of the virus evolving to outpace vaccine production, such that it could never be eliminated.

As professor Pollard said at the outset "this virus is not measles".

Unfortunately, the last big public narrative around vaccines was the Wakefield/MMR story where the bad woo-merchants ('booo!') tried to take the life-saving vaccine ('yeah!') away from children, so what do the public reach for when presented a new vaccine issue which they don't understand the intricacies of...? The narrative gets framed as some woo-merchants trying to take the vaccine way from children. But unlike the MMR (where the narrative was formed from the events, and so had it about right - Wakefield was a woo-merchant and the MMR is life saving), this time round, the narrative has been picked of the shelf, it doesn't quite fit.

Do you find the burdens placed on the healthcare system by obesity, smoking, etc. -- do you find them acceptable? — Srap Tasmaner

I don't, no. But remember the scale is whole orders of magnitude different. The average risk of needing hospitalisation from obesity is over 50 times greater than the risk of a healthy (in terms of known comorbidities), young adult needing hospitalisation from covid. I don't see anything at all odd, or suspicious about my personal appropriate thresholds lying somewhere between the two. In fact, given the enormous range between them, I think it'd be odd if it didn't. I had to have either an extremely lax or an extremely strict stance on the matter for my feeling not to lie somewhere between those two poles.

Why would you engage in a decision making process relying on a standard of risk it is evident you consider lax and ill-informed? — Srap Tasmaner

I haven't, I've used my own standard of risk. I chose obesity as an example deliberately because it was the highest publicly acceptable threshold I could think of. My own standard of risk is much closer to the odd slice of carrot cake if I'm out for afternoon tea.

Notwithstanding my own risk thresholds, this discussion is entirely about the justification others have for making moral judgements, so it's their thresholds that matter.

I think you made your decision without any consideration of those thresholds at all: — Srap Tasmaner

That's your prerogative, but it does make discussion a little difficult if you're going to replace what I say with what you think I think. Makes it kinda hard to formulate an aposite response.

Having now compared your decisions to other decisions you don't approve of, but which "we" the public at large are evidently fine with, you want everyone to be fine with your decision too — Srap Tasmaner

Yes. You said that as if it was wrong. I expect to be judged by consistent standards. Is that something you don't think I've any cause to expect?

Near as I can tell, your participation here has never really been about justifying your decision to us or to anyone -- you're completely qualm-free; it's been about demanding justification from those who disapprove. — Srap Tasmaner

That's right, yes. My overriding interest here (this forum in general, in fact, but certainly this thread), is in how people justify their beliefs, especially when pushed outside their comfort zone (the narrative space in which those beliefs are embedded).

Interesting, thanks.

there is almost no reason for you to get vaccinated — Srap Tasmaner

We've been through the reasons, no? It's a risk I don't want to take (I prefer risks from external elements to risks from things I did to myself), I don't want to support the pharmaceutical industry, I don't like prophylactic medicine in general.

The point is not whether there's competing benefits, the point is that it's no one's business but mine so long as I make those choices within the thresholds we find acceptable (ie, my choices don't burden the health services more than other choices we already find acceptable).

Oops. Read it wrong. Ignore the above. I read a 'not' where there was none. Sorry.

Should have said... yes, that's about right.

what if you're wrong about your chances of getting very sick — Srap Tasmaner

That's accommodated in the concept of risk though. If I have a 30% risk, but I'm not sure I'm right about that, then it's either true or not 50/50, so my risk is 0.3*0.5+0.3*0.5, still ends up 30%. You could even bias those odds substantially in favour of me being wrong, my resultant risk of needing hospital treatment would still be dwarfed by that of other lifestyle choices already deemed acceptable.

I suspect if you had the chance to explain to Prof Pollard how you had been following his work and had yourself not gotten vaccinated, he would say, "Don't be a damned fool. Get the shot." — Srap Tasmaner

Well, if I get a chance I'll ask him! We'll have to agree to disagree on that. The experts I've spoken to (albeit two) have both understood the position I take. There's a difference between public policy and individual policy.

the cost to you barely registers; the potential benefit to you is considerable; from a rational point of view, this isn't even a close call. — Srap Tasmaner

You're calculating the cost/benefit as if the only factors were the chances of getting ill. Generally we're not so single minded.

That's the real issue with the burden on the health care system. The system itself will survive. It's the people in it, or who want to use it, that suffer. — James Riley

There were 500,000 cumulative covid-related hospitalisations in the UK as of 23 Aug.

There were about 600,000 obesity related admissions for the same period.

Or, if you like, there were about 100 beds permanently lost from the healthcare system due to cutbacks in services (averaged for the period, of course).

No one gave a shit about the last two when they were news.