That’s a counterpoint to some arguments like “if it’s March 2021 and you’re 40 you should not get shot one” but not ones like “we should be concerned about vaccine side effects from Moderna” and “if you’ve caught COVID and you’re a 20 year old male it is unethical to mandate the vaccine and perhaps unwise to take it to prevent BA.2”
If we're talking about relative personal risk assessment, you need to incorporate natural immunity, omicron, the waning effect of the vaccines, demographic skew on both sides of this, uncertainty about the mechanism and scope of side effects, and a bunch of other things beyond dividing two numbers together.
1/10,000 men develop a medical problem from taking a vaccine.
Around 2/10,000 men die from not having access to the vaccine (I don't have the data, but I imagine most of those under 40 men died unvaccinated based on this [0])
You can mental gymnastics all you want about 'personal risk,' and 'natural immunity,' but at least agree that's not a data-driven approach.
- Vaccine induced heart damage is more likely in younger men
- The vaccine induced immunity drops off after 5 months due to waning + evolutionary pressure
- Natural immunity of a prior infection confers protection towards BA.X
I'm not doing any mental gymnastics. I stated specifically: your counterargument is one for some arguments, not others. I am illustrating clearly when what you wrote is not a meaningful counterargument if it is being used to persuade someone to get vaccinated or to justify a mandate when, for example, that person is a young, healthy man who has already had COVID.
Now go ahead and reply again with another thinly veiled insult, citing broad, long term statistics and dividing two numbers. It reflects poorly on you.
