"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
T i m wrote:
On Tue, 06 Apr 2021 11:19:04 +0100, "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

snip

Seems strange on a DIY group where people are presumably used to
measuring things that they seem incapable of understanding simple
statistics?

I'm not female, I'm not on the pill, I don't smoke ... so I took my
chances ...

Which means you must think the risks from a vaccine greater than
catching
Covid. How did you arrive at this conclusion? You'd need some pretty
specialist knowledge do it with any accuracy.

Isn't the comparison (for the individual) more between any potential
risk from any vaccine versus the risk of any *illness / death*
resulting from catching something that the vaccine may have prevented,
not actually catching Covid19 (in this case) itself?

Of course. By catching Covid, I'm assuming you'd know this by the
symptoms. Until we have exhaustive regular testing, we're not going to
know how many have it but have no symptoms. Whereas we do have figures for
those with symptoms bad enough to go to a doctor. And we also have figures
for any reactions to the vaccine - to date. Obviously long term side
effects from either will have to wait for time to pass.

The extension of that would be any advantages re herd immunity, if
there was such from the vaccine (not the case with the Covid19
vaccines as I understand it)?

Herd immunity generally means letting the weak die and the strong survive.

Nope, it works just as well with non fatal infections.

Maybe OK in the wild, but with mankind and civilisation
the 'brain' can be more important than 'muscle', as it were.

Eg, Whilst I understand on a few hundred otherwise healthy youngsters
have died from Covid19, there is a very good chance many have carried
and passed it onto their parents or grandparents who have died.

Yes - even more so where generations tend to live together.

If the vaccine prevented them from carrying the virus
(asymptomatically especially) then it would make sense to vaccinate
them, but again, I don't believe it's the case (meaning social
distancing between them and their parents / grandparents is the safest
bet and let them get herd immunity 'naturally' and so no risks from
the vaccine)?

The normal way with vaccines is to immunise (near) everyone.

That’s not true either. Some of the viruses that are
more of a nuisance don’t get anything like that result.

So the virus doesn't get transmitted and dies out.
Not of course for ever.

It has with smallpox.

But that was the theory with other vaccinations.