I think the question of whether there is a Faustian effect is the wrong one to ask, and it may in fact be a substitution for the real question (as Kahneman would say).
Your actual question is “should I get the Pfizer booster in the first half of February?”
I would answer that question (and in fact have answered it for myself) by asking questions like “what do I observe happening to people I know personally who already got boosted?” and “what do I observe happening to people I know personally who did not get boosted?”
If you subdivide the people you know personally category into “people I know personally who do not live in my immediate community” and “people I know personally who live in my immediate community,” it also becomes a useful way to distinguish the COVID prevalence/risk in your community from the COVID prevalence/risk in other cities and countries.
Then you can use that information to ask yourself “what do I believe will happen to me if I get boosted?” and “what do I believe will happen to me if I do not get boosted?”
You can also ask “what do I believe will happen to me if I do not get boosted with this particular formulation, and choose instead to wait for a newer model?”
If you consider yourself to be at a lower risk for serious COVID complications but have loved ones within your immediate circle who are at higher risk, you should also ask “what do I observe happening to people I know in terms of spreading COVID to others?” and “what do I observe happening to people in my high-risk loved one’s demographic who catch Omicron?”
Those are answerable questions, as opposed to evaluating a potential Faustian Hypothesis against an ever-growing series of secondhand, confounding data.
Good thoughts, but in this context I’m more worried about the future than the present, and I’m too introverted to have a statistically significant sample of people I know personally.
We all live in Dunbar sized bubbles. Very few people have more than 150 people for which they could know medical histories enough to answer these questions.
I think the question of whether there is a Faustian effect is the wrong one to ask, and it may in fact be a substitution for the real question (as Kahneman would say).
Your actual question is “should I get the Pfizer booster in the first half of February?”
I would answer that question (and in fact have answered it for myself) by asking questions like “what do I observe happening to people I know personally who already got boosted?” and “what do I observe happening to people I know personally who did not get boosted?”
If you subdivide the people you know personally category into “people I know personally who do not live in my immediate community” and “people I know personally who live in my immediate community,” it also becomes a useful way to distinguish the COVID prevalence/risk in your community from the COVID prevalence/risk in other cities and countries.
Then you can use that information to ask yourself “what do I believe will happen to me if I get boosted?” and “what do I believe will happen to me if I do not get boosted?”
You can also ask “what do I believe will happen to me if I do not get boosted with this particular formulation, and choose instead to wait for a newer model?”
If you consider yourself to be at a lower risk for serious COVID complications but have loved ones within your immediate circle who are at higher risk, you should also ask “what do I observe happening to people I know in terms of spreading COVID to others?” and “what do I observe happening to people in my high-risk loved one’s demographic who catch Omicron?”
Those are answerable questions, as opposed to evaluating a potential Faustian Hypothesis against an ever-growing series of secondhand, confounding data.
Good thoughts, but in this context I’m more worried about the future than the present, and I’m too introverted to have a statistically significant sample of people I know personally.
We all live in Dunbar sized bubbles. Very few people have more than 150 people for which they could know medical histories enough to answer these questions.