What you wrote makes sense, except that you underestimate the risks for young people (others have already provided sources), and I am surprised that you included “not wanting to kill older family members by negligence” almost as a footnote—is it really so rare for young people to interact e.g. with their parents? You only need to infect them once.
At the end, it is a quantitative decision; being among the first ones to take the vaccine is a risk, getting sick is also a risk; we disagree about the relative sizes of these risks… and also about government incentives (from my perspective, governments are mostly downplaying the risks of COVID-19, because their voters do not want to be inconvenienced).
My reading on that last point was that the government has incentive to declare the vaccines valid solutions to COVID-19 even if they haven’t been properly tested for efficacy and side effects, in the spirit of downplaying the risks of the epidemic. And similarly (in the spirit of steelmanning), the companies developing the virus need to do visibly better than their competitors and preferably come out before or simultaneously with them, for the sake of profits; incentives which also push towards incomplete/inadequate testing procedures.
However, my prior for that is only low-moderate in range, since the increased scrutiny involved means governmental organizations need to may much more attention to avoid even the slightest possible issue they could be blamed for. After all, they’ve already ‘delayed the vaccine’ to ensure it’s safe — in accordance with somewhat-expedited standard procedure, sure, but that’s not how the public will see it — and if after that it still ends up unsafe, it would be a significant negative blow to their reputation and would likely result in significant amounts of firing throughout the hierarchy, especially considering the rise in unemployed alternatives.
And I agree with your points on the personal risks of not taking the vaccine. Actually, I’d expect vaccination to have similar properties relative to population included as herd immunity does, so the other footnote also doesn’t deserve so little attention.
I agree that the governments have an incentive to downplay both the risks of COVID-19 and the risk of vaccines. With the medical companies, I would expect that there are already some mechanisms to verify their statements.
What you wrote makes sense, except that you underestimate the risks for young people (others have already provided sources), and I am surprised that you included “not wanting to kill older family members by negligence” almost as a footnote—is it really so rare for young people to interact e.g. with their parents? You only need to infect them once.
At the end, it is a quantitative decision; being among the first ones to take the vaccine is a risk, getting sick is also a risk; we disagree about the relative sizes of these risks… and also about government incentives (from my perspective, governments are mostly downplaying the risks of COVID-19, because their voters do not want to be inconvenienced).
My reading on that last point was that the government has incentive to declare the vaccines valid solutions to COVID-19 even if they haven’t been properly tested for efficacy and side effects, in the spirit of downplaying the risks of the epidemic. And similarly (in the spirit of steelmanning), the companies developing the virus need to do visibly better than their competitors and preferably come out before or simultaneously with them, for the sake of profits; incentives which also push towards incomplete/inadequate testing procedures.
However, my prior for that is only low-moderate in range, since the increased scrutiny involved means governmental organizations need to may much more attention to avoid even the slightest possible issue they could be blamed for. After all, they’ve already ‘delayed the vaccine’ to ensure it’s safe — in accordance with somewhat-expedited standard procedure, sure, but that’s not how the public will see it — and if after that it still ends up unsafe, it would be a significant negative blow to their reputation and would likely result in significant amounts of firing throughout the hierarchy, especially considering the rise in unemployed alternatives.
And I agree with your points on the personal risks of not taking the vaccine. Actually, I’d expect vaccination to have similar properties relative to population included as herd immunity does, so the other footnote also doesn’t deserve so little attention.
I agree that the governments have an incentive to downplay both the risks of COVID-19 and the risk of vaccines. With the medical companies, I would expect that there are already some mechanisms to verify their statements.