This seems like a cool and interesting experiment, and it seems rational from a “zoomed-in” perspective. i.e. “if I’m going to get vaccinated, I might as well do it myself, nasally, with fewer ingredients....the potential benefits are greater than the costs. Especially when considering adjacent benefits like learning, being a trailblazer, potentially advancing knowledge, etc.”
But if you “zoom out” and take a broader view of the whole Covid phenomenon, it seems like you may be (irrationally?) accepting a number of big assumptions before beginning your cost-benefit analysis. It seems that you may be assuming some subset of the points below:
a) You face significant risks from Covid-19 even though you are not elderly and don’t have comorbidities
b) A vaccine is an important part of reducing your risk of severe Covid-19 outcomes. (You don’t think you can achieve sufficient risk reduction through preventative risk reducers like Vitamin D, sleep, exercise, stress reduction, etc., and you don’t think you can achieve sufficient risk reduction through therapeutics like steroids, antivirals, antiparasiticals, etc.)
c) Vaccine experts are generally reliable sources of data and insight. (Or at least you can successfully navigate the challenge for distinguishing real experts from fake, and you are fully aware of the conflicts faced by researchers and public health experts due to their funding sources, political pressures, regulatory capture by industry, etc.)
d) The scientific (or bureaucratic?) challenges that prevented any previous coronavirus vaccines from being approved for humans were solved in the past 10 months, not by haste, but by scientific breakthroughs or by the realization that previous non-approval was in error.
e) To the extent that proof of vaccination or antibodies are required for things like travel, etc., your DIY vaccine and/or resulting antibodies will be accepted by authorities. You would not be required to get, say, the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines on TOP of your DIY vaccine. Or, if you were, doubling up on complementary vaccines would be neutral or positive, not negative.
Anyway, I’d be curious to hear any of your thoughts on these assumptions. I loved your post, and I love the DIY decision at a micro-level. If you want a vaccine, why NOT a quicker DIY nasal one instead of waiting. But I find myself wondering about what principles, assumptions, and decisions you embraced in advance of the DIY vs waiting for Pfizer decision. Thanks for any insight you can share!
At this point in the game, things like “advancing knowledge” and “I really want to know if it was actually this easy all along” are at least as big a factor as the object-level benefits. If this were last July, or if I lived in Europe, then it might be a different story, but at this point I’m likely to get vaccinated within a few months anyway.
On your specific points:
a) COVID still sucks, I don’t want my food to taste like nothing for six months, etc, but I’m definitely not at any significant risk of death from COVID.
b) I definitely do not expect that sleep/exercise/vitamin D/etc would achieve anywhere near the degree of risk reduction that a vaccine provides, and I do expect preventative to be way better than treatment here.
c) I certainly would not consider “vaccine experts” reliable, as a category. I do think that I am extremely unusually good at distinguishing real experts from fake. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that this is the major thing which we should expect rationalists to be unusually good at. In the case of RadVac specifically, I think it is considerably more likely to work than a typical vaccine trial, and typical vaccine trials have ~40-50% success rates to start with (the highest success rate of any clinical trial category).
d) Not sure what you mean by this one. Sounds like you’re making a generalized efficient markets argument, but I’m not sure exactly what the argument is.
e) Antibody test results would be the goal here. Though in practice, most governments seem so incompetent that they’re not even actually looking at antibody test results or vaccination, so it’s not a very large factor.
I really liked/enjoyed your logic on why you decided to make your own vaccine. You seem like a highly rational guy, and because of that, I find myself curious about your logic on the preceding decision—the decision that you would take a brand-new Covid-19 vaccine, and soon, from, say, Pfizer.
Most people are eager to get that vaccine, but most people are not rationalists. I’m curious about the logic an intelligent and skeptical rationalist used to decide he’d take a new Pfizer vaccine.
I’m curious about how you came to the conclusion that a new vaccine would be way better than general good health and treatment options. And I’m curious about how you came to the conclusion that a new, experimental, lightly tested, approved-only-under-emergency-authorization vaccine from a politically powerful, profit-seeking corporation poses fewer risks to you than a case of Covid-19.
Most people are enthusiastic about the new vaccines. But the enthusiasm in many cases is driven more by a year of wall-to-wall media coverage than by any logical consistency. Many of the millions rushing to get Covid-19 vaccines are not up to date on the CDC’s adult vaccination schedule and do not get flu shots.
Most people don’t even try to distinguish real experts from fake. When it comes to Covid-19, most people unquestioningly accept scientific pronouncements from...politicians and journalists. (And politicians and journalists, however noble their intentions, sometimes can’t help but be influenced by the the pharmaceutical industry’s massive lobbying efforts and massive advertising spend in the news media.)
You, on the other hand, do try to distinguish real experts from fake, and you say you are extremely unusually good at it. And as a rationalist you’re probably much more likely than the average person to understand incentives, follow the money, consult primary scientific sources, and more accurately estimate risks and rewards.
And that’s why I’m curious about your thought process. Even if your thought process was fairly quick, leveraging previous knowledge. I’ve seen plenty of emotional or political or conformist reasons for rushing out to get the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. But I’m interested in the rationalist reasons for doing it.
(Thanks for reading this reply. I know it’s a little long, a little off topic, and tinged with a little cynicism. But I’d love to read any thoughts you care to share about how you made the overall yes/no vaccine decision that preceded your decision to make your own!)
I’ve been putting off answering this, because a proper answer would require diving into a lot of disparate evidence for some background models. But developments over the past few weeks have provided more direct data on the key assumption, so I can now point directly to that evidence rather than going through all the different pieces of weaker prior information.
The key assumption underlying my belief (and, presumably, most other peoples’ belief) in the efficacy of the commercial vaccines is that the data from the clinical trials is basically true and representative. If we believe the data, then the health risks are trivial (compared to COVID), and the effectiveness is decent, and our certainty about these two facts is very high. The vaccines are not “lightly tested” in any epistemically-relevant sense, only relative to the frankly-unnecessary extreme over-testing typically used. (Zvi’s posts frequently provide helpful snapshots of the relevant data/analysis.)
The question which you seem to be interested in is whether the data is trustworthy. The key model here is that, if there were anything even remotely suspicious in there, then regulators and the media would absolutely freak out over it. That’s exactly what we’ve seen over the past few weeks—first with the AZ clotting thing, then with AZ calling their vaccine “79% effective” when the regulators thought it only merited “69 to 74% effective”. The clotting thing in particular is a clear case where there was absolutely no real, important problem, and regulators/media freaked out over it anyway, because they are super-over-sensitive to even the tiniest hint of a problem. That follows directly from their incentives: regulators do not get punished for delaying good vaccines, but if a bad vaccine gets regulatory approval, then there’s a scandal and an Official Investigation and “heads will roll”.
This seems like a cool and interesting experiment, and it seems rational from a “zoomed-in” perspective. i.e. “if I’m going to get vaccinated, I might as well do it myself, nasally, with fewer ingredients....the potential benefits are greater than the costs. Especially when considering adjacent benefits like learning, being a trailblazer, potentially advancing knowledge, etc.”
But if you “zoom out” and take a broader view of the whole Covid phenomenon, it seems like you may be (irrationally?) accepting a number of big assumptions before beginning your cost-benefit analysis. It seems that you may be assuming some subset of the points below:
a) You face significant risks from Covid-19 even though you are not elderly and don’t have comorbidities
b) A vaccine is an important part of reducing your risk of severe Covid-19 outcomes. (You don’t think you can achieve sufficient risk reduction through preventative risk reducers like Vitamin D, sleep, exercise, stress reduction, etc., and you don’t think you can achieve sufficient risk reduction through therapeutics like steroids, antivirals, antiparasiticals, etc.)
c) Vaccine experts are generally reliable sources of data and insight. (Or at least you can successfully navigate the challenge for distinguishing real experts from fake, and you are fully aware of the conflicts faced by researchers and public health experts due to their funding sources, political pressures, regulatory capture by industry, etc.)
d) The scientific (or bureaucratic?) challenges that prevented any previous coronavirus vaccines from being approved for humans were solved in the past 10 months, not by haste, but by scientific breakthroughs or by the realization that previous non-approval was in error.
e) To the extent that proof of vaccination or antibodies are required for things like travel, etc., your DIY vaccine and/or resulting antibodies will be accepted by authorities. You would not be required to get, say, the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines on TOP of your DIY vaccine. Or, if you were, doubling up on complementary vaccines would be neutral or positive, not negative.
Anyway, I’d be curious to hear any of your thoughts on these assumptions. I loved your post, and I love the DIY decision at a micro-level. If you want a vaccine, why NOT a quicker DIY nasal one instead of waiting. But I find myself wondering about what principles, assumptions, and decisions you embraced in advance of the DIY vs waiting for Pfizer decision. Thanks for any insight you can share!
At this point in the game, things like “advancing knowledge” and “I really want to know if it was actually this easy all along” are at least as big a factor as the object-level benefits. If this were last July, or if I lived in Europe, then it might be a different story, but at this point I’m likely to get vaccinated within a few months anyway.
On your specific points:
a) COVID still sucks, I don’t want my food to taste like nothing for six months, etc, but I’m definitely not at any significant risk of death from COVID.
b) I definitely do not expect that sleep/exercise/vitamin D/etc would achieve anywhere near the degree of risk reduction that a vaccine provides, and I do expect preventative to be way better than treatment here.
c) I certainly would not consider “vaccine experts” reliable, as a category. I do think that I am extremely unusually good at distinguishing real experts from fake. Indeed, there’s an argument to be made that this is the major thing which we should expect rationalists to be unusually good at. In the case of RadVac specifically, I think it is considerably more likely to work than a typical vaccine trial, and typical vaccine trials have ~40-50% success rates to start with (the highest success rate of any clinical trial category).
d) Not sure what you mean by this one. Sounds like you’re making a generalized efficient markets argument, but I’m not sure exactly what the argument is.
e) Antibody test results would be the goal here. Though in practice, most governments seem so incompetent that they’re not even actually looking at antibody test results or vaccination, so it’s not a very large factor.
Thank you so much for your great answers.
I have one follow-up question for you.
I really liked/enjoyed your logic on why you decided to make your own vaccine. You seem like a highly rational guy, and because of that, I find myself curious about your logic on the preceding decision—the decision that you would take a brand-new Covid-19 vaccine, and soon, from, say, Pfizer.
Most people are eager to get that vaccine, but most people are not rationalists. I’m curious about the logic an intelligent and skeptical rationalist used to decide he’d take a new Pfizer vaccine.
I’m curious about how you came to the conclusion that a new vaccine would be way better than general good health and treatment options. And I’m curious about how you came to the conclusion that a new, experimental, lightly tested, approved-only-under-emergency-authorization vaccine from a politically powerful, profit-seeking corporation poses fewer risks to you than a case of Covid-19.
Most people are enthusiastic about the new vaccines. But the enthusiasm in many cases is driven more by a year of wall-to-wall media coverage than by any logical consistency. Many of the millions rushing to get Covid-19 vaccines are not up to date on the CDC’s adult vaccination schedule and do not get flu shots.
Most people don’t even try to distinguish real experts from fake. When it comes to Covid-19, most people unquestioningly accept scientific pronouncements from...politicians and journalists. (And politicians and journalists, however noble their intentions, sometimes can’t help but be influenced by the the pharmaceutical industry’s massive lobbying efforts and massive advertising spend in the news media.)
You, on the other hand, do try to distinguish real experts from fake, and you say you are extremely unusually good at it. And as a rationalist you’re probably much more likely than the average person to understand incentives, follow the money, consult primary scientific sources, and more accurately estimate risks and rewards.
And that’s why I’m curious about your thought process. Even if your thought process was fairly quick, leveraging previous knowledge. I’ve seen plenty of emotional or political or conformist reasons for rushing out to get the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine. But I’m interested in the rationalist reasons for doing it.
(Thanks for reading this reply. I know it’s a little long, a little off topic, and tinged with a little cynicism. But I’d love to read any thoughts you care to share about how you made the overall yes/no vaccine decision that preceded your decision to make your own!)
I’ve been putting off answering this, because a proper answer would require diving into a lot of disparate evidence for some background models. But developments over the past few weeks have provided more direct data on the key assumption, so I can now point directly to that evidence rather than going through all the different pieces of weaker prior information.
The key assumption underlying my belief (and, presumably, most other peoples’ belief) in the efficacy of the commercial vaccines is that the data from the clinical trials is basically true and representative. If we believe the data, then the health risks are trivial (compared to COVID), and the effectiveness is decent, and our certainty about these two facts is very high. The vaccines are not “lightly tested” in any epistemically-relevant sense, only relative to the frankly-unnecessary extreme over-testing typically used. (Zvi’s posts frequently provide helpful snapshots of the relevant data/analysis.)
The question which you seem to be interested in is whether the data is trustworthy. The key model here is that, if there were anything even remotely suspicious in there, then regulators and the media would absolutely freak out over it. That’s exactly what we’ve seen over the past few weeks—first with the AZ clotting thing, then with AZ calling their vaccine “79% effective” when the regulators thought it only merited “69 to 74% effective”. The clotting thing in particular is a clear case where there was absolutely no real, important problem, and regulators/media freaked out over it anyway, because they are super-over-sensitive to even the tiniest hint of a problem. That follows directly from their incentives: regulators do not get punished for delaying good vaccines, but if a bad vaccine gets regulatory approval, then there’s a scandal and an Official Investigation and “heads will roll”.