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[Reelya]

And I, you know, pointed out that it's perfectly reasonable that there could be a vaccine who's personal benefits vs risks are below the "break even" point yet herd immunity pushes the net value positive once enough people are vaccinated.

in a situation like that, there is no member of the population who would ever make the rational decision that their *personal* dose of vaccine had "net" helped them, not at any level of vaccination from 0% to 100%. Yet, we can still look at the overall survival numbers and realize everyone is better off with the vaccination program.

So I'm just saying your example in the OP isn't the only possibility, it's just one possibility.

[GavJ]

And I, you know, pointed out that it's perfectly reasonable that there could be a vaccine who's personal benefits vs risks are below the "break even" point yet herd immunity pushes the net value positive once enough people are vaccinated.

Yes I heard you.

This is incorrect, because herd immunity will never "kick in" with "enough people" and start getting more important at any point. Herd immunity is most relevant from the very start, and it's marginal benefit only ever goes monotonically downward right from the very first vaccine all the way to the very last vaccine.

Or am i still misunderstanding? I might be, I don't really have a full grasp of what youre saying.

[GavJ]

Is what you mean to say that the break even point is simply lower for individuals than for society?  If so, then I agree. The shape of the graph is the same for both perspectives, but it may be shifted between them, such that for selfishness, the breakeven point is 40% but for society/government interest, the breakeven point is 60%

[Reelya]

i'm saying there could be a vaccine where the personal negatives outweigh the personal protection, but the maximum value herd immunity pushes the protection into positive territory.

whether or not herd immunity rises faster at first or later isn't really the question, but it is cumulative.

it would be easy to have a vaccine which looks bad if you only look at personal effects without factoring in herd immunity at all. and vaccines that fall into that pattern would only make sense as a "group response" since personal evaluation would always tell you to avoid the vaccine.

[GavJ]

Okay I think we agree then, sorry for confusion.  The graph in the OP was only meant to apply to society, and if you wanted to calculate individual selfish-only, it would need a different, offset line overlaid which would indeed fall at a different (lower) position.

In fact, I think the situation you're describing is ALWAYS the case, unless you're at an extreme situation, where it is possible that both individuals and society might choose either both 0% or both 100% vaccination. but I don't think you'd ever have society choosing a lower vaccination rate than individuals.

[Reelya]

My argument was in fact in response to this statement:

The result would be that if everybody were omniscient, pursued purely selfish goals, and followed the above logic, vaccination would at some point stop at some midpoint, like 30% or 60% or whatever at equilibrium with risk. It would not crash to 0, and it would not go back to 1960s levels.

I was just showing that "purely selfish goals" and point where overall social harm are minimized don't necessarily coincide: at every point in my example, an individual gets a net benefit from deciding not to vaccinate themselves.

Though perhaps you had something else in mind with "purely selfish goals" than I thought.

[GavJ]

I meant purely selfish goals...

There are simply two scenarios here.  1) People choose vaccines for their own families, etc.  2) Government actually if not mandates than incentivizes or whatever a higher vaccination rate than people would otherwise choose for health reasons alone.

The quote you quoted is considering scenario #1. Whereas in scenario #2, the equilibrium would be some amount higher than that (instead of 30% or 60%, maybe 40% or 70%) due to government caring more about the herd immunity than the average individual does.

Since government also has to consider a different kind of cost for interfering with its citizen's medical choices (a cost in freedoms or more tangibly, re-elections, etc.), it is unclear whether their TOTAL benefit including that risk is worth it and whether they would pass laws to mandate things. Or, if offering incentives, then obviously the incentives are a direct cost (less tax income or whatever for, say, a write-off) that may or may not be worth the extra bump.

So it's unclear really which scenario or where in between perhaps you'd end up. Frankly I don't think it really matters since we generally don't have enough data to determine either type of quantitative solution.

[Neonivek]

Just to make sure, you do realize that the vaccine does not need to include the actual virus anymore, attenuated, activated or otherwise? Sure, we cannot apply this to all viruses, and measles vaccine used commonly is attenuated, for instance, but we're not limiting ourselves to any single virus.

It doesn't necessarily take the actual virus to cause symptoms and complications.

For example, some vaccines use toxin byproducts as the antigen (mostly bacterial vaccines)

Are you talking about attenuated vaccines? Because to my knowledge while you can have symptoms they are created by the body treating the vaccine like an infection and thus your body starts going into sick mode.

[scrdest]

As such, the only damage it produces in itself is autoimmune, and you cannot really factor in that kind of autoimmune response, because that's for the most part a shit happens kinda thing

...Except autoimmune "shit doesn't happen", if there's no vaccine at all. So the autoimmune threat still needs to be factored in, however small.

It DOES happen if there is no vaccine at all. It's an immune system hypersensitivity. And the actually dangerous autoimmune side-effects like Stevens-Johnson Syndrome is, for the most part, the person being genetically a ticking time bomb.

Sure, it might occur after vaccination after introducing the antigen. Or it might show up for a completely unrelated reason without vaccination. Or show up due to the actual infection in unvaccinated people. Autoimmuneaggresion be unpredictable, yo.

It's a shit happens thing because whether or not it would have occured is mostly a discussion in counterfactuals. It's like, say, a person drunk a beer, correctly and lawfully crossed the road and got hit by a speeding car. It *might* not have occurred if the person had a better reaction time, or decided to go another way. Or it might have, regardless.

[Neonivek]

Which is why the study of alternate vaccine treatment continues as well as our studies into antigens, histamines, and autoimmune disease.

Unfortunately for people who are "high risk" of it, we don't even understand the mechanics enough to prevent it. Only sort of move around it a little.

Other things that can trigger it? Almost everything...

Whether or not the shot is more risky then just everyday life can actually be debated...

[GavJ]

As such, the only damage it produces in itself is autoimmune, and you cannot really factor in that kind of autoimmune response, because that's for the most part a shit happens kinda thing

...Except autoimmune "shit doesn't happen", if there's no vaccine at all. So the autoimmune threat still needs to be factored in, however small.

It DOES happen if there is no vaccine at all. It's an immune system hypersensitivity. And the actually dangerous autoimmune side-effects like Stevens-Johnson Syndrome is, for the most part, the person being genetically a ticking time bomb.

Sure, it might occur after vaccination after introducing the antigen. Or it might show up for a completely unrelated reason without vaccination. Or show up due to the actual infection in unvaccinated people. Autoimmuneaggresion be unpredictable, yo.

It's a shit happens thing because whether or not it would have occured is mostly a discussion in counterfactuals. It's like, say, a person drunk a beer, correctly and lawfully crossed the road and got hit by a speeding car. It *might* not have occurred if the person had a better reaction time, or decided to go another way. Or it might have, regardless.

Sorry I wasn't clear enough.  Yes autoimmune disorders can and do surely happen for other reasons.  But however many, if any, autoimmune disorders are caused by vaccines, wouldn't happen if there were no vaccine given. So that number still needs to be taken into account as part of the safety of the vaccine.

How do you know if it "would have happened anyway?" Well, unlike some anecdotal story of some dude walking across the street, we run clinical trials on drugs.  Our current clinical trials happen to be fairly useless most of the time, but you COULD run studies that were capable of detecting a statistically higher rate of autoimmune disorders in the vaccinated vs. the unvaccinated groups, if it is actually a thing. If you did random sampling and condition assignment, etc., then that would be a solid, causal indication. In other words, maybe 50/100,000 people have one normally, and 65/100,000 have one with vaccinations, or whatever. The 15 extra can be considered vaccine-caused and otherwise unoccuring if you chose proper equivalent control and experimental groups, and if the math is at significant levels.

That's why this entire thread is about numbers and statistics and studies to clearly determine whether these things are issues or not...

Not just "well I have this ticklin' feelin' in mah brain that autoimmune disorders are probly caused by dem der vaccines."

[Reudh]

Ultimately, there would be more than just those factors you've stated causing the difference between 50/100,000 and 60/100,000. Different populations have different proclivities to autoimmune disorders - so if a vaccine works on joe whitebread with low/no incidence of autoimmune disorders, it might work on joe multiculture with a higher incidence. Ultimately, you'd need a very large sample size or ensure you have an even-ish number of all nationalities/peoples/ethnicities tested for this autoimmune response.

That could potentially skew the results, especially so in America where you have entire states that have a high proportion of African-americans, (eg. Louisiana, 32%) vs. Maine, with 0.4% african american.

[GavJ]

Ultimately, you'd need a very large sample size or ensure you have an even-ish number of all nationalities/peoples/ethnicities tested for this autoimmune response.

That's the whole point of random sampling/random assignment. You don't even have to plan out all of the things you want to control for (nor in fact SHOULD you even, many would argue).

You merely choose several research sites in major regions of the U.S. and go to town. And yes, you then have to run A LOT of participants, as you say.  The 100,000 I mentioned is probably much less than you would want to run. But please note that that's already 20x more people than what they do currently. As you run many people, the black and white people and the people with different genetic dispositions will naturally end up closer and closer to 50/50 in your test cases. Just like flipping a coin a lot will get you more reliably closer to 50/50 on average.

But hell, if you want to, you could run 6,000,000 participants, only half of which are in a no-vaccinate condition, and so it would only lower the vaccination coverage by 0.9% (10% of them already would have chosen to not vaccinate as-is if not randomly assigned to that condition), and even then, it would only lower it for the duration of the study, after which the other half could get the vaccine if they wanted to. I.e. in a year or so maybe.  That's not a big deal by any stretch of the imagination. You're only actually altering your country's lifetime vaccination coverage by 0.9% / 78yrs = 0.012% by running that 6 million person study

And that's just the U.S.  Collaborate with some other nations if necessary and you can do way mroe than that, without any of you having to meaningfully alter your vaccination coverages.

[Nilocy]

Herd immunity. And longer living people. That is all.

[BurnedToast]

Your thread title is " a thorough mathematical consideration" and yet you've done nothing of the sort. Find a reputable cite for the dangers of vaccines, figure out the actual risk of not vaccinating, do "a thorough mathematical consideration" and see if the numbers support your theory. If they do, THEN make a thread that explains why we should listen to you and not to medical professionals (who overwhelmingly support vaccination).

You can't expect to be taken seriously if your whole argument is that despite mountains of evidence suggesting they are safe, we just can't know for sure so your opinion is just as valid as that of a doctor or epidemiologist because "gut feelings" or whatever you base it on.