People are hammering that @FDRLST article about vaccines but I don't see the issue. We absolutely should not be vaccinating young people before every high-risk person is vaccinated, and we should not be *requiring* vaccines for which there has been no long-term safety study.

I get that twitter is a constituency of people with tightly bunched panties who see getting COVID as moral failure and getting a vaccine as the only true defense against sin but actually basically none of you people should even be allowed to get a vaccine until like May.

Given that R values seem to begin to decline significantly at levels ranging from 10-25% even with little public control and that a lot of places are already at those levels, it seems very likely that a very good level of population-level protection can be achieved with....

... getting natural antibodies + vaccinations up to something like 40% of the population. Obviously higher is better but that's probably enough to break community spread.

And even then, it's actually okay to continue having some low level of community spread if the population with high risk is protected and hospital spots are not overwhelmed.

I mean if the only people getting continued exposure are people with an a priori expected IFR of like 0.1% then we're pretty much talking about the flu at that point, which we allow uncontrolled spread of, uh, every year.

Maybe we shouldn't do that!

But the fact that some people don't want to disrupt society over that isn't some heinous act; it's a range where there can be entirely legitimate disagreements about costs and benefits.

And if some people want to wait a few years or a decade to get a vaccine that has had no long term safety trials (hi my name is Lyman and I'm an educated human who is aware of the existence and reasoning behind the NVICP), that is perfectly reasonable as long as it....

.... does not place a burden on vaccinating high risk cases or people who want it.

Of course, we might *eventually* require COVID vaccinations in the way many large employers require flu vaccinations. That may someday be reasonable. It is not reasonable today when we don't have any long-term testing.

It's important to understand that there's no tension between "The FDA is being too demanding about testing during a pandemic! Let people try it!" and "Don't force people to get an untested vaccine."

I'm 100% onboard with the idea that the vaccine was frustratingly delayed by cumbersome testing requirements we should have waived or pushed through faster given the size of the threat. That argument is correct.

But the reason for that is explicitly *the size of the threat*, not that the testing is actually worthless. Adverse reactions to vaccines are sufficiently common the government charges vaccine producers a fee for every dose they produce and puts it in a fund to make easy payouts.

Folks if there were never any adverse consequences they wouldn't do that!

Now, adverse consequences are rare. Especially for relatively longstanding vaccines, severe consequences are EXTREMELY rare. Vaccines are very, very, very safe. Largely because they are so extensively used (and, implicitly, re-tested).

But adverse events aren't unheard of, especially with new vaccines. So if a person wants to wait it out and they're not high risk, it seems obvious we should allow them to!

And if young people try to cut in line in front of high-risk folks because they're just So Pro-Vaccine, they should be punished. Olds first, wait your turn.

And if firms try to force people to get vaccinated to maintain employment, I feel like that's a thing we should oppose and shame.

The thing is here y'all it's not necessary to force people to get vaccinated. Surveys show that the share who intend to get vaccinated is WAY higher than is strictly necessary to control the disease.

I regard it as something of a blessing that there's no kid vaccine because that way we don't have to have the debate about school vaccinations yet. That's gonna be a nasty one.