Dave,

The math becomes even worst when measured in life years lost and children putting their future at risk for those that refuse to get vaccinated or to protect those that are already vaccinated in their 80s and 90s.

How many 90s year old lives are worth saving for 1 child under 10?

It makes no sense to vaccinate children with experimental vaccine.

And the above is why again David, I counter your view that "... Then your numbers should approximately coincide...."

I think, many like Tien would have extremely different answers if Virus X was one that killed Children and young adults at the rate Covid kills off the olds while leaving the olds mostly untouched due to a lifetime of building up immunities.

we have real world examples of viruses with that profile.

All of sudden the calculus would be not to look at it as a question of 1 person (child) versus 1 person (senior adult) and ask that question but instead to switch and view it as 'years of life at risk'. Tien (and others) would almost certainly take it further and want to try and quantify 'productive years yet to live'.

So using Tien's type of equation many of the Old's who died due to covid were already past the average death age for the nation. Mathematically speaking they have zero years left and are living on borrowed time if looked at that way. So if you take an infant with 78 years of life left, how many olds should be put at risk to get society to a safe place where that infant and all others and Young adults are not at risk.


This answer becomes 'all of them'. All of the olds should take that vaccine to protect the young, even if that vaccine provides almost no benefit to the olds and puts a small percent of them at risk of complications due to the vaccine.

They do **** like this and then wonder why there are conspiracy theorist. Their behavior is suspicious.

The original question could have specified that the non children considered were elderly who chose not to be vaccinated. The answer would be different but that answer should approximately coincide with your opinion about a policy that kills a few children but saves a lot of irresponsible old people. But the fact that different scenarios approximately equate to different simplistic questions is not an argument against such type questions.

One reason why such questions can be useful is that it helps pin down what two people are actually disagreeing about. For example let's say your stance is that you think five more children will die than be saved in order to save 1000 old screw ups and you would accept up to 20 such deaths. Chezlaw thinks that 100 children, net, will die and he would accept up to 50 such deaths. Thus he opposes the vaccine and you favor it not because of your differing ideas of the importance of elderly life but rather because of differing medical opinions. Meanwhile without a Sklansky type question, you two would be arguing about the value of old and young people's lives not realizing that your difference is the OPPOSITE OF WHAT YOU BOTH ASSUMED because you were basing it on your vaccine stances.

Ya to be clear I am not arguing the question or saying the exercise is not a good one to understand how different people would approach these ethical quandary questions.

I am saying you will have massive disparity in outcome based on how you segment the question and who is at risk.

Equation 1 - Putting olds at risk by asking them to take vaccine that offers them almost zero protection, holds minor risks, but provides significant protections to infants thru middle aged folk = Yes. Absolutely the olds should do this. Measuring the risk to the olds living on "borrowed time" is meaningless versus the value of preventing the death of a person who has their entire prime years still ahead of them. There really is no equation of olds loss versus 'prime's' saved that would not make sense as the olds should not be alive and using up resources anyway.

Equation 2 - Putting young people at risk to protect olds = NO. There is really no equation that would justify making even one person do this for olds living on borrowed time. No level of risk to that group is warranted to save olds.


Think of those as the two extremes setting the boundaries of the answer to this equation and then what ever scenarios you could paint in-between those two extremes.

Where you suggest that range would not be too wide, I see it as a massive gulf.

Sure as long as we're clear that this the real chezlaw will always squirm away from such a view as he has a different view of morality. It will always be about what I think is best for the child and I've given three ways for considering that.

Above that I accept there is a place for democracy where I accept approaches I dont agree with as morally jusrified (even if I will vote against and maybe even protest against them)

This is all a far bigger cause of confusion between me and cuppee (and others) than the issues you raise.

I was using those two names just for the fun of it. I know you would never kill more than 45 children to save old people. My post was merely a defense of simplistic hypothetical questions. If you want to protest against them, Bill Chen, the math PhD who used toy games to illustrate poker GTO strategy, should be at the world Series of Poker this September and you can picket outside the hotel.

I've no objction at all to toy games. Cuppee struggles enough to understand me though so I dont want him thinking you think that I think ... Although it's all good if TS thinks that I think that cuppee thinks that you think that I think something about kids

I'd protest you saying I did object to the fun except that I assume that was another hypothetical toy of which I heartily approve.

https://insight.jci.org/articles/view/146316

Fascinating. Now if they could do South Dakota or something next that might really tell us something. But idk, kind of stretch to think BC had 90% and other places that got whacked, including densely populated, did not.

But imagine if we thought it was masks + being liberal that fought covid cases/deaths super good when it was actually just % of pop with some prior immunity from other coronaviruses. That would be something else I tell ya!

Not sure why you would say that when just upthread you have a poster, not named QP who points out that understanding you and the way you so often seem to address questions with bizarre tangent arguments that have little to do with the question but you continue to assert do, seems to be a thing that is accepted by many not just in this forum but also in the Politics. I mean, I could quote another poster in the Politics forum saying almost verbatim the exact same thing as the poster above does about your argumentation style and how often you seem to 'miss the point' but then insist you did not.

qed

In any case, I didn't say you were alone or that it was your fault. I assure you that better minds than yours have failed to understand me.

Anyone have good data on vaccine efficacy against the delta variant?

I'm seeing crazy high efficacy being claimed, but it doesn't seem to translate to the actual numbers. The numbers from each mainstream outlet seem to be wildly different.

Also, I saw something showing some areas of the UK have 90% vaccinated and others are ~20% which I imagine would make vaccines there appear more effective.

Some info on delta and vaccines

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...e-the-vaccines

Glorious.

Cuepee, chezlaw doesn't miss the point, far too intelligent for that, he/she/it just has a glorious case of "la la la I can't hear you" when it comes to things that question core foundational beliefs that chezlaw finds are functional for chezlaw. Got to keep the angst and self loathing under control somehow. I can't even say it's wrong. World can be a hard place to live in and if you got a good framework going...

Hard to line up those protection numbers with what we're seeing in the UK where Indian variant has achieved dominance:



4x growth in 4 weeks (R>1.6) with >50% of the population vaccinated, in summer, with some restrictions still in place. That's just nuts.

Maybe I'm cynical, but I get the feeling these effectiveness numbers are as real as the 52% effectiveness for the first shot.

Cuepee accusing others of missing the point is pretty funny.

Says the person who believes when you calculate 'vaccine risk' it is a strawman to counter that and ALSO consider the underlying virus or disease risk.

Rich.

I haven't seen any serious data analysis but there's a few things to bear in mind.

Firstly, the large rise in cases is heavily skewed towards young people who were not vaccinated eevna sthe schools went back exposing a younger demographic - parents, families etc. We have high vaccination take up in the Uk but it started from old people and has worked downward.

Secondly the high protection claimed is against hospitalisation. Typical figures claimed for that protection is ~90% but it drops to the 60's for protection from infection.

The encouraging data seems to be from hospitalisation of those who are fully vaccinated comapred to those who aren't. It's extremely low especially bearing in mind that ~the entire older population is vaccinated (even a young'en like me). That doesn't seem explicable by the earlier point about younger people being exposed more although that seems toi be the only other possibility. Either the hospitalisations are about to explode very soon or the vaccine works.

Mean while back to the point of discussion for today.

Some more info on Delta and vaccines. Not sure how significant this is but it could be a concern.

That appears to be saying that the younger people dont die very often even if they get hospitalised.

It maybe even more encouraging than that as I've heard it said that the fully vaccinated who are being hospitalised are mostly from the frailest part of the population. I haven't seen any firm data to support this but it's what we might expect.

Aren't the vaccines supposed to prevent you from getting severe symptoms?

Death seems like a pretty severe symptom to me.

It's not 100% effective

We ahve to compare the data to what we would expcet without vaccines. So far it's looking good. Very good even

Probably need to fast forward a few months to really get a better feel of the situation, as for now a lot of people who would want to be fully vaccinated (but are not) are part of that growth. That chart does not break down what percentage of the growth are from people that are not yet fully vaccinated.

In Canada there is an area that recently had about 100 cases of that variant, and about 90% were among those who had not yet received a vaccine. Only 1 case was of someone who had received both vaccines (that person had no symptoms).

The data in the fall when this or another variant is dominant everywhere will be much more useful, and we may find at that time that nearly every case and death is among adults are those that actively chose not to get the vaccines, and at that time a value on that anti-vaxxer demographic can be assessed just as others have done an evaluation of people based on their age within this thread. The non vaccinated will likely be using up the bulk of the health care related costs regarding Covid at that time, without nicely paying in advance for them via taxes like smokers have generally done.

All the best.