"No difference in deaths? Then why take the vaccine?" To reduce the risk that you need to rush your infant to an emergency room with dehydration from severe diarrhea?
Same chance of death and you need to vaccinate roughly 1500 kids (number needed to treat NNT) to prevent one hospitalization, but the NNH (number needed to harm, i.e. with one of the side effects like diarrhea) is about 36 (calculated according to the FDA insert). I originally came to this post intending to refute RFK's numbers, but frankly now I'm surprised that this sort of tradeoff isn't more well-known. If I'm wrong I'd love to hear why.
You'd have to compare the number of hospitalizations in unvaccinated kids with the number of hospitalizations due to serious side effects (or ineffective vaccination), not with the number of vaccinated kids experiencing any kind of side effect.
"No difference in deaths? Then why take the vaccine?" To reduce the risk that you need to rush your infant to an emergency room with dehydration from severe diarrhea?
Same chance of death and you need to vaccinate roughly 1500 kids (number needed to treat NNT) to prevent one hospitalization, but the NNH (number needed to harm, i.e. with one of the side effects like diarrhea) is about 36 (calculated according to the FDA insert). I originally came to this post intending to refute RFK's numbers, but frankly now I'm surprised that this sort of tradeoff isn't more well-known. If I'm wrong I'd love to hear why.
You'd have to compare the number of hospitalizations in unvaccinated kids with the number of hospitalizations due to serious side effects (or ineffective vaccination), not with the number of vaccinated kids experiencing any kind of side effect.