Metus comments on Expansion on A Previous Cost-Benefit Analysis of Vaccinating Healthy Adults Against Flu - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Fluttershy 12 November 2014 04:36AM

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Comment author: Metus 12 November 2014 09:03:34AM *  2 points [-]

Thank you for doing a follow up.

A couple of thoughts:

  1. In Germany the "perpetual commission on vaccines" recommends anyone to get a shot if they are in contact with many people during their day or are not healthy adults younger than at retirement age. So there seems to be an uneven benefit wrt the population at hand.
  2. Does insurance pay for or subsidise the shot? This is indirect evidence on their opinion on the efficacy. This is especially valuable if they also offer life insurance paying out the amount of dollars you value your life with.
  3. To anyone disputing the $1000 figure for being sick but not dying: Would you be willing to get flu injections until you are sick in exchange for a payment of $1000? (Minus the payment of EV of dying)
  4. There is a minor chance of getting sick in the doctor's waiting room. This can be considered too.

All in all, the benefit for healthy adults with no major social contact during the day the benefit is marginal except for the risk of death. Personally, I am seriously considering getting the shot.

Comment author: Fluttershy 12 November 2014 03:21:31PM *  0 points [-]

Thank you for the feedback and compliments. Here are some brief responses to points 1, 2, and 4:

In response to 1:

Yes, this definitely seems true.

In response to 2:

Mine does. This seems to be the case for many people in the US, at least. I would guess that private insurance companies would be more diligent about actually doing cost-benefit analyses on these sorts of issues than the people behind governmental insurance programs, though I would hope that e.g. the NHS in the UK wouldn't be too blind to the fact that conducting cost-benefit analyses of various interventions is a good idea.

I think that many people value their own lives as being worth more than the payout of their life insurance policy. A quick Google search makes it look like typical life insurance policies pay 250,000 to 1,000,000 USD, while I estimated the average person as valuing their life at 5,000,000 USD in the analysis.

In response to 4:

This is a fair criticism. I think that this would be a good reason to get vaccinated in October, or early November, before quite as many people tend to be sick.

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