>>12986885>as a young healthy male do i have a higher chance of life-altering effects from covid or from the vaccine?First, a disclaimer: I know nothing about your age or physiological health so the numbers I'm about to provide can vary.
Let's say you were to catch COVID tomorrow. The likelihood that you might experience severe symptoms is somewhere around the ballpark of 1 in 1,000 to 10,000, and those symptoms could last anywhere from a few days to 2 weeks.
Additionally, the likelihood that you're a spreader for the virus is more like 1 in 1, so depending on how many people you come into contact with while you're infected, you could infect anywhere from zero to hundreds of other people. Those people may in turn infect others and so on.
If you get the vaccine, the likelihood that you experience severe symptoms on par with severe symptoms of COVID is about 1 in 1,000,000 or less. In other words, you are about 100+ times *less* likely to experience symptoms similar to the actual virus itself. Furthermore, said symptoms are only going to last <72 hours, far less time than the symptoms of the virus.
Lastly, you are not infectious from the vaccine, so even if you do experience severe symptoms, you cannot spread the virus to anyone else (because there is no virus in this scenario, not fully anyway).
If your primary concern is your own safety, the vaccine is much safer. You are far less likely to experience severe symptoms from the vaccine than the virus, any symptoms will be shorter in duration, it dramatically lowers the likelihood you can get COVID if you come into contact with someone that has it, and your symptoms will much more mild to non-existent if by some freak chance you do catch it even with the vaccine.
If your primary concern is the safety of others, the vaccine is also much safer because you are not contagious from the vaccine itself and you are less likely to be able to spread the virus after coming into contact with someone who has it.
