Covid vaccine math?

The vaccine is rolling out in the UK now, soon the world, while the math is much more complicated - who should get it?

I propose productive years of life saved as a baseline. Therefore with a life expectancy of 81 years in the UK anyone older than this should not receive the initial dose? Tossing morality aside, using a scaling remaining life expectancy and a death rate by age group (comorbidities aside) how would we save the most expected years of life?

EX: a 100 year old is 19 years beyond expectation- the vaccine with a 95% chance of preventing infection with a death rate in this age group of 80% will preserve how many years of productivity vs. a 30 year old?

Using only productive years saved (ignoring long term effects, life choices etc.)which age group and mortality rate gives the greatest return on our investment?

Quote: LVJackal

The vaccine is rolling out in the UK now, soon the world, while the math is much more complicated - who should get it?

I propose productive years of life saved as a baseline. Therefore with a life expectancy of 81 years in the UK anyone older than this should not receive the initial dose? Tossing morality aside, using a scaling remaining life expectancy and a death rate by age group (comorbidities aside) how would we save the most expected years of life?

EX: a 100 year old is 19 years beyond expectation- the vaccine with a 95% chance of preventing infection with a death rate in this age group of 80% will preserve how many years of productivity vs. a 30 year old?

Using only productive years saved (ignoring long term effects, life choices etc.)which age group and mortality rate gives the greatest return on our investment?

Your decision tree is rotten! Protecting one hospital nurse, or one nursing home aide, may only statistically save her a little bit because her (assume young) chance of dying was small, but the many people she would have passed it on to during her ‘contagious but not sick’ phase is not considered in your formula.

You also might want to lose the ‘productive’ word.... The rest of my life will be very productive for ME, but not much so for society. Unless you can define productive it is impossible to use in your calculations.

A few other flaws in your hypothesis... but it is a great conversation starter.

Quote: LVJackal

The vaccine is rolling out in the UK now, soon the world, while the math is much more complicated - who should get it?

You can have my dose.

Quote: LVJackal

I propose productive years of life saved as a baseline. Therefore with a life expectancy of 81 years in the UK anyone older than this should not receive the initial dose? Tossing morality aside, using a scaling remaining life expectancy and a death rate by age group (comorbidities aside) how would we save the most expected years of life?

If "productive years of life saved" is the baseline, then you have to take into account that, technically, giving the vaccine to someone who would have survived without it saves zero years. Pardon me for sounding like an episode of M*A*S*H, but if you are going to do it this way, you have to take the probability of a particular person that does not get the vaccine dying into account.

Quote: LVJackal

The vaccine is rolling out in the UK now, soon the world, while the math is much more complicated - who should get it?

I propose productive years of life saved as a baseline. Therefore with a life expectancy of 81 years in the UK anyone older than this should not receive the initial dose? Tossing morality aside, using a scaling remaining life expectancy and a death rate by age group (comorbidities aside) how would we save the most expected years of life?

EX: a 100 year old is 19 years beyond expectation- the vaccine with a 95% chance of preventing infection with a death rate in this age group of 80% will preserve how many years of productivity vs. a 30 year old?

Using only productive years saved (ignoring long term effects, life choices etc.)which age group and mortality rate gives the greatest return on our investment?

I could be wrong, but I think you might have some incorrect assumptions on how vaccines work.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity

Most vaccines are less about protecting the individual receiving it, and more about contributing to the overall immunity of the population.

Nobody has told us how much each vaccinated person would cost. $100? $1,000? $10,000?
Or would it be cheaper to kill off society and let it all burn to the ground?

Quote: ChumpChange

Nobody has told us how much each vaccinated person would cost. $100? $1,000? $10,000?
Or would it be cheaper to kill off society and let it all burn to the ground?

How much are you willing to pay for your vaccine then?

80% of Americans don't have even $500 for emergencies now.

Quote: ChumpChange

80% of Americans don't have even $500 for emergencies now.

Yet most of them will still have cable TV

I don't know about that. There's plenty of over-the-air channels in the big cities, just not cable news. A lot of people are cutting the cord and getting some kind of streaming TV deal and pay the cable company for the internet only.

Millions of phone subscriptions in China lapsed in the first few months of this year.