Hi Nick. Fair point. I thought about those effects, but should have explained why I did not cover them in the post. I have now added the following to the summary and main text.
I have not considered the effects of my vaccination on other people, soil animals, or microorganisms, but they do not change my decision. I think they are much smaller than the effects on my work and donations resulting from the time and monetary costs of my vaccination.
My marginal earnings go towards donations, and I believe donating the difference between my estimates for the cost and benefits of 24.7 $ to the most cost-effective global health interventions would increase human welfare more than the benefits of my vaccination to other people. GiveWell published a report on dietary salt modification in July 2025 where they concluded the following.
Overall, we estimate that it costs about $855 to avert a death via dietary salt modification in China and India, and the intervention is about 14 times as cost-effective as spending on unconditional cash transfers. However, this is a preliminary estimate that we plan to refine with additional work.
According to Coefficient Giving (CG), “GiveWell uses moral weights for child deaths that would be consistent with assuming 51 years of foregone life in the DALY framework (though that is not how they reach the conclusion)”. Assuming 51 DALY/life, the above cost-effectiveness would be 0.0596 DALY/$ (= 51⁄855). So 24.7 $ would avert 1.47 DALYs (= 24.7*0.0596). Supposing 1 DALY/symptomatic-flu-year, which greatly overestimate the badness of having a symptomatic flu, my vaccination would only be worth it if it averted more than 1.47 symptomatic-flu-years (= 1.47/1) in other people, or 97.6 symptomatic flus (= 1.47/(5.50/365.25)) for my assumption of 5.50 days of symptoms per symptomatic flu.
The benefits to other people would only materialise in cases where the vaccination prevented me from getting a symptomatic flu, which is when I could have infected other people. Combining the above with my assumption of “0.0610 symptomatic flus per person-year”, I estimate I would have to have infected 1.60 k (= 97.6/0.0610) people conditional on getting a symptomatic flu for my vaccination to be worth it. In contrast, I would only contact with a few people if I had a symptomatic flu.
I believe I should consider effects not only on other people, but also on all potential beings. I suspect effects on soil animals and microorganisms are the driver of the overall effect, and I have very little idea whether their welfare would be increased or decreased. In any case, I think the conclusion accounting for all beings would still be that I should optimise for increasing the impact from my work and donations, which points towards my vaccination not being worth it.
Hi Nick. Fair point. I thought about those effects, but should have explained why I did not cover them in the post. I have now added the following to the summary and main text.
My marginal earnings go towards donations, and I believe donating the difference between my estimates for the cost and benefits of 24.7 $ to the most cost-effective global health interventions would increase human welfare more than the benefits of my vaccination to other people. GiveWell published a report on dietary salt modification in July 2025 where they concluded the following.
According to Coefficient Giving (CG), “GiveWell uses moral weights for child deaths that would be consistent with assuming 51 years of foregone life in the DALY framework (though that is not how they reach the conclusion)”. Assuming 51 DALY/life, the above cost-effectiveness would be 0.0596 DALY/$ (= 51⁄855). So 24.7 $ would avert 1.47 DALYs (= 24.7*0.0596). Supposing 1 DALY/symptomatic-flu-year, which greatly overestimate the badness of having a symptomatic flu, my vaccination would only be worth it if it averted more than 1.47 symptomatic-flu-years (= 1.47/1) in other people, or 97.6 symptomatic flus (= 1.47/(5.50/365.25)) for my assumption of 5.50 days of symptoms per symptomatic flu.
The benefits to other people would only materialise in cases where the vaccination prevented me from getting a symptomatic flu, which is when I could have infected other people. Combining the above with my assumption of “0.0610 symptomatic flus per person-year”, I estimate I would have to have infected 1.60 k (= 97.6/0.0610) people conditional on getting a symptomatic flu for my vaccination to be worth it. In contrast, I would only contact with a few people if I had a symptomatic flu.
I believe I should consider effects not only on other people, but also on all potential beings. I suspect effects on soil animals and microorganisms are the driver of the overall effect, and I have very little idea whether their welfare would be increased or decreased. In any case, I think the conclusion accounting for all beings would still be that I should optimise for increasing the impact from my work and donations, which points towards my vaccination not being worth it.