zico wrote:For question 1, the answer is a resounding "Yes!". The chart below is based on infections at the peak of the second save (presumably Jan2021) - the chances of vaccine harm is unchanged, but the chances of being in ICU from Covid are much higher. Hopefully, we'll never get a peak like this again, so it probably isn't relevant (even though it was given as an example by Van Tam).
That's not much of a hope. COVID is infectious enough that without interventions most people will get it. Even with fairly rigorous lockdowns most people will get it eventually*. You need to look at the lifetime risk of getting COVID v. the lifetime risk of the vaccine (possibly a one time risk but we can't know that after less than a year). The 16 weeks or the height of the peak are arbitrary and should not inform policy unless something is likely to change after the 16 weeks.
Now if we had some evidence that one of the vaccines was safer and we just have to wait for production then locking down for a while to wait for the safer vaccine might make sense. But we have no such evidence.
*Unless we lock down hard enough to drive the virus to extinction, which is not going to happen.