What brought this up today is that I’m thinking of signing up for this Lyme disease vaccine trial: https://clinicaltrials.chasemr.com/adults-lyme-disease-vaccine-clinical-trial-0-1
#Connecticut is one of the worst states for Lyme infection, but baseline prevalence is still 0.035%.
I’m finding it very difficult to calculate the expected utility of participating in a vaccine trial for Lyme, given that I plan to do a good amount of hiking in CT in the summer, but I’m also good about wearing long pants and using tick spray.
If anyone’s curious how I landed on this: I signed up to do it because while the incidence of Lyme disease is fairly low in absolute terms, the rate of severe adverse effects from phase 2 trials is also very low.
But it turns out the trial is closing on Monday, so I’d need to get the first shot then, and they want 2 weeks between getting the Lyme vaccine and getting the COVID vaccine — and I’m scheduled to get the first COVID vaccine shot on Monday.
I could put off the COVID vaccine for 2 weeks, but I believe that would have practical downsides for me, and I don’t think that the practical benefits of getting the Lyme vaccine aren’t high enough to overwhelm that.