Exactly this. I would rather take the "most unsafe" vaccine of the last 30 years than take an Advil. (I am a biochemist)

The one that really surprises me that people take like candy is Tylenol/Panadol/Paracetamol/Acetaminophen. It's the leading cause of acute liver failure in the US. Among common OTCs, its active dose is I believe the closest to its lethal dose. Just 2-3X the recommended daily upper limit can cause liver damage, and when taken around alcohol, the toxicity is dramatically higher.

I strongly doubt that Acetaminophen would be approved as an OTC drug if proposed today.

I never really gave much thought to how dangerous this stuff was until a year or so ago, Eric Engstrom (one of the creators of DirectX and a personal hero of mine) accidentally overdosed and died from it:

> He died at a hospital in Seattle. His wife, Cindy Engstrom, said he had injured one of his feet in October, accidentally took too much Tylenol for pain relief and suffered liver damage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25423712

On the other hand, for some people Paracetamol (in the US Acetaminophen) works very well, and it's really cheap. So although there's been increasing oversight to reduce overdose deaths, I think you're going to keep seeing it available OTC in some form even though you're right it'd never get OK'd if invented today.

Once I realise that the Flu (or whatever) is inducing enough pain that I can't ignore it, or I start to run a serious fever, I take paracetamol to get on top of that, usually in the form of Lemsip because I'm bad at taking pills, Lemsip is cheap, and none of the other ingredients in ordinary Lemsip these days really do anything much, just the paracetamol.

I find maybe 1 or at most 2 of the "maximum" 1g (= 1000mg) doses a day gets the job done, which is well inside the indicated limits.

None of the OTC alternatives do it for me, they're not useless but the effect from the indicated dose is far reduced so I'm glad to have paracetamol. I've had fentanyl after surgery, which was certainly effective but seems like a very bad idea to have around the house, and Entonox after a road accident which again, effective but seems like a bad idea for OTC usage.

I think they're safe enough, personally... But most people need some risk calibration.

Popping NSAIDs multiple times a week on a regular basis is definitely not good, and yet the same people who do that are often afraid of vaccines.

People are seriously clueless about relative risks.

Fascinating, can you tell me more about your aversion to Advil? I haven never encountered anyone warning about it until now and would like to know more.

I don't have any aversion to Advil, you're missing the point.

I'm not saying Advil is dangerous, I'm saying people significantly overestimate the risks of vaccines.

If you're concerned about vaccines but not about other common drugs, you're in need of some risk calibration.

>"If you're concerned about vaccines but not about other common drugs, you're in need of some risk calibration."

The good news is that I am not concerned about the safety and efficacy of vaccinations. I misinterpreted your comment because of the way it was worded. This is because I know some over the counter pain medications, like Tylenol, can be dangerous. So, I assumed there was a risk to Advil that I wasn't aware of and wanted to know more, given your background as a Biochemist.

Could you elaborate on why you wouldn't take advil?

Not the poster. Advil is pretty safe, but sometimes has horrific effects (e.g. Stevens Johnson Syndrome, catastrophic stomach bleeding, etc.)

Also, NSAIDs are shown to slow healing from injury in most cases.

Ibuprofen is terrifically useful but also a little scary for something we use so routinely.

e.g. some parents gave their 7 year old a motrin, and all her skin sloughed off her body and she had brain damage and lost 80% of her lung function.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jury-awards-63m-to-samantha-rec....

That’s ridiculous since SJS and TENS can happen with pretty much any drug.

And fatal anaphylactic reactions to vaccines aren’t atypical.

How is atypical defined? They are very rare for the COVID-19 vaccines.

So is SJS and TENS.

That's not what I said. I would take Advil if I needed it.

My point is not that Advil is particularly dangerous, my point is that people dramatically overestimate the dangers of vaccines.

Yes and the known risks are calculated within the trials or after few days of usage. Definitely not 20 years after you've gotten the first pill. Would be pretty hard to correlate it to something that happened 20 years ago.

You completely ignored my example of it taking 4 years to identify the risks associated with Vioxx (which was pulled from the market).

I have all three vaccine doses too, I’m not saying don’t take the vaccine, I’m saying Advil has a more robust safety profile.

This is wrong.

Covid has been around for 2 years. The vaccines for 1 year. We don’t know the long term effects of either.

Vaccines were trialed for dengue fever that made the disease worse. Vaccines are NOT “the safest drugs out there”.