THE PRAGMATIST’S GUIDE TO THE COVID19 VACCINE – BY THE NUMBERS
You likely fall into one of three vaccine categories. You bet! No way! I’ll think about it! Liars lie but numbers don’t. I love numbers and data driven decisions. I thought it might be fun to run through some numbers together and see were they take us. Please join me.
The raw numbers are from the OC Register this morning. The percentages are from various valid internet sources and are very round but reasonable. The astute will note that the percentages total 94%, not 100%. Still good enough I think for reasoned decision making. The vaccine data is from the CDC website regarding the Pfizer phase 3 trials.
86.5 million Total number of cases worldwide
1.9 million Total deaths worldwide
24 million Total cases in US
400,000 Total deaths US
80% Mild or asymptomatic cases
10% Long COVID cases – symptoms for 1 month
2% Long COVID cases – symptoms for 3 months or more
2% Deaths
85% Percent of deaths that had known risk factors
15% Percent of deaths that had NO known risk factors
95% Percentage of protection from vaccine against disease
8.8% Severe adverse reactions. Most commonly headache and fatigue but none requiring hospitalization.
0.6% Serious adverse events in vaccine group
0.5% Serious adverse events in placebo group
The conclusion is that there is no statistical difference in these groups meaning that there were no serious adverse events due to the vaccine itself.
0.00 Number of phase 3 participants requiring hospitalization
0.00 Number of phase 3 participants who died
If you take the vaccine you have a 95% chance that when (not if) you are exposed to the virus you will NOT get COVID19. You do have well over a 50% chance you will get body aches, a headache, fatigue, that type of stuff. These symptoms will be worse on the second shot and will last for 1-2 days. You have an 8.8% chance that these temporary symptoms are going to be very uncomfortable. That’s about it for the bad stuff. Based upon phase 3 trials, you have a 0.0% chance of needing hospitalization and a 0.0% chance of dying. No, we don’t know about the possible long-term effects and that won’t be known for months to years, time we don’t have to get life and our economies back to normal. Yes, there will be media stories as more and more people are vaccinated about adverse events, and maybe even deaths. But you MUST look at those events in the context of the actual data, not in the context of fear and gut reaction, of media sensationalism, and of the human tendency to have an overly dramatic and negative world view (for more on this read Factfulness by Hans Rosling or watch his TED Talks).
If you choose to not have the vaccine then when (not if) you are exposed to the virus (and remember that there is a new strain that is some 70% more contagious than the one we have been dealing with) you will have a 2% risk of dying, a 2% risk of having long COVID for 3 months or more, and a 10% chance of having long COVID for a month. Long COVID includes headache, fatigue (sometimes severe), shortness of breath, brain fog, joint pain, chest pain, cough, muscle pain, fever, depression, and heart palpitations. If you don’t have risk factors your risk of dying is reduced to 0.3% which is a very small number indeed, until you look at the total number of cases, until you really consider how contagious this virus is. Your 0.3% risk of dying has so far totaled 60,000 dead in the last year just in the U.S. that would most certainly be alive today except for COVID. That’s more American’s dead in a year than died in the entire Vietnam war, and remember, that’s just 15% of the 2%, those without risk factors. There are another 340,000 dead in the U.S. in the last year that did have risk factors, like my dad. The fact is that you don’t really know if you are at risk or not until you either are or are not dialing 911.
As a pragmatist, I can’t see the logic in not getting the vaccine. As a human who cares deeply for his fellow humans, since I can’t tell by looking at you whether you are at risk of not, I view getting the vaccine as my civic duty. It is my honor to try to protect you even if you choose not to protect me.
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