Statistics on Covid tell a story too. However, statistics are super easy to manipulate to tell a story that you want to tell if you're clever (or dumb) enough. And when we are trying to figure out why statistics are what they are, we may attribute them to the wrong reasons. After all, correlation does not imply causation. And if you've studied statistics at all, you know about standard deviations, etc. But whether or not you have, it's important to take a step back to look at the bigger picture. Narrow-minded views won't work. Looking at statistics through the lens of conclusions you've already drawn isn't going to help either.
Some important questions you may want to ask about Covid are what the excess mortality rate has been since the start of the pandemic, what the number of new cases per day looks like now in your area, and what the death rate is as of late compared to the number of cases. When deciding whether or not you should get the vaccine, you'll want to know what the chances are that you'll get a severe case or that someone you're near could catch it from you and get a severe case. You'll want to know what the efficacy rate is of the vaccines that are available to you. And you'll want to know what the chances are that you'll get a severe reaction or side effect from the vaccine. Your doctor can also help you to make a determination, based on whatever unique situation you're in (pregnancy, underlying condition, age, bad side effects from other vaccines, etc.), of whether or not you should get a vaccine, and which one you should get if so.
I chose to get vaccinated last month, and I chose the Moderna vaccine. The main reasons that I made this decision were because I looked at statistics and articles, from the left, right, and supposedly neutral sources, and I spoke with two of my doctors about my situation. I'm not going to tell you, like many will, that the vaccine will be safe and effective for you. In all likelihood, yes, it will, but I don't know your personal situation. So I'm going to tell you to do the same thing that I did. Read up on it, and speak with your doctor. I highly recommend considering getting the vaccine. Heck, you'll notice that I'm not even going to give you any statistics here, because I want you to find them yourself. But I will say that I was extremely hesitant to get the vaccine, because I'm one of those people who had a rare and severe reaction to the flu vaccine years ago. And I know someone who had a family member get the vaccine and nearly die from a rare heart issue that occurred because of it. I chose to get it anyway. Besides, I have some older family members who are not vaccinated, and I've also seen friends and family who nearly died from Covid.
The first doctor I spoke with, during my annual physical, recommended that I get it, and the second one, a specialist, asked me how I got there. I knew where he was going already. There was more risk that something bad could have happened to me on the way there in my car (especially with the way people drive in CT- Is it just me, or have drivers in general gotten worse lately?). Based on my situation and what he knows about the vaccines, the doctor told me, straight up, "Don't get the Johnson & Johnson." That advice might be different for someone else, but at that point, I decided to figure out whether I would get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, as he suggested I get one of those.
Moderna appeared to be more likely to cause mild side effects, and Pfizer appeared to be more likely to cause severe side effects (though both were highly unlikely to do so based on the statistics, and absent of performing a full statistical analysis, it may not even be a statistically significant difference). Moderna also appeared to have better efficacy, and this was right on the heels of a study that showed diminished efficacy for Pfizer against the Delta variant (though it still offers quite a lot of protection). So I chose Moderna. I literally walked up to the daily free vaccine clinic they have on the town green and asked for it. That was it. About 15-20 minutes later I left.
My body doesn't like things going into it that don't belong in it, so I had a cold sweat right after getting the shot (same as what happens when I get an IV or eye drops), but I was fine and not light-headed at all. I drank some water. Over the next day or so, I was a bit tired and had a very mild headache, also known as an average working Thursday, so not really any symptoms to report there. My arm was a bit sore, but that's what happens when you get a shot. I'll get jab number two soon. I can expect an increased chance of a slightly worse reaction- that is to say, I'll be perfectly fine in all likelihood.
For those of you holding out on the vaccine, I recommend that you make sure you are doing so for the right reasons. If you're pregnant, for example, that makes sense to me. Last I checked, even the CDC wasn't giving that a full endorsement, though it seems unlikely that there would be any adverse effects. If you don't want to get it because you've calculated your risk higher than your reward, read up on it and verify that it's true. If you don't want to get it because you've already had Covid, it was mild, and you now have antibodies to it, that's your choice, though after six months or so, the numbers are still showing that you will be more protected with vaccination (antibodies go away over time- I'm pretty sure I had Covid in February 2020, but when I was tested for antibodies over a year later, they weren't there). If you're immunocompromised, I highly recommend talking to your doctor. However, if you're not getting it because of what a handful of experts have said against it in opposition to a myriad of others, or because you believe the government is trying to kill you with it based on some random guy on the internet thinking this is the Tuskegee Experiments Part II, or because people have died after getting the vaccine (if more than half the population is vaccinated, some number of those people are going to die), I would ask that you read up on it more. Search out articles and statistics from unbiased sources, or since very few truly unbiased sources exist, seek out information from both left and right wing sources. Feel free to reach out to me if you'd like as well, and I can point you to some statistics.
If you're on the right and love to listen to Ben Shapiro, I would have trouble finding someone more pro-vaccination than he's been from the very beginning (when VP Harris said she would be wary about a vaccine developed under the Trump administration). I think he's offered a trove of great information and statistics on the vaccine during this podcasts, despite some on the left wrongly accusing him of being anti-vaccination, a blatantly false claim. It does seem that folks on the right are more hesitant to get the vaccine than folks on the left, in general (hence why I am pointing to Shapiro as a resource here, even though I would trust his wife, an actual doctor, more on the topic), though it is also true that it's more of a problem to have lower vaccination rates in densely-populated urban areas that are largely blue than sparsely-populated rural areas that are largely red. For those on the left who haven't gotten it, yes, it was developed under President Trump, and Trump has been extremely pro-vaccine, but don't let the early errant comments by VP Harris dissuade you from getting it. Look at the numbers and decide for yourself.
And the numbers now are telling a story. Cases have spiked, in large part due to the Delta variant, but deaths have not followed suit in the same way as they have in previous spikes. Why? Well, you can speculate that this variant is less dangerous, but I don't believe that's accurate. Those who are not vaccinated have the same risk factors as they have had throughout this pandemic. And you can speculate that we've gotten better at treating it, and yes, we have, but that still isn't the full story. Those who are not vaccinated are now much more likely to get Covid, and much more likely to have a severe case of Covid when they do get it. That tells me that the main driver of the lower death rate is vaccines. Sure, there are other confounding factors, but based on the statistics, the vaccines appear to me to be quite effective.
I'm one of those people who, the more someone tells me to do something that I don't want to do, the less likely I am going to be to do it. So when social media sites like Facebook are pounding the vaccination stuff down our throats (see the screen grab photo I used here, which probably has the standard link because the word shot was used in a sentence), and celebrities and other people who are generally idiots are parroting the line that "vaccines are safe and effective" and posting videos of themselves getting vaccines, without really knowing anything at all about science or statistics, I really don't want to get the vaccine. Weren't these social media sites same people banning folks who mentioned facts and opinions they didn't like and removing "misinformation" that Covid leaked from a lab in Wuhan, only to later realize that very well may have been the case? Yes. But, as hard as it is to admit, it doesn't mean that they are always wrong, and could even be generally correct on vaccines.
President Biden and his administration are lying dog-faced pony soldiers (his words, not mine, and I'll do another post about all that sometime in the near future), but that doesn't mean that they're wrong about the vaccine either (though the mixed messaging has been a disaster, most notably with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). At first, I thought Dr. Fauci was doing the best he could, but now, like Senator Rand Paul, I don't trust a lot of what comes out of his mouth either, but that doesn't mean that he's wrong about the vaccine. The Biden administration has picked up where the Trump administration left off and brought us to the point where the vaccine is available to every adult in the United States. And good for them. Those of us living in America are blessed by the "America First" policy, because we have something that many others in the world wish they had so quickly- the option and ability to get vaccinated (and with no money out-of-pocket, funded by the taxpayers).
Plenty of other things happening make no sense. Show me the evidence that more mask mandates will help anything. Seriously. If you have it, I'm interested. Yes, N95 masks will help stop the spread quite a bit, and the non-N95 masks that most people wear when they wear one will help a little bit in a controlled environment, but what good are a bunch of people reusing the same dirty non-N95 masks over and over to comply with mask mandates going to do? Perhaps some, but I would estimate very little. Have we actually done a study that attempts to mimic what happens in real life, where many people reuse dirty masks, touch their masks over and over, and wear them improperly? Vaccines are way more effective than masks.
That isn't to say that you shouldn't wear a mask in a crowded indoor area if asked to. I believe the government should stay out of it, but just as a baker can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding, he can refuse to let unmasked people into his business. Masking up outdoors, while alone in your car, or while waiting for the dentist to explore your mouth seems to be nothing more than theater though. The same was the case when we had mask mandates for the vaccinated before those were lifted. The statistics did not support it. You can argue they were out of an abundance of caution, and that those bringing them back now are also acting out of an abundance of caution, but I don't see statistics that support it, and I don't put a lot of value in isolated outlier situations such as spread among vaccinated people in Provincetown. That being said, if my local store asks that I wear a mask when I enter, whatever. Not a big deal. But I'm also not wearing one when I'm not asked to do so.
One of the most annoying things going on right now though is the masking of children in schools. I don't have a child, but if I did, I would much rather my child got Covid than the flu. I don't want my child to get sick at all, but again, the statistics show that Covid is not very dangerous for children. For adults, it's certainly more dangerous than the flu, but we know that it isn't for children. We don't need to take extreme precautions to protect children from Covid. A few hundred children out of the tens of millions of children in the United States have died from Covid. Every life is precious, but it's ridiculous to act like this is a grave threat to children. You'd think it is based on the news coverage whenever a very young person dies from Covid (as opposed to the lack of news coverage when a very young person has a serious adverse effect from a Covid vaccine). Statistics don't support this. And children do not need to mask up in school (you know those things are germ traps anyway for kids, seriously). If it's the teachers, parents, or any adults that you're worried about, as reasoning for masking up children, they have all had the opportunity to get the vaccine. If they got it, they have a high level of protection against Covid. If they didn't, you'd be hard-pressed to find any in that category who are asking for children to be masked up to protect the adults.
I don't trust the government. I don't trust the media. I don't trust big tech. I don't trust big pharma. I do trust science. I do trust statistics. I do trust my doctors. I chose to get the Moderna vaccine. I would recommend that you research what is best for you if you haven't yet gotten vaccinated. My advice would be to especially consider the Moderna vaccine, but please do inform yourself from multiple sources across the political spectrum, and please seek the opinion of your doctor or doctors. For many things in life, we must evaluate risk vs. reward, and the Covid vaccine is no different. Also, the Federal government has done its job here as far as making vaccines widely available, so kudos to both the Trump and Biden administrations on that, but don't let this turn into authoritarianism now.
You get to decide what's best for you, but please base your decision in reality, statistics, and what you believe will be best for you and those around you.
