There is a lot of news reports about people not getting the covid vaccines. There are a number of reasons why. Some are:
- The virus is not real (great job, Donnie!)
- The vaccine is not that effective
- The vaccine is still too experimental
- A microchip is injected along with the vaccine, which tracks your movements. (If you’re really truly concerned about this, throw away your cell phones. RIGHT NOW. For good. They orient themselves by touching base every couple of minutes with nearby cell towers (call “pings”). The government can track these pings. It’s a pain in the ass but it’s worth it for specific situations. That’s how they’ve caught some of the January 6 insurrectionists (well that and people’s propensity to brag on social media). For your next insurrection, leave your cell phones at home—put them on your to-do list. Also, many apps come with tracking software.)
But, if you get the vaccine, you are very, very well-protected against getting COVID and even more very, very well-protected against dying from COVID.
Here’s why.
Everyone’s heard about the 95% efficacy rate of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. “Efficacy rate” is a specific, clinical study term with a specific definition (look it up). It is nonsensical to use it to describe the efficacy of the vaccine out here in the real world.
In a clinical trial (when scientists and doctors, under controlled conditions, study the effects of a new medication on a study group of participants), “efficacy rate” compares two sets of numbers. The comparator number is the total number of people who get sick in the study. The first number in the comparison is the number of people who get sick even after taking the medication (breakthrough cases). The second number in the comparison is the number of people who get sick who don’t take the medication (these are from the placebo group). Oddly, the efficacy rate is the percentage of people who get sick WHO DON’T get the medication.
So, in the Pfizer clinical study, 43,661 people volunteered. From the entire group of people, 170 caught the disease. Of the 170 sick people, 8 had received the vaccine and 162 had received the placebo.
The calculation for the efficacy rate goes like this: 8 out of 170 is 4.7% (well, ok, 5%). 162 out of 170 is 95%. So, of the 170 people who got sick in the study, 95% DIDN’T get the vaccine. Ergo, the efficacy rate of the vaccine is 95%. You can’t use this number out in the everyday world because 1) the world is a chaotic, dynamic place and not like a controlled clinical trial, and 2) the way that 95% value is interpreted is not intuitive—shouldn’t it be 5%?. But that would sound bad in the real world.
So, let's look at some numbers from out in the wild.
On April 6, 2021, the Detroit Free Press reported that
the covid vaccines were 99.99% effective in preventing “breakthrough” COVID—people who got sick despite getting the vaccine. The vaccines were also 99.999% effective in preventing death from covid (this was covered in an earlier diary by some Kossack but I couldn’t find it to link to it). Notice I didn’t say “efficacy rate”.
So, what that that 95% (or 5% or whatever)?
Well, Michigan State health officials followed up on a bit more than
1,842,940 people who received both doses of the vaccine. This is 42 times the number of people in the clinical trial (I think that's enough people). Of that approximate 1.8 million vaccinated people, 246 of them came down with COVID anyway (well, those who demonstrated symptoms—these are the breakthrough cases) Michigan health officials are looking more closely at that number because some may have caught COVID before taking the vaccine. So, 246 is a worst-case scenario. 246 out of 1.8 million is 0.0133%. Subtract 0.0133% from 100% and you get (with rounding) 99.987%. So, 99.987% of a bit more than 1.8 million vaccinated people were protected from getting sick from COVID (oh, and probably 8 were hospitalized). Rounding up, you get 99.99%. Not too shabby.
Of the 1.8 million people who were vaccinated, 3 people died of COVID (these 3 were most likely hospitalized). 3 out of approixmate 1.8 million is 0.000163%. Subtract 0.000163 from 100 and you get (with rounding) 99.9998% (if you rounded up from that, you'd get 100% and that's just silly). The COVID vaccines kept 99.9998% of those vaccinated from dying. Even more not too shabby.
Violà. A real-world result based on a clinical trial result: 99.986% efficacy based on a 95% efficacy rate.
And, here’s something I didn’t know until last month.
There is a vaccine characteristic called “
sterilizing immunity”. This is when a vaccine completely (100% GAR-UN-TEED!) prevents a bug (could be bacterial, could be viral) from infecting someone. You get the vaccine,
and 100% of the time, you don’t get the bug—no infection, no replication, no passing the bugger on to others.
It turns out that sterilizing immunity is quite rare among vaccines. Google searching (admittedly, only about 30 minutes’ worth but I did chase down some rabbit holes) came up with only 2 vaccines with sterilizing immunity—smallpox and measles. You can deduce that with all the vaccines that are out there, it’s not easy developing a vaccine that confers sterilizing immunity.
The vast majority of the other vaccines do not confer sterilizing immunity: HIV, COVID, flu, hepatitis B, polio, pertussis, diphtheria…and the list goes on and on. These vaccines confer what is known as “
effective immunity”. That means you can still catch the bug but its symptoms are very mild (breakthrough cases, which don't occur all that often). Few, if any, deaths occur. There can be many asymptomatic cases (not tracked in the Michigan study), which can pass the infection (almost always mild) to others. Now, the influenza virus mutates like it’s going out of style (and any particular variant usually is, given the vaccine for it), and flu vaccines come out yearly. And, even then, the good folks at the CDC usually numerous variants of the flu to choose from in order to produce a vaccine cocktail. Sometimes, they make the wrong choice on the vaccine. Not often, though.
Coronavirus also mutates at a crazy rate and so it too may require yearly vaccinations (some coronaviruses cause the common cold, which is part of the reason that you get colds over and over). SARS-CoV-2’s crazy rate of mutation is why EVERYBODY should get the COVID vaccine. People without vaccination who get the virus are walking coronavirus mutation factories (WCMFs—an old acronym I just made up), pumping out thousands (if not millions) of mutations per each, a few of which may be the source of a new pandemic, eg, the UK’s B.1.1.7 variant, which is the current heartthrob of the pandemic here in the US (we are lucky that the current vaccines are effective against this variant). This is why anyone who knows anything about mutants (X-men included) is kinda
scared about what’s going on in India right now (3.7 million infected/dead and growing).
Granted, the technology for developing COVID vaccines is very flexible and the logistics are now in place to rapidly disperse the vaccines to lots of people.
And if people DON'T get the vaccine? Well, we’re back at the top of this diary again, now, ain't we?