So, we've been hearing it for a while. If you're vaccinated, you can go about your life and go back to normal. But, despite that, I'm still, quite frankly, paranoid about COVID. And with this latest wave, I'm legitimately getting scared again. So, why is this? Should be be taking more proactive measures to protect yourself?
Well, let me put it this way. Imagine the COVID vaccine is like getting a bulletproof vest. If you get shot without a vest, you're screwed. But if you get shot with a vest, well, you'll probably survive. Does this mean you want to get shot? Not necessarily. It will still be an unpleasant experience, you can still face harm from bullets or even die if there's a chance your bulletproof vest fails. The vest helps a lot, but it's best not to tempt fate. Beyond that, let me just explain why, using statistics, and understanding how virus transmission works and immunity works, why we should still be cautious of the disease until herd immunity is reached.
We've heard a lot about vaccine efficacy rates. Against the original strain of COVID, the vaccines are very effective. 94-95% efficacy against any form of disease, and 100% against severe disease. That is about as strong as a bulletproof vest as you can get. No one is supposed to die, and "breakthrough cases" are supposed to be lower. J&J isnt as effective against getting any COVID, but its still effective against being hospitalized and dying.
Okay, so, that's very good. THat means for every 100 unvaccinated people who would get the disease, only 5-6 of them will get it in any form with the vaccine, and no one will die from it. That's good.
But, now we're starting to hear about this delta variant. That's what diseases do if they dont die out, they mutate. They replicate in peoples' bodies and eventually one mutation comes along that actually improves the virus. That's why we cant eradicate colds. There are too many variants and its hard to keep up with them or eliminate them all. They just keep popping up. So, what's the efficacy of the vaccines against delta? Well, lower. Now, we're at 88% effectiveness against any disease, or 96% against severe disease. Now you have a 12% chance of getting it, and a 4% chance of getting really sick. Even if you get the shot. Because the shot isn't as effective against the new variant. And what variant is behind the latest covid resurgeance? The delta variant! And looking at the map for COVID cases and how it's going to spread, this does not look good. We were, through June, largely eradicating the disease, but now, in July, the delta variant is causing it to make a resurgeance, with much of the country increasing its COVID rate at an exponential rate in a relatively small amount of time. I was planning to go down south in a couple of weeks for vacation. But the rate down there might be as high as 40 cases per 100000 people per day, whereas we were at around like 2 cases per 100,000 people per day here at home. That is fundamentally dangerous and shows we're going in the wrong direction. Even worse, while most people with the vaccine are going to be fine, there are COVID breakthrough cases. Especially among older people.
Now, people will say, yeah, but theres only been like 6000 cases, and 1100 deaths, out of like 160 million people vaccinated, over 99% of deaths are still among people who are unvaccinated. Sure. But that doesn't mean the vaccine is foolproof. Breakthrough cases are happening, and I wouldn't want myself, or my parents, in that 1%. If a disease killed 1000 people and it wasnt covid, which has already killed like 600,000 people in the US, we would be freaking out. But because it's COVID, and because it has already killed so many, we consider this a huge success.
And this isn't even including all cases, just positive, documented ones. Many people can still get flu like symptoms from catching COVID before their body blows it off. And given how many side effects COVID can cause in the long term, I would not want myself or anyone I know to get ANY form of COVID. Long COVID is a thing. I dont know if vaccinated people can get it, but I wouldn't want to take that risk.
So why is this happening? Well, it's because people aren't getting vaccinated. In order to eradicate a disease, we need to get herd immunity. What's happening now is half the country doesnt believe in vaccines and wont get vaccinated, meaning only half the population has the shot, with red states being particularly bad at getting it, when we arguably need 70%, or even 80-90% to achieve immunity.
So what does this mean? Well, it means the virus continues to proliferate. Sure, the vaccine might protect say, 90% of vaccinated people from it. But that's not good, because 10% can still get it, with some still getting very sick and even dying from it. But, the vaccine also cuts down on virus transmission. If everyone had the shot, well, if I have a 90% chance of being fully immune, I only have a 10% of transmitting it to someone else. And if I only have a 10% chance of transmitting it, and person B who I come in contact is also vaccinated, they only have a 10% chance of getting it if I can give it to them. So that's a 1% chance of them getting sick. And if they come in contact with person C, they only have a 10% chance of passing it on, and so on and so forth. That's how vaccines are so effective, if everyone has them, then the chance of the virus infecting others goes down to 0 really fast, as it becomes increasingly difficult to infect people. None of them are 100%, but if they are 90-95%, and everyone has it, well, the virus struggles to find hosts to infect and dies out.
What's happening right now is only half the country is vaccinated. And the other half wont take the vaccine. And now there's a new deadly delta variant which is more contangeous, and the vaccine is less effective against it, leading to more people who are vaccinated getting sick and even dying. The virus is spreading out of control among the half of the population with no immunity at all, with the other half still having to rely on their vaccine to protect them against the virus. The vaccine needs to both protect you, but also others, in order to work. If it only protects you, it can still spread, and you can still get sick. To completely avoid getting sick, we need to starve the virus of hosts to infest.
See the problem? If everyone had the shot, the chance of virus transmission would go like this:
10% -> 1% -> 0.1% -> 0.01%, etc.
But instead it's doing this:
100% -> 100% -> 10% -> 100% -> 10% -> 1% -> 100%
In other words, the virus is tearing its way through half of the population infecting everyone in its path, while the other half has to hope their vaccine actually holds. Which is why the south, home of the Trumpers, is turning into a petri dish. And it's going to make these places dangerous to visit, even for the vaccinated. And it might also make its way up north too, where you still have that stubborn 30-40% of the population that won't get the shot. It's just a frustrating situation all around. We should be improving and getting back to normal, but we're going in the wrong direction because people won't get the shot.
GET THE ####ING SHOT!
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