YES! TO THE COVID-19 VACCINE
So the math is, get 50 million seniors into vaccine centers, then get them back a second time, using a vaccine that we have not yet manufactured. That’s why it will take six months – or longer. Now, because COVID-19 is much more likely to kill or maim older Americans, we can’t just let the virus run its course to spread through the population. That plan would cost 4 million Americans their lives. This explains lockdowns and why they are crucial... These are desperate public health measures to assure that folks who need oxygen or ventilators or ECMO machines can get them. (Currently, many states’ hospitals are overrun.) Obviously, lockdowns are not ideal... But what is ideal is a vaccine. And now we have two that both work. They are 95% effective at shielding you from COVID-19, plus 97.5% effective in stopping severe disease. Seniors should absolutely get this vaccine. Based on CDC data, for every 20 years of life, your risk of death or hospitalization increases by 10 times. And co-factors like obesity or smoking increase your risk by age by 4 times. This means a 70-year-old smoker faces 4,000 times the risk of death or hospitalization from a case of COVID-19, compared with a healthy 10-year-old. This bring me to the second point – vaccinating kids. Right now, neither vaccine is approved for children. Moderna says it will have safety data in children some time in 2022, so it’s likely
If not, let’s look to other people, too... Here’s where I get to part two of my persuasive essay... Your decision to take a vaccine affects everyone around you – and their decision affects you. And, let’s be specific... I’ll cover how the old and the young get COVID-19 vaccines. First off, the latest U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”) guidelines for COVID-19 vaccines open up the floodgates for everyone 65 and over. This means there are 50 million people requiring 100 million doses... At least so far, we don’t have 100 million doses made or distributed, nor are these being delivered. So, the fact that the guidelines change doesn’t instantly protect older folks. This will take six months, or more. Everyone needs two doses about a month apart. This is called “prime and boost,” in order to show off the spike of COVID-19, and then to challenge your system to trigger a response. That’s partly why the second dose has double the rate of side effects. These side effects are an immune response. And because the whole point of a vaccine is to trigger such a response, we have to accept it. Again, these triggered immune responses are not much worse than you get with a tetanus shot, and they are less intense than the effects of the new shingles (chickenpox) vaccine designed for older folks.
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January 2021
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