For my friends out there who remain unconvinced COVID vaccinations are a good idea, please think again.

Breakthrough infections – fully vaccinated people contracting COVID – accounted for only about 1 in every 700 hospitalizations.

Put another way, people who haven’t been vaccinated accounted for 699 out of 700 hospitalizations.

A similar dichotomy holds for COVID-related deaths; fully-vaccinated people account for less than one out of a hundred COVID-related fatalities.

Not surprisingly states with lower vaccination rates are seeing higher infection, hospitalization and death rates.

Great source for tracking state-specific data

Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri are among those states likely to experience increases in COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.

There is another factor in play here – unvaccinated people are far more likely to get infected, become a COVID host, and pass their germs on to others. So not only do they risk their own health, they also endanger many more people.

And – and it’s a BIG and – the more people infected, the more likely COVID will mutate and become more transmissible and deadlier. We’ve already seen this with the Delta variant; transmission rates are increasing rapidly especially in the South.

What does this mean for you?

Please – get vaccinated.

You are as done with COVID as I am.

COVID is not done with us.

Here in New York’s Finger Lakes everything is open; had a great family night out yesterday, no masks required for those of us fully vaccinated, hiring signs are all over, and the joy that is upstate NY in summer is in full swing.

While we are blissfully enjoying life, the Delta Variant is:

• apparently far more transmissible than COVID 1.0 and the Alpha Variant
• according to early evidence from Scotland doubles the risk of hospitalization;
• likely responsible for killing tens of thousands in India; and
• responsible for 90% of new infections in the UK, which has led to a postponement of re-opening.

That’s the bad really bad news.

The good news is vaccinations – especially the ones based on mRNA (e.g. Pfizer) are still “spectacularly effective” against the Delta variant. 

As in 96% effective in preventing hospitalizations.

However, that’s after both doses; a single dose is just 33% effective at preventing symptomatic illness.

Here’s the thing. The more of us that get infected, the greater the chance that the damn virus morphs into a deadlier, more transmissible, and thus even bigger problem. So far the vaccines we have are working.

But – and it’s a damn big “but”, far too few of us are vaccinated. That’s particularly true of southern states, where a combination of misinformation,  awful treatment of minorities by some governmental entities and segments of the medical community (the Tuskegee experiment being a prime example) and resulting mistrust, and difficulty with the J&J vaccine have combined to drastically slow vaccination rates.

click here for detailed state-specific data

Here’s a great graphic detailing state progress towards full vaccination…

All this is to say that the fewer vaccinated people there are, the more likely COVID will mutate into something even worse.

What does this mean for you?

Get vaccinated.

Note – if you want to debate or disagree, cite credible sources for your statements. Period.

Let’s get real.

You and your kids are driving 80 mph on a highway, when a truck suddenly veers in front of you.  Since you are a quick-thinking insurance person, you estimate your chance of dying if you hit that truck at about 40 percent – just a bit better than even odds.

Or, you can swerve off the road – where your chance of dying is 1 percent – about 1 in 100.

This…

Or this…

What do you do?

That’s the question facing vaccine skeptics.

Vaccine skepticism is driven by memes, misunderstood data, a lack of understanding of basic math, pure laziness, demagoguing, and social media’s incredible ability to publicize nonsense.

Recently I had an electronic conversation where a COVID vaccine skeptic (my characterization, not their’s) cited “publications and VAERS” as sources for their concerns…I don’t know what publications the commenter was referring to; the only reference provided was a 14-month old TV report.

[reminder – if you discuss or debate, provide credible sources – ideally primary source – for your opinions.  Do your homework and don’t be lazy.  If you spout unsupported opinions – looking at you TJ – be prepared to be skewered.]

Leaving that aside, let’s talk VAERS, the vaccine reporting service run by the CDC and FDA. VAERS accepts reports from providers, vaccine recipients (or those who say they had a vaccine, parents, and “others” of any adverse event regardless of proof that it was caused by the vaccine. And VAERS reports can show deaths due to ANY CAUSE – could be drunk driving, hang gliding, heart attack, cancer, whatever.

Want proof ?A few years back VAERS accepted a report of a doc who felt like he was becoming the Incredible Hulk after a vaccination.  

VAERS is often misrepresented by Vaccine Skeptics lying about “problems” and deaths allegedly caused by the vaccine. [Here’s a great review of VAERS reporting issues]

Ok, the data.

VAERS received 4,178 reports of deaths (0.0017% of all who received the vaccine) between Dec. 14, 2020 and May 3, 2021. Remember about 165 million of us have had at least one shot. [source above]

Even if ALL 4,178 deaths were “caused” by a vaccine – and there is ZERO evidence that’s the case –  reality is your chance of dying from a COVID vaccine is far less than getting struck by lightning.

Compare that to your chance of dying from COVID – I ran the numbers here for a 55 year old white man from zip code 92111 with no pre-ex. The risk is .07 percent.

This person is 40 times MORE LIKELY TO DIE OF COVID than from an “adverse event” after you get a Covid vaccine.

What does this mean for you?

Science always wins…or, put another way,

Good luck with the truck.

Highly credible data shows today’s infection rate among the unvaccinated is as high as it was back in January.

Remember January?

Shutdown restaurants. Remote “learning”. No family gatherings. No high school sports. No fans at professional sports. No concerts or weddings or parties or fun.

80,000 of our friends, parents, grandparents, colleagues, and loved ones died of COVID in January.

If you aren’t vaccinated, don’t think you’re safe.  You are not. Your chance of getting COVID is the same as it was back in January.

But that’s not the worst of it.  Research shows the variants are more infectious, and in some states this is driving a hospitalization rate double what it was in January.

What does this mean for you>

Unless you don’t care about leaving family, friends, kids, parents, and loved ones with nothing but memories of you, get vaccinated.