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Want to Increase Vaccination Rates? Let the Virus Do Its Thing
Louisiana “boasts” one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and as a result, the latest Delta COVID surge is hitting the state harder than high-vaccination states. It’s quite clear from local hospital’s reporting on the surge who are seeing the brunt of the impact: the unvaccinated. According to the latest numbers released, 239 unvaccinated patients are hospitalized, compared to just 32 vaccinated.
The question for healthcare workers and policymakers is “How can we convince the reluctant to get vaccinated?” And the answer may be simply: Let the virus do its thing. Let the apprehensive see with their own eyes what happens when you choose to stay unvaccinated. Watch your neighbors spend twelve days on a ventilator (mine just did) and let word of mouth scare people out of their apprehensions and fears. According to a recent study, these are the most common reasons why Americans are staying unvaccinated:
If you’re seeing dozens of your friends, colleagues, neighbors, and friends fall ill, most of the above reasoning falls to the wayside.
As I mentioned previously, I have a neighbor who recently spent weeks hospitalized, twelve days on a ventilator. We have several mutual friends in common who aren’t vaccinated. All of those individuals are now more concerned about getting sick than getting sick from the shot. They’re more concerned about what twelve days on a ventilator will do to them long-term than what the shot will do to them long-term.
This anecdotal hunch on a key driver of vaccination moving forward seems to be true in Louisiana, where it was reported last week,
On Monday, Louisiana reported one of its largest vaccination surges in months.
According to the Louisiana Department of Health, 84,271 additional doses of the vaccine were administered since Thursday. That’s even higher than last weekend, when the state reported 65,589 additional shots in an identical timeframe. Louisiana reported 56,110 doses over the weekend of Aug. 1.
About 61 percent of the shots given this past weekend were administered in people getting their first dose of the vaccine.
Across the country and the world, there are governments responding to any small or large COVID spike with increased lockdowns, mask mandates, and more. Recently in the New York Times, I wrote about why this is the wrong strategy in a post-vaccine world. But here’s another reason why mitigation efforts are the wrong call: Perhaps driving down the virus is also driving down the best motivator for vaccination.
Published in General
Letting the virus do its thing is also IMHO the best way to beat the virus. The D variant seems more contagious and is undoubtedly less lethal than its predecessors. Viva D variant! Long may it wave, driving out the worse ones.
And all this time I thought the key to increasing vaccination rates was to make self-righteous posts condemning the unvaccinated on social media. You really do learn something new every day.
If dozens of my friends, colleagues and neighbors started to fall ill, I would certainly be alarmed, but perhaps not for the same reasons you might be. COVID has been present in this country for close to two years now. The first year of that there were no vaccines. And the first months of that there were no lockdowns or mask mandates. In all this time, dozens of people I know have not suddenly fallen ill. Over time many people I know contracted COVID, most with mild symptoms, some with more severe, none needing to be hospitalized. All those people have developed some level of natural immunity.
So if many people started falling ill, I would wonder: Why now when we are objectively far less vulnerable as a population to COVID than we were 18 months ago? If dozens of people I know were to get sick, wouldn’t it have been then rather than now? This would not make me more likely to rush out and get a vaccine, but rather be even more skeptical what the health bureaucrats are telling us about the nature of the disease and how to prevent it.
I agree completely.
Our local “health department” is loaded with bureaucrats with less than sterling medical credentials. The better you know them the less you trust them. Throughout the “crisis” they traveled to their out-of-state lake cabins, rented closed restaurants for parties and family celebrations, etc.
Public health is worthless. I hate all of them.
It appears that you may be comparing apples to apples, when you should be comparing apples to oranges because of the more widespread nature but reduced health effects of the Delta variant. Your conclusion would be correct if we were dealing with the same virus as 2020, but the virus is mutating. If you’re concerned more about the public health effects, then you’d presumably be more likely to go out and get the vaccine. If the spread is something you can live with so long as the effects are diminished, you’ll be less likely to get vaccinated. Plop that on top of the disinformation we’re seeing from all over the place and the political hay everyone is trying to make of it and you have a stalemate. We are, however, reaching a point where something has to give.
True enough, except that this distinction is also not made by a lot of the “Get the jab!” cheerleaders. For example, I understand that the extension of emergency approval still applies to a vaccine that is only warranted for performance against earlier variants.
No matter what, we’re on our own against D, which is fine, because it’s a whole lot less lethal.
I don’t want the vaccine because I hate needles with a passion.
If the vaccine works on Delta then J Climacus’s analysis is applicable. If the vaccine doesn’t work on Delta then J Climacus’s analysis is applicable.
Bottom lines:
I do not know dozens of people who’ve been hospitalized/died. I doubt most people do, considering the actual overall numbers. Delta from what I’ve heard, may be more transmissible but is less deadly. If I were to suddenly experience dozens of people hospitalized/dead, then I would ask: how could this be so if the vaccine were as effective as they were saying? If the vaccine isn’t effective against Delta then I would say that bringing up delta is a non sequitur.
From our local medical center…..
Oh you will love being in the ICU then.
So Bethany, I am curious about your thesis – because Israel has a 94% vaccination rate, with accompanying high rates adverse effects including death, blood clot crises in the jabbed, myocarditis at 2500% the rate of that affliction in 2019 among young males. Guillain-Barre, MS and paralysis victims.
Yet in Israel, the ICU’s and regular hospital wards are filled with COVID and variant patients. Again, 94% of these people have been vaxxed.
Same story over in Iceland.
Any reply appreciated.
That’s an answer to a question no one here is asking. Looking at the original poll of unvaccinated, it appears that lack of effectiveness does not appear to be one of the top reasons for not getting vaccinated. The top three answers, to me, seem to be the same reason worded slightly differently: worry about long term/unknown effects. The next significant answer is distrust of government.
Bethany’s suggestion is to let people realize the benefit of vaccination on their own as they experience dozens of people they know who become hospitalized/dead. The answer to that is: 1) that hasn’t yet been the case that people know dozens of hospitalizations/deaths, 2) if we were to start experiencing that at this point with ~70% vaccinated then that would not inspire newfound confidence in the vaccines anyway.
Back to your chart though: I would guess that we could also construct roughly the same chart only substituting vaccinated/unvaccinated with <60 years old and greater than 60 years old. The CDC numbers have been bearing that out consistently.
So for those of us under 60 years old with no serious comorbidities, it remains reasonable to hold off until we have not only quantity of tests under the belt but tests over time too.
And yet, whistle blowers are saying the vaccine status of patients is being altered, to fit the needed narrative.
Although two months ago, the news media was reporting the Covid cases being hospitalized, and the variant cases being hospitalized were mostly among the vaxxed.
As someone whose spouse’s medical record “disappeared” before our filing a malpractice lawsuit, I tend to believe the whistle blowers.
My wife got COVID last December. Her immunity is better than that which the jab gives you. The powers that be are ignoring this and wonder why many people don’t trust them…
Nothing short of Divine Revelation would convince you.
And yet I am far less disingenuous than you are.
When I point out to you on my “ivermectin” topic that one of the few “FDA approved meds” now available for doctors to prescribe without fear of having their med licenses pulled – or even being arrested – is remdesivir, and that the two studies by which this approval came about were extremely negative about the ability of remdesivir to help with COVID, and the first study was stopped – actually freakn’ stopped – because people’s kidneys wwere being destroyed and then people died, before the 28 day end for the study, you ignored that comment. Instead you went on about an industry-sponsored critique of a decently done study on ivermectin. Using such hyperbole and “Universalist” statement of “GIGO.”
So when it comes to discussions, you are the one who is disingenuous. You are the one who is hyperbolic, and when it is shown to you some one of your attacks on me is meritless, you don’t have the manners to apologize. (When I stated I successfully treated my case of diverticulitis as something I cured by using probiotics, as a lack of healthy bacteria flora lining the gut is the actual cause of diverticulitis, you chided me by saying that the diverticuli – pockets of pus – is what causes the condition. But what causes the diverticuli is the destruction of healthy flora, and that you never replied to.)
I hope that the “other” category in the NYT’s poll includes conscientious objection. I oppose these vaccines because of the connection to the abortion industry. And I am sick of people telling me to get vaccinated.
In order to properly assess the effectiveness of a Covid vaccine, it is necessary to stratify the population by age…which has been done here in the case of Israeli data.
For those 40-49, the severe disease occurrence is 40 per 100,000 for the unvaccinated. For the fully vaxxed, it is 1 per 100K.
For those 60-69, the numbers are 76 per 100K unvaxxed and 9 per 100K vaxxed, other age ranges shown in the link.
These numbers do include a timeframe in which Delta was active. Only data up to a certain point, of course, so *not* an estimator of someone’s total risk over the life of the pandemic, however long that lifetime may be.
Covid is a nasty disease. I know two people who’ve had it recently, one late-60s and one who is 30. They were both quite sick, the older guy was in the ICU for several days and says his survival was actually in question for a while. These are both guys who were in good physical shape.
Are you agreeing with my point in response to Kozak’s chart? Or are you disputing it? Or are you making an entirely different point. I’m not saying that the vaccines aren’t effective. I don’t think doubt about effectiveness is the main reason people aren’t getting vaccinated.
Kozak’s chart (quite distinct from the point of the OP) is that of those hospitalized most are unvaccinated. My two points in response to him is 1) we can likely say the exact same thing based on age, and 2) occurrences of hospitalization by unvaccinated/vaccinated says very little about what % of those infected become serious and among which groups that seriousness predominantly happens. This affects the calculation that goes into deciding if the risks of a vaccine (mainly from the still-unknowns) outweigh the benefits (which seem apparent so far, although not necessarily so in relation to Delta).
I too know someone in his early 40’s who was in the ICU. He was quite healthy – except for an underlying heart condition that otherwise may not have affected him for decades if ever. There is always some risk, but we should be talking about the broad numbers and not anecdotes. Even your anecdotes, though, are a far cry from the OP and knowing “dozens” of people with serious cases. If that were to become the case then I’d say such a development would call the vaccines into question more than driving me to get one.
It’s absolutely incongruous to me that an educated person would choose not to get vaccinated. Maybe it will help turn the tide for the skeptics now that the FDA has approved Pfizer.
It’s incongruous to me that the concept is incongruous to you.
People who have adequate Vitamin D levels and are not obese are at far less risk from COVID.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion. I can only counter by saying the numbers tell the story. With the new variant, making it’s ugly journey throughout the world, hospitals are increasingly populated with the unvaccinated while the vaccinated who contract it get mildly sick. A vaccinated friend of my son recently came down with the variant which he described as a mild case of the flu. His story is not an aberration.
Indeed the numbers do tell the story. Unvaccinated or not, covid is simply not particularly deadly for those <50 years old who are actually infected. That’s CDC data, not my suppositions.
I’m not really worried that the vaccines are ineffective (although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’re not effective as claimed). My worry, and the worry of most unvaccinated judging by the chart Bethany posted, is side effects and long term effects. One implication of not trusting government is that it becomes not-automatic to trust the FDA approval they’ll be issuing today with less than a year in existence. There was a time even just a few years ago when I would not have suspected agencies like the FDA to be so nakedly politically motivated, but the institutions have destroyed their credibility.
I’m glad these were made and pushed through. People >60 are at high risk and the benefit of the vaccines is pretty clearly worth the risk of the unknowns for people in their position. It just isn’t for younger and healthier people, anecdotes of my neighbor’s father in law’s cousin’s daughter notwithstanding. The numbers are indeed clear.
We are repeating the mistake the authorities made last year. It was clear from early on that COVID was strongly age sensitive. Senior citizens are at risk. The young were much less at risk than they are from seasonal flu. Our whole society was locked down whereas we should have only locked down the at risk people and let the young develop natural immunity by getting COVID. Jay Bhattacharya pretty much said this fifteen months ago.
Now there’s a push to get the young to take the jab. Again, we should have encouraged the vulnerable to take it and then stopped. A large vaccinated public encourages the evolution of variants which put the elderly at risk. Dr Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccines, has argued that mass vaccination in a pandemic is dangerous. The stupidity of our public health authorities is mind boggling. And we don’t know the long-term effects of these vaccines. A decade ago I worked for a large insurance company which had exposure from thalidomide from five decades prior. Why aren’t we encouraging safe methods to reduce your risk such as maintaining adequate Vitamin D levels and losing weight if you’re obese. The long-term effects of this are known to be positive.
Here is the report on a clinical study that proves what you are saying:
posted by Keevn Otte| Optometrist12 hours ago
Large-scale Study of Antibody Titer Decay Following [Pfizer Vaccine] or SARS-CoV-2 Infection. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.08.19.21262111
“In vaccinated subjects, antibody titers decreased by up to 40% each subsequent month while in convalescents (those infected w/ COVID) they decreased by less than 5% each month. Six months after [vaccination] 16.1% subjects had antibodies below the seropositivity threshold while only 10.8% were below the threshold at 9 months after infection.”
Your wife is indeed in better shape from her immune system’s totally natural response to her COVID infection than the vaccinated individual is.
Plus studies have determined that for those of us who have had COVID, then should we get vaccinated, we are at a 300 to 400% greater risk of suffering an adverse effect than someone who did not weather a bout of COVID.
There’s a third way: Pfizer and Moderna need to defend their products.
I went to their websites to see what they are saying about the rumors against these next-generation vaccines. There was nothing there that addressed the specific questions and concerns people have about their products.
The only possible explanations are that (a) they are afraid to say anything because of the government regulators who monitor all company communications or (b) they have the unequivocal support of the U.S. government and so don’t need to explain their products to their customers.
The CDC never really addressed head on the accusations about the MMR vaccine either. They just went after the people who questioned them. They should have addressed people’s concerns point by point. They never did. Their answers were not specific. They just kept repeating, “That study has been discredited because someone didn’t follow the research rules.” Wrong answer.
Like Afghanistan, this is a crisis of their own making.
The companies can defend their products by renouncing the legal immunity they have with respect to them.