Vaccinated Americans more likely to die from a lightning strike than Covid
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
- 1,263 covid deaths in the USA out of 163M vaccinated [2]. 1263/163M = 7.75e-6 and it's not even August.
Seems wrong, by more than (vaccinated=1263/163M)/(lightning=41/328M) = 62x. Or am I missing something?
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/06/08/us-weather...
[2] https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/health-departments/bre...
0 - https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/06/08/us-weather...
1 - https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-o...
2021 has had an uncommonly low number of deaths. The same link says the 10 year average is 25 fatalities per year, and on average about 7 by the end of July.
It’s a choice between getting Covid and getting the vaccine. It’s only a matter of time before one gets Covid if one isn’t vaccinated.
The only caveat is with the delta variant and whatever next even more virulent variant comes along due to the mutations that occur as the virus continues to spread freely (due to lack of vaccines induced herd immunity), vaccinated people may get it without a booster. But So far data shows the breakthroughs are hospitalized at just a fraction of the rate as unvaccinated.
In a world where Covid wasn’t doesn’t exist, of course taking the shot makes no sense. But Covid is like getting all the proteins in the shot, plus thousands of extra ones from the live virus trying to infect all your cells.
If one is hesitant of the vaccine, one should be 1000x scared of Covid. All the concerns I’ve heard people express about the shot are 1000x more applicable to actual Covid. That’s what doesn’t make sense to me about the people concerned about the vaccine, if they evaluated Covid consistently it seems that there would be no question of whether to be vaccinated or not.
I’m legitimately confused why people with concerns about the vaccine don’t have the same concerns about Covid, but instead assume the best about Covid while assuming the worst about vaccines. Why do people do that?
Unless the commenter above is much older than typical HN demographics, if they get covid they will likely get a cold and then be fine. This the overwhelmingly most likely outcome.
The idea that catching this disease is some great event is just media conditioning.
For the vast majority of people it is a cold. Sometimes it's a bad cold. You know, like the kind we used to get every few months in the before times?
And apparently long term brain damage according to several large studies published in the last few months. It's not exactly a secret that death isn't the only measurable consequence of the virus.
And it's not like the people who _are_ older than the HN demographic are out there getting sick by licking doorknobs and wombats. COVID is being spread to them by the decisions of people who are unwilling to take the harm of spreading the virus seriously.
> And it's not like the people who _are_ older than the HN demographic are out there getting sick by licking doorknobs and wombats. COVID is being spread to them by the decisions of people who are unwilling to take the harm of spreading the virus seriously.
Ultimately, at some point, these vulnerable people need to be the ones to go on lockdown. We cannot shut the world down to accommodate a very small segment of the population. We never made everyone stay inside with AIDS
The current US COVID fatality rate is 1 in 50 cases. The incidence of measurable brain damage in survivors appears to be even higher. Even if we pretend that everyone in the entire US has already been infected (obviously false), that would still be a fatality rate of 1 in 550. Getting to 1 in a million takes some extreme stretching.
> We never made everyone stay inside with AIDS
I don't know who all needs to hear this, but you cannot get HIV from someone breathing on you. Also the government's weak/slow response to the HIV epidemic in the US is considered by many historians to have been a complete travesty of governance. I don't think it makes the great point of comparison that you intended it to.
> all viral colds have a whole slurry of symptoms that some unlucky few get
"Few" being the operative word there. The difference in risk between a cold and COVID is stark.
> I remember when some kid in my mom's second grade class died one weekend
You remember it as a weird rare event because there wasn't a global cold pandemic killing 1 in 50 people who got infected.
This offers real estimates of the actual IFR (the likelihood of death if you have the virus in your system).
I'll refer you to table 3
The average HNer is going to likely be in the 0-54 demographic. Their IFR is anywhere from 0.004% to 0.23%.
The case fatality ratio you cite has a number of problems. Firstly, it's not true that the 'current' COVID fatality rate is 1/50. To make such a claim you need to define 'current'. You are citing the entire case fatality rate over the last year and a half. And even then, you're overstating it, since it's 1.8% by most estimates.
A current rate would mean taking a smaller window starting from today and determining the CFR. Given that cases are currently going up while deaths are flat, the current CFR is going to be lower than the global CFR you cited.
CFR is always higher, because most people with COVID will not notice they have it [1]. Thus, we need scientific modeling to determine the number.
Moreover, I am not arguing that vulnerable populations do not exist. Merely that the death rates are so non-uniformly distributed, that it really doesn't make sense to have a uniform policy on all age groups / background conditions. The data tell a lot different story.
[1] From the study: The exponential pattern of our age-specific IFR estimates is qualitatively similar to that of case fatality rates (CFRs). However, the relative magnitudes are systematically different, reflecting the extent to which asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases are much more common in younger adults than in middle-aged and older adults. For example, the ratio of CFR to IFR is about 15:1 for ages 30–49, about 7:1 for ages 50–69, and about 5:1 for ages 70–79 years
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/burd...
Maybe not the best analogy. It’s much easier to prevent transmission of HIV by avoiding high risk behavior like IV drug use and unprotected sex than, you know, standing next to someone who’s breathing.
Vaccines are not solely for the benefit of individual, but also the population of which the individual belongs.