I happened to get embroiled in a dispute on the hottest topic of the day – vaccination. It had been so comfortable to consider the issue self-explanatory: vaccination is unique in its efficacy to save lives. Period. What else matters that much? Well, it turned out to be not that obvious, or at least not to all.
COVID-19 falls to #10 cause of death in US in 2023.
Mpox threatens to become a new pandemic.
Polio has not been eradicated yet.
I happened to get embroiled in a dispute on the hottest topic of the day – vaccination. It had been so comfortable to consider the issue self-explanatory: vaccination is unique in its efficacy to save lives. Period. What else matters that much? Well, it turned out to be not that obvious, or at least not to all.
After years of declining vaccination rates, Britain is experiencing a measles outbreak. Or, just think of the Ottawa unprecedented 24-day-long anti-vaxxer-truckers’ ‘Freedom Convoy’ or of analogous major disruption that later threatened D.C: “U.S. Capitol reinstalls barricades as trucker convoy heads to Washington.”(Reuters) And the Canadian self-styled “Freedom Convoy” couldn’t have come at a worse time. As Canadian officials pressed their U.S. counterparts for exemptions to the Biden administration’s Buy American pledges, the Convoy revived worries that the blockades at several U.S.-Canada border crossings boosted the economic nationalism that threatened bilateral ties.
U.S. Capitol reinstalls barricades as trucker convoy heads to Washington.”(Reuters)
Why all this grotesque social disruption, as if the COVID pandemic itself weren’t more than enough? The WHO estimates that fifteen million people have died of COVID, and worldwide COVID cases surpass 500 million, even if only about a half of them have been test-confirmed. But even if ‘only’ some 7 million died, what on earth can make anyone even pause before unequivocally and enthusiastically welcoming life-saving mass vaccination of those for whom it is medically safe (some 96-97 % of the population who have non-weakened immune systems)? Whatever matters more? This is a so commonly misinterpreted theme of personal freedom: is a healthy free citizen ‘free enough’ to refuse vaccination?
The first million deaths from the pandemic occurred just over seven months into 2020. For the second consecutive year, COVID-19 was ranked as the third leading cause of death in Americans behind heart disease and cancer. Roughly 234,000 COVID deaths since last June could have been prevented …
My opponent, LGL, was an intelligent and reasonably medically informed person who passionately believed that the right to refuse vaccination IS the sterling evidence of being free in a liberal democracy. With religious fervor he maintained that only totalitarian regimes can force vaccination on their healthy citizens and accused me, who had escaped totalitarianism in Russia, of almost a betrayal of freedom.
First, LGL tried to discredit vaccination by questioning its value with hand-picked quotes from a few sources like, say, some doubting the efficiency of two shots – but the same sources in the next line would admit that three shots are perfectly efficient. So, this clearly was not working for him. Nor was it new or original. The Washington Post (January 14, 2022) presented an interesting historical excursion into the struggle for mass vaccination and the grave consequences of its neglect.
“When smallpox began spreading in Boston in the 1720s, Cotton Mather campaigned for residents to be inoculated — and was met with fierce criticism and even an attempt to bomb his home. Some Bostonians argued that inoculation violated God’s will. Others, including doctors, argued that it was folklore that would do more harm than good. In Mather’s time, one evangelist for inoculation was Benjamin Franklin. Along with several other Founders — including George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson — Franklin himself was finally persuaded. As the disease was sweeping through Philadelphia in 1736, he and his wife, Deborah, initially decided not to inoculate their 4-year-old son Franky. The boy was sick with a cold and the Franklins worried that his body would not be able to handle the side effects of inoculation. Soon, though, Franky contracted smallpox and died… When rumors spread in Philadelphia that Franky had died from the inoculation rather than the disease itself, Franklin took the painful step of writing the true story in his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette.”
Today, three hundred years later, Tennessee Republican warns that there might be vaccines in the lettuce. Truly immortal ignorance… By April 17, 2022, in the U.S. there were 82,309,113 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 1,015,441 deaths. The first million deaths from the pandemic occurred just over seven months into 2020. For the second consecutive year, COVID-19 was ranked as the third leading cause of death in Americans behind heart disease and cancer. Roughly 234,000 COVID deaths since last June could have been prevented with a primary series vaccination, according to a newly updated Kaiser Family Foundation analysis.
In the last 350 years of global use, vaccination has proven its value: millions of children saved from smallpox, polio, measles, viral hepatitis, diphtheria, tetanus, rabies… hundreds of thousands of young women saved from cervical cancer. Surely the attempt to discredit such glaring evidence should be futile.
Most recently, flu (not COVID) vaccination was linked to 40% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s.
Most recently, flu (not COVID) vaccination was linked to 40% reduced risk of Alzheimer’s. People who received at least one influenza vaccine were 40% less likely than non-vaccinated people to develop Alzheimer’s disease over the course of the four years examined, according to a new study from UTHealth Houston.
But next my opponent LGL raised doubts about the efficacy of protection via vaccination. This was also easy to dispute: just look at medical statistics.
“Mortality… during the COVID pandemic rose by 6% in 2020 and 2021 despite the average mortality rate dropping 28% and 29% for females and males respectively between 2000-2019.”
How does vaccination affect it?
“Before the delta variant emerged, there were 5 to 10 cases of the coronavirus for every 100,000 fully vaccinated adults each week. The rate for the unvaccinated was 50 to 90 cases. During the delta wave, unvaccinated people were 5 times as likely to get infected as those who had their shots. Before the omicron surge, unvaccinated people were 15 times as likely to be hospitalized as those who were fully vaccinated. During the omicron surge, that difference in rates dropped to about seven times as much. Before omicron, unvaccinated Americans were 50 to 60 times as likely to die as those who received the vaccine’s primary series and a booster shot. At the end of the year, that was reduced to 27 times as high…”
“Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto has battled multiple health challenges over the years, including stage 4 cancer, open heart surgery, multiple sclerosis and, currently, COVID-19. The host of Your World With Neil Cavuto announced last week that he had tested positive for the coronavirus, despite being fully vaccinated. In recent days, he has both credited the vaccine for saving his life and used his platform to encourage others to roll up their sleeves. Now some of his viewers are sending him death threats — because he encouraged them to get vaccinated for their own safety,” (NY Times, Feb. 25, 2022). They are sending not just their arguments, their views and opinions – but death threats! Does this strike you as a sterling expression of freedom in pluralistic democracy?
Nothing of this reasoned argument seems to matter for anti-vaxxers, as they have their own concerns: did you know that a microcomputer can be inserted in your body while it remains invisible in 1 ml of the injectable vaccine – so that ‘THEY’ (?) later can remotely control your mind? Staunch anti-vaxxers with such bizarre conspiracy theories are a small minority but they are noisily vocal online and in social media, affecting vulnerable minds.
However, many more people are merely undecided for various reasons and need help in overcoming their hesitancy?
Lately, Canada has approved a second COVID vaccine that is made without mRNA/DNA technology (Novavax’s Nuvaxovid, made using an inactivated virus), providing an alternative for people who remain skeptical about the safety of mRNA/DNA technology. Today, vaccination is the best choice of ‘first care-providers’, as the urgency is pressing. Tomorrow we shall know more and do better, but we mustn’t be so much ‘perfectionist-from-inception’ today as to reject what is available for its alleged imperfection – at the cost of millions of lives.
… vaccine that is made without mRNA/DNA technology (Novavax’s Nuvaxovid, made using an inactivated virus), providing an alternative for people who remain skeptical about the safety of mRNA/DNA technology.
Why do people worry about the safety of mRNA/DNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson)? Mostly because, never used before, they differ from the traditional vaccines in that they “…force a person’s own cells to make a protein that their own immune system will attack… [The new vaccine] enters cells that use this foreign genetic material to synthesize the spike [defence] protein… Traditional vaccines in contrast use dead or attenuated viruses…” as an erudite concerned person explained her hesitancy.
But fearing “foreign genetic material” here is as unreasonable as fearing genetically modified food; remember “I don’t want salmon DNA to make my tomato smell fishy”? You don’t want to, eh? Do you want earthquakes or pandemics? Who, do you think, is going to ask us? This is by far too simplistic a concern, considering the natural eternal interplay/exchange of ‘our own’ and ‘foreign’ genes through viruses in the biomass on our planet. And potential consequences are beyond our control. Currently, that coronavirus has mass-entered the human genome, who knows? In fifty years the medics may declare in surprise: “for unclear reasons the incidence of leukemia (or of redheads, or freckled, or…) is now markedly altered!” Or, maybe not.
… remember “I don’t want salmon DNA to make my tomato smell fishy”?
How does a mRNA/DNA vaccine compare to a traditional vaccine? The Sinovac is a vaccine that uses an inactivated form of the COVID-19 virus (right circle on the graph below), instead of the mRNA/DNA technology that Pfizer and Moderna use (BioNTech, left circle). It is obvious that the mRNA/DNA vaccine is always more efficient than a traditional one (Sinovac). This turned out to be true for all age groups.
The target is the same for the traditional and mRNA/DNA vaccines: a protein that teaches the body to protect itself against a microbe/virus. The difference is in how to enhance its production: with mRNA/DNA this is easier and faster than with traditional vaccines. It is also safer for the public as well as for the vaccine manufacturers, as an attenuated microbe/virus is still a live microbe/virus. mRNA/DNA vaccine requires no microbes. In other words, we have learned more about Nature’s pathway to create our life-saving immune defence and are able to interfere (to enhance the body’s production of defending proteins) at the point some steps prior to the one that Edward Jenner had learned about 350 years ago. This looks to me like glorious scientific progress.
True, a lot remains to be learned about mRNA/DNA vaccines: this novelty leap forward arrived as an emergency measure when the pandemic had already unleashed mass killing. In particular, arguable long-term post-vaccination side effects are as yet poorly understood. Also, people with autoimmune diseases need special medical attention with both traditional and new vaccines.
As to the collapsing athletes, the story – as it is – sounds to me anecdotal; to take it as ‘evidence’ of public danger would be a mere confirmation bias. More information is badly needed before we can say if it has anything at all to do with vaccines, or maybe with a new clandestine performance drug, turned into ‘new fentanyl’, or whatnot…
Next, LGL referred to a number of vaccinated people who later contracted COVID – where then was the protection? This is true but we are talking of an immensely complex system of individual and herd susceptibility. At the time of past pandemics, pre-Jenner, (plague, smallpox, cholera, etc) – it similarly was not known why many died but some recovered and a few others never got sick. P. De Kruif in his popular book Microbe Hunters referred to an enigmatic episode with Dr. Pettenkofer of Munich, who was disputing the famous R. Koch: unlike Koch, he believed that microbes do not exist, but that all diseases originate from unsanitary conditions and toxic chemicals. Pettenkofer requested from Koch a vial with a live culture of cholera vibrios and swallowed its contents publicly, then patted his magnificent beard and said that this should prove the vibrios were a fantasy. He never got cholera! Nobody knows why: was his immune system so unusually strong or had he a unique haplotype specifically including cholera resistance, or was his gastric acid production in overdrive and killed all vibrios before they entered the bowels, or..? This episode only confirms that a human body (let alone a human society) is far too complex to always expect simple linear causal correlations.
Next, LGL asked whether everybody ought to be vaccinated no matter what. Obviously, not: people with autoimmune diseases, leukemias, lymphomas, AIDS, with inborn immunodeficiency or immunosuppression due to an organ transplant need to be exempted or to have some unconventional approaches. This applies to the traditional vaccines as well.
The harder part of a dispute – about “freedom and human rights” – followed. Next, the indefatigable LGL wished to know, what about freedom and the rights of someone who is healthy but does not want to be vaccinated simply ‘just because!’? It is the eternal problem that humans have been stuck with forever: individualism versus communitarianism, and the dividing line is badly blurred. You are free as long as your freedom does not impinge on my freedom. Anti-vaxxers believe in “my life – my decision”. My opponent, LGL, seemed to be one of them. But the problem is that it’s much more than just THEIR lives.
Let’s compare the COVID crisis with another current social calamity, namely, the overdose crisis. Over 100 000 Americans, mostly young and healthy, die annually of drug overdose. Why? Too many do not bother or dare to think for themselves (Kant’s “Sapere aude”): instead, it is “I’ll go with the flow!” Should we call it a “deadly triumph of conformism”?
Yet, there is a principal difference between the loss of life from overdosing and from COVID… After all, in the overdose crisis, their calamitous senseless risk-taking threatens those young adults’ own lives. Not so in the anti-vaxxers’ movement: their ‘freedom to stay unvaccinated just because…’ is a direct threat to you and me, and our children.
Humans have not yet found a ‘magic bullet’ against viral infections (unlike life-saving antibiotics against most bacterial ones). Only herd immunity protects us from mass demise in a viral pandemic (think of the early 20th century influenza). About 70% of the population should have to recover to halt the pandemic. Or the same proportion of people should have been vaccinated.
Humans have not yet found a ‘magic bullet’ against viral infections…
Herd immunity makes it possible to protect those who can’t be vaccinated, such as newborns or those with compromised immune systems. It is the only known way today to protect the masses and the most vulnerable. But if ‘just because’-anti vaxxers join those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, then, taken together, they may leave behind less than 70 % of the eligible population. This is a real threat. This is already directly against your and my children…
It is more so that 32 % of people in the United States remain unlikely to get vaccinated against the virus according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. This newest group of vaccine doubters are parents: fewer than 1 in 3 American parents want to vaccinate their 5- to 11-year-olds. A recent study from the University of Oxford suggests that a fear of needles is a major barrier for about 10% of the population. According to the International Monetary Fund, the proportion of anti-vaxxers ranges from around 10-20% of the population in the UK and 25-32% in the U.S. to around 50% in Japan and 60% in France. Roughly 64.8% of the world population has received at least one dose of a COVID vaccine, although only 14.8% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.
By now much of the world has decided that most young children do not need to receive Covid booster shots. It’s true in Britain, France, Japan and Australia. Some countries, like India, have gone further. They say that otherwise healthy children do not need even an initial Covid vaccination. In Germany, public health experts don’t recommend vaccines for any children, including teenagers, unless they have a medical condition. Scientists in these countries understand that Covid vaccines are highly effective. But the experts have concluded that the benefits for children often fail to outweigh the costs. The benefits are modest because children are extremely unlikely to become seriously ill from Covid and are less likely to transmit the virus than an adult is. The costs include the financial price of mass vaccination, the possibility that a shot’s side effects will make a child sick enough to miss school, the tiny chance of more serious side effects and the inherent uncertainty about long-term effects. The U.S. C.D.C. urges booster shots for all children six months and older. Yet the recommendation has failed to accomplish much. Instead, most American parents have chosen to overrule the C.D.C. Only about 40 percent of children under 12 have been vaccinated against Covid, and only about 5 percent are up to date on their boosters.
Is there any evidence at all of possible medical adverse effects of vaccination? Needless to say, it is a matter of continuous intense medical scrutiny. “Vaccination with either of the 2 mRNA/DNA vaccines — Moderna and Pfizer — is associated with a small increase in the likelihood of developing myocarditis or pericarditis over the subsequent year. The numbers, though, are really low, a total of 269 in almost 5 million people [which means out of the entire U.S. 330 million population no more than 17,750 people may suffer this side-effect]. Does it mean we should reject the new vaccines?
When the car was invented, traffic fatality quickly raised its ugly head (with incomparably – many orders – higher numbers than the myocarditis after vaccination). Eventually we’ll learn to make safe self-driving self-stopping-before-any-obstacle cars. Does it mean we should have abandoned the car until that bright future reduces the traffic fatality? Uncontrolled excessive perfectionism is a negative force blocking/slowing down imperfect progress today in favor of uncertain future progress, which is actually endangered by this very blockage.
“…Death rates were less than half among vaccinated people as compared with unvaccinated people. This study, conducted in Denmark, followed everyone in the Danish Civil Registration System who was 12 years or older (N = 4,931,775) who received at least one dose of a vaccine. Almost all people in Denmark received the mRNA/DNA vaccines BioNTech162b2 (Pfizer) and mRNA/DNA-1273 (Moderna). The authors identified all patients admitted to hospital with a diagnosis code of myocarditis or pericarditis who also had increased troponin levels (to focus on patients with biochemically verifiable heart damage). Almost all patients (96%) were available for follow-up. Over the year, 269 people developed myocarditis or myo-pericarditis. Most (73%) were male and 40% were between the ages of 12 and 39 years. The Moderna vaccine was associated with an increase in myocarditis, especially in the 12- to 39-year-old group. The Pfizer vaccine was associated with an increase in myocarditis in women. Although statistically significant, the rate of carditis was low: Even in the younger age group, the rate was 1.6 (Pfizer) to 5.7 (Moderna) per 100,000 individuals,” (Husby A, Hansen JV, et al. SARS-CoV-2 vaccination and myocarditis or myopericarditis: population based cohort study. BMJ 2021;375:e068665.).
As of mid-October 2021, officials had confirmed 945 reports nationwide of myocarditis or ericarditis out of nearly 400 million doses given of the two vaccines (0,0002%). Cases were more common in adolescent males and young adults.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) directly compared the incidence of myocarditis after COVID versus after vaccination in the U.S. And reported on April 1, 2022, that being still quite a rare complication, myocarditis is nonetheless six times more common after COVID than after vaccination. Besides, people infected with COVID-19 are 46 % more likely to develop later type 2 diabetes. This is a very pressing social problem: “Mr Biden said as much about diabetes as climate change in his recent state-of-the-union message”.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) directly compared the incidence of myocarditis after COVID versus after vaccination in the U.S. And reported on April 1, 2022, that being still quite a rare complication, myocarditis is nonetheless six times more common after COVID than after vaccination.
Joseph Fraiman and 6 coauthors from US, Spain and Australia offer – in a not-peer-reviewed preprint – a cost-benefit analysis of serious adverse effects (SAE) in clinical trials of mRNA anti-COVID Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. SAE was detected in 98 per 10,000 versus 85 per 10,000 in placebo; risk ratio 1.15. It needs much more research before we can reach any sound conclusions. If such cost-benefit analysis had ever been performed before we started using antibiotics, hormonal treatments, pain killers, anti-inflammatory, anti-psychotic medications etc, I fear medicine would have never had any of them in its arsenal. Nor have we had any others.
A 62-year-old man from Germany has, against medical advice, been vaccinated 217 times against Covid, doctors report. The bizarre case is documented in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal. The shots were bought and given privately within the space of 29 months. The man appears to have suffered zero ill effects, none, researchers from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg say.
“Nearly 60 million American adults — or about one out of every four — remain unvaccinated against COVID-19. They have made an irrational choice that exposes them to severe illness.” This already makes up at least 25 % of the adult population. The number of people with a weakened immune system is estimated as 2,7-4 % of the population. Sum them up and the resulting 27,7-29 % closely endanger if not encroach on the coveted 70 % necessary for herd immunity. This is the case where literally every single person may open or close a Pandora’s box of pandemic spread through his own individual role in increasing herd immunity.
“The successful part of the story is the rapid increase in vaccination among Black and Latino Americans since last year. Today, the vaccination rate for both groups is slightly higher than it is for white Americans, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s surveys. Only about 60 percent of Republican adults are vaccinated, compared with about 75 percent of independents and more than 90 percent of Democrats… And Republicans are both disproportionately white and older. Together, these facts help explain why the white death rate has recently been higher than the Asian, Black or Latino rate,” (NY Times, June 9, 2022):
In England in 1796, there was such fiery resistance against Jenner’s suggestion to use cow smallpox blisters for vaccinating people that the government made Jenner’s inoculation mandatory for its citizens at the beginning of the next century. Yes, governments are vital for promoting vaccination, and in doing so they are mass life-savers rather than malicious ‘freedom-usurpers.’ In Western history, this positive role of the government has been demonstrated over and over again. Many fundamental issues of public health, such as provision of nutritious food and drinking water, of means for personal and public hygiene, garbage (shelter for plague-spreading rats) removal, all critical for preventing our mass extinction from pandemics, have been solved by government efforts – and historically, not without the fierce resistance of some local ‘freedom enthusiasts’.
There still are many critical medical issues unresolved but now coming into public focus: smoking, drinking, substance abuse. Next immediately come viral and antibiotic-resistant bacterial pandemics. Vaccination is our only mass protection and its refusal ‘just because’ is not only unwise and unconscionable but can be plain suicidal. “Last year the number of Americans who died hit a record high, largely fueled by the coronavirus and climbing rates of drug overdoses… there were 3.465 million deaths — an increase of about 80,000 more than 2020’s record-setting total,” according to CDC data.
On April 8, 2022, the AP reported: “Life expectancy in the United State continued to slide downward in 2021, a new study by public health experts found, after it dramatically declined in 2020 as the coronavirus swept through the country. Across all groups, life expectancy dropped to 76.60 years last year — down from 76.99 in 2020 and 78.86 in 2019. Researchers found the continued decline in life expectancy last year was largely among White Americans. That’s a reversal from 2020, when Hispanic and Black communities… saw the most dramatic decline in life expectancy. The report postulates that vaccine hesitancy and resistance to pandemic restrictions among some White Americans… may have contributed to the shift”. Vaccine hesitancy and resistance to restrictions… How many more precious lives must be lost before people reverse this triumphal procession of killing anti-reason and ignorance. 