So you think it’s best to wait to get the COVID vaccine until more people have gotten it and it proves to be safe and effective? Maybe you’re right. But probably only on a technicality.
As I’m oft to do, I’d like to begin with a personal anecdote. I began outlining and writing a Sci-fi novel in November 2019 that had a major plot point of a vaccine created in an absurdly short time-period in order to halt a pandemic. Of course my fictional pandemic was a Chekhov’s gun of sorts, allowing for universal vaccination that—as it turns out—was used for mind control. I’ll spare you the rest of the plot, just in case I decide to actually finish the project. I had a complete outline, and even wrote the first two chapters. Then 2020 rolls on in and—BAM!—it happens for real. Maybe not the mind-control part, but there is a pandemic and vaccines created in record time.
Many people fear the new COVID vaccines were similarly rushed to market. They fear that corners were cut, safety disregarded, and study results falsified in an effort to capitalize on the potential for billions of dollars. Is this possible? Sure it is. Anytime you hear the phrase “billions of dollars” thrown around, there’s potential for malfeasance.
But here’s the facts. Vaccines are safe. They have been for a very long time. Sure, a handful of people may have had severe allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, but it’s extremely rare. Want to know what wasn’t rare? Dying in infancy prior to the 19th century. The primary reason we live past 40 years of age (which was the life expectancy around 1800) is due to two things: antibiotics and vaccines.
Bacteria, parasites, and viruses are deadly! They live with the simple goal of reproducing. If you get right down to it, humans are just like these microbes. Evolutionarily speaking, humans exist on this planet for the sole reason all creatures do—to procreate. We must pass on our genetic material to the next generation, increasing our species’ genetic diversity, thus allowing natural selection to work its magic. But since we’re at the top of our planet’s food-chain, with the greatest cognitive ability of any creature, we don’t view our existences with such a limited perspective.
We are an ingenious enough species that we can sidestep natural selection processes that would generally take tens of thousands of years at the very least. We’ve created antibiotics and vaccines that have more than doubled human life-expectancy over the last 200 years. Yet too often we take these miracles for granted.
On nearly a daily basis I hear someone at the pharmacy respond when asked if they have any questions about their medication, “No, it’s just an antibiotic.” Just!? Others will refuse the offer of a vaccine saying, “I don’t believe in vaccines.” They exist! The pharmacy has a bunch in the fridge. There’s the polio vaccine that prevented your grandparents from needing an iron lung to breathe. It’s right next to the tetanus vaccine, so you won’t need to be buried 6-feet under the very soil that harbors those bacterial spores. They even have a –70°C freezer in anticipation for the vaccine for COVID—a disease that, in less than a year, has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide (as of December 23, 2020).
We have 6,000 people dying per day from COVID. Yet people worry about a rare acute allergic reaction, or a few days of aches, pains, and flu-like symptoms. Here’s some possibly shocking news you may not be aware of. The field of medicine relies on statistics. And statistics don’t care about you as an individual. Medicine’s broad goal is to find the optimal course of action for the greatest number of people. No one medication or vaccine will be right for everyone. There will always be outliers who respond poorly or adversely. The more dangerous or severe a disease, the more leeway is given to the safety of the medication for its cure or prevention. Cancers are fought with medications that wreak absolute havoc on the body, but it’s acceptable because the alternative is near certain death.
It would be realistic to remove a medication from the market after only a couple serious reactions if there were other medications available to treat the condition. This is not the case with COVID. The occasional serious side effect, anaphylactic reaction, even a handful of deaths from a vaccine must be weighed against the current status of the disease and the thousands of lives it takes daily. Rushing a vaccine to market and accepting a higher than normal adverse reaction profile makes perfect sense in our strive for herd immunity. We need 70-90% of the population to obtain immunity before those without immunity can safely return to their pre-COVID lives. If we want to end this pandemic, sacrifices must be made.
There will be two types of people: those who want to be the first in line for the vaccine, and those who want to wait a few months to see how others fare. Of course there’s always going to be that 3rd group who won’t get any vaccines for fear of autism, government mind control, or some other conspiracy theory BS. Those first two groups of folks will be sacrificing their deltoids to help reach herd immunity, benefiting the entire species. Anti-vaxxers can continue to reproduce. Their unvaccinated offspring protected by herd immunity afforded to them by 100’s of millions of people who take advantage of life-saving vaccines.
So you still think you’ll wait to get the COVID vaccine until it’s better proven to be safe and effective? I’ve been working in a pharmacy the entire pandemic, even giving COVID antibody tests to people who obviously lied when answering “No” to the question, “Have you been exposed to anyone with COVID-19 symptoms in the past 14 days?” If I haven’t gotten the virus yet, a few more months shouldn’t hurt. And to be honest, there won’t be enough doses for everyone initially anyway. Might as well let those who really need or want the vaccine get it first. There will be plenty to go around soon enough. So, I guess, yeah, come to think of it . . . You’re Probably Right.
[024] December 23, 2020