I recently read, for the millionth time, '... and I'll feel safe.'
Well, that's nice. But wouldn't you prefer to be safe(r)? The vaccinated people around you wearing masks may make you feel better, but making more people get vaccinated and/or enforcing mask wearing by unvaccinated people would actually make you safer. Having hand sanitizer at every entrance may make you feel safe, but it's doing almost nothing, so feeling better is still not making you safer.
There is no absolute value of safe because no activity is without risk. We do what we can to mediate risk: wear seatbelts, anchor that bookcase to the wall (though most furniture deaths appear to be from adults *moving* furniture), get prenatal care (though ~1% of Black infants still die; thanks, America, you suck), and maybe stay indoors when there's lightning. And then we (mostly) get in a car anyways, or walk down the street, or have children, even though it's risky because everything is risky.
So, to everyone* still buying hand sanitizer, wearing plastic gloves at the gym, and marching up a mountain alone wearing a stupid cloth mask, get a fucking grip, get your kids vaccinated if you can, and look at the actual numbers instead of panicking. Or (and this is totally a confidential to some people I know), if you are perfectly willing to do Thing A because it's convenient but moderately risky (going inside W@lmart!), but not Thing B which is objectively as safe as it gets (everyone's vaccinated *and* has to wear masks), TRY BEING REASONABLE INSTEAD.
*That is, everyone doing unreasonable things that don't mitigate risk. Not everyone doing reasonable things to actually mitigate risk.
Yes! I've earned some enemies in our PUBLIC HEALTH department by flatly refusing to make my students wipe down their desks for each class. I told them where the bucket of wipes is, they can choose to participate in Campus Sanitation Theater activities or not.
ReplyDelete(But I am also very human which means doing some silly things for my own anxiety level around my too-young-to-be-vaxxed four year old - you know, along with sending him to a mask-wearing preschool in highly rated masks, avoiding willfully unvaxxed family members, etc.).
Last year I told my lab students, completely deadpan, "The University has desired me to tell you to stay six feet apart at all times. There are eight people and four sets of pipets."
DeleteAlso I enforced the desk wipes 0% including last year because it was clear to me - and MANY others- in April of 2020 that covid is airborne.
I brought up booster shots in my church ladies group on Thursday (we are all late 30's to 40's). The academic biochemist professor pointed out that the research shows you really only need a booster if you're over 50. I was still the only one of 4 people to say maybe I won't get one. There are extenuating circumstances, 2/4 are immunocompromised and 1/4 has a Down Syndrome child and lots of public interaction and exposure.
ReplyDeleteOver 3000 boosters needed in our age group to prevent one (1) hospitalization, but only 100 to prevent a case! You get covid, you get covid, everyone gets covid (but almost nobody gets hospitalized).
Delete(I am 100% not getting a booster this year.)
Genuinely curious about your opinion: is there a downside to a healthy 40ish person getting a booster, either at an individual or population level, assuming it's not preventing someone else from getting one?
DeleteIf I get one, odds are I'll spend at least a day in bed, for what I judge to be minimal benefit, so that's certainly a personal downside! From both a population and personal level, all the side effect risks arise once again; although they are quite small, they are not zero - which is also why young people are generally specifically recommended to not get one; the adverse events you're preventing start to be on the same order as the adverse events you're causing. There is a monetary cost, which is being absorbed into both our taxes and our healthcare premiums; boostering people who don't need it imposes a cost without a meaningful return. We could, for example, give a pertussis booster every 5 years or more frequently (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28506516/) but we don't bother, despite many large outbreaks in recent years.
DeleteOn a population level, the more vaccine doses the better, except for how COVID IS ENDEMIC AND THERE IS NO STOPPING IT, and also how as from a public health standpoint, vaccinating the unvaccinated has a higher public health return than boosting 40 year olds. Doses aren't a limiting factor, but public health time is in fact a zero-sum proposition.
I don't think other 40 year olds need to *not* get a booster dose, I just also don't think they *do* need to get a booster dose.
Thanks. I've been trying to figure out if/when to get a booster. I know lots of people who are pretty healthy and youngish who have gotten one already. I haven't been in a hurry, although I just about beat down the door to get the vaccine initially. Our state keeps having its own special surge even as other places calm down so that's making me more inclined to do it when I'm eligible (which, at the moment, I'm not).
DeleteA book I am currently reading (Reckoning with Risk) recommends giving all statistics as, instead, natural frequencies. (Let's pretend the numbers and risks are evenly distributed even though they're not.) Based on the current incidence in my state, out of 10,000 people, over the next six months, 220 of them will get covid. If all 10,000 of them got a booster, then the CDC's estimate is that over 6 months, that might prevent 100 of those covid cases, and 120 people would still get covid. Covid hospitalizations across all age groups are currently around 10 per 100,000 (https://gis.cdc.gov/grasp/COVIDNet/COVID19_3.html) ; so of those 220 people, 1 or 2 would likely need to be hospitalized.
DeleteOver-70s are roughly 10x as likely to be hospitalized as a 40 year old - so if we expand this to 100,000 people, 10 people will be hospitalized and 5 of them will be over 70, roughly- which is why there's a better return.