3 Questions for Anti-Vaxxers

I respect vaccine skeptics.
They keep vaccine proponents honest.
They force vaccine defenders to provide strong justifications.
It's important to communicate with them with respect, not derision.

If you think there's skepticism in the high-income, educated world, you should visit the rest of the world.

It's higher.

I'd like to respectfully address some of the concerns that vaccine skeptics have.

Two-year anniversary

The Coronavirus Pandemic has lasted for two years, which is the same amount of time that took for the Spanish Flu Pandemic to begin to die out.

Are you fearful?

I fear neither the Coronavirus nor its vaccines.
Most people fear one or both.
That fear pushes them to take a strong position.

I don't take a strong position because I don't give a fuck what people do since COVID is no big deal unless you're old and/or fat.

Answer these 3 questions

1. What is the percentage chance that you'll get COVID?

2. If you get COVID, what is the percentage chance that you'll get extremely sick or die?

3. What is the percentage chance that you will get extremely sick or die from getting a COVID vaccine?

My estimates

1. 80% - if it's not already endemic, it will be in 2022.

2. Less than 1%. If you're old/fat, much higher. If you're thin/young, much lower.

3. 10-1000x less likely than #2.

I took the vaccine because I figured that the odds that I would get hospitalized (or die) due to COVID was probably 1 in 1,000 since I'm old but not fat.

Meanwhile, the odds of getting seriously fucked up from the vaccine was probably, at worst, 1 in 10,000.

If my estimates are reasonable, the answer was clear. Neither poses a grave risk. I do many things that are far riskier. So I need not lose sleep over either the vaccines or COVID.

Of the two highly unlikely events, getting fucked up from the vaccine was even less likely than the virus destroying me.

What do anti-vaxxers say?

Of course, anti-vaccine folks probably flip my estimates.
Some flip them to a comical level.
One friend claimed that if she took the vaccine, there was an 80% chance that she would be hospitalized, which is fucking hilarious.

I'd advise you to research this, but the problem with the internet is that you can find a seemingly "reliable source" for almost anything you can imagine.

I can "prove" that:

• the moon landings didn't happen
• the world is flat
• broccoli is bad for you

When to question the majority

If you don't want to take a vaccine, it's probably because you don't trust the standard news sources. And you don't trust over 90% of doctors and medical experts.

I'm all for taking contrarian perspectives - I do it all the time. There's a famous line:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect. - Mark Twain

However, at some point, you might want to pause and reflect more carefully if you're in the minority.

Why not be skeptical about whether murder, stealing, or Hitler are bad?

The evil mainstream media, the powerful politicians, and the fat cat corporations are unanimously pushing the narrative that murder, stealing, and Hitler are horrible. Shouldn't that make you suspicious? Isn't obvious why that is? I'll tell you why:

• They're against murder because they want to keep the population high so that more people are competing for jobs and that brings wages down!
• They're against stealing because the prison and justice system makes fat profits from all the thieves - and powerful people don't want to cut into their ill-gotten gains!
• They're against Hitler because all those powerful entities are run by Jews and they don't want another populist to get elected!

The point of my ludicrous arguments is that you can always take a contrarian viewpoint. You can always invent a conspiracy theory. However, believe it or not, the majority is usually right about most things. 

Why should anyone care whether others take the vaccine?

The libertarian in me doesn't give a fuck if someone doesn't want to take the vaccine just like I don't give a fuck if someone doesn't want to wear a seatbelt.

The only problem I have is when taxpayers have to pay for the hospitalization costs of those who don't wear seatbelts.
Unfortunately, it's too draconian to put a law that says, "No seatbelt, then the government will not cover your car accident costs."

The same goes for vaccines. If people want to defy the conventional wisdom that vaccines and seatbelts are helpful, that's fine, but don't expect society to pay for your medical bills if you're wrong.

Long-term side effects of vaccines?

The skeptic fears the long-term side effects of vaccines. But those same skeptics have several vaccines in their bodies. Most of us have taken vaccines for typhoid, tetanus, rubella, measles, mumps, Hep A/B, and polio. If you've traveled to the tropics, you probably got the yellow fever vaccine.

If vaccines are going to have nasty side effects, they always show those side effects hours, days, or weeks after the shot. It won't show up 5 years later. 

On the contrary, vaccines get weaker with time, which is why we usually need booster shots.

But what about mRNA vaccines?

If you're worried about the dreaded new technology of mRNA, you can do what I did: take the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine. Or the Chinese or Russian vaccines, which are based on traditional vaccine development methods. 

If those vaccines haven't significant side effects after being out for over one year and having gone through 100 million shots, then they won't have side effects in five years.

Every year, vaccines for typhoid, tetanus, rubella, measles, mumps, Hep A/B, yellow fever, and polio send people to the hospital due to horrible side effects. However, those are exceedingly rare events.

If one in 100,000 people who get a vaccine get hospitalized due to the vaccine, that's 80,000 cases worldwide (assuming everyone gets the vaccine)!

Imagine that! 80,000 potential news stories of people falling gravely ill due to a vaccine!

And if kills one in a million, then that's 8,000 deaths from vaccines! Horrible, right?

Not necessarily.

You must ask yourself, are my odds of dying from the coronavirus lower than one in a million?

Humans are poor with math and statistics. I hope this helps. 

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