Eradicate the Sucker!

According to CDC, Covid vaccines are not 100% effective, but…

99.999% is pretty d.mn close.

The absolute number of break thru infections (people getting Covid despite being fully vaccinated) requiring hospitalization in the US reported by CDC is six thousand (6,239). These are fully vaccinated people who - despite the vaccine - ended up getting infected and in need of advanced care in a hospital.

The absolute number of fully vaccinated people in the US is 165,000,000 according to CDC (as per Aug 4 2021), i.e. more than 165 million Americans are now fully vaccinated.

Source: CDC (as per Aug 4 10am CET)

With this we can quantify the risk of getting infected when fully vaccinated, so called break thru cases: Based on CDC data from the American population as a whole: If you are fully vaccinated, the risk of getting so sick with Covid that you need to go to the hospital is 1:26,400. That is, for every 26,400 break thru cases, 1 has some immunity to the effect of the vaccine, and gets so sick they need to be hospitalized.

For the the ones of the 165 million fully vaccinated people in the US who gets sick with Covid, the risk of getting so sick that even the hospital can’t help is one in every 130,000 fully vaccinated people (1:130,000) and this is despite the vaccination. That is 1/1000th of a 1/100th or 0.001% of all vaccinated people.

CDC has also found an Increased Covid risk for US population sub-groups with significant differences in infection and hospitalization rates (source: CDC). With the exception of the Asian subgroup, the population sub-groups monitored in the CDC study have been about 3 times as likely to get hospitalized when infected with Covid. And Covid death rates, so far, are more than twice as high for these ethnic sub-groups, as in the American population on average. With the Delta variant spreading rapidly, which is estimated to be 50-70% more contagious, the risk of infection is increasing significantly, and it is necessary to pay special attention to humans with increased risk and getting in front of the curve with vaccinations.

What we are not talking about:

For the US population subgroups monitored by CDC, other factors are in play. According to CDC, race and ethnicity are risk markers for other underlying conditions that affect health, including socioeconomic status, access to health care, and exposure to the virus related to occupation, e.g., frontline, essential, and critical infrastructure workers.

This is important because what we see is that, for the admitted Covid patients in emergency wards, statistics are really, really bad. And once intensive care is required, of the vaccinated people admitted to emergency wards, one in five (the 0.001%) are too weakened or too late and is overcome by the virus.

We have only one alternative to complete isolation, to keep ourselves and our loved ones out of the hospitals, far away from the Covid kill-zone in the emergency wards.

La resistance (toward vaccines):

Probably a good guess that the reason for some of the resistance is because scientists have been, and still are, using science terms to describe vaccines, rather than layman’s terms everybody have time to internalize and understand.

From comments and posts on social media, it also appears that a lot of the resistance is actually reactions to the strong push and high speed of deployment, which is not giving people time to think.

When we are facing an imminent danger, and at the same time being pushed to make choices we are not at ease with, about getting injected, with a vaccine we don’t really understand, and many oppose for various reasons. It is only human to get concerned and pull back until we learn more.

But with Covid, and especially the new variants spreading now, this is at great risk for one self, children, family, loved ones, friends, team mates, colleagues, co-commuters and other people we engage with physically.

Vaccine ‘technology’:

When science uses a word like e.g. ‘technology’ about a vaccine, its might scare some people and create misunderstandings. It does, however, not mean that actual technology is injected into peoples’ bodies. The term ‘technology’ refers to the biological processes used to create and copy the cells needed for vaccine production. What vaccine producers consider their proprietary technology is the production processes used to mass produce the vaccines in factories.

So ‘technology’ or ‘biotech’ is not physical technology it in the vaccines, and people will not get machines or chips or something else injected in their bodies with the vaccines.

Messenger RNA, mRNA:

People might have read about messenger RNA (mRNA) based vaccines and thought that sounded like some software, but mRNA-based vaccines are not related to Microsoft messenger, or other software products or devices. But mRNA refers to the organic copy component and the biological mechanism our cells uses do split and form/copy new cells. And here mRNA is the recipe constructing the new cells in our bodies’ protein factory.

In the human body, the Covid mRNA based vaccines reuse this internal mechanism in order to distribute the recipe for immunity to enough cells in our body to achieve resistance to the deadly corruption of cell mechanisms caused by the Covid virus.

So, with the speed of the Covid Delta variant spread and potential other Covid mutations threatening our human race’s biological basis, we can fight Covid only by getting in front with immunity, by building and rapidly deploying vaccines which tackle the effects of the Covid virus.

Vaccine Manufacturers:

There is no collusion among vaccine manufacturers, there are many companies participating in the race (see graphic below) about being first with results from clinical trials, which is the final stage in development where testing is done with real people to verify that there are no unknown or unintended side effects.

The hype, frenzy and secrecy about vaccines has to do with each vaccine manufacturer developing their recipe for the vaccine, and keeping their way of producing the vaccine a secret. This is necessary because there is a risk that obscure market actors will try to skip development process steps by decomposing, copying and stealing vaccine recipes from other companies.

As can be seen from McKinsey’s overview below, this is not a one vaccine/one producer game. What we see now is that the first market leaders with approved clinical trials quickly become leaders in the market due to the high demand world wide. More vaccines will follow, as vaccines candidates are passing clinical (human) trials state and are approved for use.

Source: McKinsey

Vaccine testing and approval:

Hopefully, approvals for all vaccines will happen fast, but what is important from the graphic is that this is not just about a few big pharmas like Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. They were fastest in completing the process and first to launch and therefore they now have an advantage in serving the market.

But all products must still pass through the same steps, the same process, the same approvals, and the good and safe ones will all pass through, get approval and become available.

We can expect more vaccines in the future, cheaper vaccines and better vaccines, all compliant with safety rules and medical standards.

What would Rachel do?

One way to minimize risk in everyday life is to avoid getting one self into high-risk situations, this means avoiding to mingle or socialize with people who are not yet vaccinated, even Friends.

Public persons (like Jennifer Aniston) who seeks factual information, keeps up to date with scientific development, and take action accordingly, keeps themselves and people around them safe by taking proper precautions.

People like her are good examples, role models to follow.

#eradicatecovid

#fasterforward

#backtolife