Some Positive Covid-19 Vaccine Thoughts and Statistics

This is what is known
- Covid-19 and its variants are among the most contagious and deadly viruses we have seen in modern medicine. In the US alone there have been at least 33,000,000 infections and 580,000 deaths in the past 17 months.

- More than 17 months into this pandemic we see that Covid-19, even in seemingly mild cases, is showing many long-lasting aftereffects in people, all of them unpleasant, many of them debilitating, some of them deadly - so even if you survive the virus, you may have long term health impacts such as heart, lung, breathing or neurological consequences.

- Some people will have side effects after vaccination, it happens with every vaccine. VAERS should be used to report reactions so the developers can work to make them more safe (https://vaers.hhs.gov/reportevent.html)

- Some people believe there are issues with how the vaccine was developed and/or how rapidly its emergency use was approved. Mayo has addressed this issue in numerous podcasts including https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-qa-podcast-covid-19-vaccine-confidence-and-the-importance-of-that-second-dose/

- There is a lot of controversy surrounding whether the Covid-19 vaccine is effective. It is not perfect, but current reports indicate 90% + effectiveness against infection, and less risk of hospitalization and death if infected.

Here are some statistics that explain why I chose, in spite of the vaccine's potential risks, to get vaccinated. (data from http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/ and https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations) *

From the data, I extrapolated the following:
- Since the vaccine was tracked, beginning January 1, 2021 the US has administered over 267,000,000 million doses.
- During that time, new infections dropped 83% (from a peak of 300,000 per day to about 40,000 per day)
- Deaths dropped 80% (from a peak of over 4000 people per day to under 1000 per day)

That's pretty dramatic evidence that while Covid is not eradicated, it is getting under control. All of this explains why the states and CDC have now chosen to lift many of the precautions such as business and school closures, mask mandates and limits on gatherings. We still need to exercise caution and be willing to step back if infection surges again.

And we still need to get as may people as possible immunized, to further cut transmission.

*Divoc-91, a project of Johns Hopkins University, provides daily updates of worldwide Covid statistics in a series of interactive graphs. CDC statistics are gathered from every state and territory through automated reporting systems.