The COVID Vaccines: Do I Feel Lucky?

Measuring risk and reward in the age of COVID

Among the “I can’t wait to get my fourth booster” crowd, there exists an unquestioned belief that the COVID vaccines are Safe and Effective. No matter that the definition of Safe and Effective is ever-changing, just get the damn shot already! It’s safe, okay? SAAAAAFE!!!

Well, clearly, we know that’s not true; there’s grave risk involved, which you can read more about on 100 different Substacks, including mine. But given that we know that, let’s turn to the question of efficacy, and ask: Do these shots have any kind of reward to offer that might justify that risk?

First, a quick review of the genesis of the definition of vaccine efficacy:

December 2020: “Take this shot, and you will never, ever get COVID or any of its variants, and you can’t spread it, either. This vax will end COVID!”

May 2021: “Okay, you might, maybe still contract the virus, but it’s so rare, we’re going to stop counting these ‘breakthrough cases,’ since we’re already up to 10K, and we can’t count higher than that. But at least you won’t be spreading it around.”

July 2021: “Oh heck, it looks like you can spread it just as much as unvaxxed people, and in fact, the level of virus in your body may even be higher than your unvaxxed counterparts, but at least you won’t be hospitalized or die.”

September 2021: “Okay, okay, fine, you can still be hospitalized and die, but the vax greatly reduces the chances of that.”

So now that we’ve redefined vaccine efficacy to mean “reduction of symptoms,” exactly how good are the shots at doing that? You’d think there would be studies and statistics all over the place on this, since it’s now the sole reason to get the jab (besides not losing your job). Yet, there’s been precious little of that data to be had here in the US until recently, when a little bit was dribbled out to us…probably by accident. Buried in an appendix of a study on how the immune-compromised respond to the vaccine, were some actual numbers on COVID outcomes, stratified by vaxxed vs. unvaxxed, so let’s take a look.

These were outcomes on patients who were seen at any of several large medical research centers, like Duke, Columbia, Johns Hopkins, etc., between December 2020 and September 2021. It’s important to note that these patients are not representative of the whole U.S. population. They had a median age of 51 and half had at least one co-morbidity, so older and less healthy on average. Importantly, they were also database-matched by demographic and health factors to the unvaxxed group, so that should reduce arguments about whether stratifying by vaxxed vs. unvaxxed creates very different populations.

So what do we see in this study?¹ When they compared those who were vaccine naïve at the time they contracted COVID, to those who were post-second shot by at least 14 days when infected, the data shows an outcome advantage to having been vaxxed. No one is denying that difference; it’s just not the CERTAIN DEATH vs. walk-in-the-park they’d have you believe. In fact, the difference was rather modest, as the below graph shows.

The likelihood that the vaxxed patient was admitted to the hospital was 6.1% lower (15.4% vs 21.5%) than the unvaxxed, and the likelihood of a severe outcome, defined as dying or being hooked to a ventilator, drops from 2% for unvaxxed to 0.9% for vaxxed. That’s a 28% improvement in hospitalization rate and about 50% improvement in death/vent outcome.

I’m not going to pretend that’s nothing, but let me point out two things. First, those are much higher hospitalization and death rates than the country as a whole, reminding us that these patients are older/sicker than average, and second, the vaccine appears to be LESS effective at “reducing symptoms” than most of the proven early treatment protocols utilizing Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Fluvoxamine, and even Viagra(!), paired with steroids, antibiotics, and vitamins/supplements.

Early treatment protocols have been found to reduce risk of death and severe outcomes by 50-85% (see this page or, again, any of 100 blogs on Substack for more detail).² The death curves with and without early treatment look like the below graph.³ For pretty much anyone under 70, your risk of death from COVID is damn near zero if you actually get treated when you get sick, rather than sitting around waiting until your O2 is 65%, like these major medical institutions would have you do. And even for the aged and institutionalized, early treatment keeps COVID’s IFR below 1%.

So here’s what it comes down to: Risk vs. Reward. We’ve seen that outcomes (reward) with early treatment are at least as good, and probably better than, the vax-and-hope method. Meanwhile, all of the early treatment protocols have been found to present negligible risk to COVID patients, but more importantly, ZERO risk to people who don’t currently have COVID, since they’re not taking drugs for a condition they don’t have. The vaccines, on the other hand, are administered to perfectly healthy people, including still-developing children and teenagers, presenting all of them with recognized, but unquantified, short-term risks, along with completely unknown long-term risks.

This choice—pre-emptive vax vs. safe, early treatment when infected—is like the choice between dropping a five-spot on Tom Brady in the Super Bowl, and dropping your Tesla keys into a poker pot before the cards have been dealt. In the stats world, and in the casino, we call this a no-brainer.

Or, as Dirty Harry would say, “Before you take that shot, you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘Do I feel lucky?’”

1. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2787643

2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924857920304258

3. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.08.21260210v1