I’m personally tired of hearing about COVID-19 and the vaccine. It’s everywhere! I’m writing this, not to tell you to get vaccinated or not, but to discuss the issues I see with the way we have approached this particular vaccine. I honestly think it’s time for us to relook the way we are looking at it. We are treating this vaccine completely unlike any other vaccine we have ever had to take.
I think we, as a country, made a huge mistake by allowing this virus to become politicised. We all ran in fear and locked ourselves in our houses because we subscribed to the hysteria we saw on Social Media. The vaccine has polarized us in a way I honestly didn’t expect to ever see. Generally, it has been liberals who have fought against vaccines. Now, it’s conservatives that strongly oppose the idea of getting this one, particular vaccine.
The way we are approaching this vaccine is completely political, and not actually grounded in any sort of truth. We are fighting this one particular vaccine, without fighting any others.
I don’t know your stance on getting the flu vaccine regularly, but you either do, or you don’t. Why? Why are you for or against it? Does your choice have anything to do with anything you’ve seen on Social Media? Does your choice have anything to do with what your friends and family are doing? Does your choice have anything to do with what political party you are a member of?
How about the HPV vaccine? Have your daughters been vaccinated against HPV? Why did you make that decision? Did that have anything to do with anyone else? Some schools have actually mandated that vaccine as well, yet nobody seems to be up-in-arms about a vaccine to protect our children from a Sexually Transmitted Disease. Children we, as parents, assume aren’t having sex. Yet, we lined them up and got them the shot.
Does anyone else see a problem with that way of thinking? Anyone at all?
In 2019-2020, the flu vaccine prevented an estimated 7.5 million cases of influenza (USAFACTS, n.d.). Americans were vaccinated at a rate of 51.8% and, as data continues to be refined, influenza is far less deadly than COVID-19. We saw mortality rates from the flu at 1.8 deaths per 100,000 population (CDC, n.d.). COVID-19 now has a mortality rate of 224.64 deaths per 100,000 population (Johns Hopkins, n.d.), 66.4% of Americans are fully vaccinated from COVID-19 (CDC, n.d.). Based on the alarmingly different mortality rates, it is a good thing we are vaccinating at a greater rate for COVID-19 than for the flu. And, it may be reasonable to expect the numbers of vaccinated to increase once vaccines are approved for younger children.
I still think, even after looking at the actual stats, there is a huge discrepancy in the way we treat this vaccine compared to any other. Less than 2/1000th a percent of the population dies from the flu, yet we vaccinate more than half our population, including infants as young as 6 months. Yet, 2/10ths a percent of the population is dying from COVID-19 and we politicise our resistance to the vaccine.
What’s even more alarming, to me, is that we politicise it the way in which we have, yet ⅔ the population is vaccinated. What are we fighting about? Why?
I have no authority to tell you to vaccinate yourself or your children. I won’t presume to make any choices for you. I will tell you that you are probably looking at it in a way that is incredibly wrong. Stop looking at vaccines from a political standpoint, and start looking at it the same way you look at every other vaccine.
References
CDC. (n.d.). COVID-19 Vaccinations in the United States. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total
CDC. (n.d.). Influenza. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/flu.htm
Johns Hopkins. (n.d.). MORTALITY ANALYSES. https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
USAFACTS. (n.d.). How many Americans get flu shots? USAFACTS. https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-americans-get-flu-shots-vaccine-cdc/
