As I write this more than the equivalent of a 9\/11 catastrophe happened yesterday (12\/10). It\u2019s horrible and it\u2019s going to get worse. The head of the CDC predicts this level of deaths for the next 60-90 days and even the conservative model used by the IHME says it is likely we will have more than 500,000 deaths in the United States by April 1. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, there is light at the end of this dark, dark tunnel: we are about to roll out a massive vaccination effort based on what can only be described as one of the greatest triumphs of modern science. We have two vaccines that are based on a new technique that will be applicable to many viruses, not just SAR-Covid 19. If widely adopted, these (and other vaccines that are coming soon) will stop the horror. Granted not fast enough, but it will happen and could (should?) be completed by the end of the 3rd or very early in the 4th quarter of 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unless people don\u2019t get it. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that surveys show many people will be reluctant to get the vaccine. Yes, it seems that the vaccine will probably make you feel awfully crappy for 48 hours after the second shot, but that isn\u2019t the only problem. People worry about really bad<\/em> things happening because of the vaccine. But the problem is that it is hard for people to understand that random ^%$& happens a lot. They say: \u201cOh my friend\u2019s father got this vaccine and had a stroke two days later.\u201d Or, I just saw on the news that some healthy 35 year old had a stroke a week after getting the vaccine.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They confuse correlation with causation. Why? Well unfortunately people of all ages get strokes and if you are vaccinating millions of people some of them will get strokes within a few days of getting the vaccine. How many? We can actually calculate roughly how many! From https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC3250269\/: \u201cAmong adults ages 35 to 44, the incidence of stroke is 30 to 120 of 100,000 per year, and for those ages 65 to 74, the incidence is 670 to 970 of 100,000 per year over 75 years\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if we use these numbers and take the midpoint for people 35-44, about 75 people per 100,000 who are 35-44 will have a stroke in a year.  <\/em>There are about 45 million people 35-44 in the United States. That means there will be about 75*(45million\/100,000) = 33,750 strokes in people between 35-44 in the United States or almost 100 a day. These strokes have nothing to do with a person getting a vaccine. <\/em>And the rate of strokes in people over 75 is about 10 times higher. Because there are about 35 million people over 75 in the United States, we would expect about (820*35million\/100,000) or about 800 strokes a day that have nothing to do with a vaccine<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So please, please keep in mind when hearing anecdotes about side effects from these miracle vaccines that bad ^&%$ happens randomly a lot.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to end by showing you a table for background rates on a lot of bad ^%&$ you might see as being \u201ccaused\u201d by these vaccines-even terrible ones like death<\/em>. Every time you hear an anecdote about some bad side effect after a Covid 19 vaccine please<\/em> think about this table (taken from:https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2861912\/<\/a>) . For example, within one week after vaccinating 10,000,000 people, you will likely have around 98 people keel over and die for no apparent reason and if all of them were pregnant women, almost 27,800 miscarriages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Predicted numbers of coincident, temporally associated events after a single dose of a hypothetical vaccine, based upon background incidence rates<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n