I am very far from being an anti-vaxxer. I’ve vaccinated all three of my children for all their routine shots so far. I’ve gotten my flu shot most years in the recent past. But today I’d like to explain why I made the personal decision to not vaccinate myself against COVID-19.
I am also very far from being susceptible to conspiracy theories. My decision not to get vaccinated is not motivated by misinformation or the belief in any conspiracies whatsoever. In my opinion, my decision is not controversial. But unfortunately, like everything related to COVID, the media has hyper charged this topic to create division, outrage and drama. They would like you to think that anyone who is not 100% enthusiastic about getting their COVID vaccine is 1. Believing a conspiracy theory 2. Is extremely selfish 3. The sole reason that the pandemic won’t end.
First I’ll explain my risks related to COVID. Then I’ll carefully elaborate my reservations about the current vaccines being offered. These reservations are not universal and shouldn’t be construed as not supporting the idea of a COVID vaccine in general. I do think it’s amazing that we have these vaccines and they will reduce countless hospitalizations and deaths. I also think that for a large portion of the population, taking the vaccine is a no brainer, however it isn’t for everyone. My analysis supported by facts and data from our own government health authorities will show that in my case, the costs may not outweigh the risks.
Finally I’ll cover the argument that: regardless of the cost/benefit to myself, I should be vaccinated for the greater good of society. I’ve struggled a lot with this question as it could easily sway the equation for me if the data improved. But the indications I am seeing so far, make this argument quite weak for myself as an individual.
My COVID-Related Risks
Me: I’m a 32 year-old male, with no comorbidities and have a healthy BMI of 19.5. I exercise regularly and eat what is probably considered a better than average diet. I don’t smoke and I only drink casually.
The 30-39 demographic group in Canada
As of June 25, 2021 there have been 231,116 confirmed cases of COVID in my demographic group since the pandemic started which contributed to 137 deaths. (Source: Government of Canada daily epidemiology summary).
It appears we have surpassed the peak of cases for 2021 so we should see less deaths for the remainder of the year. If we anticipate that the deaths in my demographic go up slightly to 150 then we can surmise that 75 people per year died of COVID in the 30-39 demographic between 2020 and 2021. This would represent approximately 1.4 deaths per 100,000 (based on an estimated population of 5.3M in this demographic from Statistic Canada in 2021).
For my age group, the deaths so far have been pretty equal among the sexes so there have been approximately 37.5 deaths in males per year from COVID in the 30-39 age group. The incidence rate is still 1.4 deaths per 100,000.
Many have believed that I did not fear COVID enough or take the disease serious enough during the pandemic but my numbers will clearly show that I really have much bigger problems to worry about.
To put the projected 37.5 deaths per year in perspective let’s look at the leading causes of death for my demographic group according to Statistic Canada (Source: Stats Can Report of leading causes of death by age from 2015-2019)
From 2015-2019, the 30-39, male population of Canada experienced the following:
Between 692-1256 deaths per year due to accidents (28-50 per 100,000).
Between 450-513 deaths per year due to suicides (18-20 per 100,000).
Between 70-100 deaths per year due to homicide (2.2-2.7 per 100,000).
Between 15-26 deaths per year due to the flu (0.6-1 per 100,000).
*Incident rate is based on an average male population of approximately 2.5M in this age group between 2015-19 according to Statistics Canada.
So, compared to COVID I have a much greater chance of dying in an accident (20-35x more) or from suicide (14x more). I am also almost twice as likely to get murdered. My risk of dying from the seasonal flu is slightly lower.
My context becomes even more striking when I take into account comorbidities. The overwhelming majority of deaths in Canada in all age groups have been in people with at least one comorbidity. To come to this conclusion I have two sources.
Alberta Health is the only provincial health authority disclosing complete comorbidity data on COVID but they present a clear picture. As of June 25, 2021 only 73 or 3.2% of the province's 2,295 deaths have been in people with no comorbidities (i.e. cancer, obesity, heart problem etc.). It’s important to note that old age is not a comorbidity. So many of the 73 deaths were likely healthy seniors in the 70-80 range as they were at a high risk of COVID regardless of comorbidity. (Source: Alberta Health)
Statistic Canada released a report in November, 2020 examining the relationship between COVID outcomes and pre-existing chronic health conditions. They studied just the first 9,500 deaths in Canada (the number is now over 25,000) but it paints a good picture of how prevalent comorbidities were during the early peak of the pandemic. They calculated that 90% of the first 9,500 deaths occurred in people with at least one comorbidity. And that even the 10% of deaths that occurred in people with no comorbitites, they almost all occurred in the senior populations. They stated the following in their report: “Healthy young adults, adolescents and children who contracted the virus have been the least likely to develop severe complications from COVID-19, including death. In fact, 100% of the COVID-involved deaths of Canadians under the age of 45 as of July 31 had at least one other disease or condition certified on the medical certificate of death”. (Source: Statistics Canada)
That last statement is worth really contemplating. In the first 9,500 deaths in our country there were ZERO occurrences in a healthy person under 45. There is no reason to assume that these percentages would change drastically as the pandemic progressed.
So using these facts and analysis, I can conclude that, based on my lack of comorbidities, my risk of dying from COVID is not 1.4/100,000 people but likely a fraction of that number. But let’s be conservative and say that in the 30-39 demographic with no comorbidities, the occurrence of death rate reduces by approximately 70% and is 0.4/100,000 people. I will make another assumption; that the three other causes of death I am concerned with (accidents, suicide and homicide) don’t correlate strongly with comorbitities. In other words, my chances of dying from those likely do not change based too much on my health profile.
With an estimate death rate of 0.4/100,000 people, my chances of dying from an accident is between 70-130 times higher than COVID. My chances of dying from suicide is approximately 45-50 times higher and from homicide it’s 5-7 times higher.
To put this another way, I am 50x more of a danger to myself than COVID is. But it doesn’t necessarily mean I shouldn’t get a vaccine. Like I said earlier, I’ve gotten the flu shot before and I face an even smaller risk of that seasonal illness. I am open to any medical products or advice that will reduce my overall risk of death and improve my health. But it must not create more risk than it is reducing. I’ll talk about that next.
My Vaccine Risks
I’ll start this part by saying something pretty simple and obvious but which has become so incredibly taboo: vaccines, like nearly all medical procedures or medicine, have risks associated with them.
If there were no risks, we wouldn’t need to closely test these products and closely follow them. We even have an entire department dedicated to monitoring these risks in Canada. The Canadian Adverse Events Following Immunization Surveillance System (CAEFISS) has been tracking and monitoring adverse events to vaccines for over 10 years.
The presence of risks doesn’t mean vaccines are bad. It just means we need to examine them against the disease or problem they are trying to solve.
So what are the risks? (Source: Goverment of Canada COVID Vaccine Adverse Events report from June 25, 2021)
So far the country has administered 31M doses of COVID vaccines and there have been 7,926 adverse events (30/100,000 shots) with 1,719 of these events being considered serious (6.5 per 100,000). The rest were considered minor (described by Health Canada as a rash, soreness or slight fever among others).
I believe the overall numbers might be underrepresented because I know multiple people who have had an adverse event that would have been considered minor but likely never filed a report with their doctor and handled the symptoms at home (can you think of someone that had abnormal soreness on the arm or a fever and didn’t report it officially?)
But the serious events are likely pretty accurate as these would be hard to miss. My only skepticism here (this might be just my perception) is there may be some reservations among doctors to accurately report all events as there has been some odd reprimanding behaviours in Canada for legitimate experts who question the safety of vaccines. I’m not saying I agree with any of these doctors but I find it very troubling that many doctors have been disciplined or fired for valid arguments that they are perfectly qualified and educated to make (eg. Google Dr. Francis Christian, University of Saskatchewan and Dr. Byram Bridle, University of Guelph for some of the most recent cases of experts facing serious backlash for simply voicing their concerns).
If I was a doctor or health professional in Canada and I had a legitimate concern regarding these vaccines I might be hesitant to speak up. It doesn’t mean there are concerns present but I’m just lacking the confidence that doctors today are free to question mainstream narratives.
But anyways, back to the actual stats and facts as they are. I wanted to put the current adverse events numbers in perspective so I looked up historical data from the CAEFISS. The most recent long-term report tracked all adverse events from all vaccines administered in the country from 2012-2016. During this time the country administered approximately 25M vaccines per year. Every year the numbers were pretty consistent. Adverse events occurred in 12-13 per 100,000 shots and the serious events rate was 1.1 per 100,000. (Source: CAEFISS report 2012-2016)
2012-2016 All Vaccines Adverse Event Rate: 12-13/100,000
2021 COVID Vaccine Adverse Event Rate: 30/100,000
2012-2016 All Vaccines Serious Adverse Event Rate:1.1/100,000
2021 COVID Vaccine Serious Adverse Event Rate:6.5/100,000
Since the adverse events rate from the multiple prior years presented was pretty consistent and the total number of doses given each year is pretty close to the total number of doses for COVID vaccines given this year, this makes for a fair comparison.
My interpretation of this data tells me that the total adverse events rate is 2.5 times higher with the COVID vaccine than the expected average in a year. And the serious adverse events rate is 6 times higher. The fact that most COVID vaccines right now require two doses doesn’t help these numbers.
The most recent CAEFISS report indicates that 119 deaths have been observed following a COVID vaccine. In the language they use, they seem very biased and opposed to declaring that any single one of them is definitely caused by the vaccine. Obviously out of fear of sparking any vaccine hesitancy. But they indicate that from the total, 50 are likely unlinked to the COVID vaccines. Most of the rest are either listed as “under investigation” or “not enough information”.
I am making the conservative assumption that at least 69 of these deaths are linked to the vaccine (119 minus the 50 that are ruled out).
As the data is evolving on this I am observing three things:
It appears based on the recent report from CAEFISS, that as opposed to COVID which sees more complications in the older age groups, adverse events seem to occur more in the younger age groups up to the point of this reports (eg. Thus far, there have been more adverse events reported in the 30-39 age group than in the 70-79 age group even though at the time of this report most 30-39 year-olds would not have received their second dose).
The report is also only including data up to June 18 at which point the majority of second doses across the country had not been given yet. In other countries, second doses have been linked pretty widely as producing more adverse events than the first dose.
We are just starting to be aware of the prevalence of myocarditis as an associated adverse event to these vaccines. CAEFISS has acknowledged that there is a link and that they are following it closely. From my research, myocarditis is not something doctors are normally on the lookout for, when it comes to vaccines adverse events. So the numbers here may go up as more are aware to look out for it. The myocarditis risk so far has been very disproportionately observed in male children and young adults (a demographic group I find myself part of). This report from the British Medical Journal (BMJ) provides a good summary of the evolving risks associated with myocarditis. In it, Dr. Vinay Prasad, a haematologist-oncologist and associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco, told The BMJ “There is a clear and large safety signal in young men and a clear but small signal in young women as well.” In the report he states that we may have to look at providing a smaller dosage to young males.
These points tell me that:
We will likely see a slightly higher incident rate of serious adverse events and deaths in the coming months.
The current occurrence rate per 100,000 of adverse events and deaths is either accurate for my age group or my age group’s incident rate is actually higher than the current average.
But for this analysis I will stick with 69 deaths from 31M doses. These numbers show that my chance of death from a COVID vaccine would be 0.22/100,000 doses. If everyone in my age group gets 2 doses this year then the death rate would be 0.44/100,000 people (0.22x2). Slightly higher than the annual incident rate for meningitis deaths in my age group (approximately 0.2-0.3 deaths per 100,000). And slightly higher than my calculated risk of dying from COVID.
Again this is a microscopic risk compared to almost every other cause of death affecting my demographic profile. But compared to my microscopic risk of dying from COVID they are quite similar. One could even make the argument that based on my healthy risk profile, I assume more risks with the vaccine. Especially if the myocarditis risk for young males ends up more severe as the data evolves. And especially if the vaccine ends up being much less effective than originally thought. At a 95% effective rate, the vaccine course does not entirely eliminate my risk of COVID, while still presenting me with an equal or higher additional risk. At a lower effective rate, then the costs of the vaccines will easily outweigh the benefits.
These numbers alone likely are not enough to convince me one way or another to get vaccinated. The incident rate of complications is still low regardless of perspective, however we still don’t know why the incident rate is multiple times higher than in a regular year. And that’s something that needs to be addressed.
What about COVID complications?
I often hear the argument that we can’t just look at deaths to analyse something like this, because many people survive COVID but suffer long-term health effects. But we can also say the same for other causes of deaths. As well as for the vaccine-related serious adverse events that don’t result in death. I’m sure that many of the people who suffered a serious adverse event without dying are experiencing long-term health effects as well.
When it comes to accidents, there are multiple times more people that don’t die from one but suffer long-term injuries. A Transport Canada report detailing auto accidents in 2018 found that for every 1 auto related death that year, there were 5 serious injuries. (Source). I’m sure many people who survive a bout with suicide or an attempted murder suffer long-term as well.
What all this means is that as a healthy young adult, my risk of developing any long-term complications from COVID are much smaller compared to my risk of developing complications following a car accident, failed suicide attempt or after surviving an attempted murder.
So in conclusion, we only have hard data for all these causes when it comes to deaths. That is why I am using incidents of deaths as my primary indicator for my analysis and calculations of risks. Also, my data and findings so far tell me that, based on my age and health, my risks of complications from COVID are almost as small as my risk of death.
So why am I not vaccinated?
As I said earlier, my short term risks of dying from COVID or this vaccine are vanishingly small but seem to tilt the scale towards passing on a vaccine at this time.
I’ve learned in my life when it comes to all tough decisions there are three things we need to consider.
What we know
What we don’t know
What we don’t know that we don’t know
I am not only making my decision based on what we know (current risks from COVID and the vaccine). I’m also making my decision based on what we don’t know (higher serious adverse incident rate as more second doses are given) as well as what we don’t know that we don’t know (risks we don’t even know that exist yet).
If my short term risk analysis concluded clearly that I benefited from the vaccine, I would be willing to accept the very small risk of potential long-term issues we don’t know about yet. But, as I’ve outlined, that’s not the case. I don’t think there are long-term risks but no one can know with absolute certainty.
Here are some of the questions I will be following closely regarding the vaccines in the coming months:
Why are there multiple times more serious adverse events per dose from these vaccines compared to every other vaccine that has been in circulation before? I’m not trying to be controversial with this question, but genuinely curious. Maybe it can be explained and accepted as a consequence of a vaccine for a virus that is very hard to beat. Or as a necessary consequence of this new game-changing mRNA vaccine technology. But we need to understand why this vaccine is different and properly assess the risks based on individual factors.
Most health authorities have acknowledged a link between myocarditis and the vaccines but I haven’t read if anyone has determined what specifically is inducing it. I think once we know that, it will provide more reassurance.
What about my community?
The last argument I’ll cover is that I should be vaccinated to protect my community. And for this one I’d be willing to accept some minor additional risk if the evidence could show me overwhelmingly that my vaccination status would help my community.
But it appears that the vaccine is not as effective at stopping the spread as scientists would have liked. Especially with the delta variant (formerly known as the Indian variant).
The most recent stats out of Israel show that the most vaccinated country in the World is seeing a surge in cases and 50% of new cases occurred in fully vaccinated people. They are indicating that the delta variant is evading immunization. This is concerning as the prevailing narrative is that the delta variant will shortly be the dominant strain in every country.
Another example is Scotland who is also a World leader in vaccination. With over 50% of their population fully vaccinated (70% partially), they saw their highest daily case count of the pandemic on June 29. One third of their hospitalizations in the most recent wave are vaccinated individuals. According to the recent stats, admissions for the 60 to 69-year-old cohort are up almost fivefold in five weeks, despite 100 per cent of them receiving their first jab.
Fortunately, even if the vaccine might not prevent people from spreading the virus, most studies and authorities are indicating that the vaccine is effective at reducing the number of serious outcomes and deaths from the virus even with the prevalence of variants. This will be good news if true, when our governments finally accept that we will have to just live with COVID as a society.
If the numbers continue to show that the vaccines are not stopping the spread but simply reducing severe outcomes, then I (or anyone) do not have a moral community obligation in getting vaccinated. Especially if my demographic and health profile indicates that I assume more risks with the vaccine.
I also never attend large indoor gatherings, do not work in a high risk setting and don’t have any close contacts that are immunocompromised.
Conclusion
I am not firm on my decision. I may elect to get vaccinated in the coming months or maybe next year but it will be a personal choice primarily based on my risk analysis.
Dr. Prasad, the epidemiology professor from the University of California said in his British Medical Journal statement: “Vaccination always serves two purposes, firstly to benefit the person who gets it and secondly to benefit others. We are willing to do things for the second purpose but not if they are a net harm to individuals.”
So until the benefits of being vaccinated are clear to someone individually, we cannot force it on them for the good of the community regardless if that argument holds water. The medical community and governments appear to be using questionable coercive tactics that would be considered unethical by historical standards. Especially if the data shows that people can still transmit the virus if they are vaccinated.
At this point it appears that a major motivated factor for many is driven by social acceptance and not necessarily for personal health or moral reasons. Most bioethicists would conclude that this could be a problem. It could be a catastrophic problem if there turns out to be larger risks than currently presented.
It’s one thing if someone assumes a risk based on a personal decision. But it’s very troubling to reconcile a negative outcome from a vaccine that someone may have been coerced into receiving (directly or indirectly). In my opinion, we are seeing indirect coercion by authorities anytime they try to implement social rules (i.e. to go to a restaurant or live event) involving vaccine status. Although I don’t agree with vaccine passports as they will be a nightmare even for the vaccinated and turn out to not be effective in the case of COVID, there are precedents for vaccine requirements for international travel. But there is no precedent, nor justification for applying vaccine status rules for intra-country travel as well as for participating socially within your own country. Public health authorities are taking a huge chance here. If it is determined down the road that they were just a little bit misleading on the risks, it will be exaggerated and tarnish trust in public health for decades. It could also boost the anti-vaccination movement like nothing else before.
The anti-vaccination movement is already benefiting from the subtle direct and indirect public health messaging on vaccines so far. The 25-30% of the Canadian population who may have valid reservations about this particular vaccine are being lumped into the tiny percentage of the population who oppose all vaccines. By labelling a COVID-specific vaccine skeptic as a universal “anti-vaxxer” we may very well turn them into one as that is the only group left willing to listen or accept them. By indirect message from health authorities, I mean that from their standpoint, there is no room for me to be correct in my reservations. The only explanation for my lack of desire to be vaccinated is that I'm not informed enough on the benefits or I am too blind to see them. In some cases that could be argued but there must be room for the possibility that I may be right. Health authorities have to accept that for some, the cost/benefit analysis of vaccination right now is not overwhelmingly obvious. Especially due to the fact that we are using a revolutionary new type of vaccine that was only first used on humans less than a year ago. They need to move away from the divisive language they are using and the rules they are applying that are driving people to pass immediate judgement to anyone who is not vaccinated yet.
This debate is getting even more important now that we have started vaccinating children. I think one could argue that for healthy children at least, we risk making an enormous mistake if we don’t allow the proper analysis of risks/benefits for this group.
I am open for discussion, debate and convincing on any topic I discussed in this essay. If you think I misrepresented something. If you think I exaggerated something. If you think I misunderstood something or made a mistake in calculations. If you think I used an incorrect or inaccurate source. PLEASE TELL ME. But tell me specifically. I won’t respond if someone just tells me I’m wrong without specifying where.
Don’t hesitate to ask if you would like a clearer or more direct link to any information I provided.