My opinions on Covid-19

  

Background

SARS-COV-2 is the virus. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - CoronaVirus - #2.
COVID-19 is the disease.
Corona virus is a type of virus. Corona viruses have been around a long time. Most corona viruses are named "the common cold". They usually produce mild symptoms.

Resistance to corona viruses

People who contract a corona virus and get better develop immunity to that particular strain of virus. The body learns how to combat it and never gets sick from it again. This is basic science and history. We cannot rewrite reality. I am not aware of any evidence that adequately explains how the SARS-COV-2 virus is different from other corona viruses in regard to resistance. Therefore if you get it, you cannot get it again. If anyone can explain why this virus is different in this regard, please let me know. I think anyone who already contracted the virus and survived should be treated as if they received a vaccine. They have a similar amount of resistance.

Numbers: 91% of people infected have antibodies after 6 months. If you are in the 9%, you can benefit from the vaccine.
100% of people who got the vaccine had antibodies after 4 months (the longest study so far). Clearly the vaccine is more reliable at producing antibodies. I believe that is due to the quantity of virus material.

Origin of SARS-COV-2

The virus was first discovered in bats in Wuhan China 2013. It was discovered there in humans in 2019. It could have entered the general population from bats because the previous 2 SARS related diseases came to humans that way. Others show evidence that it could have only come from the virus lab that found it. It was not in the wild before that. The researchers in Wuhan were warning people against this possibility but that does not mean it wasn't started there. I don't care enough to worry about how it got here. It's here and now we have to deal with it.

Cause of death

When a person dies, the cause of death is documented, and any existing co-morbidities are also documented. (A co-morbidity is a condition a person has in addition to the cause of death that may have contributed to the death or could be a cause of death on its own in some cases). The cause of death is generally documented as the last thing the person got that "pushed them over the edge" into death.
For instance, my step father died of the flu in the hospital but did not enter the hospital with that condition. He had a heart condition, diabetes, and more recently, pneumonia. Obviously he would most likely not have died of the flu had he not had those co-morbidities, but that does not make the diagnosis incorrect. The flu was the last thing he got that he actually died of.
Some people don't like attributing so many deaths to COVID-19 but that is just the way these events are recorded.
I would love to know the statistics around what percentage of COVID-19 deaths that were without co-morbidities and for those that had them, which ones contributed the most or were most common.
It has been mentioned that obesity, and COPD are common co-morbidities (and therefore contribute to raising the risk for a person).
There was a policy in some organizations to put Covid-19 as the cause of death if the patient had Covid-19 at the point of death regardless of the symptoms. This was controversial but the thinking there was that it was most likely the most recent symptom. It's unlikely that someone gets a heart condition AFTER getting Covid-19, right?
The exception is things like accidents. If someone is hit by a car and they have Covid, it is probably not Covid that killed them. Listing that as a Covid death is probably not correct by I am not an expert at such things.
There may have been some motivation to make the tracking of Covid related deaths more visible by making them the primary cause.

Awareness

Never before have I seen any disease tracked as closely at this one. We do not have good context to compare with other diseases and other causes of death. We may have a good idea how many people died from Covid but do we have a good idea how many people died from heart disease? How about cancer? Why don't we have a running count on how many people died from the flu? Just having more visible information on this particular disease has caused a great deal of angst, in my opinion.

Risk factors

Documented risk factors for death from COVID-19 are
Statistically, 80% of all COVID deaths are in people 65 and older. 90% of deaths are in people older than 45.
My belief about this is that not only are older people more frail, but that older people have more existing risk conditions from the list.
I believe the same about racial minorities and physical disabilities - meaning that it is not a primary factor but a statistical correlation.
Those two groups of people have higher incidence of the other listed factors. I don't have access to the data to prove this, so it is just a theory at this point.

How bad is SARS-COV-2?

It is certainly much worse that the common cold. There can be additional factors beyond what the common cold brings, such as: I have never heard of anyone dying from the common cold but lots of people are dying from Covid-19.

The vaccines

4 kinds of vaccines: Whole virus, protein subunit, viral vector, and Nucleic.
The Pfizer vaccine uses messenger RNA to deliver the antigen producing RNA to our cells.
The Moderna vaccine uses the same process.
The Johnson and Johnson shot is a viral vector shot. General medical knowledge says the side effects of this shot are smaller. This kind of vaccine has a 64% effectiveness against the new variants also.
AstraZeneca shot is similar to the Johnson and Johnson shot, but is not available in the USA.
Novavax makes a shot using the protein subunit vaccination strategy, but that is not available in the USA yet either. It is showing good results on the other variant strains also. Latest news predicts it will be available in Q4 of 2021.
Sinopharm/Sinovac uses the Whole Virus strategy to cause an immune reaction (see above). These are the vaccines used in China.

Wild stories/theories

I have heard unsubstantiated stories and theories about various COVID things.
  1. The vaccines are a way to "thin the herd" and kill people off (Bill Gates anyone?)
  2. The mRNA vaccines modify your DNA so they will turn you into something you don't want to be
    1. Weakened so you are susceptible to other diseases
    2. Prone to Cancer
    3. Monster from the Black lagoon?
  3. Pregnant women and their babies are dying from just one shot
  4. Multiple people have keeled over dead from just one shot
  5. The virus can cause sexual dysfunction in men
  6. The vaccines can cause sexual dysfunction in men
I don't think these stories are representative, predictive, and in many cases true.
I also don't have any proof they are false, so I leave them in the "very rare", unlikely, and unknown categories.
For simplicity I lump them together under a minute risk factor.
Unproved theories can be dangerous because they sway opinion without actual proof.

No so wild stories

  1. There are over 4000 documented cases of people getting Covid-19 AFTER receiving the vaccine (as of June 2021).
  2. Do all the animals die in mRNA animal trials? We don't have evidence of any concern. There is a clarifying article in the references (#12).
  3. The number of deaths from vaccination have gone up 20x in the last year, largely due to the Covid shot.

Politics and more

Unfortunately the decision to get vaccinated has been conflated with politics. Your vaccination decision is used as an indicator of your political views. If you are Democrat you have to get vaccinated and if you are a Trump republican you should not. This kind of correlation can be deadly. I have noticed another correlation between city dwelling and Democratic voting as well as country living being correlated with Republican voting. The priorities of people in the country are different than people in the city for various legitimate reasons. Also the closeness and frequency of contact varies by the density of your living space. It is obviously easier to social distance if there is more space. (see ref 16).

My experience (and bias) late 2020

My estimations

My decision

Updates

July 2021 there were multiple articles about how the incidence of Covid cases dropped BEFORE the vaccines had a chance to work and that the Alpha and Delta variants were supposed to be worse but that prediction didn't pan out. (reference #13)
99.5% of the people dying from Covid are unvaccinated (reference 15). This is not surprising to me, but it may also not apply to me since the majority of people dying from the disease have at least one risk factor.

September 2021: Half of the people I know who got Covid and ended up in the hospital had one of the shots already. I recognize there is probably a bias where more than half of my circle of acquainences had a Covid vaccination, but it's still interesting experience as a bystander.
My son had to get a shot in order to stay in college (even though he already had the virus). I encouraged him to get the J & J shot and he did. He experienced chills at 12 hours, a headache at 24 hours and was back to normal within 48 hours. This makes me consider getting that same shot. I still prefer a traditional vaccine but I might not have a choice eventually.

October 2021: My wife got an anti-body test which showed she sill had antibodies in her system after 11 months. She is being forced to take Covid tests every week by her school (which are always negative of course).
President Biden had a speech (ref #20) pushing schools and most companies require vaccination or fire people.
In New York state they fired a number of health care workers. I have not seen an article that will state an exact number, but it is hundereds of people because at least Erie County suspended 176 employees (See ref #21).
A study confirm that my son's experience is typical (getting chills after getting the shot after geting covid). (#23)
October 2021 we find out more definitively that natural immunity is effective as reducing the risk of re-infection. (#22 and #23) Joy has been saying this for a long time and now people are becoming more open to admiting it is true.
Late 2021 I heard of a sudy showing elevated risk of heart Myocarditis in young men (which would include my son). (ref #25). What is interesting is that Myocarditis is more common after someone actually gets a virus.

In January 2022 I got the J&J shot. Let me tell you why.
  1. The wife of a friend of mine is a nurse teacher and interacts with lots of nurses. She said from her experience, the people with the worst symptoms in the hospital are unvaccintaed.
  2. The wife of another friend works on a Covid ward as a nurse and deals with patients every day. She said in her experience the cases tend to be genetically related. One family will have no symptoms and another family will all die of it, one after the other. She also suggested taking a shot was a good idea.
  3. I am older than other people in my family (over 50) and therefore more a risk.
  4. I am not genetically related to my wife and therefore cannot guarantee I will have the same reaction she had. And, frankly, I was not too thrilled with the reaction she had. I would like to avoid her experience.
  5. A friend of mine told me he did extensive research and believed the shots would not hurt him. He has multiple contacts in the medical field and I trusted his advice (some). After 20+ months of not hearing anything major negative about the shots, plus multiple friends having no side effects (including my son), I thought his conclusion was reasonable (but not conclusive).
  6. The data on outcomes in the hospital seemed compelling. People with 1 or more Covid shot had better outcomes than people with no shots (ref #26 & 27). You could argue the data is rigged or something but I think that is accurate enough to be compelling. This was enough to tilt my feeling towards getting a shot but not enough to "get me off the couch" since all the factors are very small. To this day I believe I could get it or not get it and the decision was minor. While getting the shot I told the technician I didn't really need the shot but I was getting it anyway so I didn't have to keep saying I hadn't got one yet.
  7. The factor that got me "off the couch" was the fact that my workplace decided that all in-person events would require vaccination. I have gone to lots of company events and did not want to be left out this next time so I made the appointment. Due to circumstances, we have not actually had any in person meetings since that decision, so it's a bit ironic.
The only effect I experienced was a strange feeling of large particles flowing through my brain for about 30 minutes. It's strange to think you can feel much of anything INSIDE your brain, but that's what I experienced. I did not get chills and I did not get tired. It was basically a normal day.

Now, for psychological reasons, I am sensitive to anything I feel in my heart and my brain these days. If I get a headache, I wonder if it is releated to the shot. If I get a heart palpitation I wonder if it is related to the shot. I had these things before as well, of course, and I am getting older so I expect them to increse naturally, but I still have the tendency to be sensitive to them due to the relationships ascribed. Oh well.
A friend of mine heard I got the shot and sent me to the "how bad" website to see how much risk I was taking (since apparently) the risk is different per batch due to formulation differences. According to that site, I had a very low risk batch, which is nice. (See ref #28)

Questions

What questions or concerns did I not address? Please let me know so I can enhance this article.

References

  1. WHO technical guidance
  2. Covid conditions
  3. CDC corona virus info
  4. Common cold
  5. can you get the same cold twice?
  6. CDC coronavirus risks
  7. minority health
  8. The book: COVID-19: The Pandemic that Never Should Have Happened and How to Stop the Next One (didn't read)
  9. Vaccine types
  10. Nucleic vaccines
  11. Yale vaccine comparison
  12. mRNA animal trials
  13. NYT delta mysteries
  14. male infertility
  15. the unvaccinated
  16. how news impactes decisions
  17. vaccination after contraction
  18. Novavax progress
  19. Novavax USA
  20. Biden speech
  21. Workers fired
  22. doses the same
  23. Natural immunity
  24. Comparison natural vs vaccination
  25. Heart Myocarditis in young men
  26. Comparison vax vs. non for hospializations and deaths NY Times
  27. Comparison vax vs. non for hospializations and deaths KPC news
  28. How bad is your batch?
  29. Relative risk by age groups