A story about vaccinations, Canadians and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
Hang in there, it will all make sense before we're through...
Since I’m big on simple metaphors to explain complicated situations (pretty much my job description) let’s pretend we’re all stranded in a lifeboat and we have to make it to land, but our journey is going to take a while so we decide to ration our food and water and then wake up one morning and all the food and water is gone (and let’s make the food Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups because it’s my metaphor and I love those) and some selfish fat-ass at the end of the boat is wiping chocolate off his lips and saying the rest of us don’t have a right to tell him what to do.
Here’s where my lifeboat metaphor breaks down because I think we ought to chuck the selfish fat-ass overboard and hope sharks can smell the delicious combination of chocolate and peanut butter that is now treading water.
In real life, we don’t have that option.
Instead, we’re stuck with the people who refuse to wear masks, maintain social distancing and now don’t want to get vaccinated.
So let’s examine all that, shall we?
The history of vaccines and anti-vaxxers
Widespread vaccination became a thing back in the early 1800s after a man named Edward Jenner discovered you could use pus from a cowpox blister to infect somebody which would then protect them against smallpox and here’s a brief explanation (which is all my scant expertise allows) on how that works.
We all encounter thousands of germs every day and our immune system fights them off, but every once in a while we encounter something new and our immune system says “What the hell is that?” assuming immune systems can talk and I really don’t see why you shouldn’t buy this image if you went along with the whole Lifeboat-Peanut-Butter-Cup scenario.
In for a dime, in for a dollar.
So the idea is you get somebody a little sick with something (which is why we often feel like crap after being vaccinated) and our immune system develops antibodies to fight it off and then it will know what to do if it encounters the same germ in the future. Vaccines are medicine’s self-defense course.
That’s about as simple as I can make it and as complicated as I can handle.
But some critics objected to Jenner’s idea on religious grounds, believing that the vaccine was “unchristian” because it came from an animal which makes me wonder how those critics felt about leather shoes and T-bone steaks. It also makes me wonder if something is “unchristian” does that mean it’s OK for Jews and Buddhists because when I look at the list of “unchristian” activities I might like to try, it makes me think of switching teams.
When it comes to religious beliefs, I consider myself a free agent.
Other critics objected to vaccines because they didn’t trust “science” a condition that still exists today which I used as a jumping-off point for the cartoon at the top of this post because some of the same people who don’t trust science, do trust Donald Trump, random strangers on social media and the nut jobs that thought there was a ring of cannibalistic pedophiles operating out of the basement of a pizza parlor that doesn’t actually have a basement.
If you want a little perspective on humanity, try this: Edward Jenner’s first scientific description of vaccination came in 1798 and the last witch burning in Europe took place in 1811.
So while one man was boldly going where no man had gone before, other people still believed in witches and you could say, “Geez, people were so ignorant back then” but if Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi were scheduled to get slow-roasted on the 18th green of the Mar-a-Lago golf course, you know some people would buy tickets and they’d make it a special on the Fox News Channel.
Anyway…
As long as there have been vaccines there have been anti-vaxxers and in 1902 the city of Cambridge (home of you-know-what university) wanted to fight a smallpox outbreak by mandating vaccination and a guy named Henning Jacobsen refused to get vaccinated because it violated his right to be a dumbass (a right enshrined in the Constitution’s Second Amendment) and the case went to the Supreme Court and they ruled that states can enact compulsory laws to protect the public in the event of a communicable disease or someone trying to eat all the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
As is so often the case, people overly-concerned with their rights tend to forget other people have rights as well.
On the other hand…
Take the principle of sacrificing one person’s rights for the common good too far and pretty soon you’re talking eugenics and sterilizing people you don’t want to reproduce so you can have an army of blond-haired, blue-eyed people shouting “Sieg Heil” and invading Poland.
Turns out this “rights” stuff is tricky which is why we have old, out-of-touch people, wearing robes, sitting around thinking about things and often coming to the wrong conclusion (just ask Dred Scott) which isn’t very efficient, but it’s the best system we’ve come up with so far.
Just 210 years ago we were still burning witches, so I guess it’s progress.
Jump forward to the mid-1970s
Back when we were wearing flares and platform shoes (which might justifiably call the public’s judgment into question) there was a controversy over the DTP vaccine (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) and people questioned whether children were suffering neurological conditions after being vaccinated and those people included doctors ( face it, somebody has to graduate last in the class), but a study by the Joint Commission on Vaccination and Immunization (an independent advisory commission in the UK) indicated risks from being vaccinated were very low, a point worth thinking about which we’ll get back to before we’re through.
Now lose the flares and platform shoes and jump forward to the late 1990s
In 1998 a doctor named Andrew Wakefield published a study in The Lancet – a British medical journal – that said there was a connection between autism and the MMR vaccine (measles, mumps and rubella) a study which has since been retracted and debunked because apparently Andy bunked the living shit out of it.
Eventually, Wakefield’s study was found to be “fraught” with ethical, financial and methodological impropriety and in 2010 Wakefield was struck off the UK medical register for misconduct which I’m pretty sure is that ceremony where they break your sword and cut the buttons off your uniform and you have to spend the rest of your life using one hand to hold your pants up so every time you walk into a pub (which it sounds like you’re going to want to do a lot) someone says:
“I knows you…yer the bloke wat put out that study wat was fraught.”
(And yes, that English accent is 100% derived from Dick Van Dyke’s performance in Mary Poppins.)
Since then a number of studies have been done to assess the safety of the MMR vaccine and none of them found a connection between the vaccine and autism.
Apparently Wakefield was one of those guys who was overconfident in his own opinions (he thought he was going to win the Nobel Prize) and I’d say that sounds just a little bit like me, but it’s also a fairly accurate description of 97% of the people who leave comments on Facebook and even though I just pulled that number out of my posterior, I feel confident it’s accurate.
After Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine (and I believe they use the word “practice” because nobody’s perfected it) he went around defending himself and his flawed study and getting “rubes” (a condition that flares up if you haven’t been vaccinated for “rubella”) to support his various ventures and we’re now stuck with a bunch of people who still believe a guy who was shown to be a humongous fraud.
But enough about Donald Trump.
So what are the risks of not getting vaccinated?
According to a website (that appears to be Canadian in origin) it’s wrong to think of anyone who doesn’t get vaccinated as an anti-vaxxer because those people are hardcore and probably won’t change their mind, but the good news is they’re a small minority and the rest are “vaccine hesitant” and should be talked to reasonably which only goes to show you Canadians are way nicer than the rest of us, which now that I think about it isn’t all that high a bar to clear.
As the OPC (Overly-Polite Canadians) point out, our brains are bad at processing complex information and instead rely on “cognitive biases” (shortcuts) in how we perceive information and one of those shortcuts is “confirmation bias” which means we’re more likely to believe something that fits our already existing beliefs and reject anything that contradicts them which might not be rational, but does save time.
So if you’re thinking maybe vaccines are dangerous and you hear Jenny McCarthy say they are, you think: “I knew it” and quit listening to contradictory information even though maybe you shouldn’t be taking medical advice from former Playboy centerfolds and current Masked Singer celebrity panelists.
(Clearly, you should be taking medical advice from former Kansas City Star political cartoonists and current bloggers with a minor drinking problem. Hey, it’s one drink a day so get off my back, even though it sometimes turns into three. You think Jenny McCarthy is perfect?)
Apparently believing stuff that confirms our existing beliefs makes us think we know more than we do about a range of subjects, which I think I just proved with my biased statement about Canadians. (I’m absolutely sure there are assholes in Canada even if they’re only there temporarily and I’m absolutely sure of that because I once went skiing in Banff.)
Moving on.
Some people don’t want to get vaccinated unless it’s 100% safe and as the OPC article pointed out, nothing is 100% safe and that includes flying on airplanes, driving a car and not getting vaccinated.
(Although recent experience proves that if you have an eye operation and have to wear an eyepatch, you can be 100% sure numerous people will make a Pirate Joke so don’t tell me there aren’t any sure bets in Life.)
But except for that Eyepatch-Pirate-Joke exception, pretty much everything else is a gamble and the best you can do is calculate the odds, which in this case would mean comparing the number of people who had an adverse reaction to a vaccine to the number of people who have died from COVID-19 and if you can’t figure that one out, you need a new calculator.
There also something called “omission bias” (apparently our brains are chock-full of biases that screw with the part of our brains that’s logical and rational, but is so small it can’t be seen without the help of the Hubble Telescope) and omission bias gives us the feeling that harm that comes from action is somehow worse than harm that comes from inaction, which means that whenever we face a hard choice, we want to curl up in a ball and do nothing. A reaction that fails to recognize that doing nothing is also a choice with its own set of risks which might be worse than the risks associated with taking action.
Herd immunity
According to the Associated Press, states are now asking the federal government to withhold COVID-19 vaccine doses because they don’t have enough demand for shots which, as you might have guessed, is not a good sign.
About 57% of our adult population (and as always, I use the term “adult” loosely) has received at least one dose of the vaccine, but we need to get to about 70% to achieve herd immunity which can provide indirect protection from infectious disease once enough of us are immune.
So how do we convince another 13% of Americans to get with the program?
Our OPC Friends to the North have a suggestion: change the default. Instead of insisting people get vaccinated, make it harder to not get vaccinated.
Vaccination passports
On more than one occasion Republicans have insisted that individual businesses should decide what works best for them and Republicans believe this with all their hearts right up until an individual business sets a rule they don’t like.
Now that some businesses are saying they just might require a “vaccination passport”(the card they give you that shows you’ve had your shots) some Republicans are having a fit and saying businesses have no right to tell individuals they’re not welcome.
Wait…what happened to all that Individual’s Right to Choose horseshit?
You decide not to get vaccinated and someone else decides you can’t come into their hardware store, restaurant or strip club (hitting hypocritical conservatives where they live) unless you do. I can’t remember where I left my law degree, but I’m under the general impression businesses can set rules for their establishment (like “No shirt, no shoes, no service”) as long as those rules are enforced equally.
And if states have the right to protect the public, how about they say you can’t come back to school or enter a public building unless you get vaccinated?
If you want to skip being vaccinated go right ahead and then go live in a cave, but if you want to be part of the group, follow the group rules.
And don’t eat all the Peanut Butter Cups.