How math works: Why you're wrong about vaccines

Hello, humorous hacks of Hive! It's your old frenemy, Hugh Telmi, back again to enter-taint you! You're reading these words right now because I haven't gotten the time, energy, and ideas all together at the same time to make a comedy video yet, but we're getting there, slowly.

Yes, you heard me right, video, in italics. If you think I'm funny now, just imagine how much funnier I will be when you can see my ugly mug!

Are you quivering with anticipation yet? Good, now to let you down real slow...

I thought about changing the title of this to Dusting off old drafts... because the original draft for this ancient artwork is over 2 years old now. You heard that right too, two years! News cycles move so fast now, it's hard for me to imagine that anything lasts for 2 years. When I saw 2 year old drafts sitting around my account, I thought I must have been hacked.

"Have I even been here for 2 years?", I wondered aloud.

"Yes, it's been at least that long since you took out the garbage!" my girlfriend replied.

It's going to be a little longer, while I sit here and type to figure out what the hell is happening.

So, let's get on with it. The following is what this draft consisted of when I opened it:

The whole world is really polarized right now, and few things highlight that polarization more than The Vaccine 'Debate'.

If you don't know why I put 'Debate' in quotes, you're probably not going to like anything in this post. Turn back now, you've been warned. Or, stick around and fuel your outrage... whatever suits you. I don't want to tell anyone how to live their lives, I do it because it's a compulsion.

For those of you who haven't met me, I'm a bit of a pro-vaccine anti-vaxxer. Sounds on-brand for me, doesn't it?

It's not really as confusing as it sounds, it just means that I recognize there are some vaccines that are REALLY good to get, like the polio vaccine, and then there are vaccines that don't do shit except make pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars, like the flu vaccine.

My recommendation is that people think before they get vaccines. I know, I know, that's a lot of work for most people. Isn't it worth it for your health? Honestly, if you feel it isn't worth it, I'm okay with that. If non-thinkers want to shorten their lives, I think it's the most thoughtful thing they can do.

Back to vaccines...

Specifically, the COVID vaccine. Everybody seems to have an opinion about it, but nobody seems to want to back that opinion up with facts. Okay, I'll grant you that some people use 'facts', but when they're presented out of context, they hide more truth than they illuminate.

This is why it's important to know how math works. The anti-vax alarmists want to tell you about every adverse reaction that ever popped up after a vaccine, and they're right about one thing: there are lots of them. There are millions of people who got the COVID shot and ended up worse off because of it. The context that they fail to mention, is that out of the BILLIONS of people who got the shot, those millions are only a few tenths of percent of the people who got the shots.

So, if you get the shot, there is a very well documented chance that you'll have an adverse reaction. That's what they tell you, and it's true. What they don't tell you, that is also true, is that the chance is about .2%.

That's what the conspiracy people do and don't tell you. Now here's what the pharmaceutical companies do and don't tell you...

They tell you that it's over 80% effective at decreasing your risk of severe illness and death, which is sort of true. They actually have to guess at that number a little bit, because they don't actually know if you would have had a severe or deadly infection without the vaccine. They can make a pretty good guess, because they have tens of millions of data points to compare, but that doesn't really matter to us. What they don't tell you is that you only had about a 5% chance of developing sever or deadly illness in the first place, and their 80% effectiveness only reduces that down to about 1%, so you're actually only 4% less likely to get really sick, if you take the vaccine.

If you're 4% less likely to get sick when you take the vaccine, but only .2% more likely to get sicker from the vaccine, they call that safe and effective.

That's a lot of math, Hugh! What the hell are you trying to do, turn this place into a classroom?

So, what if I am? Laughter is the best medicine, education is the second best medicine. That's 100% true, and I can back it up with math.

As you might imagine, I have more to say about this, but I see we're rapidly approaching 900 words, and I don't want to start testing the limits of anyone's attention span.

I DO want to drop a shout-out to @vincentnijman, who dropped a pretty funny set of knock-knock knock-offs in the COMmunity, and gave me a good chuckle this morning! I also want to do a name drop for @caleb-marvel, who brings a ton of funny to the Leo space, and is totally worth a look.

What have the rest of you done for a laugh?