Risk

I spent my working career involved with risk assessment, relative risk and risk cost/benefit matters.  Covid-19 presents all of those issues.  Here's an example.

The FDA recently put a temporary hold on the J&J vaccine due to several reports of serious blood clots in the brain.  According to news reports this was about a 1 in a million occurrence or about once in every million vaccinations.

When trying to assess my own personal risk to covid I made my own calculations.  Maricopa County, where I live, has been reporting its covid data daily and separately reporting hospitalization and mortality data for those in long-term care (LTC).  Maricopa also reports data on these metrics for those 65+, though it provides no further breakdown of subcategories above that age.  Because Maricopa has a population of 4.5 million (which would make it the 26th largest state) its data is statistically significant.

Being 70 places me in a higher risk category though I am in relatively good health while having some other controlled risk factors.

To calculate my risk I did several things:

Made a simplifying assumption that all the LTC data represents those 65+.  It actually does not though the vast majority of those in LTC are 65 and up.  In any event, this assumption probably leads to slightly understating my risk once the assessment is complete.

Maricopa data reveals that for those 65+, and not in LTC, the mortality rate if one contracts covid is 9% and the hospitalization rate 25%.

Next is a little more simplifying.  Since Maricopa does not report mortality and hospitalization for 65-74, 75-84 and 85+ unlike some jurisdictions, and because mortality and hospitalization rates increase significantly for each of these subcategories, I looked at available data from other states and medical research reports.

Doing so, I concluded that my mortality risk in the event of contracting covid was about 3% or 30,000 in a million and that of hospitalization about 9% or 90,000 in a million.  Remember, this compares to 0.001% or 1 in a million risk of a blood clot from J&J.  In other words, my mortality risk if I were to get covid while being unvaccinated is 30,000 times higher than of getting a blood clot from J&J.

Based upon that I concluded that it was reasonable for me to take steps in minimize exposure and to get vaccinated (which I have been) in order to avoid contracting covid since a 3% chance of dying and 9% of ending up in a hospital seemed significant to me.  

It also means that there would have to be a very large potential risk attached to a vaccination to have prompted me to decline the vaccine.  To date, I've seen nothing anywhere near such a risk from vaccine side effects.

Having been vaccinated does not make me invulnerable.  However, my risk factors are greatly reduced.  Post-vaccination my risk of contracting covid from an interaction that pre-vaccination would have led to my infection has now been reduced more than 95%.  Further if I were to get covid my risk of hospitalization has decreased by 90% and that of dying by more than 95%.  I sure hope my calculations are correct!

The bottom line is that having been vaccinated I am willing to put myself in more situations where I might have a potential exposure because the likelihood of infection is very small and the likelihood of a bad outcome even smaller.  The benefit to me of more interaction with people now outweighs the risk of contracting the disease.