Odds in favor of getting the COVID-19 shot

Doctors and nurses have cajoled and pleaded, talking about how they are watching patients struggle to breathe before they ultimately go on a ventilator and die. The governor has offered cash incentives and a lottery and alluded to the possibility of going back to lockdown-style measures much more restrictive than masking up indoors as the highly contagious delta variant takes hold and hospital intensive care units fill up.

Despite these efforts and many others, an estimated 500,000 New Mexicans who are eligible to get vaccinated against COVID-19 have chosen not to do so.

Let’s hope the Food and Drug Administration’s long-awaited full-use authorization for Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccination will make a difference.

Because there were nearly 6,000 new COVID cases in New Mexico last week and 33 more deaths.

The reasons for vaccine holdouts are many, ranging from those who don’t believe the virus will affect them to those who don’t think the vaccine works all that well to those with fringe notions such as it can alter your DNA and/or cause you to become magnetic.

And, of course, many have voiced concern over the speed with which it was developed and possible side effects, pointing to the fact that — until last week — the FDA had only given the vaccine emergency use approval.

In New Mexico, 67.2% of residents ages 18 and older are fully vaccinated, but African Americans and Hispanics lag significantly behind non-Hispanic whites. There is geographic disparity as well, as counties in southeastern New Mexico (43 percent in Curry County, 34 percent in Roosevelt County) have far lower vaccination rates than Bernalillo, Santa Fe, Sandoval and Los Alamos counties. That’s frightening when you consider that nationally, more than 660,000 people have died of COVID-19 and the death toll in New Mexico is over 4,500.

Finally, while much has been made of “breakthrough” infections among vaccinated people, it’s important to recognize that a very high percentage of patients who require intensive care and ventilators are unvaccinated. It’s not unusual for every patient in a hospital ICU to fit that description. And the most important purpose of a vaccine is to keep you from getting really sick and dying.

But even for mild cases, some mathematical context is useful.

New Mexico recently reported that 19% of new COVID cases were in fully vaccinated people, compared with 81% in unvaccinated people. Those are pretty good odds in favor of getting the shot.

And that’s what has to happen if we hope to vanquish, or at least suppress, this virus by year’s end.

— Albuquerque Journal