How to talk to mRNA fanatics

Someone I know who got vaccinated and regrets it is stuck arguing about Covid jabs with people in his (very woke) workplace. He asked for help. Here's what I told him.

Hard-core Covid vaccine advocates haven’t given up yet.

Fewer Americans are receiving mRNA boosters this fall than ever before. In Washington state, jabs are down about 25 percent from 2023. In red states, Covid shots barely exist anymore. Barely 5 percent of Floridians have had a 2024 booster.

Still, mRNA fanatics won’t quit. Even if they aren’t getting jabbed , they insist the shots worked as advertised. And they always - always - rely on The Chart. A person I know who initially trusted the jabs but has since seen the light asked me for help in a fight over The Chart this week.

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(If this morning’s heartfelt appeal got you thinking about signing up, you can right now! And if didn’t… you can still sign up.)

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You know The Chart. I’m not going to post it here, but it purportedly shows much higher death Covid rates among the unvaccinated than the jabbed throughout 2021. (The Chart NEVER shows raw numbers of deaths, just rates.)

Look at The Chart! the believers say. The Chart is Science with a capital S. The Chart is Numbers with a capital N.

You can’t argue with The Chart!

Well, yes, you can. The Chart is badly flawed because of a problem in epidemiology called “healthy vaccinee bias.” (More about healthy vaccinee bias here.¹)

But mentioning healthy vaccinee bias can be frustrating. It requires some knowledge of the papers that discuss it. (Prove it! Oh, you can’t!) It’s fighting about data at a granular level.

Worst of all, it sounds like an excuse.

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I wanted to offer a different way to debate The Chart.

A more holistic approach, if you like. It concedes some ground to the fanatics without giving up the key issue. It’s short and punchy and, I hope, relatively easy to follow - 14 texts, plus one chart, of Covid deaths from Vermont, which you can find here (down the linked page). Yep, the fanatics have a chart, now skeptics have a chart too.

Best of all, it’s true.

Here goes:

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(Yes, this is how I spend my time.)

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Of course, even getting into this debate is conceding ground to mRNA fanatics.

After all, the issue of whether the mRNA jabs worked against deaths in vulnerable people is separate from the questions of whether they were safe; made sense for younger people; should have been mandated for anyone; and worked better than traditional inactivated-virus vaccines.

Still, I think it’s important to meet these folks on their own ground rather than conceding an argument they make that is at best vastly overstated.

Hope this helps the next time you get stuck with a cousin or neighbor or coworker² who insists, But they did work! They reduced deaths!

Meanwhile, if you missed - or skipped - my thanks and appeal this morning, it’s here. I hope you’ll read it and subscribe!

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(Or just subscribe - that also works.)

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1. Healthy vaccinee bias comes in several forms. For Covid the key bias came because doctors avoid vaccinating people with just weeks or months to live. The shots may be uncomfortable and probably won’t produce much immune response anyway.

In a highly vaccinated group, many of the unvaccinated will be these deeply ill patients. And older Americans were highly vaccinated against Covid in 2021. About 95 percent of Americans over 65 received at least one jab. The fact the remaining 5 percent died at higher rates from Covid than the vaccinated doesn’t mean the shots would have saved them - it suggests that many were too sick even to get them.

2. Mostly a problem if you work in academia.