Ron writes: “85% of fully vaccinated staff and residents at the Willington (sic) Care Centre in Burnaby, BC tested positive for COVID. There were 13 deaths according to news reports on October 21, 2021”
Perhaps the necessity of booster shots should have been brought to his attention:
https://www.healthing.ca/news/deadly-outbreak-at-b-c-care-home-shows-booster-shots-needed/
Unfortunately, no vaccine is 100% effective and when an extraordinarily wily opponent like the COVID virus is involved the situation is even more fraught; therefore one will always find cases where vaccinated people have been infected. All this tragic event mentioned shows us is: Get your booster shots as soon as you can!
We are also told: “Unfortunately there are many, many more examples of the complete failure of these vaccines to protect us from harm and death. Perhaps it would be useful to share the peer reviewed studies that you are using to show the effectiveness of the COVID jabs in preventing transmission?”
This is really a rather amazing statement!
Anyone unaware of the many, many peer-reviewed studies showing the effectiveness of the vaccines in question has quite clearly not bothered to look, because this information is very readily available.
Here are a few links to information addressing the question, there are many, many more for anyone who wants to pursue the matter:
1) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/effectiveness/work.html
2) https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-vaccine/art-20484859
3) https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2108891
No doubt there are indeed “many, many” examples of the supposed “complete failure” of these vaccines, and these numbers are indeed impressive if one only looks at the numbers in isolation. However, when one calculates these numbers as a percentage of the total number (billions) of vaccines administered globally, the picture changes dramatically.
We have all heard of fatalities due to commercial aeroplane accidents and may even know someone who lost his/her life in such an event. The numbers are alarming, until we realize that one would have to fly for 16 000 years, 8 hours a day, to have a 100% chance of dying in an aircraft accident.
This is comparable to the situation under discussion.
Academic research about vaccine successes and failures are readily available and there is no excuse for ignorance about this. All allegations about the “many, many” vaccine failures I have come across in the popular press rest on anecdotal evidence.
The plural of anecdote isn’t data.
Leon Retief
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
