Millions of Canadians would be grateful if anyone could send vaccines to Canada. Image by pixundfertig.
There are very few aspects about my homeland that I miss, but in 2021 folks living in the U.S. are lucky for one yuge reason: They have more than enough COVID-19 vaccines. Although the interests of Big Pharma typically conflict with the ideal of a healthy world population, every hundred years or so it’s nice to have them in your corner for dramatic public health concerns.* Trudeau realized this in 2020, and now rather than ignoring their lobbying, he seems to have gone too far in the other direction by apparently dropping a meaningful pharmacare program that includes cuts to wasteful spending on drugs.
Meanwhile, in the “United” States, although the nation as a whole is experiencing phenomenal progress in vaccination (compared with most of the world), they are also hitting a brick wall due not to supply, but to “vaccine hesitancy”. Especially since a large portion of the U.S. population still appears unmotivated to be vaccinated, we’ve been wishing that Joe would send vaccines to Canada. Now it appears he will indeed be sending more.
* In our grand utopian future, Big Pharma will not actually be a prerequisite to vaccine production.
We all make mistakes
I have a confession. There was a period in the 1990s when somebody had, for several years, turned me against vaccination. Why did I believe her? She was a mentor and she had the gravitas of an authority figure in my life. She cited a (now discredited) doctor who warned about a supposed correlation between vaccines and a particular affliction. In my eagerness to absorb ideas from her, I overlooked the basic logical fallacy of correlation implying causation. She also mentioned that her two children had not been vaccinated — and hey, they turned out just fine. It was as simple as that.
At the time, my brain only had distant memories of the tools given to me by high school science teachers. I lacked an education / training in applying my critical thinking skills to scientific research. The lay public may believe they understand a published research study through reading the abstract, but interpreting the science usually involves layer upon layer of depth. Repeating the slogan “Question authority” led me nowhere, and it hasn’t led the anti-mask, anti-vaccine crowd any closer to truth either.
Not at all surprisingly, the woman who indoctrinated me was a prominent figure in the “natural health” community. In 2020, anti-vaccination propaganda flourished among “wellness influencers” (aka yoga capitalists) and other New Age promoters of self-worship. Conspirituality became mainstream, with wellness influencers and QAnon acolytes feeding off of each other to gain followers. This is only one of many reasons for the following phenomenon:
This chart by Statista shows the share of the population unwilling to take a Covid-19 vaccine in selected countries in 2020. At least Canadians appear not to be as stupid and selfish as their counterparts in the nation below them.
Hesitancy versus Heedlessness
Is it that every individual not eager to be vaccinated is a believer of harebrained conspiracy theories? Of course not. Reasons not motivated by politics include apathy, laziness, fears based on incomplete communication of the science, or simply a failure to grasp the gravity of letting the virus continue. But if you want to try arguing against the current vaccines based purely on scientific evidence, you don’t have much ground to stand on after a risk-benefit analysis.
Right now, hesitancy due to lack of perspective is exemplified by the fear of blood clots associated with Vaxzevria, the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca. Is the administration of Vaxzevria associated with an increased risk of thrombotic events? Nope. A paper published in a prominent toxicology journal in April of 2021 sums up the current scientific consensus:
Media-induced hysteria…
Yet we see supersized social alarm based on the 1 in 100,000 estimated incidence of the rare adverse effect mentioned in the above clipping. More than 400,000 people have been vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine in the province so far, and at the time of this post, the 1 Quebecer who perished after being vaccinated with Vaxzevria is making headlines. No matter your age, however, you still have a much greater chance of winding up in the ICU due to the virus itself. Since science always includes qualifiers, you can dig deeper into the risk-benefit analysis by visiting this page on the University of Cambridge’s website.
In Montreal we sometimes have the option of which vaccine we wish to receive. I had a choice between AstraZeneca’s or Pfizer’s, and I chose the latter due to reading about efficacy. Yet if AstraZeneca had been the only option, I gladly would have received that for my first dose. A friend who is already at risk for blood clots asked if Vaxzevria would increase her risk further. The body of scientific literature suggests this is not the case, as summarized here:
Please thank Joe, not the cultists
Should we be thanking Murica’s anti-vaccination cult for inadvertently increasing the likelihood of Canadians receiving more vaccines? No, because they are still elongating problems for all of North America. At the current rate of vaccine avoidance, herd immunity may not become a reality in the U.S. unless something changes. As progressive commentator David Pakman notes, Republicans want coronavirus restrictions to be gone, but they don’t want to put in any effort to get us to that point quicker.
Of the states with the most doses administered per adult, 14 of the top 15 voted for Joe Biden.
As for states administering the fewest doses, 14 of 15 voted for Donald Trump.” — Alexander Panetta, CBC
Yes, vaccine avoidance in the U.S. largely comes down to politics. As we watch it play out in real time, we find that the pathological individualism and religious dogma of the Republican Party pours gasoline on the fire. More precisely (and painfully predictably), their behavior helps to keep SARS-CoV-2 going for as long as possible. Ironically — but not uncustomarily — this minority of Americans is being bailed out by the science and people they badmouth.
Don’t Let It Happen Here
Will Canada do better than the USA? Will Quebec? We don’t know yet because compared with our neighbor, we are only doing half as well at getting our compatriots jabbed for the first time. Canada faces some of the same “vaccine hesitancy” obstacles, but we have yet to truly discover what portion of the Canadian population has been indoctrinated with the most insidious virus on the Internet: propaganda issued by the self-obsessed fools working against public health with their anti-vaccination agenda.
The topic in a recent English-language Montreal podcast was “How far should we go to get people vaccinated?” The issue of paying vaccine-hesitant Quebecers to get vaccinated came up. Not a bad idea, as one guest points out how it can be far more costly for Quebecers to not get vaccinated. He also cracked a joke about holding down vaccine-hesitant Quebecers to get them jabbed, which drew instant ire from someone who took the guest seriously. This just goes to show the level of fear and long distance from reason within the anti-vaccination cult.
2021 is the year to cripple SARS-CoV-2 in North America. If we can overcome the malignant individualism that has infected so many, we may have a chance at herd immunity. But at the moment, supply is the problem. Please, anyone: send vaccines to Canada.
