Mostly due to a former wannabe fascist president, the U.S. is stuck in deep political divide, one that has morphed into a divide on practically every other socio-economic issue.
This politically-driven divide is at its dumbest over the COVID-19 vaccine. While the pandemic has killed over 800,000 Americans, and the vaccine has killed none, the anti-vaxxer crowd cares more about going along with their like-minded group. In short, they prefer to deny science in order to ‘own the libs’ by getting sick or dying.
Every once in a while, though, the anti-vaxxer crowd wants to do more than deny science; they also want to deny math. This is usually manifested by them pointing out that even vaccinated people are getting infected, then showing some kind of data where the infected vaccinated group percentage continues to increase.
It’s such a stupid, specious argument.
Let’s first establish that the vaccines are between 75%-90% efficacious. None of the vaccine developers ever said they were curative (although the anti-vax crowd wants you to think that). The vaccines are meant to reduce the number of infections, reduce their symptoms, and minimize deaths.
Then let's establish that while we don’t have nearly enough people vaxxed in this country or world, that number goes up every day. As that number increases, and the number of unvaxxed people decreases, it is a mathematical certainty that there will be a higher percentage of vaxxed people who still contract COVID-19. Taken to the limit, if everyone was vaccinated, then the percentage of vaxxed people who become infected will increase to 100%.
Meanwhile, this anti-vaxxer math-denial belies the fact that the percentage of hospitalizations and deaths will continue to increase for the unvaxxed population, regardless of what the vaxxed people do.
In the end, science and math facts aren’t going to matter to a cult-following group. If you’re willing to believe someone who tells you the earth is flat, it’s likely you’ll also believe 2 + 2 doesn’t equal 4.
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