Are the covid vaccines really doing any good? (Spoiler: yes they are)

I recently saw it reported that out of all the UK people who have died (so far) from the Indian (delta) covid variant, a third were double-vaccinated. The article was from The Sun: it's not something I usually read (because it's trash), but I must admit that when I saw the headline pop up in my news feed thingy on my phone, I was both intrigued and horrified. I clicked it.

I have only had one dose of the vaccine so far, and I have been looking forward to my second jab (scheduled for July), believing that it'd be my ticket to immunity. And the more of us are immune, the more we can start seeing each other again. Hearing that a third of people who've died from the Indian variant in the UK was not what I wanted to hear. If the vaccine programme isn't offering much protection, then it's pretty pointless, I thought... for a few seconds, until I read the sensationalised story and gave it a little more thought.

The Sun is telling the truth, in this instance; this article in The Telegraph reports the very same statistics.

Image source: The Telegraph, 12 June 2021

Although it is sometimes useful to look at the proportions of something, as these pie charts do, it is not always sensible. Yes, a third of people who have died from the delta variant in the UK have been double-jabbed, but exactly how many people are we talking about here? The answer is twelve. Twelve double-jabbed people have died from the delta variant - that's out of 42 people in total who've died from it. This is not a large or worrying number. 

Why? Because no vaccine is 100% effective. 

Around 30 million people in the UK have received two doses of the vaccine. So, out of the 30 million people who have been double-jabbed, just 12 have died from it. It's a tragedy, of course it's a tragedy, but from a statistical point of view, it's insignificant. Twelve deaths out of 30 million is less than 0.5 people per million.

But shouldn't we be concerned that a third of the deaths were in double-jabbed people? That seems like quite a high percentage.

Well, no.

As more and more people get vaccinated, the number of double-jabbed people in the UK is increasing. Suppose we were to reach a point where every single adult had had both doses. This would mean that any deaths from covid - and statistically, we'd expect there to be a few - would be in a person who was double-jabbed. One hundred percent of deaths would be occurring in fully vaccinated people. Although that might sound alarming, it's worth remembering that many people will die from flu each year despite having had the flu vaccine. So long as the raw number of covid deaths is low, the percentage of how many of them had been vaccinated is immaterial.

Of course, we shan't reach a 100% vaccination rate, as some people can't have it, and some people refuse to have it for whatever reason. But the more people have the vaccine, the greater the proportion of all deaths could be among vaccinated people - because they're so populous. 

We still need to be vigilant. We still need to wear masks and keep our distance. And we still need to get vaccinated.

Why did I allow myself to be drawn in by the clickbait sensationalism of The Sun? I don't know. I'm just glad that a few moments' thought enabled me to see the statistics for what they are.

I want the pandemic to be over.

"Is it Miss or Mrs?": Why my marital status is no one's business but my own

Picture the scene....

A man - say, Mick - walks into a shop and wants to take out a mobile phone contract, or buy a new kitchen, or have some furniture delivered to his house. The shop assistant needs to fill in a form with his details. She gets out the paper form or pulls up the online form on the computer. The first question on the form is "Are you married?"

Pretty weird, right? Why is it relevant in any way whether or not Mick is married? It's not. He wants to buy a mobile phone, or a kitchen, or to have some furniture delivered to his house: it really does not matter whether or not he is married, and we would think it bizarre and unnecessary that he should be asked whether he is married, let alone that it should be the very first question on the form!

So, you'd like your new sofa to be delivered, would you?
Are you married? Image source: Unsplash

And yet this is what happens when women have to give their details for a form. It is almost always the case that the very first question a customer service representative asks is "Is it Miss or Mrs?" Why does the shop assistant need to know whether or not I am married? My marital status makes no difference at all to whether or not I can obtain a service. And yet the form requires that I ascribe myself a title. Why?!

This is not the 19th century, where women are the property of their husband, and it is sinful to live with a partner "over the brush", or strange for a woman my age to be unmarried. Women in 2021 are, I believe, allowed to buy a carpet or suchlike without permission from a man, whether or not I am married. Wow! The rights we girlies enjoy today! Yet I must announce (or 'admit') my marital status when I want to have a carpet delivered to my house, lest the shop delivers a carpet to me on the wrongful understanding that I am a married woman, when in fact I am unmarried. Imagine that! Think of the children!

Given that men and women supposedly have the same rights as one another in the UK today, I don't really see why titles such as Mr, Mrs and Miss are needed at all. When buying a carpet or a kitchen or a mobile phone, "Do you have a vagina?" and "What gender do you identify as?" seem utterly irrelevant questions, but this is essentially what the form is getting at when it asks me to identify my title. Titles are pointless.

Now, if someone has a non-standard title such as Captain, Reverend, Professor or Doctor, then it seems reasonable that they may want to have their title on the form, but for the rest of us, why does it matter whether I am Miss, Mrs, Ms, Mr, or Mx? It does not.

I am looking forward to the day when I don't have to tell the shop assistant whether or not I am married just because I want to buy a carpet; failing that, I will just have to look forward to the day I pass my viva and can call myself 'Doctor' Karen Lancaster. Then I can buy things and have them delivered to my house, and neither the shop nor the delivery driver will know my utterly irrelevant marital status. I hope they can handle the not knowing. Until I obtain my PhD, however, they simply MUST know whether or not I have got married.

We have made many leaps forwards in sexual equality and the recognition of transgender and non-binary people. I hope we continue to make progress. But I think that the clinging to the titles of Mr, Miss and Mrs may be holding us back. If a man does not need to announce his marital status, then why does a woman? If a woman changes her title from Miss to Mrs when she marries, why does a man's title not change from Mr? And if a transgender or non-binary person wants to identify their title as something other than Miss, Mrs or Mr, why can't they? (Mx serves this function, but is often not available on forms.)

I have a dream: I dream of a future where I can put my name into a form without having to declare that I'm an unmarried woman, and silly titles like Mrs and Miss are abolished from the English language altogether.

How should we share covid vaccines?

Vaccinations in the UK are going well. Source: Unsplash

Covid-19 has had a devastating impact across the world. But now, thanks to the wonders of science, there are several vaccines which are safe and effective. Given that it takes time to administer the vaccines, not everyone can receive it straight away, so some people will have to wait their turn.

What I want to consider is how it should be determined who receives the vaccine first. The virus seems most dangerous to old people and those with underlying conditions such as diabetes, so I'll take it as a given that within a country, those people should be prioritised. However, what I'm wondering is how it should be determined which countries are first to receive vaccines, and how many. I'll consider these possibilities, that the countries to receive/use the vaccines first of all should be...

1. The countries that make the vaccines 
2. The countries with the highest death tolls
3. The countries with the highest death rates
4. The countries with the oldest populations
5. The countries best able to administer the vaccines quickly

The countries that make the vaccines 

If country X has put extensive time, effort and money into researching and developing a vaccine, perhaps it is fitting that the citizens of that country are first in line to receive that vaccine. This seems fair in the same way that if I work hard to obtain some commodity or money, I should be allowed to spend it to benefit my kids. I did the work, so I can reap the benefits. 

A problem with this is that the covid vaccination system then becomes a question of wealth, with the richest countries in the world, such as the USA, China, Japan, and much of western Europe being first in line to receive vaccines, with the poorest countries in the world in places such as Africa, Asia and Latin America, being left behind. 

In the UK, we hold our NHS dearly - even more so since covid - and believe that healthcare should be based not on wealth, but on need. This means that we should find it uncomfortable to endorse a system where the countries which sink the most money into developing vaccines are the ones to receive the vaccine first, just in virtue of having been rich enough to develop a vaccine.

The countries with the highest death tolls

If we think that healthcare should be distributed based on need, then death tolls seem a pretty good measure of need. In the USA nearly half a million people have died from covid-19; it might seem like they are most in need of the vaccine, and therefore the USA should be the ones to receive it first.

But allocating vaccines according to brute number of deaths is obviously going to favour countries with large populations. it is no surprise that of the ten countries with the largest populations, five of them are among the top ten countries with the highest death tolls (Mexico, Brazil, USA, Russia, and India). This would mean that countries with small populations would be way down the list of who gets the vaccine, even though they may be in dire need of it, and experiencing far more deaths per head of population than some of the heavily populated countries, such as India.

The countries with the highest death rates

Calculating deaths per head of population seems quite a reasonable way of determining which country is in the most dire need of the vaccine. After all, they are losing the greatest proportion of their population to covid, it seems only fair that they should be helped the most by receiving the vaccine. 

However, this might unfairly favour tiny countries and territories. For example, these statistics (as of 4 Feb 2021) show that Gibraltar and San Marino have the highest number of covid deaths per head of population; they have suffered 79 and 68 deaths respectively, but because of their tiny populations, they are top of the table in deaths per head of population.

Moreover, simply having a high total number of deaths per head of population doesn't mean that a country is in dire straits now. It's possible that a country has had a high death rate per head of population, but then got things under control and now they don't have any cases. I'm not sure whether any countries actually fit into this hypothetical category, but they could do. Normally, in philosophy, the fact that something hypothetically could exist is good enough to prove a point, but this is real-world applied ethics, so reality matters. There are certainly countries who have got things more under control than others though, and a country whose daily death rate is really on its way down is perhaps less in need than a country whose daily death toll is on its way up, even if its overall death rate is currently low, because covid hit them later.

The countries with the oldest populations

There are several covid vaccines
available. Source: Unsplash

Covid is most dangerous to older people, so perhaps the countries with the oldest populations should be prioritised. Sure, there will be some countries with an ageing population who haven't been really troubled by covid, but why should that matter? Simply because they haven't had a high death toll or death rate yet doesn't mean they won't have one. And since a vaccine is about preventing deaths rather than treating those who are already ill and dying, then it really shouldn't matter at all that we'd be sending vaccines to some countries who aren't suffering too badly as yet.

However, countries which currently have low rates of infection don't really seem to be in dire need of vaccines in the same way that those with high rates of infection are. Perhaps such countries are good at stemming the spread of infection by other means, such as lockdown and mask-wearing, or perhaps the virus has mutated into a less potent strain in their area, and they won't really need the vaccine after all. So perhaps giving vaccines to countries basted on their population age isn't the best idea after all.

The countries best able to administer the vaccines quickly

Vaccines are a valuable resource - both economically and health-wise. It would be a tragedy if vaccines were given to a country which squandered them. There are some countries which lack the infrastructure, refrigeration facilities, staff, or other necessities to administer the vaccines quickly and effectively. It would be a great shame if vaccines were given to such countries and they were wasted, when other countries could have used them to save lives. 

Conclusion 

I've considered several possibilities above, and none are unproblematic. I believe that out of all the options, some sort of combination of death rate per head of population, and brute number of deaths, coupled with some understanding of who is suffering the worst right now. This would put Belgium, Czechia, Italy, the UK and USA as some of the first countries to receive the vaccine in great numbers. This isn't really a perfect solution, but I think it's a reasonable solution. Once the most vulnerable people in these countries have been vaccinated, it would be fair to move on to other countries (but if/when I'm offered it, I'll be snatching their hand off!)

In practice, there seems to be a mixture of sharing methods taking place. I'm glad that the UK is doing very well with its vaccine rollout -- we have a very high death rate at the moment, and I'll feel much more at ease when that's under control. I just hope that the vaccine rollout can be swift and effective everywhere, and that the pandemic will soon be over.

And finally...

Look at this infographic I drew. It took me ages, and without any special software, so please look at it! Alas, I can only put it on here as a flattened image, so the links don't work. And I can't get it to be high resolution, or the right dimensions for the screen. But here it is anyway!

Collective restrictions

"Right, Lee, if you don't stop this behaviour right now, then the whole class will lose out on playtime.... ok Lee that's it, everyone is missing playtime, all because of you." 

I know I certainly experienced this sort of event as a child, when I, a generally well-behaved student, had my freedoms restricted because some idiot in my class was misbehaving. I felt the injustice of it then, and I still hear of teachers doing it today. It's wrong. 

Yet that is exactly what is happening with lockdown restrictions. I am staying home for over 23 hours per day. I haven't seen my parents in the flesh since Christmas; I haven't seen my elder sister in 6 months, and I've not seen my younger sister in a year. The last time I met a friend indoors was a year ago. This is not because I don't want to see my family and friends: in non-pandemic times, I'd see someone at least once a week, and partake in sports 1-2 times a week. I'm not doing the things I want to so because (a) The government have said not to do these things (b) I don't want to spread the virus (c) I don't want to catch the virus. 

I have curtailed my normal activities to such an extent that I don't think I could curtail them much more at all. My parents have not left the house in nearly a year, except to go to the doctors, or to have outdoor exercise. they order food and other products online, and haven't seen friends in I don't know how long. 

And yet, I hear on the news that lockdown restrictions aren't being successful enough, and that our freedoms may be curtailed further. I feel pretty sure that the continued spread of covid is not because of my behaviour, and I am certain that its not because of my parents' behaviour. 

There are people meeting in groups for weddings; organised sport and kids' sports clubs are still going on. People have been partying in pubs and in the street until the most recent lockdown. When I've driven through towns, I've seen large queues outside take aways and restaurants. So many people are still going into work, to work in non-essential jobs, and the number of kids in school is apparently around half of what it is when schools are fully open, and anecdotally, plenty of those kids have one parent who is a key worker, and another who is working from home, so the kids should really be at home, like the rest of us who are having to home school and do our work at the same time.

A lockdown would work, if people would actually lock down, and stay at home. But many people are not doing that. And so the government, like a teacher who is rapidly losing her rag, punishes the entire class rather than punishing the offender. But the thing is that if people are not adhering to current restrictions, why should we have any reason to believe that they'd adhere to more stringent restrictions?

If Lee - the naughty boy in the class I mentioned - doesn't do what he's told when the teacher says sit quietly and listen for 5 minutes, then when the teacher says everyone must sit quietly and listen during all of play time, would he suddenly reform his behaviour? Doubtful. Instead, the rest of the class - who had already sat quietly and listened for five minutes - now have to sit and listen for 20 minutes. And they do this, while Lee is still throwing a wobbler because he doesn't want to sit and listen at all. Nothing is achieved by forcing people who are already following the rules to follow more stringent rules, simply because some idiots were not following the first set of rules.

What really needs to be done is to get people to actually follow the rules and stay home. Because of the virus has an incubation period of about 7 days, and when people catch it they're infectious for 2-3 weeks, then really, if everyone could ACTUALLY lock down and self isolate for 3-4 weeks - or even 5 or 6 weeks just to make sure, then there should be no one infectious after that time, and the virus would be fully eradicated. Yes, it would be a right pain to be imprisoned like that, but it'd rid us of covid-19, and plenty of other communicable diseases too. 

Instead, those of us who are already isolating for alnost all day every day are now being told we need to isolate more. All the while, other people are partying, getting take aways, and going to non-essential jobs.

With that approach, this virus will be with us for a long time yet to come.

EDIT: Perhaps I hadn't given enough thought to the restrictions, as I was thinking that only essential workers should go into work. The restrictions say you must stay at home, but can leave for essential reasons, such as work or medical care. I was thinking this meant that people can only leave home for essential work, not nonessential work. So if a person worked in a factory sewing t-shirt sleeves together, they should stay at home and not go into work (because t-shirt sewing is not essential; the country won't grind to a halt without t-shirts for a few months). But now I come to think about it, there must be vast numbers of people who are using public transport and working in places, doing nonessential work. In a stricter crackdown, those nonessential workers should be stopped from working. The definition of a "key worker" is also pretty broad. Working in B&M Bargains, for example, makes someone a key worker.