Writer shows vaccination ignorance

Chase McWhorter’s letter “Those narrow-minded vaccine advocates” had all the right numbers; however, he forgot to show his work, as my high school geometry teacher put it when she gave me a bad grade (Aug. 9, The Aspen Times). Although Chase’s numbers are correct, you must look at where they fit in the whole population.

In the case of the article in Forbes stating that 4,000 recent COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were among the fully vaccinated, one must consider the whole U.S. population. Almost 170,000,000 people have been vaccinated. That makes 4,000 cases about 0.002% of the vaccinated population, 1 in a 100,000 people that have had a breakthrough COVID infection. Please remember, 97% of the people hospitalized for COVID did not get vaccinated. The vast majority of those 4,000 did not get symptoms. A far cry from a failure.

In the case of Singapore — 75% of the COVID cases occurring in the vaccinated population is an indication of how successful vaccination is in their country. There are so few unvaccinated people in Singapore that all the COVID cases are mostly in the vaccinated. There are so few unvaccinated Singaporeans that as a percentage of all COVID cases the number of unvaccinated people getting COVID is exceedingly small.

The same goes for hospitalizations in Israel. An exceedingly small percentage of the people are unvaccinated. Since there are so few COVID cases in the unvaccinated, that means there are not many unvaccinated people in the hospital. Remember again, 97% of those in the hospital are not vaccinated.

As a board-certified immunologist with the same educational background as Dr. Fauci, I can assure you it is all in the math. In a population where most of the people are vaccinated there may be more breakthrough cases, most of which are asymptomatic, than cases of the unvaccinated which may end up hospitalized or die. We must look at the percentages, not the raw numbers. Please get vaccinated. Your life depends on it.

Dr. Michael Pacin

Aspen