Have you heard the news? “Unvaccinated seniors are 50 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than vaccinated/boosted seniors!”
Google it, you’ll find several articles. Seems pretty scary, huh? Here’s what they don’t tell you: Per the Centers for Disease Control, hospitalization for unvaccinated seniors is 205 per 100,000 people. That’s 00.2%, or a one in 488 chance. For the vaccinated it’s 10 in 100,000.
This tells us two things, and both are important, but the second is much more important and always omitted in the fear-stoking news:
1. Vaccines do help prevent hospitalization.
2. Even among people over 65 and unvaccinated, the chance of being hospitalized is statistically minuscule.
In other words, if you’re over 65 and worried about COVID, you’ve lost all perspective – likely because of such “news” reports. Even unvaccinated, 99.8% of seniors DON’T end up in the hospital from COVID.
So the real question is, why would anyone think they’re going to be the one in 488, and not among the 487? Because that’s what we’re told. Endlessly. At best, they say that if you’re one of the 487, then “you were lucky.”
Nope. You were just normal. Like me and everyone else. It’s just the fear that was out of the norm.
Rob Kerchner
Valencia
