In the previous post, I looked at the latest available data to see if the covid vaccines are effective. Despite challenges from the new delta variant, it is hard to dispute that the vaccines remain remarkably good at preventing infections, or, in the case of relatively rare breakthrough infections, preventing hospitalizations and deaths. If you want to protect yourself and those around you from covid, it makes sense to get vaccinated… unless the vaccine itself is a significant threat to your health.

I have waited until the end of this little series on covid vaccines to talk about safety issues for a couple reasons. First, I think this is one of the most difficult objections to engage, because it is an emotionally charged issue tied up with sad stories we’ve heard from friends or seen circulating on social media. One can’t—and shouldn’t!—simply dump a pile of safety studies on someone who believes that the vaccines injured or killed someone they love. However, our responsibility before God as stewards of our own health and of our neighbors’ wellbeing means we do have a responsibility to think carefully about even such difficult stories.

This brings me to the second reason I wanted to address safety issues last. As I have surveyed some of the main arguments against the vaccines in my earlier posts, I wanted you to see the way in which motivated reasoning and carelessness with the truth have so polluted this debate for more than a year. Many who should have known better have negligently passed along bad “facts” without much apparent effort at verification, simply because the claims fit a narrative they assumed to be true.

This blizzard of misinformation has, of course, been reinforced by Dr. Fauci’s self-confessed dishonesty, by the hypocrisy and abuse of authority by many in power, and by very reasonable skepticism about the trustworthiness of our government, the media, and Big Pharma. In a low-trust environment, we are mentally primed to believe the worst.

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In my previous article in this series, I looked at whether we can trust the data on covid and vaccination. That is a very important question, and if you aren’t sure about it, I would encourage you to go read that piece first. The short version: Challenges with testing and reporting mean case counts are more like estimates than exact tallies, but the more important figures for deaths and hospitalizations seem generally trustworthy. Also, the rumor that the CDC is counting vaccinated and unvaccinated cases differently is based on a misunderstanding of a completely different data collection program. Looking at the reporting systems in place, and cross-referencing the official picture with other real-world data, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason to doubt the basic picture of the pandemic which is presented by the official numbers.

In this post, I’ll look at what the numbers tell us about vaccine efficacy. I’ll look first at whether covid is still a threat, then at how protective the vaccines actually are, then at whether natural immunity is better, and finally at the problems of waning immunity and the delta variant.

Is covid even a threat anymore?

Just a few months ago, it seemed like covid was on its way out. Now, not so much. This survey from Jim Geraghty (a conservative writer who has been a good source of covid info throughout the pandemic) includes many links to local news stories in states across the country describing hospitals strained to capacity.

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In my first post on covid vaccines, I made a case for why vaccination is the best way to love our neighbors and be wise stewards of our own health. However, my argument had a major weakness. I think most skeptics would agree that vaccination is wise if everything I assumed was true was actually true. It’s that “if” which causes all the trouble. Most of us have heard any number of arguments that the data about covid and vaccines is unreliable, or that the vaccines don’t really work, or that they are dangerous. If those arguments are sound, then the case for vaccination collapses—and some of them seem quite compelling at first glance.

In this post, I will look at one major set of arguments against the vaccines: that, for one reason or another, we shouldn’t trust the numbers on covid and vaccination. This is an important question, because our picture of the pandemic and its possible solutions is necessarily built from statistics, percentages, and probabilities. Because covid is only moderately lethal compared to viruses like smallpox or the Spanish flu, we aren’t going to see bodies littering our neighborhoods. The official number of roughly 600,000 dead is “only” one in 500 Americans. Even though that’s twice as many Americans as died in World War II, it’s still few enough that most of us can’t get a good sense of the magnitude of the tragedy by personal experience unless we work in a hospital in a hard-hit region. For most of us, our picture of the pandemic has to come from numbers, and if we can’t trust the numbers, we can’t even begin to discuss anything else.

So let’s look at those numbers. I’ll first discuss the overall numbers which inform our understanding of the pandemic in the US, then more recent accusations that the CDC is intentionally fudging the numbers to blame most current cases on the unvaccinated. If you think I missed an important argument against the accuracy of covid numbers, please share a summary or link in the comments and I’ll update this post if needed.

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Also in this series:

• Covid Vaccines #2: Can We Trust the Data?
• Covid Vaccines #3: Do They Work?
• Covid Vaccines #4: Are They Safe?
• Covid Vaccines #5: Why It Matters

To those of you who forgot I existed or subscribed because you thought I was a recipe blog, Hi! I still have a year left in seminary, but, for the first time since I started at GPTS, I hope I’ll have the time to start writing semi-regularly again.

As I’ve considered resuming writing, I spent the summer vainly trying to find my way around the elephant in the room: namely, the world’s ongoing thoughtful little chat about vaccination. I have repeatedly talked myself out of discussing it lest I do more harm than good, but after a lot of thought and prayer I have decided to start blogging again by embracing the covid elephant instead of dancing around it.

Let me start by saying that I am fully vaccinated against covid (thank you, Moderna) and I think you probably should be too. But my primary goal here isn’t to prove that vaccination is safe and effective, nor to convince you to get vaccinated. Instead, I have two main hopes.

First, I keep hearing from friends who are genuinely distressed and unsure who to believe about covid and vaccination. I cannot approach that question as a medical researcher or doctor, but then, you probably can’t either. We are both in the position of interested laymen, trying to find the truth in a haze of confusing data and conflicting narratives. And while I’m not a medical professional, I have spent the last 15 years teaching argumentation and research. That doesn’t make me infallible, but I hope it will make my perspective helpful.

Secondly, more than anything else about the past year, I have been heartbroken to see the anger and foolishness from all sides of our public discussions, including within the church. I am increasingly convinced that the controversies of the past year have been a divine test for the American church; a test we have largely failed as we have fallen into opposing camps, each defined by their loudest and least reasonable members while everyone else is afraid to start a potentially explosive conversation. Yet we are unlikely to find either peace or truth if we are scared to talk to each other! God’s tests are often preparatory, and I wonder how we will handle the next complex and divisive issue. Will we show the world what a difference it makes to be indwelt and sanctified by the Spirit of Christ, even in disagreement, or will we disdain those for whom Christ shed his blood? If I don’t change a single mind about vaccination but do help to bring some mutual understanding to a contentious debate, I will be happy and satisfied. (And on that note, please pray for my own wisdom and self-control as I write!)

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