Millennials are more likely to die as a result of a car crash than they are from the coronavirus, statistically speaking. But you know what’s orders of magnitude safer than the coronavirus for all people? The coronavirus vaccine.
Around 19 in 20 people in the United States killed by COVID-19 so far were older than 50. Given the very limited evidence of children contracting and transmitting the coronavirus, it would be a travesty to extend school closures or mask mandates for even one day longer. But as the nation races to reach the point of herd immunity, to protect transplant recipients and others who cannot develop antibodies, and to avoid the evolution of a variant that is not blocked by our vaccines, it’s worth making the statistical case for the vaccine specifically as it pertains to young people, who are least likely to want their shots.
Adults ages 18 through 29 are 10 times more likely than children and younger teenagers to die of COVID-19. Those in their 30s are 45 times as likely, and those in their 40s are 130 times as likely. All in all, just 6.4 millennials per every 100,000 people ages 25 through 34 died of COVID-19 thus far.
But the case fatality rate is another story. In Spain, 20-somethings reported more than a 0.2% case fatality rate, meaning that one in every 500 young people who contracted COVID-19 did die from it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the U.S. figure as 0.1% for those ages 18 to 29 and 0.3% for those ages 30 to 39.
Now, the whole point of “flattening the curve” was to maintain hospital resources, and every subsequent measure after was supposed to protect the elderly, who are disproportionately vulnerable to the virus. No reasonable person would favor prolonging the economic stagflation and mental crises sown by lockdowns to prevent young adults from avoiding a virus that is as likely to kill them as the flu.
Fortunately, we don’t face that trade-off. Not only are the vaccines extremely effective, but they are also extremely safe.
The blood clotting that caused the federal government to put a temporary hold on the Johnson & Johnson shot is exceedingly rare — just 28 cases out of 8.7 million, and only three of those patients died. The CDC is also keeping tabs on reports of myocarditis, a rare but treatable heart condition, in patients who received the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Israel, which has nearly completed its vaccine campaign and sees a mere handful of COVID-19 deaths per week, is tracking 62 myocarditis cases reported out of 5.12 million people fully vaccinated. For reference, that’s one in nearly 90,000 vaccines administered, or 0.00001211%.
And it bears repeating that these rare side effects are only rarely fatal. And only 706 people out of 101 million people vaccinated have landed in the hospital for “breakthrough infections.” This implies that the vaccine is multiple times safer than COVID-19 and genuinely prevents infections.
You should get the vaccine, in part, to protect the immunocompromised. But if that’s not reason enough, just be selfish and do it for yourself.
