By PAUL FERRELL
Los Alamos
Mr. Moses gave an excellent rebuttal of Mr. Day’s claims regarding COVID, but I feel I must point out an additional flaw in Mr. Day’s letter that was missed: Both the numbers and the math given by Mr. Day are fundamentally incorrect.
According to the latest data from the CDC there have been 356.2 thousand COVID deaths in the 18-64 age group, not 164.3 thousand as Mr. Day stated. Furthermore, the odds of dying from COVID were calculated incorrectly. That should be the ratio of deaths to the number of cases (Mr. Day used the total population as the denominator). The CDC estimates that there have been 80.83 million cases in that same age group2. The odds of dying of COVID for that age range is thus 0.44 percent, not 0.08 percent as Mr. Day calculated.
Mr. Moses makes the point that 11 laboratory employees, according to Mr. Day’s numbers, would die of COVID if no one was vaccinated and everyone caught it (which would be likely over time). With the corrected odds, that number should be 0.44 percent of 13800 employees and contractors: 61 people. Sixty one coworkers who would most likely have died had a vaccine not been developed. This would have been the ‘natural’ course of things. Thankfully, vaccines were developed and available, and we won’t see this many COVID deaths.
Without the mandate, if the lab had hovered at the reported 85 percent vaccination rate from before the requirement, that would leave 2070 unvaccinated employees. Of just those, we would expect around nine deaths on average. Additionally, the chance of breakthrough infections amongst the vaccinated would be significant. While the vaccinated are 11.3 times less likely to die from COVID3, those odds are still high enough to kill one person per 2500 breakthrough infections. That’s just a little more than one breakthrough case per unvaccinated employee! So without the mandate, that’s nine unvaccinated deaths plus a good chance at one or more vaccinated deaths.
With everyone vaccinated, it’s unlikely we’ll have any COVID deaths at the lab (given current widespread variants) moving forward. Outbreaks are likely to be small, as the vaccinated are six times less likely to be infected3. Small localized outbreaks mean that it’s unlikely that a significant percentage of the workforce will have breakthrough infections, and those that do will again be 11.3 times less likely to die from it.
But what about the risks of the vaccine? Adverse reactions to the vaccines have been extremely rare, typically numbering in a few per million people4. The CDC has tracked deaths by ANY cause post-jab, whether it was old age or other pre-existing conditions, and found such deaths happened only 0.0022 percent of the time, or one in about 500,000. Miniscule odds compared to the chance of dying from COVID itself.
As Mr. Day said, LANL is where you go if you want the math done right, so I’m sure laboratory management had a much more thorough analysis of the situation than my back of the envelope calculations.
They also had to take into account that an average is just an average, and those nine unvaccinated deaths could easily be twenty if we were particularly unlucky. Furthermore, my calculations only account for deaths, not long-term, non-fatal damage caused by COVID. Given all this, I don’t see that LANL had much of a choice. They were ethically obligated to protect their employees and did so. I applaud them.
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