The National Health Service in the United Kingdom issues a COVID 19 vaccine surveillance report on a regular schedule, with plenty of detail on the effectiveness of vaccines and the infection rate and mortality rate for persons receiving one dose of a vaccine, fully vaccinated or unvaccinated. These data are essential for persons skeptical of vaccines to make a reasoned choice between becoming immunized or simply waiting to either be infected (and become immune if recovered and not succumbing to the disease) or be lucky that the disease simply passed them by. Unlike Ontario government reports that tout the effectiveness of vaccines, the NHS reports are crystal clear about the efficacy of each vaccine against differing outcomes and provides the degree of confidence for each assessment.
The data clearly support Ontario’s claims of vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization and mortality but likewise make it clear that the available vaccines only provide 60 to 85% effectiveness against becoming infected. That datum is important since Ontario’s “vaccine certificate” program which allows fully vaccinated persons to attend large assemblies like baseball games without masks or social distancing pretends that being “fully vaccinated” is a complete barrier to either becoming infected or infecting others. That results in a false sense of security that can only end badly for some people.
U.S. FDA data show the rapid decline in vaccine effectiveness over time. Vaccine passports don’t surface the degree of protection as it wanes, giving people false confidence they are not exposed and unlikely to infect others.
The latest Ontario data show that 32% of the infections recorded were “fully vaccinated” persons, a percentage that will only grow as more people either become vaccinated or acquire immunity naturally. Ontario should be as clear as the NHS about the effectiveness of vaccines, and transparent enough to admit that even fully vaccinated people have a non-trivial risk of infection. As the size of the vaccinated population continues to grow and the size of the infected but recovered population also grows, the unvaccinated population is becoming irrelevant as a public health issue but extremely relevant to the issues of privacy, personal freedoms, and the integrity of our democratic institutions.
At the individual level an unvaccinated person by now recognizes that they have as much as a 5% chance of infection over the next two years (assuming the same risk level as the past two years), a 98% chance of recovery if infected, and an immunity stronger than vaccination if that occurs. For many, that is a risk worth taking and governments should not interfere with it. A plethora of scientific literature supports that view.
It is time for Ontario and Ottawa leaders to face the facts, admit that the unvaccinated population is no longer a public health risk and accept that the assault on individual freedoms through “vaccine passports” is an unwarranted departure from democratic norms and should stop. The right of Canadians to decide what risks to accept and to refuse medical procedures should not be sacrificed to political expediency, particularly when the touted benefits are tenuous.