Opinion: Vaccination the only way for Australia to escape its ‘gilded cage’
Fully vaccinated people are less likely to end up being hospitalised if they become unwell.So, we could expect to see 80 per cent of hospitalisations and deaths avoided in a fully vaccinated population. I suspect that in March 2020, the AZ numbers would have been regarded as unbelievably good.
The adult population of Australia is about 20 million. The risk of death with the AZ vaccine is reported as being 1 per million. So, even if we vaccinated the entire adult population with AZ we would expect to see 20 deaths from side effects. There is no doubt that an analysis that is far more complex than this, including stratification by age and co-morbidity, Alpha vs. Delta variants etc, should be used in finalising the approach. However, while this would nuance the numbers, it is unlikely the macro conclusions would change.
There will be those who say we must consider factors such as years of life saved – and this is an area where there is no consensus. There seems to be little clinical, public or political appetite to consider the death of an 80-year-old as different from someone less than 40. As has been acknowledged for nearly 70 years, health is “the state of complete physical, mental and social well-being” and far more than simply the absence of disease.While I have not touched on the health impacts of ongoing lockdowns, this should further push us towards the most rapid path to complete vaccination we can achieve.
For COVID-19, the data leaves no room whatsoever for the balance of risk – a vaccinated community is far safer than an unvaccinated community.
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