In a recent guest column (“With mandatory booster jabs, have the Five Colleges lost their way?” Jan. 11), Chris Matero begins by stating that his commentary is a “request of the Five College community” to consider new scientific data relevant to COVID-19 booster shot policy.
Given that we have no idea who he actually represents (is he acting in some official capacity?), it seems like a deceptive beginning on a critical issue that is too often lacking in honest and trustworthy reporting, and in need of more than a little humility.
Mr. Matero reports many facts out of context and omits critical conclusions. For example, in the England studies that Mr. Matero himself refers to in his column, he states that it reports “75% of hospitalizations were vaccinated patients and 25% were unvaccinated.” He leaves it at that. In reading his own cited study, it states that “vaccine effectiveness against hospitalization from Omicron is close to 90%.”
What is also left out is that the UK Health Security Agency reports unvaccinated adults are eight times more likely to be hospitalized. Studies cited (courteous of the column) clearly differentiate between transmitting and getting omicron (high numbers), even if vaccinated and boosted, compared to vaccine and booster protection against serious disease.
Mr. Matero reports from the Canadian study that mRNA vaccines “have only 6% effectiveness and …. boosters provide a brief rise to 37%.” Again, this only refers to the numbers of total cases reported, and not serious symptomatic disease. It’s misleading. In fact, the unvaccinated hospital rate is five times greater than the vaccinated as reported by the Ontario Science Table online dashboard. And it also states that the unvaccinated population is 14 times more likely to be in the ICU than the vaccinated.
What appears to be true is that many more vaccinated people are getting COVID, and that some end up hospitalized. What this basically means is that a small percentage of a large number (the skyrocketing cases of omicron among the vaccinated) is still a large number. Most of the vaccinated who are hospitalized tend to have vulnerabilities and are much older.
I believe that we have a right not to be vaccinated. However you then forfeit certain rights and privileges that allow you to be part of a community. To make the decision to boost or not, it’s critical to have access to accurate data, in context, in detail, rather than cherry picking information that supports a particular viewpoint.
Vandy Bollinger
Leverett