Are unvaccinated people dangerous?

Friday, December 17, 2021 (22:38)

Today I was together with a group of vaccinated people, and when one of them heard that I am not vaccinated, he stared at me and said “You increase the danger that I get contaminated!”

I answered “No my friend. Your risk of getting contaminated is the same, whether I am vaccinated or not, the probability of being a virus carrier is the same for me as for you, the fact of being vaccinated has no influence on whether you are a carrier. The only difference is that my risk of getting contaminated by you is higher than yours. So it’s rather the opposite: I risk more than you for being here together with you.”

And guess what happened: he was polite and changed the topic. But I felt that he actually didn’t believe me.

I wrote this down because I was so shocked.

But then, after writing it down, I saw a serious bug in my reasoning: When you just got in contact with the virus (e.g. in the bus), then you aren’t yet a danger for others. You become a danger only when the virus started to grow in you. Which will happen more probably when you are unvaccinated. Which means that the fact of being vaccinated does have an influence on whether you are a contaminator. In other words: he was right. Antivaxxers are –theoretically– a bigger danger to their fellows!

Corollary: To be an antivaxxer, you need to either refuse theory or be an egoist who value their own beliefs more than the health of others.

This changes what I wrote two days ago. Ouch, I am going to have discussions with my wife!

Saturday, December 18, 2021

For almost one day I lived with thoughts of style “Oh my God! Yes, I repent: I am going to get vaccinated! This is going to destroy our marriage! Or at least it will cause a lot of work for my wife and me! But if you are sure you want me to vaccinate, I will do it.”

On my way to a rehearsal I had the idea to call this friend who triggered this avalanche with his remark (“You increase the danger that I get contaminated!”). I had to ask another friend for his phone number, so I actually called him only in the evening. Our dialogue went something like this:

Me: Do you remember your little joke yesterday about that I increase the danger that you get contaminated?

Him: Oh, you know, this question is not something we should let divide us.

Me: But I wanted to thank you because your joke –afterwards– made me understand that you are in fact right. (I explained the above.)

His reaction was absolutely not what I had expected.

Him: I am over seventy years old, and during my whole life I have never needed any pharmaceutics and have never been seriously ill. But after I got vaccinated, I started to be ill and to need pills almost all the time. And the doctor told me that probably I will have to take them until the end of my life. If I had known this before, I wouldn’t have let them vaccinate me.

Me: What a piece of luck that I called you!

This new information made turn me back to my old position of remaining unvaccinated.