By RON MOSES, Ph.D.
Fort Collins, Colorado
rwmoses@earthlink.net
As a former resident of Los Alamos, I continue to enjoy reading the Los Alamos Daily Post. As one interested in the well-being of Los Alamos and LANL, I must respond to the extraordinarily misleading claims in Robert Day’s letter of October 20 regarding the Laboratory’s vaccine mandate (link).
In his first point, Mr. Day asks “What is the risk factor associated with COVID”. He arrives at a figure that the overall Laboratory employee set has an approximate risk of 0.08% for death due to COVID-19, presumably in a year’s time. He compares this to an overall death rate due to traffic accidents of 0.02% per year. Mr. Day notes that the chance of survival in each case is over 99.9%, something that “..most people … do not consider to be particularly risky”.
Although the chances of survival for a year’s risks of each are comparable; the RISKS OF DEATH are quite different, roughly by a factor of 4. Put in terms of the numbers of people, consider that there are 9827 TRIAD employees, and when all other affiliates from students to contractors are added, there are about 13,800 people actively affiliated with the Lab. If all 13,800 were unvaccinated, an 0.08% death rate would lead to an annual number of COVID deaths at LANL of approximately 11 people, versus 3 from vehicular accidents. Do you really want to look your colleagues in the eye and say: “My freedom to ignore a health mandate is worth up to 11 of your lives?”
Mr. Day’s second point is: “What is the effectiveness of the proposed vaccine?” Here the logic quoted is more subtle but even worse. The claim is that in one of the world’s most vaccinated countries, Israel, almost 60% of those hospitalized are fully vaccinated. He then quotes Ran Balicer, the CIO of Israel’s largest HMO, as saying that COVID vaccines do not appear to be very effective. In fact, if a LARGE portion of the population is vaccinated, and a SMALL fraction of those get breakthrough cases, that can easily match the LARGE portion of unvaccinated people who contract the disease in the SMALL set of unvaccinated people who make up a portion of the Israeli population. This shows that Mr. Balicer’s and Mr. Day’s statements are profoundly misleading.
Let’s consider data from closer to home here in Colorado where 67% of the population has had at least one dose, and 61% are fully vaccinated. It is currently reported that 80% of hospitalized COVID patients in the state are unvaccinated. Running the math tells us that, locally, vaccines are approximately 88% effective in preventing hospitalizations of vaccinated people, generally consistent with widely acknowledged data. This sharply refutes the very misleading quotes from Mr. Day and Mr. Balicer.
Mr. Day’s third question is: “Is the overall health of laboratory employees going to be improved in a way commensurate with the penalty being induced on the individual employee?” If you happen to be among the large percentage of people who either don’t become infected with COVID or those who contract a light case while unvaccinated, then so be it. If you ARE among those who become seriously ill or the 0.08% who may die, it is a very big deal.
I was at LANL during the years when the Lab was having what seemed to be a disproportionately large number of avoidable lab accidents, yet losing far fewer than 11 people a year, as compared to the projection above for unvaccinated COVID deaths. Let me remind you, that was a REALLY BIG deal leading to multiple mandatory Lab-wide shutdowns and the loss of a great amount of work and money, in addition to the pain and suffering of those directly involved in the accidents. Play with this fire at your own risk Mr. Day.
The final question is: “What role does the medical practice of informed consent play in this decision?” In answer to that, “informed consent” is indeed available through religious and medical exemptions, albeit some might consider quite stringent. If you simply want to grandstand and make political statements about “individual freedoms” and “totalitarianism”, then be my guest; go out and try your luck at the “individual freedom” to drive drunk. Just do it on some backcountry private mountain roads away from the rest of us!
