To Covid Vaccinate or not to Covid Vaccinate?

A COVID vaccination skeptic patient of mine today asked a question during our pre-operative office visit...."So many people have apparently died of COVID, how is it we have not seen an increase in the death rate since the pandemic started?" Embarrassed I had no immediate good answer answer, I later looked up the recent stats on deaths in the US and here is what I found:

2017 --- 2,813,503 died with a death rate of 732/100k population.

2018 --- 2,840,000 died with a death rate of 723/100k population.

2019 --- 2,900,425 died with a death rate of 715/100k population.

2020 --- 3,358,814 died with a death rate of 828/100k population.

The increase of 450k could be explained by Covid and related deaths in 2020. In 2020 Covid was the 3rd highest cause of death after heart disease 690k, Cancer 598k, Covid 345k. Since the start of the pandemic (just over a year) we have had 590k die in the US (out of 33 million documented cases). The mortality rate seems to be about 1.8% or 18 per 1000 infected cases. (I thought it was about 0.5%)

Manufactured or not, this is one mean and crafty virus, not to be trifled with. I don't think we are done with it yet. We don't have an effective treatment yet.

Finally with regard to post Covid vaccination infections-- https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/verify/getting-covid-after-fully-vaccinated-sick-after-second-dose-how-many-people/65-27fee9e0-4601-4d46-9f3b-684d74e913b3

Author

Marcus M. Aquino, MD Surgeon