There are some things that are more urgent than the economy and finance, so we will make an exception and talk about vaccination this time. To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? The vaccines endorsed by the government, especially the multi-billion dollar deal to procure China-made jabs, are in a hurry to clear stock in order to buy more. In the end, is getting doses of vaccine any use?

As at Mar. 10, the six countries in the world with the highest inoculation rates were Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the UK, the US, Chile and the European Union (EU), in that order. The cumulative COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people were 104, 64, 35, 28, 27 and 10 respectively. For the seventh and eighth countries on the list, Brazil and Russia, the numbers were below 6, hence too low to be considered. Figure 1 illustrates the vaccination rates of these six countries since the end of last year, which shows that only the top five countries had been more active.

Keeping in mind the trend of these six lines then let’s look at Figure 2 - this is the daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people for the same six countries during the same period, with the same colors representing the same countries. Listed below are the observed relationships between the two.

1. In Israel, new daily confirmed cases peaked then fell after about half of its population had been vaccinated. However, its daily number of cases was already very high, the most among the six countries, therefore, the fact that the initial drop was faster than other countries does not indicate anything, with or without vaccines.

2. Although the inoculation rate in Israel is rising, the daily number of confirmed cases since late February has not been declining, but only moving sideways.

3. Although Israel had the highest inoculation rate among the six countries, it also had the worst recent daily cases among the six countries.

4. Since the beginning of the year, the number of confirmed cases in the U.K. and the U.S. have fallen sharply from their respective highs, but the two countries had only just begun vaccinating their residents at that time. Now, about 40% of their residents have received vaccination.

5. Inoculation rates in the UAE, Chile and the EU have been increasing so far, but the daily cases are still not decreasing. About 60% of Emiratis have received vaccination.

6. The inoculation rates in the UAE, the US, Chile and the EU have risen at different rates, with a high of 60% and a low of 10% so far. However, since early February, there has been little difference between the four regions in terms of daily cases, so naturally, the horizontal trend is similar.

7. There is no correlation between the inoculation rate and the epidemic situation, including the rate of increase in the vaccination rate and the rate of decline of the epidemic.

The above are seven observations and the following are seven questions that remain unanswered.

1. In general, vaccines for epidemic diseases take years to develop, ranging from three years to eight years or more. How is it that there are vaccines made available within half a year for this unusual disease that the experts initially had no clue about? The vaccine companies are profit-making, so they will certainly say that the vaccines are very helpful. The government is also desperate for results, so it will naturally be throwing drugs at the situation. Yet, as seen from the above data, how effective is it?

2. The current most powerful vaccine claims to be 95% effective. However, the infection rate was 1.0% on Dec. 12 before the first dose was administered worldwide, and the rate rose slightly to 1.5% just one quarter after the vaccine was administered, which means that 98.5% of the population has remained intact for five quarters since the outbreak. Let’s not even talk about the 51% effectiveness of Sinovac Biotech, even if it was 98% effective, it still would not be better than the 98.5% of the population who were not infected and not vaccinated.

3. At present, among about 200 countries in the world, only 16 or 8% of them have infection rates higher than 5%. The first four are Luxembourg and three small mountainous countries with a population of just a few to tens of thousands, so the percentage of infection is high. The next 12 countries with high infection rates, including the US, have so far recorded rates of only 5% to 6%, that is, 94% to 95% are still in the clear. In this case, how helpful is the vaccine?

4. So far, after five quarters since the outbreak, the infection rate in Hong Kong is only 0.15%, thus even if the vaccine is 99% effective, there is no scientific justification to administer it.

5. In Hong Kong, from the start of the vaccination on Feb. 26 to Mar. 10 at the time of writing, five deaths were confirmed with three dead after vaccination. The Hong Kong government stressed that there is no direct scientific evidence to prove that the three people had died as a result of vaccination. However, many of the fatalities were in their 70s and 80s with chronic illnesses, so it is equally difficult to establish direct scientific evidence that they had died from the Wuhan pneumonia. While it is said that vaccines may not be relevant to the hundreds of deaths in Hong Kong every day, are the deaths attributed to the Wuhan pneumonia really related? It is clear that the Hong Kong government has double standards.

6. In the past two weeks, the causes of death of the eight victims were either unrelated or not directly related to the Wuhan pneumonia. What if they are related? Please do not follow the Hong Kong government’s example of double standards. How should we weigh this 3:5 risk of vaccinating or not?

7. To be frank, vaccination is the injection of the virus into the human body. Despite the small amount, how large of a dose can the elderly tolerate?

In the case of the Sinovac vaccines, which cost several hundred dollars more per dose than the other vaccines, with tens of billions of dollars of profit blatantly given to China, of course, the Chinese Communist Party and Hong Kong officials are urging the public to participate enthusiastically in the vaccination campaign. However, it is your own life and the Hong Kong government will not accept responsibility if you die, otherwise how can they clear the inventory to send more profits to China? With the government not taking any liability, your insurance company will not compensate you either. Of course, the most likely result is that you will be fine after the jab, but it also does not seem to help. In this way, the cost is time and money, and the return is to buy peace of mind. If you trust the statistics, it is not difficult to make a choice between doing and not doing.

Vaccines were first developed in the late 18th century. If vaccine research and development had kept pace with the emergence and mutation of viruses, why were there still global pandemics in the past two centuries? The government and vaccine companies cannot answer you for all of the above.

(Law Ka-chung, columnist)

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