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'Why don't you write something about all the people dying from the COVID-19 vaccines?" the bearded man queried after learning we work for The Maui News.
Standing in the shade of a small tree near the Costco gas station exit, he held a hand-printed sign asking for the kindness of strangers. At first glance, he did not appear to be a man with a comprehensive health care plan or extensive social safety net. Even so, to him the risk posed by a free jab was greater than contracting the disease itself.
Despite scientists and leaders across the spectrum insisting the vaccines are safe and effective, he is not alone. New variants are fueling surges of the disease in unvaccinated populations around the world, while illness and death among the vaccinated are minuscule. Still, vaccine hesitancy persists.
It is all too easy to chalk this hesitancy up to fearmongering in the media, political divisions or even a rising national distrust of authority. Those who study risk perception say it is human nature.
In a Psychology Today article from a while back, Dave Ropeik explains the science that concludes humans are hardwired to emphasize instinct over intellect and feelings over facts.
"The problem is that the human risk perception system is based more on emotion and instincts than on reason and rationality, and that bodes poorly for dealing with the immensely complex threat," Ropeik writes. "We're counting on a risk perception system to save us that's better designed to protect us from snakes and the dark than global abstractions laced with technological complexity and unknowns."
For the record, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week that 5,479 people in the United States died after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine. This includes all deaths whatever the cause. Even if the vaccine caused every death, which it didn't, divide that number into the 318 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccines that have been administered and the risk is 0.0017 percent.
Serious side effects are similarly rare. If one in a million sounds too chancy, consider this: Out of the U.S. population of 328 million, there have been more than 33,425,000 COVID-19 cases, well north of 10 percent. The disease has caused more than 600,800 deaths. Long-haul COVID is a reality that is going to affect individuals and our health care system for years to come. The virus is not going anywhere. It is expected to still be causing illnesses years from now.
Everyone has a right to refuse the vaccine no matter the potential consequences to their health or the health of their families. They are welcome to make that decision as long as they don't try to use numbers to back their choice, for those numbers do not add up.