#ProtectRBG Yes, It’s a Real Thing
Yes, it’s on Twitter, Young and Older People want to protect the health of Ruth Bader Ginsberg. And yes, though much of it is serious-funny, what I’m advocating today is for you to GET YOUR FLU SHOT. Why?
HERD IMMUNITY: you will protect RBG and other folks by staying well. A new study done by economist Corey White has measured the effects of the public being inoculated. Using data from the 50 states, from 1994 to 2016, he found that each percentage point increase in the rate of vaccinating our citizens results in 807 fewer deaths from the flu. Yet, said another way, if 4,016 people were vaccinated this season, we would expect to save one life. The benefits only accumulate incrementally until we reach the herd immunity threshold–that means that when enough people don’t get sick because they are protected by the flu shot, the result is they protect those with weak immune systems from getting the flu and possibly dying.
If that hasn’t convinced you–here are more statistics:
a one percentage point increase in the rate of vaccination would mean 15 million fewer lost work hours nationwide. (Your failure to get a flu shot will on average cause five hours of wages to be lost.)
the University of Minnesota discovered that 1/3 of the folks getting their flu shot did not know that by doing so they were helping keep others healthy;
educating folks about the benefits of herd immunity increased their desire to get a flu shot by 7.3%.
A NEW IDEA–YOU GET PAID
If each vaccination would produce $98.00 in social benefits due to reducing work absence, that would certainly outweigh the $15.00 per-shot cost of administering the shot. So how much could a person expect to be paid for getting the shot? Another study!!! Yes, studies are rampant, but done in 2015, economists found that a $30.00 subsidy was enough to increase vaccine rates by 12 percentage points–add that to the “not missing work” benefit and a much larger carrot could be cost-justified.
MORE RESULTS OF MASS INOCULATIONS
Businesses that employ many people could expect a tax break if they hit a certain target for vaccination. The government could experiment with different financial carrots and sticks to find that which achieves herd immunity for their community.
THE FUTURE
All of this is done to change the habits of our people, make getting a flu shot every autumn a common thing, and thus avoid what could attack us in the future…a virulent strain like the pandemic of 1918 that claimed an estimated 675,000 lives in the United States alone.
And did you know that tens of thousands of Americans die every year from the flu. SO GET YOUR FLU SHOT.
Much of this information was taken from an article in the LA TIMES that proclaimed in its headline: GET A SHOT and SAVE GRANDMA, and any child who has an immune disorder, or any adult who takes a medication that affects his or her immune system.
Let’s increase our messaging, let’s subsidize flu shots, let’s aim for herd immunity and:
save lives
cut back on hospitalizations
please employers who won’t get that call that can truly mess up a work day, “I’m so sick, I’ve got the flu.”
PHOTO: Ana Martinez, a medical assistant at the Sea Mar Community Health Center, gives a patient a flu shot in Seattle, Wash. on Jan. 11. (Ted S. Warren / Associated Press in the LA TIMES)
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