The speed of science

In the face of the wave of misinformation and emotionally charged arguments that have overwhelmed Western societies and their followers in various parts of the world, it was difficult to find a rational response, and one was tempted to restrict their opinions and advices to themselves.

However, when the decision was taken worldwide to vaccinate children, at the end of 2021, this self-centered attitude was not viable anymore. Children are different.

I was, literally speaking, the only person in my children's entire environment, who was opposed to their covid vaccination. The other elders in our family, in their extended family, their teachers, their classmates, all were already vaccinated and asking my children what they were waiting for, with an air of responsibility and moral superiority.

My authority and credibility as a father was reduced to zero. Just speaking was useless.

When I realised, because she was still in bed late in the morning, that one of my daughter had taken the day before one shot of covaxin at a vaccination camp organised in her school - exceptionally open for vaccination, even as it was still closed for teaching - and furthermore, when I realised that I was the only person whom she kept in the dark, my world collapsed. I decided to to do what I should have done much before: 

Follow the scientific method.

As my daughter was in bed for 3 days, too weak to get up, I asked her, on the 3rd day when she was better, to collect covid, vaccination and population data from 3 government websites:

1) Cowin Portal:

https://www.cowin.gov.in/

2) State-Wise Covid Status:

https://www.mygov.in/corona-data/covid19-statewise-status/

3) Census of India:

https://censusindia.gov.in/census.website/

She took screenshots of each state number of vaccinations (1 and 2 doses) from the Cowin dashboard, and wrote down the figures in an excel sheet. She then wrote the number of covid cases and covid deaths of each state, in a different column, as per the State-wise Covid Status. In the next column she wrote the population of each state, as per the Census.

Then, dividing the number of vaccinations and number of cases and deaths by the population of each state, she obtained the numbers per capita.

She then sorted the columns by number of 1st dose per capita, and put the result in an x-y graph.

The result is below:

I then asked my daughter if she could see in this graph any relation between the number of vaccinations and the number of deaths. She was hesitant. It was not very clear, she said. There were very high variations between states. But there was a slight correlation: Higher the number of doses, higher the number of deaths. I then asked her, is it clear from the government data that vaccinations reduce the number of deaths? She said, "No. It is rather the opposite".

By the time she reached this conclusion, after 4 hours of tedious work, her  younger brother and elder sister had joined us and were also observing the data.

She decided to not go to school for the second dose. She would return to school only when the classes would restart. Her brother and sister also decided to not go to school get their shot. Their main worry was what to tell to their friends and to their teachers. But they felt confident they would be able to say something and to face them.

I am not sure what had the more influence, my daughter experiencing bad side effects (for more than a week) or assembling and studying government data. But to this day, my kids are the only ones in their entire school to not have been vaccinated.

It took 4 hours of boring, tedious clerical job: making screenshots, saving them in folders, writing the values in the excel sheet. 

4 hours. The speed of science?

Links to my daughter's files:

spreadsheet

screenshots