Being bored and curious... apparently virtually all cases of cervical cancer are caused by HPV source and 4070 women will die from cervical cancer each year in the US. I'm not sure looking at the rate for one year is really the best number to compare the advantages of the vaccine, especially if the vaccine offers lifelong immunity, but I have a migraine and am not seriously researching this, so let's go with that for now. The US population is apparently 304,059,724. I'm assuming half of them are female.
If I did my math right, this means that of those 7 million vaccinated women, we would expect 187 of them to die from cervical cancer in some year or other. I'd say each year, but we're taking a narrow age range and cervical cancer tends to kill within certain ages, so when they get to the right ages, if they're representative of the larger population, about 187 per year for some number of years. Versus 20.
Now, there's a lot of fudge factor in my numbers, and I have a migraine, so I may have messed up. The vaccine does not confer 100% immunity to all strains of HPV. However, HPV kills in more ways than just cervical cancer, so that balances somewhat. A big question would be, as I said, how long the vaccine's immunity lasts for.
But it looks likely that over 100 young girl's lives were saved and many others were saved having an incredibly scary and potentially health-damaging problem. Just because you survive something doesn't mean it's good. Having cervical cancer and surviving is certainly better than having it and dying, but still not a great outcome.
Of course, those 20 deaths do occur younger, and you do have to weight that somewhat. They lost more of their life. But it's still the case that it's highly unlikely that all 20 were linked to the vaccine, and it's still more life spared than lost unless you really prefer avoiding a very small risk when you are young to have a larger risk when you are a bit older. Some people may feel that they're okay with dying any time past a certain age or whatever, but I think most people who feel that way when they are young are likely to change their minds when they get older and it becomes closer to reality.
no subject
If I did my math right, this means that of those 7 million vaccinated women, we would expect 187 of them to die from cervical cancer in some year or other. I'd say each year, but we're taking a narrow age range and cervical cancer tends to kill within certain ages, so when they get to the right ages, if they're representative of the larger population, about 187 per year for some number of years. Versus 20.
Now, there's a lot of fudge factor in my numbers, and I have a migraine, so I may have messed up. The vaccine does not confer 100% immunity to all strains of HPV. However, HPV kills in more ways than just cervical cancer, so that balances somewhat. A big question would be, as I said, how long the vaccine's immunity lasts for.
But it looks likely that over 100 young girl's lives were saved and many others were saved having an incredibly scary and potentially health-damaging problem. Just because you survive something doesn't mean it's good. Having cervical cancer and surviving is certainly better than having it and dying, but still not a great outcome.
Of course, those 20 deaths do occur younger, and you do have to weight that somewhat. They lost more of their life. But it's still the case that it's highly unlikely that all 20 were linked to the vaccine, and it's still more life spared than lost unless you really prefer avoiding a very small risk when you are young to have a larger risk when you are a bit older. Some people may feel that they're okay with dying any time past a certain age or whatever, but I think most people who feel that way when they are young are likely to change their minds when they get older and it becomes closer to reality.