In his Dec. 9 letter, Dr. Joshua Cutler makes a compelling scientific argument for vaccination against the evolving coronavirus. And, of course, Gov. Mills, Health and Human Services Commissioner Jeanne Lambrew and Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention Director Nirav Shah have been using a number of moral and civic responsibility arguments to convince Mainers to get vaccinated.

Despite pleas and arguments such as these, though, some 30 percent of the Maine population are still not vaccinated. Might an economic argument get through to them? According to the Maine CDC, 383 Maine people are hospitalized currently with COVID-19. If we assume some 80 percent of them are unvaccinated, that translates to about 306 unvaccinated patients in hospital on a given day.

It’s hard to know the daily cost of hospital care for an average COVID-19 patient because there’s no such thing as an average patient. But even if we assume a conservative average daily cost per patient of $1,000 over the course of a year, the cost of care for those unvaccinated patients would be at least $111,690,000 (306 patients x $1,000 per patient per day x 365 days). Vaccinated people are hospitalized as well, of course, but if all those 306 unvaccinated had been vaccinated, the chance of any of them ending up in the hospital would be vanishingly small.

Unvaccinated Mainers need to realize their behavior will force Mainers (and themselves) to eventually pay for those avoidable hospitalization costs through tax and premium surcharges of over $110 million annually.

It’s easy to pooh-pooh science, morality and civic responsibility. But money?

Daniel Bryant, M.D.
Cape Elizabeth

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