Bad Beats and Coolers
We are going to die. Short of suicide, we have no direct control over the reason or the means. We try to improve our odds, by managing the risks we take. Still, life cannot be completely safe. Accidents and illnesses can claim us, despite all our precautions. Yet, if we want to live, we should act in ways that improve our odds.
There is some discussion lately among whole food, plant-based eaters (a very small minority of the total population) of an apparent recent spike in cancer occurrence. There is speculation that it may correlate with Covid-19 vaccination. Here are a couple of examples:
Some of these same people hold that Covid-19 itself is no danger to WFPB eaters, and so, for them, the vaccine is unnecessary and may increase risk of cancer. I know of no mechanism to explain this suspected causal relation. What a lot of logical leaps!
As of December 2022, I have not had Covid. I have only been tested once, when it was required in order to return to the United States from Costa Rica. I am nonetheless not at all convinced that eating WFPB protects me from a coronavirus infection, although I suspect it would tend to reduce the severity of the resulting disease. I don’t see how either coronavirus or a coronavirus vaccine could increase risk of cancer. I have had four Pfizer Covid vaccine shots. So far, no cancer either.
In the game of poker, when you have a substantial edge in the odds when the money goes into the pot, you still might lose. For example, in Texas Hold-em, you are dealt two aces, and go all in preflop against a single opponent, who holds a seven of clubs and a deuce of diamonds. Over many such trials, you should win over 87% of the time. But this means you will lose about 1 in 8. This type of loss is called a “bad beat.” Taking a bad beat means you made a good, correct decision. Good players take bad beats. Poor players have to get lucky to win.
The worst kind of bad beat is one where it seems as if someone surreptitiously swapped in a stacked deck, arranged to give you an irresistibly great hand, and an opponent a miracle, runner-runner draw to beat you. This kind of beat is called a “cold deck” or a “cooler.” You have no realistic choice but to lose all your chips.
On the other hand, suppose you have a pair of tens, and your opponent has the ace and king of hearts. You will win 53.7% of the time, and lose about 46%. There could be ties, as when a flush in diamonds is dealt to the board. This situation is close enough that we call it a “coin flip.” When you lose a coin flip, you did not suffer a bad beat—you just failed to get lucky.
The higher the stakes you play for, the greater the edge you want in order to risk your stack of chips. At play money or low stakes games, some people push all in with random hands just for kicks. When risking something important, they do so only when they think they have the best hand or that their bluff will succeed. In large tournaments like the World Series of Poker, some players manage to get all in with pocket aces on the very first hand, at least a four-to-one favorite, and some of those lose, often when an opponent with pocket kings flops a third king.
When playing for your life, coin flips are too risky. You want to put the odds in your favor as much as possible, even though it does not guarantee survival. Smoking cigarettes is like flipping a coin with cancer. Getting vaccinated against Covid, and then getting Covid anyway, is like taking a bad beat. The unlikely bad result occurred. Eating whole food, plant-based and getting vaccinated gives you an edge, but you can still get Covid, though you probably won’t get seriously ill.
If you eat whole food, plant-based, get vaccinated, and still get cancer, it’s natural to wonder at the cause. Humans want to attribute events, especially adverse events, to some agent outside themselves. We live in a highly toxic environment, and are frequently exposed to carcinogenic agents such as smoke, fumes, sunlight and other forms of radiation, and some of the stuff we eat. Cancer cells can be present in our bodies much of the time. If we have healthy immune systems, the cancer does not progress into noticeable tumors or other malignancies. Our immune system protects our healthy cells from our cancer cells. But the complexity of the factors involved preclude knowing for certain the cause of any particular case of cancer. Like most medical knowledge, we know only some things that tend to cause cancer, some things that can treat it, and some things that can prevent it, but not always.
If you are not eating the healthiest you can, you are taking risks you don’t need to take. If you are, then you get to evaluate the available evidence, and decide whether the risk from Covid is greater or less than the possible added cancer risk entailed by the vaccine shots. I have told you my answer. You can do everything right, and still take a bad beat. I would rather take that bad beat than bet my life without obtaining every edge I can.
