I have fewer than 500 Facebook friends. Seven have died since the Covid vaccine was introduced. (None died of Covid)

In a phone conversation I had with him in the fall of 2021, Dr. Dan Stock said he thought between 1.5 and 2 percent of all Americans would be killed by the Covid-19 vaccine.

While it’s difficult to say how many Americans have now died from the vaccine, I have looked at my own circle of friends, and the results have been somewhat of a shock.

Out of 491 Facebook friends, seven have died since 2021. I don’t think any died in the five or ten years prior.

Of the seven, one committed suicide, so I will not include him.

Of the remaining six, I know that four got the Covid-19 vaccine. The other two may have gotten it. I just don’t have any information on their vaccine status.

The first to die was my friend Steve Coopersmith, who I met at an IU Baseball game when I was collecting signatures in my run for IU Trustee in the early spring of 2020. He was a New Yorker who’d come to Indiana University to study at the Jacobs School of Music and stayed in town. In retirement, he’d started a travel agency and his business was booking people on cruises. He loved it.

The last time I saw him was in May of 2021. We met for lunch at a local restaurant and sat out on the patio. It was a beautiful spring day, with a bright blue sky, brilliant sun, but a gusty wind that kept blowing over the patio umbrellas.

Steve told me he was getting ready for a big trip to Europe and that he was taking a river cruise on the Danube.

When we said goodbye in the parking lot, he told me he’d just gotten a Covid booster. I stiffened up and said something about the vaccine not being good or safe and he said proudly that his doctor was refusing to take patients who wouldn’t get the vaccine. I quickly threw back at him that I would fire any doctor who forced a vaccine on his patients, or threatened them. It didn’t get heated. It was all said quite quickly, and the amity between us remained (more or less) as we said goodbye and walked toward our own cars.

Steve went on that big European trip with the cruise down the Danube a couple months later, and I sort of lost track of him with other things, including a busy work schedule, preoccupying me.

At one point, I realized I hadn’t seen a Facebook post from him in a while, and thought to go to his page. There I saw the many messages of sorrow and condolence. He had passed away on November 13, 2021.

I called his wife Karin and she told me what had happened. He’d flown back from Europe the day before. They had friends staying over at the house as they’d all gone to an IU basketball game together. The man happened to be a doctor, a doctor who runs a charity that Steve loved called - Dog is my CoPilot.

In the middle of the night, Karin said she heard Steve make a strange gurgling sound. Then he rolled over and fell off the bed. She rushed to get the doctor friend and he ran in and tried to resuscitate Steve, but could not. He was taken to the hospital and there was pronounced dead.

He was 68 — a very energetic 68 with tons of friends, none of whom expected him to die suddenly.

Two months later an old boyfriend named Timothy Herlihy died. He was living in Pompano Beach, Florida, and would sometimes comment on my Facebook posts. He told me he got the vaccine, and sometime after, said he wished he hadn’t. He died in January of 2022. I don’t know how, in what manner. He was about 56.

An old college friend named Reid Alan Cox died of bile duct cancer. He had been the number two top attorney at the Department of Homeland Security, and then had left DC and moved back to his hometown of Phoenix, where he was a senior attorney with the Transportation Security Administration. He was a gourmand, and overweight, but had taken to walking every day with his dog. He announced the cancer diagnosis and died about five months later, in August of 2023. He was 50.

The fourth was Jim Allen, a friend who lived in Bloomington with his wife Dawn. My understanding is that he had already been diagnosed with cancer and was undergoing treatment when he got the Covid vaccine — a requirement for anyone admitted to hospitals at the time. He died on March 10, 2023 at the age of 66.

Two others were Otis Casey, a friend of a friend from college — they’d worked on the Chicago Board of Trade together after graduating from IU — and Dave Shuee, a friend from local Republican politics. Otis was around 50, while Dave was 58. I don’t know whether either of them got the vaccine. They may not have.

I just find it strange that 1.2 percent of my Facebook friends died after the vaccine was introduced (more than 1 in 100), and none before.

Really, what are the odds?