Groucho Marx's comedy game show "You Bet Your Life" premiered on NBC in 1950. One favorite piece of shtick was the lowering of a Groucho-faced duck from the rafters if a contestant happened to say that day's secret word. The prize? $100.

These days, there’s no prize if you bet your life by skipping the available COVID-19 vaccines and boosters.

According to a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study, unvaccinated adults were 23 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 during the omicron surge than adults who were vaccinated and boosted.

The boosters matter: The study also found that "hospitalizations were 5.3 times higher among the unvaccinated than vaccinated but not boosted."

These CDC figures reinforce earlier findings that unvaccinated adults are more likely to require ICU admission or intubation for mechanical ventilation, or to die compared to vaccinated adults with or without a booster.

You can feel positive about getting vaccinated and boosted — and having your children over age 5 receive this vaccine. The benefits for kids are 100 times greater than the risk (they aren't zero from any vaccine), if you include the child and the family members they come in contact with.

Another way of saying it: For younger folks, the chance of a serious adverse reaction to the vaccine is less than one hundredth the risk of catching COVID-19 and having a serious adverse reaction to it.

For folks age 65 and older or those with serious health problems, the benefit vs. risk ratio is about 10,000 to 1.