As a general internist for the past 39 years and one who has posted twice before on COVID-19 (the first a warning before COVID hit the U.S., the second a video demonstrating the value of physical distancing), I feel obliged to jump in again now, as we experience our 4th COVID surge, this one COMPLETELY PREVENTABLE, if everyone had just followed CDC guidelines and worn their masks and taken their FREE vaccines when available. How COVID has become a political issue is beyond me; while President Trump was certainly guilty of minimizing COVID before it hit the U.S., he eventually took not only the COVID vaccine series but monoclonal antibodies as well, though only after predictably contracting the natural infection as a result of his reckless behavior. COVID is first and foremost a public health disaster---615,000 Americans have died, and yet many of you still think it’s “just another virus.” Remember, this is a “novel” virus, and we really have no idea of the entire spectrum of possible complications of the infection. Lung scarring, heart muscle damage and acute kidney failure requiring hemodialysis are just a few. A new study of older adults in Argentina just released on 7/30/21 found dementia-like changes in memory 6 months out from COVID infection, and other researchers found Alzheimer’s-related proteins in the blood of New Yorkers who manifested neurologic symptoms early in the course of their COVID infection. The CDC released a study last week suggesting that as many as half of patients requiring hospital admission for COVID will have long-lasting adverse effects as a result, many lifelong. Life is really a series of decisions---which fork in the road will you take? In some cases, the two choices appear equivalent, or the data that you would use in your decision-making process is either unavailable or conflicting. This is NOT one of those cases.
Consider that 87% of our hospitalized COVID patients, 95% of the COVID patients currently in the ICU and 95% of those requiring mechanical ventilation, are unimmunized. A COVID vaccine makes you 8 times less likely to be infected with COVID and 25 times less likely to be hospitalized or die as a result. The delta variant is more highly transmissible than the chickenpox virus, and the viral load of those exposed (even the immunized) is > 100 times that seen with the original COVID-19 strains, allowing some transmission from immunized individuals to other immunized contacts, but especially to the unimmunized; many of you have already heard about the huge Provincetown (Cape Cod), MA outbreak in the news. All COVID vaccines are on EUA (emergency-use approval) right now, but FDA full approval of the mRNA COVID vaccines (Pfizer & Moderna) should be available within a month. I really doubt that that will sway any of the anti-vaxxers, but it will make it easier to pass mandates for vaccination among health-care workers, flight attendants, food-handlers, the military, and other private, state and federal employees. As of now, 347 million doses of COVID vaccine have been administered in the U.S.; that’s a pretty substantial sample size. It’s obvious that the vaccine is safe, and it’s more effective than any flu vaccine ever developed. So, it really makes no sense for any of you to wait for latent side-effects of the vaccine in others, while ignoring the very real complications of the COVID virus infection in yourself. I’m really tired of seeing all the whiny posts by non-medical folks suggesting that their civil liberties are being infringed upon by masking and physical-distancing mandates and vaccine recommendations. Talk to the doctors and nurses who tirelessly care for these people on a daily basis and should have been done after a very long and tragic December & January.
After nearly a 6-month lull, COVID-19 has resurfaced with a vengeance, this one clearly a “surge of the unvaccinated.” And consider all the conferences, conventions and concerts that we should be attending but that will now be scrubbed as the infections and death counts again mount, and all the new masking mandates that will now be pushed out---all because of your ill-advised choices. If it were only you that suffered the consequences of your behavior, that would be justice, but I would still feel bad for you as a friend. But when your actions, or lack thereof, lead to rising death rates and more shutdowns, it's time to re-examine your motivation(s). Instead of dwelling on your own civil liberties, please consider the civil liberties of the >50% of Americans who have fulfilled their civic responsibility and got vaccinated, in an effort to protect themselves, their families, and society as a whole. Sadly, the deaths this time around will be increasingly in the 35-60 age range…those that thought that filling out a questionnaire and standing in a short line to take one or two jabs in the arm was too much of an inconvenience for them to endure. Please understand that Dr. Fauci is not the devil (though his early dismissal of the Wuhan lab-leak theory still concerns me), but has your health and well-being as the prime focus for his decisions, and has from the get-go. He is being asked to balance his public health concerns with economic and educational concerns of others, related to business and school closures, leading to a lot of policy reversals as surges come and go; what a nightmare for one man to endure. He has served as this nation’s top infectious disease expert under 6 U.S. Presidents, and co-authored the textbook that many of our top physicians were weaned on; the man knows what he is doing. So please trust the science and get a vaccine. If you distrust the rapidity of development of the novel mRNA platform utilized by Pfizer & Moderna, then opt for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which utilizes the DNA-based AdVac vaccine platform that J&J used for prior vaccines for Ebola, RSV & Zika virus; a booster shot of the J&J COVID vaccine will likely offer protection very similar to that seen with the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. Trust me, this is a virus you really don't want to take chances with. Get protected!
The above from Dr. Alan Wilkins - a practicing doctor in Southern California.
Tom's Doomsday Resources / tom@mmto.org