What is the purpose of vaccination?
I get a lot of questions about Covid vaccines and I try to put out information as often as I have time to. I hope you find this helpful.
There seems to be a misconception about the purpose of the Covid vaccines. First let’s look at a vaccine you are familiar with, the flu vaccine. In this day and age no one thinks that getting the flu vaccine will eradicate influenza. There is a clear understanding that even if you get the shot, you can still get the flu but if you do, it will be less severe. We humans have learned to co-exist with the influenza virus every winter and we will have to do the same with Covid.
The Covid vaccine will not stop you from catching the corona virus or stop you from passing it on to someone else, but it will stop you from getting a severe case of Covid-19 or dying. Which is basically what you want.
Vaccinating everyone in the country will not eradicate the Covid corona virus but it will certainly make it a lot more manageable.
Now the good news: ALL the Covid vaccines are 100% effective at reducing the severity of the disease and stopping deaths. This is fabulous news, this is what we want. If we have to have a minor ‘cold’ for a week so be it.
So when people ask about the difference in efficacy of this vaccine of 95% vs that vaccine 88% or even 65% that’s not what they should be focusing on. That is not what makes one vaccine ‘better’ than the other.
The best vaccine for you, right now, is the one you can get your hands on.
In the spring we may have more time (and more choices) to be picky.
The idea of a ‘one shot’ vaccine is a nice one but is more likely to materialize as an annual shot like the flu vaccine, it has to change with the variants as well.
Other interesting covid facts:
Older people have less side effects from the current vaccines than younger people. Why?
It is thought that younger people have a more active immune system which sometimes kicks into high gear and creates more allergic reactions.
In Germany, people over 65 are not going to receive the vaccine. Their strategy apparently is to create herd immunity in the younger crowd and thus help ‘protect’ the seniors. They say there is limited data that it works in seniors and they don’t want to ‘waste’ the (AstraZeneca) vaccine.
Speaking of the AZ shot the first injection of the AZ vaccine has now been shown to give 10 to 12 weeks immunity. Therefore in the UK they are focusing on getting the first shot into everyone and the interval to take the second shot has been extended.
Johnson and Johnson have now applied to the FDA for Emergency Use Approval (EUA) if they get approved as fast as the other two we could have a third shot available in March. The more the merrier! It is unclear what is holding up the AZ vaccine in this country.
There is a study going on in Washington state at a university, on Luvox (Fluvoxamine). A race course doctor in California noted that taking Luvox at the beginning of getting Covid prevented hospitalizations and serious disease. He had heard this from somewhere else and so tried it on patients from the racecourse community who were willing to take it. There were 200 people in all, none of the people who took the drug had to be hospitalized. 3 who chose not to had to be hospitalized and 1 died. Fluvoxamine is an SSRI antidepressant. Interesting huh?
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