February 2021 – Challenges and Progress with Vaccination

The roll-out of the vaccines has been arduous and grueling due to our past president’s negligence in procuring sufficient vaccines, his cavalier attitude, toward the virus, and blatant disregard for the mounting deaths. Most people have had a hellacious struggle spending infinitely long hours on the phone, investigating, and hunting for sites to procure a vaccine.

Biden is doing everything he can to enable sufficient doses to vaccinate as many people as possible.

Across the country, the death toll of the coronavirus is horrific — and it’s worse than many experts expected. (Dudding, Payadue, 2021) Now we are threatened with serious variants that have entered the US from many parts of the world. We are looking at adding booster shots on top of 2 doses. We are running as fast as we can to outfox the virus lethality, racing to get to the other side. (Zraick, 2021) The variant from South Africa, B.1.351, may also blunt the effectiveness of Covid-19 vaccines made by Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax. It has spread to at least 31 countries, including the U.S., where the first two known cases of the variant were identified in South Carolina this week. (Tumin, Bogert, 2021)

We are beginning to make progress with vaccination:

In the 2/1/2021 NYT Morning edition, Leonhardt says, “Here is a key fact: All five vaccines with public results have eliminated Covid-19 Deaths. They have drastically reduced hospitalizations.”

“Of the roughly 75,000 people that have received one of the five in a research trial, not a single person has died from Covid and only a few people appear to have been hospitalized. None have remained hospitalized 28 days after receiving the shot.” (2021, Leonhardt)

Our World in Data (2021) says “To bring this pandemic to an end, a large share of the world needs to be immune to the virus. The safest way to achieve this is with a vaccine.”

Cumulative COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people: 0.17

Start of vaccine administration: December 2020

So far 25.6 million shots have been given, according to a state-by-state tally by Bloomberg and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the last week, an average of 1.21 million doses per day were administered. (2021, Bloomberg.com)

As a health care professional, I was able to get my first vaccine in California but had to move mountains to register in Washington for my second dose.

We are looking for herd immunity to stop the spread of the virus. Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to a disease to make its spread unlikely. As a result, the entire community is protected, even those who are not themselves immune. Herd immunity is usually achieved through vaccination, but it can also occur through natural infection. (Harvard Health, 2021)

We will win the war, but we have grave losses of those that still struggle with the effects of the virus (the long haulers) and we discover daily new long-term symptoms. Death surrounds us. We honor the grief and stand silently in homage.

References:

Bloomberg. (2021, January 29). More Than 87.1 Million Shots Given: Covid-19 Tracker. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/

Dudding, Will, Payadue, Marcus. (2021, January 28). NYT Evening Briefing. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/briefing/gamestop-healthcare-general-motors-.html

Harvard Health Publishing. (2021, January 12). https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/preventing-the-spread-of-the-coronavirus

Leonhardt, David. (2021, February 1). Good morning. The vaccine news continues to be better than many people realize. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/01/briefing/vaccination-myanmar-coup-rochester-police.html

Our World in Data. (2021, January 29). Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

Tumin, Remy, Bogert, Jeramiah. (2021, January 29). NYT Evening Briefing. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/briefing/vaccines-gamestop-cicely-tyson.html

Zraick, Karen. (2021, January 28). The variant that emerged in South Africa is reported in the U.S. for the first time. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/us/covid-south-africa-variant-south-carolina.html