A year and some change we’ve been coping with the global pandemic of COVID-19. Now the question we’re trying to ask is: Who’s gonna readily step up for the vaccines available for it?
We already know the anti-vaxxers that won’t. They should, but they won’t. Let’s focus the conversation on the majority that will.
My next question: which one do you select?
You mean there choices, you ask? Yes. I’ve been following it closely, knowing I’ll be in the last group for eligibility. I’m healthy, single, 40 year old male that is not at-risk. That means my monkey-ass is at the end of the line, AS IT SHOULD BE.
I’m just writing and thinking pragmatically. Let’s look closer at the choices.
Case in point: the media coverage and public reception of the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine. Results from its trials were released last week. According to the company, it should be able to deliver 100 million doses in the first half of this year. But this good news hasn’t been greeted with the enthusiasm that accompanied announcements about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
Perhaps that’s because in its clinical trial, the J&J vaccine had an efficacy number — the percentage of cases prevented entirely — of 66 percent. Compared against the 95 percent efficacy rate for the Pfizer vaccine and the 94.1 rate for Moderna’s, Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine simply doesn’t look as good.
But in another sense, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine trial results were incredibly encouraging. The same trial showed that J&J’s vaccine makes Covid-19 cases much milder, meaning you might still get sick but you are much less likely to be hospitalized or die. Indeed, on that front, the J&J vaccine performs just as well as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s, a fact that seems to have been undersold in news coverage about it.
To put J&J’s effectiveness in another context, think about the flu. Flu vaccines mostly don’t prevent you from getting sick with the flu but instead make the flu much less awful if you catch it and less fatal for at-risk populations. A Covid-19 vaccine that was similar to that — one that made you much less likely to be hospitalized or die, and made the disease milder — would still be enough to help bring the pandemic to an end and give us back our lives.
That’s exactly what we have with the current crop of vaccines, including the three that haven’t been received as well as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s. No one who got two doses in clinical trials for the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines has been hospitalized or died, and the same holds true for the new vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Oxford/AstraZeneca, and Novavax (which haven’t yet been approved in the US). Each of the vaccines has demonstrated very high protection against severe Covid-19 in trials.
So why aren’t we talking about that?
– Kelsey Piper, Vox on February 11, 2021
And just to reiterate, no vaccine is a silver bullet to kill it’s associated virus. The yearly flu vaccine you elect to have is an additional, yet important layer of protection from influenza. If you do happen to be infected, it decreases the EFFECT.
It doesn’t make you bulletproof, per se.
Around The World
As of February 11, 2021 the total world cases of COVID-19 stands at 107M, with 2.3M deaths according to WHO. Of that total, the USA has 47M cases, 1.1M deaths. Drilling down further in Washington State: 329K cases, 4.7K deaths.
Ugh. So many sick folks, that many dead. Breaks my heart.
Hopefully throughout 2021 those number of cases and deaths will be less while simultaneously increasing the distribution and dispensing of the vaccine.
I purposely didn’t answer my own question: Are you vaccinating against COVID-19 or not?
Yes, I will to answer flatly.
And with whichever vaccine is offered to me, and my preference is the Johnson & Johnson one-shot and done. That’s only IF all things being equal. Otherwise, I’ll roll up my sleeve, and you do your thing.
More from me later,
‘los
los, Fil-Am Renaissance Man 