Last week, I read an article about how Germany has a surplus of over 1.4M doses of Astra Zeneca because people are missing their appointments to hold out for Pfizer.
I read another article today about how governors are concerned about the optics of distributing Johnson & Johnson to low income neighborhoods where people are harder to track down for vaccination.
Someone on Twitter this morning asked, “How immune are you after the first dose of Moderna?”.
There’s still a lot of vaccine misconception out there, so I’m going to try and address some.
First off, none of the vaccines will prevent you from getting COVID. None of them. No one is claiming that about their vaccine. What we’re talking about when we refer to the efficacy of a vaccine, is how effective are they at keeping you out of the hospital with just a mild or moderate case that you can recover from at home. That’s all we’re talking about. We’re not even at the stage of talking about whether you can spread the virus after you’ve been vaccinated. The assumption at this point is that you can, and that you should stay masked up until we know more.
Angela Merkel was asked if she would get the Astra Zeneca vaccine (I don’t know why we’re pretending she’s not already vaccinated). She replied that she would not because she’s 66 and in Germany, Astra Zeneca is only approved for people under the age of 65. They put out a very sketchy (and scientifically unsound) study that claims it’s only 8% effective on those who are over 65. While it may (we’re still not seeing definitive proof in the UK to support this) be less effective on people over the age of 65, we need to understand what “less effective” means? It means if you’re over 80, you only have a 19% chance of ending up on the hospital. In other words, it’s 81% effective.
I don’t know why Merkel would say something so reckless and stupid, but her words have resonated and the people she represents aren’t getting Astra Zeneca vaccines.
Everyone is focused on getting the vaccine with the ‘highest percentage’. There’s more to it than that. I got my first dose of Moderna last week. My top 2 choices were (and still are, although I’m already wed to Moderna) Astra Zeneca and Johnson and Johnson. Since this pandemic started, I’ve done a stupid amount of reading about it. I’ve read hundreds of scientific studies, some of which I understand, some of which I’m reasonably certain I misunderstood. I actually scheduled a call with the Chief Science Officer of my company to discuss what I thought I understood with him. I have a concern about the long term efficacy of m-RNA vaccines. They’ve been in development for several years now, but COVID is the first time anyone has tried them. The primary issue with them is the short term efficacy. They don’t seem to produce the same response from your own immune system that (for example) the polio or measles vaccines do. They just don’t seem to produce a meaningful t cell response from the natural immune system. That’s why we hadn’t seen one until COVID. We (by we, I mean all of us including the scientists who created these vaccines) don’t know how long either of the m-RNA COVID vaccines will provide protection for. We just have to wait and see.
For that reason, I concluded that the two vaccines that were more like traditional vaccines were more likely to produce the kind of t cell response that your body needs to give you long term protection. Our Chief Science Officer agreed with my conclusions, so my thought process isn’t totally off base.
So why did I get a Moderna shot? Because it’s imperative for all of us to get vaccinated as soon as possible. The higher the vaccination rate is, the fewer hosts this virus will have Fewer hosts = fewer mutations.
That was a little imprecise, and some of you may have spotted an inconsistency in what I’m saying so let me clarify. The vaccines mean that your body will produce an immediate immune response to COVID, which will keep the viral load down. The lower the viral load is, the less severe the symptoms you will have. Also, it appears that if you have a lower viral load, you’re not as efficient a transmitter as someone with a higher viral load and that what you’re infecting others with is a lower viral load case of COVID. Mutations are errors in replication. The lower the viral load, the less of the virus there is to replicate and therefore create errors in replication.
You have to get vaccinated with whatever you can get, as soon as you can get it. That’s the bottom line.
I don’t agree about the narrative regarding the optics of distributing J&J to poorer neighborhoods. NYC was going to send mobile vaccination trucks to lower income neighborhoods as soon as J&J started rolling in. This makes sense to me, as only one visit would be needed There would be no need to schedule second vaccination appointments at locations that the people who received the first injection might or might not be able to get to. The logistics of scheduling two interaction with people using trucks sounds like a nightmare, and doesn’t make much sense to me especially knowing that J&J will 100% keep you out of the hospital if you get COVID 50 or more days after your vaccination. Plus, J&J has much more favorable storage requirements that lend themselves to mobile vaccination.
Instead of worrying about the “optics” of getting low income people vaccinated with the product that makes the most sense in this situation, we need to deal with the perception problems that lead people to believe that J&J (and Astra Zeneca for that matter) are “subpar” choices. They’re absolutely not, and if I had been given an option when I showed up for my vaccination appointment, I would 100% have chosen J&J.
We need to get people in every corner of this planet vaccinated as soon as possible. The lack of understanding about the different vaccines shouldn’t slow those efforts down. Educating people should not be the Herculean task that it’s become in the digital age.
