‘Epidemiologically speaking, to maximize prevention of transmission, infection, hospitalization, and deaths, everyone (except those with medical contraindication) should be vaccinated.’
IN the United States, the new changes in policies for COVID-19 vaccines brought on by Health Secretary Robert J. Kennedy Jr. have created misunderstanding and confusion among the American people and even among Filipinos. His aim is noble. He wants to apply purely scientific indication (rationale) for prescribing the vaccine, and not simply vaccinate everyone, which would protect some people from the occasional complication of the vaccine, and also save money for the government.
In my opinion, he is disregarding a couple of medical truths. A healthy person is not totally immune to COVID-19 or the flu, or other viral infections.
‘Healthy’ is not enough
There is no question about the benefits conferred by the COVID-19 vaccine. I am an avid proponent of vaccines in general. This vaccine has saved billions of lives around the world over the past 4 to 5 years. About 98-99 percent of those who died during the height of the pandemic were unvaccinated. Some of them were without comorbidities, described as “healthy.” From 2020 to 2022, there were 15,243 deaths of children ages 1-17. So even some healthy ones, who were unvaccinated, got infected and died from COVID-19 then. Being healthy is not enough protection.
A grave mistake
In this pandemic, where the “most deadly” Delta strain of COVID-19 was at its height globally in June 2021, and killed over 1,000 persons each day in the United States alone, including several so-called “healthy” individuals, among them 15,243 children ages 1 to 17,” it would be a grave mistake, from my medical perspective, to deny prescription and insurance coverage for vaccination for healthy individuals, including children, who want to be vaccinated.
These mRNA vaccines are truly wonderful, conferring health and life-saving benefits, greatly outweighing the 30 or greater percentage risk of death and complications from COVID-19 infection, compared to the potential side effects and rare deaths from the vaccines, which are a fraction of one percent. Some of them were not even directly caused by the vaccine itself.
Unvaccinated individuals (including healthy ones) are more likely to harbor the virus and more certainly spread it compared to vaccinated persons. Vaccinated individuals could also be carriers, but to a much lesser extent, and their infectivity is significantly lower and ends faster. Even the healthy ones could benefit from the vaccines, also protecting the people around them.
Medical-historical facts
(1) Epidemiologically speaking, to maximize prevention of transmission, infection, hospitalization, and deaths, everyone (except those with medical contraindication) should be vaccinated. This is plain common sense. One does not have to be an Einstein to discern this.
(2) If less than 99+ percent, the vaccination rate has to be at least 80 percent for the nation to have herd immunity. At this rate, there will still be infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, but much lower than what the 55 percent vaccination rate in December 2022 did to the United States, where the latest death count from COVID-19 today is, so far, 1,226,358.
(3) This is unacceptable, but will be repeated, if we do the same “politically correct and expedient” strategy for future pandemics (47-57 percent likely in the next 25 years), straying away from strict epidemiologic principles, cowardly refusing to mandate vaccination and strict implementation (with penalty) for those who do not comply with CDC guidelines for mitigating spread of the infection. (The USA has laws mandating treatment and restriction of movements for those with active tuberculosis, which is not even as rapidly transmissible and deadly as COVID-19.) As citizens and fellowmen, we must, as a society and a nation, be compassionate and just to our more vulnerable fellowmen and children.
(3) Those who refuse vaccination have the right to do so, but must self-quarantine (isolate) themselves at home, to prevent them from spreading the virus, until the pandemic has subsided to a more controlled status. This is our “collateral responsibility” for exercising our civil right to refuse the vaccines. We cannot enjoy our “freedom to choose to refuse” the vaccines, and still roam around spreading the virus and potentially kill people, especially those seniors or children with co-morbidities or who are immunosuppressed, without collateral responsibility and justice. Privileges and rights come with duties and responsibilities.
(4) Epidemiologically, federal mandates, although unpopular, will help save millions of lives if properly implemented. More than 2/3 (about 860,000) of the almost 1.3 million Americans who died from COVID-19 would have been saved, had federal mandates been enforced. George Washington, during the Revolutionary War in 1777, went against Congress and mandated mass inoculation against smallpox for the members of his Continental Army, when the viral infection was killing more soldiers than British bullets. Had he not done so wisely and bravely, we could have lost that war and still be under British rule today.
Access to the vaccine
The new policy under Secretary Kennedy: (1) Getting COVID-19 vaccine now requires a prescription; (2) Only those adults and children with co-morbidities would be eligible and will be covered by their Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance; (3) Healthy individuals, including children (6 months – 17 years old) are “no longer recommended” to get the COVID-19 vaccines. They could still get vaccinated, under a physician’s supervision, but this would be an out-of-pocket expense.
While I totally support Secretary Kennedy’s MAHA programs of removing all dangerous food additives and chemicals, recommending exercise and healthy diet, with less salt, less high-heat grilling/cooking, pointing out the dangers of processed meats/veggies, illicit drugs, alcohol, tobacco, and targeting the cause of autism to prevent it, etc., I beg to disagree with his implied reasoning that healthy people do not need the protection of the vaccine. Statistics in the past have already shown that healthy people, including children, have died from COVID-19.
I rest my case.
