On Monday, the first health care workers rolled up their sleeves and accepted a shot in the arm of the Pfizer/ BioNTech cocktail that offers hope against the coronavirus pandemic. In Pittsburgh, five front-line UPMC employees, including a critical care nurse and a patient transporter, had their injections livestreamed.
This is the culmination of nine months of work to push back against covid-19. This is the day that we have anticipated. Now, when your turn comes up, just do it.
Do it because it is smart. Because it is brave. Because it is the right thing to do.
The Pfizer vaccine is 52% effective after the first dose and 95% after the second. That is a dramatic number — as much as twice as effective as the flu vaccine. It doesn’t just promise to reduce the number of cases of covid-19, but to help the cases that are acquired be less deadly.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in November followed 101 coronavirus patients. It showed that 191 household members also tested positive for the disease within five days of the first diagnosis. Those subsequent patients were as likely to be adults as children.
As with any vaccine, there are those whose immune systems will not tolerate it, and many of those could be among the most at risk from covid. There will be those with certain allergies who would take the vaccine if it were possible, but it isn’t. For those people, the best defense is tamping down the disease’s spread overall.
The idea of a booster shot for the economy is a common analogy. This time it is not a metaphor.
While the coronavirus attacks the circulation system of the human body, the lockdowns aimed at limiting it have crippled the way money flows through businesses and bank accounts. Unemployment has been unprecedented. Small businesses — particularly restaurants and bars — have been forced to find new ways to do business or close their doors. This can be rectified only by restraining the disease instead of the economy.
Do what is necessary. Take the vaccine.
— The Tribune-Review (TNS)
