The astonishing success of COVID vaccines

[shunyadragon]

I routinely know more about my own medical conditions than the people treating me. I have had more than one nurse ask if I was a doctor before

eta: that reminded me of something that royally ticked me off: About a month ago I got a call from someone at Kroger Pharmacy saying that they needed to schedule me for a Shingles vaccine. I asked which doctor of mine set that up, and after some hesitation she admitted none of them, this was basically Kroger pushing the vaccine on people. I got angry and told her that I am not allowed to get live vaccine shots (which the shingles virus is) and that it could cause real damage if I didn't know better and just listened to her "scheduling" me for the shingles vaccine without knowing my medical history or getting approval from my doctors first. I think I scared her pretty good. I hope she reported back to her boss and they stopped doing such nonsense.

I agree from the perspective that we should be acquire as much knowledge about our own medical issues as possible. Doctors and other health professionals deal with so many patients they cannot always deal with everyone's health problems.

[Sparko]

I agree from the perspective that we should be acquire as much knowledge about our own medical issues as possible. Doctors and other health professionals deal with so many patients they cannot always deal with everyone's health problems.

Yeah without our charts they probably don't even remember what we have when we visit them. It's like an assembly line at most doctor's offices. My primary doctor got tired of that and really shrank down her practice to only the patients she can handle personally. More like an old school country doctor, without the house calls. But the specialists I see (endocrinologist, cardiologist, etc) have way too many patients. Heck some of them I have to schedule months in advance to even get in. And then they ask some dumb questions, the nurses check vitals and they update any prescriptions and send me home.

[Sherman]

Teal, the vaccines not only prevent infection, but in the cases where that fails, it prevents death by making the infection much milder and shorter than without vaccination. So the death rate does matter.

I agree that the infection rate is going to be the most relevant though. And it seems to be dropping among those vaccinated. Most of the continued infections seem to be from those who were not vaccinated (according to a news report I was listening to today)

I have lost 3 people close to me to Covid-19. So the disease is a real threat. I have gotten the first stage of the vaccine and will be getting the second stage on the 7th of May.

[Seeker]

The CDC has done an analysis of the data up to April 20th. At that point, 87 million US residents had been fully vaccinated. Among those, only 331 people have needed to be hospitalized due to COVID. That's .00038 percent of the total vaccinated population. There were only 77 deaths due to COVID-19 in this population.

This really is a society-wide success. It took years of government funding of basic science for us to understand how to structure an RNA to work well, and to figure out the chemistry needed to insert it into a cell. A couple of startups (one in Germany) pioneered the use of the technology in vaccines, and major pharmaceutical companies have been helping with the manufacturing and distribution. And, after a shaky start, the government's been central to making sure the shots get into the arms of as many people as possible.

The full measure of success will be getting the vaccines out globally. As long as the virus is circulating in populations, there will be a risk of it evolving into a threatening form that evades vaccines. Having it contained in the US may only be a temporary success when it's still spreading widely in Brazil and India - as well as a vaccine-hesitant population here.

So the OP is talking about the success of COVID vaccines only within the confines of the USA?