General Wellness

As the summer moves along and the prospect of returning to school looms for our kids, we really need to be aware of 3 important facts.

#1 – If you count all the kids under 12, less than 50% of Americans are fully vaccinated. Another 14% or so received one of two shots.

#2 – The last few weeks have seen the sharpest rise in new Covid cases since even the start of the pandemic.

#3 – 99.5% of the Covid related deaths in the last 6 months occured in unvaccinated people.

The simple takeaway points are that 

• this pandemic is not over by a longshot, 
• we may be headed into the same kind of fall we experienced last year and 
• vaccinations are the best, and only way to protect ourselves, our friends and loved ones and to mitigate the progression of this scourge.

Don’t waste time trying to convince the vaccine-hostile people. Nothing will change their minds. They skew the facts to fit their beliefs and not even getting seriously ill or having relatives or friends die is incentive enough to change their minds.

Try to be an example and educate those who are vaccine-hesitant, since they simply need to be made aware of the facts. Some of those facts evolve, but that is the nature of science and experience.

Of course we don’t know the long term side effects of vaccination, but we know the short term risks and we know what can happen if you get sick with covid. At best, you lose out on 2 weeks of your life because you need to isolate. At worst, you can die or pass along the disease to someone else who may be more seriously affected.

Vaccines are safe and effective, even, it turns out, against the Delta variant. 

We have no definitive recommendations yet about boosters. It seems that we have longer term protection than previously expected.

Please enjoy being with family and friends while we still can, since that can all change in the coming weeks. Mask mandates are already starting to creep back in. Just do so safely.

Know your audience. I still wear a mask in any store. Some of it is habit, some paranoia but because of the simple fact that when half the people are not vaccinated and this variant is so much more infectious, I certainly don’t want to catch it or pass it along to family, friends or patients. 

MASK UP when appropriate.

VACCINATE.

VENTILATE. Remember that this is really an indoor disease.

PRACTICE BASIC HYGIENE.

DISTANCE.

GET HEALTHY. Despite the repeated calls for people to work on their weight and health, both seem to have deteriorated for the average American. Remember that simply being overweight, itself a chronic disease, increases your risks of contracting Covid and/or having a worse course of it.

Stay safe and be well.

AC

It’s starting to get bad again.

Don’t let the low numbers and lax masking rules fool you.

We are heading into another Covid surge and unless people smarten up and get vaccinated, we will soon be in the same mirky soup we were in last fall.

School is at risk.

Livelihoods are at risk.

Lives are in the balance.

There are a few statistics and facts you need to know.

#1 – in the last 6 months, 99.5% of Covid related deaths were in non vaccinated people! If you refuse to believe the numbers, no one can help you, but you’ll be begging for help when you get sick! That should be enough to convince anyone to get vaccinated. Period.

#2 – 80% of new cases of Covid are from the Delta variant which ravaged India. It is 2x more infectious as the previous variant which was 2x more infectious than the original virus. It affects kids much more and is more lethal.

#3 – We have a significant proportion of the population, kids under 12, who are not yet eligible for vaccination. They can get Covid, especially the delta variant, and they can transmit covid to all those unvaccinated people.

The delta variant is such an issue because it attaches to the ACE 2 receptor more vigorously and the average person infected with it produces 1000x more virus in their respiratory tract than the previous versions of the virus. Infected people have been described as exhaling a “cloud” of virus.

As far as concerns for the vaccines are concerned, more than 300 billion doses have been given and we have plenty of data on their safety. Any complications seen with it, such as clots, heart inflammation or neurologic issues, are lower or equal to background numbers and are irrelevant.

I just spoke with a patient of mine who is an EMT (emergency rescue worker). Even in the county where I live where 80% of eligible people have been vaccinated, he has seen a dramatic increase in Covid cases, almost all in unvaccinated. He is heading down to Arkansas to assist with an emergency field ICU since they are overrun with Covid cases, essentially all in unvaccinated people and almost all from the Delta variant.

If you have not received the vaccine, please educate yourself about the actual facts and stop being selfish.

It’s not about you. It’s about everyone else.

Stay safe and be well.

AC