The Norwegian health agency announced that they were not changing their vaccination policy based on the reported deaths in nursing homes after Covid-19 vaccination. They now are stating that there is no link and that the deaths were from chronic diseases. They did say that the inflammatory response to the vaccination may have contributed in some cases to their diseases however. The initial numbers were also downgraded. Furthermore, I am still not able to identify any vaccination associated deaths in the US.
The bottom line – Don’t believe naysayers and GET YOUR VACCINE. It IS safe and the downsides of getting sick may be far worse.
HOPE AND WORRY
There may be some glimmers of positivity coming out of last week’s Covid numbers in the US. There has been a gradual decrease and now plateauing in numbers of hospitalizations and subsequent deaths (since most deaths come from patients who are sick enough to need hospitalization) as well as numbers of positive cases. However, plateauing with over 3000 deaths a day is hardly a positive situation. To repeat something I heard many months ago, no longer accelerating a car is good but if you are driving at 100 miles an hour, you will eventually crash. We need the numbers to go down. And hence the worry.
We now have 4 Covid virus variants of concern. We know of the British one, now identified in many states, as well as the South African variant, which has not had much impact in the US yet. Now there is a Brazilian variant and most concerning, a new variant identified in California, where they surpassed 1 million cases.
Why are they arising? The more the virus spreads, the more it divides and the greater the chances of a bad combination of mutations. These viruses mutate continuously, every day. These can be thought of as evolutionary changes. Eventually, the right combination occurs leading to some survival advantage. These new strains have the survival advantage of being more infectious than the original SARS-Cov-2. Although they don’t seem to cause worsening Covid disease, just because of sheer numbers due to greater and faster spread, we WILL see more cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
The present vaccines seem to be effective at least against the British variant as well as the South African one, particularly with the Pfizer vaccine, but we need more data and time.
The good news is that if we ALL do what we know works, we can avoid infection from these variants as well.
MASK
DISTANCE
WASH AND SANITIZE
PROTECT YOUR EYES
VENTILATE
VACCINATE
HYDRATE
GET HEALTHY
Stay safe and be well.
AC