Despite their much better vaccination rate than what we have in the US, new daily cases of Covid 19 are extremely high all over Europe. As high as at any point in the pandemic and in most places, they are having record numbers. Our rates are pretty high as well, also rivaling if not surpassing peaks at any point in the last 2 years.
A startling difference however is the hospitalization and death rate. In the US, our rate is at least double of any European country. That’s per capita, not absolute. So many more people are catching or re-catching Covid, but many fewer are needing hospitalization and/or are dying in Europe. The difference is again, vaccination rate. Those who are getting really sick and are dying are almost exclusively unvaccinated, or now, incompletely vaccinated.
Not only are their overall vaccination rates better than ours by at least 10%, but their complete, boosted vaccination rates are much greater. As of last weekend, uptake of the third shot (some prefer to call the booster the “third shot” of the series) in the United Kingdom was 55.4%, in Germany 55%, in France 51.1% and even in Canada where truckers have made a stink, their rate is 44%. All significantly outpacing the US figure of 27.6%. I read a sad statistic that 58% of Democrats who had 2 doses were interested in a booster whereas only 18% of 2 dosed Republicans wanted a booster. Even after they made the wise choice to get the vaccine, they still allow politics to influence their health decisions.
As time passes, more vaccines get administered, statistics on who is getting sick and dying and who is not increases, it is still crystal clear that, although you may still get Covid, you will have a much milder course if you are vaccinated, have a much lower risk of developing long-haul symptoms and almost no risk of dying. The third dose, or second if you got J&J, is imperative for maintenance of protection. The risks from the vaccine are negligible. Yes, there is some tailoring when it comes to who should get which one, and again, imagine the privilege we have to have a choice of which vaccine to get.
Omicron now accounts for nearly 100% of new cases in the US, and ~5% are the BA.2 subvariant. Rates of the subvariant doubled from last week. We know it’s more infectious than BA.1 but doesn’t appear to be causing worse disease, although we still need data.
As for vaccinating kids under 5, the decision to approve it has been tabled for now, which immediately generated a slew of paranoid opinions in the blogosphere. The bottom line is that in order to make safety recommendations, you actually do have to have enough study participants who get sick to make a comparison and the fact is that younger kids are more resilient, parents are more protective of their kids and not enough 5 year olds are actually getting Covid, it’s hard to make any definitive comparisons yet. In addition there are studies looking at a third dose and the CDC decided to wait on that as well before going ahead and giving their blessing.
Approval will come soon.
Have a great weekend.
Stay safe and be well.
AC