BY TYLER TAYLOR, MD
Family Physician
Los Alamos
1) If you get vaccinated and get COVID, you’ll very likely have a much milder case because of the shot. And you’ll be much less likely to get hospitalized and end up with a huge bill.
2) You’ll also be far less likely to die a miserable death, after many days on a ventilator separated from friends and family. Since February, 97% of New Mexicans dying from COVID have been unvaccinated. This pattern is basically the same across the country.
3) The folks you spend a lot of time with will be much less likely to catch COVID from you. Also, vaccinated friends and family members who care about you hope you’ll protect yourself and get one of these shots. That’s not being controlling. Friends look after friends – especially during a national crisis.
4) These vaccines are extremely safe, with about 1 serious side effect for every 10,000 doses given. Almost all of those are allergic reactions that happen within 30 minutes and can be easily treated. (That’s why people are asked to stay around after their shots.)
5) All the U.S. vaccines are amazingly effective. They prevent about 9 out of 10 serious COVID infections. For comparison influenza shots are roughly half as effective at preventing the flu each year.
6) The COVID vaccine made by Pfizer is now fully approved by the FDA. The second vaccine to come out, made by Moderna, is very likely to get similar approval soon. Till now, they were considered “experimental”.
7) In America, the vaccines are completely free, and are now easy to get in every part of the country – at pharmacies, clinics, health departments, etc. When did you last get something very valuable for free?
8) If you’ve got a “good immune system”, take advantage of it! The vaccines fire it up to work super-well at protecting you.
9) Healthcare workers desperately want all Americans to get vaccinated. About 4,000 of them have died of COVID while taking care of us the last 16 months.
10) There is nothing alive in today’s 2 most common COVID vaccines (by Moderna and Pfizer), so they can’t possibly cause an infection. Over 202 million Americans have gotten them. And no, there’s no evidence they cause sterility or DNA damage.
11) If you avoid getting COVID, you’ll also never get the “long-haul” symptoms that go on for months. About 3 out of 10 COVID patients struggle with them, even those with milder illnesses, and many thousands of those unlucky folks now can no longer work.
12) For American businesses to fully recover, jobs to be plentiful, and our social restrictions to disappear, we’ve got to crush COVID ASAP. Like folks in the U.S. military, we civilians are being asked to do our patriotic duty for the good of the nation.
13) The longer this pandemic rolls on, the more new strains of the COVID virus will keep appearing. Some are even more contagious and deadly than the first strain, and they will spread first through people who aren’t vaccinated. The delta strain we’re now facing is so contagious that the average infected person will spread the virus to 6-9 more people.
14) In 16 months, about 630,000 Americans have died from COVID – 110,000 more than died in WWI and WWII combined. Eleven times the number who gave their lives in Vietnam. COVID can’t be stopped with bullets or peace treaties – only with syringes.
15) If you don’t get vaccinated and end up in the hospital seriously sick with COVID, you’ll look and feel like a complete idiot!