EMS
Vaccines Are Our Lifeline
We have had a very tough last 18 months. All of us have worked extremely hard, dealt with a huge amount of stress, and James Winslow unfortunately, watched some of our co-workers get very sick and maybe even die. The personal stress that many of us have dealt with has been significant. Personally, I have sometimes woken up in the middle of night after coming home from a busy COVID emergency department with nightmares worried I had virus on me that I was going to give to wife and family. I know there are many other EMS workers and other healthcare providers who have been through much more than I have. We will get through this. The only way to
really make it end though is through vaccination. The COVID vaccines have been fully tested, they are safe and they are effective. We all need to get vaccinated to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities. There are many rumors and incorrect information regarding the vaccines. Here are some answers to a few questions I have heard.
Have the Vaccines Been Fully Tested? All the COVID vaccines currently being used in the United States have been fully tested and any adverse effects of the vaccines are being carefully monitored. We are not Russia or China where vaccines were approved without fully testing them. The Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines went through full Phase 3 testing which required at least 30,000 participants. Since
then over 350 million doses have been given in the United States. We now know everything there is to now about any adverse effects of the vaccines and their effectiveness. These are safe vaccines. Any adverse effects of the vaccines are outweighed by their benefit.
Do the Vaccines Work? The vaccines are very effective. A recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine looked at the effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine against symptomatic disease. It found that one dose of Pfizer vaccine provided about 30 percent protection against symptomatic disease and the full two dose regimen still provided 88 percent protection against symptomatic disease. Here is the link to that article: https:// www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/ NEJMoa2108891?query=featured_ coronavirus If you do get COVID after vaccination it is normally nothing more than a cold and the infection
is not severe. A good illustration of this occurred at a recent COVID outbreak in Massachusetts. This took place at a resort community where 60,000 people came what was basically a big party. Among the people attending there was a 70 percent vaccination rate. Three hundred forty-six vaccinated people got COVID. Of the 346 vaccinated patients who got COVID only four were hospitalized and two of those patients had significant comorbidities. None died. Nationally we have seen that around 95 percent of COVID cases and all hospitalized patients with COVID were unvaccinated. Here is a link to Massachusetts data: https://www.cdc. gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm
Do the Vaccines Make a Person Infertile? The vaccines do not affect fertility. No vaccine has ever caused infertility. COVID infection is very dangerous for a pregnant woman. A pregnant woman with COVID is 22 times more likely to die than a non-infected pregnant woman. The baby is also more than two and one-half times more likely to have a bad outcome at birth including but not limited to intracranial hemorrhage, severe lung problems or hypoxic encephalopathy. There are many more severe complications that a COVID infection can cause for a pregnant woman. A really wonderful benefit of the vaccine is that it allows the mother to give protective antibodies to the newborn in her breast milk. The complete article can be found on the Journal of the American Medical Association website at this link: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/ jamapediatrics/fullarticle/2779182 There is also preliminary research showing a possible association between COVID infection and erectile dysfunction. One study found that after COVID infection men were more than five and onehalf times more likely to have erectile dysfunction. This could be due to general debilitation after the infection. It’s also possible that the
6 Fall • 2021
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Carolina Fire Rescue EMS Journal
