Video explains why getting vaccinated is a must

In light of the more than 131 million people infected with the coronavirus worldwide and the extreme caution to be taken against the COVID-19 disease it generates, the only effective tool to fight it, namely the vaccine, costs more and more. importance.

In this line, Vox made a recent video in which he explains in detail why getting the vaccine is essential. At the same time, he begins by presenting the new Johnson & Johnson vaccine against COVID-19. And he says that by early March more than 6,000 doses had to be shipped to the city of Detroit, Michigan. But Mayor Mike Duggan said, “No thanks”.

“Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are the best and I will do everything possible to ensure our citizens have the best.” Duggan was referring to the range of efficacy of the vaccines, which are super effective: 95% for Pfizer and 94% for Moderna. While Johnson & Johnson is only 66%. And, if you look at these numbers, it makes sense to think that some vaccines are worse than others. But this announcement is false. These numbers are not important in determining the effectiveness of these vaccines.. To understand this, you must first understand what they are supposed to do.

The effectiveness of vaccines is calculated in long clinical studies, when tested on tens of thousands of people. These people are divided into two groups. Half receive the vaccine and the other half a placebo. They are then sent to live their lives, while scientists monitor the COVID-19 disease in the following months. In the first Pfizer / BionTech trial, 43,000 people were studied. Ultimately, 170 people got COVID-19. How do these people belong to these two groups?

If we split those 170 people in half, that would mean that even a single person could be infected with and without the vaccine. Which would give an efficiency of 0%. If all 170 had gone to the placebo group and 0 to the vaccine group, the vaccine would have been 100% effective. With this particular clinical study, there were 162 people in the placebo group and only 8 in the vaccinated group, meaning those who received the vaccine were 95% less likely to contract COVID-19.

Now, This does not mean that if 100 people are vaccinated 5 of them will get sick. Instead, 95% apply to the individual. Thus, each person vaccinated is 95% less likely to be infected than a person who does not have the vaccine.

The effectiveness of each vaccine against COVID-19 is calculated in the same way. But each study for each vaccine could have been done under different circumstances. For example, Moderna’s rehearsals were held entirely in the United States, during the summer months.

The Pfizer / BioNTech trials were initially conducted in the United States also at the same time. Johnson & Johnson, however, was educated between October and January, when participants were most likely to be exposed to contagions. And many more trials have taken place in other countries, such as South Africa and Brazil, around the same time that COVID-19 variants have started to appear and dominate infections in those countries.

In South Africa, most of the cases in the Johnson & Johnson clinical study were exposed to the new variant, not the original strain that was studied in the United States, and yet how it reduces infections is significant.

Dr Amesh Adalja, a specialist at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, said: “If you’re trying to make a comparison between each vaccine, they must have been studied in the same clinical trials, with the same inclusion criteria, in the same parts of the world, at the same time.“.

Meanwhile, Dr Deborah Fuller, University of Washington Department of Microbiology, said: “If we took the Pfizer, Moderna vaccines and did a clinical trial at the same time and saw the changes, we could see the differences. “

These efficacy figures indicate what happened in every vaccine, in every clinical trial, not exactly what is happening in the real world. But many experts say that’s not even the best number for judging a vaccine’s effectiveness, because preventing infection because preventing all infection isn’t always the goal of a vaccine.

For Adalja, “the goal of the COVID-19 vaccination program is not necessarily to achieve ‘zero’ COVID-19, but to stop this virus, to suppress its ability to cause serious infections and hospitalizations. “

To better understand it, it is useful to observe different results of exposure to COVID-19. Ideally, you don’t get sick at all. In the worst case, we die. In between, there will be hospitalizations, severe symptoms, moderate symptoms, or no symptoms.

At best, vaccines provide protection in this way. But, in reality, this is not the main goal of COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. The main goal is to give your body sufficient protection to cover the risks of death, hospitalization and severe symptoms.

And that’s something all of these vaccines do well. In the placebo trials, people had to be hospitalized and even died from COVID-19. In the group of those who were vaccinated, no one had to be hospitalized or died from COVID-19.

“One thing I wish the mayor had understood is that all vaccines are 100% effective against death or hospitalization from COVID-19Fuller added.

Efficiency matters, but that’s not what matters most. The question is, which of these vaccines will protect us from infection. Which will help us stay alive. Which will help us not to have to be hospitalized. Which will help end the pandemic. And the answer is all of that.

“The best vaccine for you right now is the one they offerFuller said, while Adalja concluded, “With every vaccine that reaches a person’s arm, we are getting closer to the end of the pandemic.

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