Coronavirus Vaccine, The Beginning of The End
The Vaccines are finally here and being administered. The nightmare of a year that was 2020 is over and there is now hope for a recovery. Hope to be able to meet family and friends. Hope for a job without risking the lives of your household.
And while it is important to get the vaccine, with the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America (AJMA) and the Fatwa Council of the United Arab Emirates both declaring the vaccine obligatory and halal respectively, there need to be clarity about the process after getting vaccinated.
Can I lose the mask?
No you cannot.
As sad as it is, a vaccine is just another layer of protection as stated by infectious disease specialist Kristin Englund, MD, Michal Tal (an immunologist at Stanford University). The CDC goes so far as to recommend maintaining all behavior like before, even if you are vaccinated.
Furthermore, Dr. Thomas Russo, chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York noted that it is not clear yet whether a vaccinated person can spread a virus. He further pointed out that since there is no way of telling others that you vaccinated so to put others as ease, he suggested wearing a mask, as though you yourself are safe, you do not know others are vaccinated or not and others do not know you are vaccinated too.
Am I safe?
Yes and No
The vaccine by Pfizer is only 95% effective meaning that 5% people may still get mild to serious coronavirus symptoms. Likewise, the other major vaccines are also in similar range. So there cannot be a 100% safety from just the vaccine alone. The vaccines are 2 doses and take up to 2 weeks after the 2nd dose to become fully active. This means that you cannot abandon all protocol the second you get vaccinated. A vaccine is a medicine not an off switch for the pandemic.
The real issue, one which is being highlighted around the world is that the vaccine is a layer of safety for the vaccinated person only. Until herd immunity is achieved, the coronavirus will not go away. Herd immunity is as defined by Gypsyamber D’Souza, PhD ’07, MPH, MS, and David Dowdy, MD, PhD ’08, ScM ’02, of John Hopkins “When most of a population is immune to an infectious disease, this provides indirect protection — or herd immunity (also called herd protection) — to those who are not immune to the disease”
They stated that depending on the infectious nature of the disease, herd immunity can be achieved from 50% to 90% of population is immunized. In case of coronavirus variants being detected, “level of coverage needed for herd immunity would become higher, in the 80 to 85 percent range,” Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Pakistan the NCOC has estimated herd immunity at 70% or 70 million minimum.
So true safety, as well as the time to abandon SOPs is only when herd immunity is achieved and the only way to do that is if a very large percentage of the population is vaccinated. When this is achieved, the virus will be unable to spread and it will die naturally. That is how Smallpox and other epidemics were killed and why they never came back.
Make no mistake all these virus exists and can come back, but because of vaccinations and the resulting herd immunity, no natural transmission occured since 1980.
So why bother?
Many small drops make a river. The reason why measles, smallpox and polio have died in almost the whole world is because enough people were vaccinated. So the disease had no way to spread or reproduce, it starved and died.
Vaccination acts like a bubble, the more people get it, the more it covers. Inversely the less people get it, the more holes appear. In 2014 a measles outbreak happened in Disneyland Orange County USA. An investigation reveal it happened because an 11 year old child was not vaccinated for measles. And so the carelessness of the parents resulted in 125 new cases to be reported of measles, mostly children. And the virus was detected to have originated from Philippines. So one unvaccinated carried the Philippine variant to the USA and the virus infected the unvaccinated child who spread it to others.
One microscopic hole in the bubble and 125 people were hospitalized. That is what it means to not be vaccinated.
As time progresses, new and even better versions of the coronavirus vaccine will appear, but for now the only real safeguard are the current generation of vaccines. And if herd immunity is achieved, we can return to normal
Conclusion
2020 has been a long year, full of suffering and difficulty and loss. It will not be a year anyone alive will ever forget. But now it is 2021, a new year and new beginnings. The vaccine is here. All the hardship, all the precaution will be worth it if we get vaccinate and gain herd immunity. If we work together, help each other we can rid the world of this horror. With the vaccine we have a chance to end this nightmare for good.
New variants of the virus may come, but now the knowledge is there, the preventions exists, scientists have the means to evolve the vaccine just as fast if not faster. Initially it was a race, whether the virus infects us all or whether we discover the vaccine first, we won that race. Now it’s a marathon, whether we stay ahead with vaccination or we let the coronavirus catch up and renew the disaster that was 2020 by not vaccinating.
