https://t.co/vP5UYtMvdk

Last week I spoke to over 5000 people in rural Georgia. Most were not vaccinated because they still had questions. EVERY question they asked was legitimate and important.

Stop telling people to “just get vaccinated” if you aren’t willing to put in the work to help them do it.

That “work” is MUCH more high touch than spouting condescension online.

“The unvaccinated” are not a monolith of defectors. They are people our health care system has long underserved - Black folks, rural folks, un and un/under insured folks and young folks.

That work requires daily acts to dispel and decrease the rampant disinformation people are contending with. It requires laws that prevent media organizations from willfully distributing disinformation about science during a pandemic when peoples lives depend on vaccine science.

That work requires interventions that can successfully vaccinate groups NOT individuals - like households, schools, churches work places - so that the protection of vaccination is SHARED among those most likely to encounter each other. Remember, vaccines protect you AND others.

That work requires incentives to vaccinate that begin locally, not trickle down from above. A lot of people are not aware of the large federal programs available to them. But they know their child care provider or grocery store attendant or neighbor - THEY are the influencers.

I've been wanting to write this thread for a while. It has been inspired by hearing a common thought: why can't people just "listen"? If people just followed the rules, we wouldn't be in this mess. I think this is oversimplification of the problem with COVID: 1/

It is true, there are people who haven't been following guidelines (by definition that happened a LOT at Christmas/NYE in my region), but even before, we know transmission in private gatherings happens. 2/

These private gatherings are pictured to be big raucous parties, but in reality, even before lockdown, this is just people having dinner, watching TV, doing things we did before on a daily basis. These little ripples when added across the country make a big wave.. 3/

...and little can be done about this apart from positive messaging. You can't very well have police patrolling neighbourhoods across the country. 4/

Next thing is we keep hearing over and over and over, stay home. There are diminishing returns with this advice, but also, most people who can stay home ARE. So what's the issue? There are a HUGE # of people who can't stay home because they work in essential jobs 5/

This would also include:

• Tylenol and Advil
• Aspirin
• Pepto-Bismol and Tums
• Benadryl and Claritin
• Sudafed
• Ivermectin‼️

👉🏻 https://t.co/3seDr4CQ8H

With 90% of American seniors now fully vaccinated, the overwhelming majority of the country's mortality risk has been, simply, eliminated. Even given Delta and flatlining vaccination rates, it is already a very different pandemic now. A thread (1/x).

There will be new cases, some of them severe and some leading ultimately to death. And there of course complications beyond death—even beyond hospitalization and severe disease.

If vaccination rates got close to 100%, we might be able to bring those numbers, in the future, close to zero. But even now we have probably eliminated 90% of all potential mortality from COVID-19. This makes it a very different kind of disease than we encountered last year.

First, "they kids are safe. Believe it or not, they always have been."

"It may sound strange, given a year of panic over school closures and reopenings, a year of masking toddlers and closing playgrounds and huddling in pandemic pods, that among children the mortality risk from COVID-19 is actually lower than from the flu."

Them: Is there any other vaccine in history that required three doses in a year and yet still didn’t prevent transmission of the virus it was meant to protect against?

Me: Your childhood vaccinations would like a word with you.

Before I forget, reminder that your TDap: Tetanus-Diphtheria-Pertussis (every 10 years) are technically a repetitive vaccine series or rather boosters during adulthood. HPV is another vaccine that could fit here as well.

“Even the measles vaccine, which is incredibly effective, fails to protect about 3% of vaccinated individuals who are exposed to the virus. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine-hailed a medical miracle- was 80% to 90% effective at preventing paralysis caused by the polio virus.”

“Breakthrough cases don’t mean that the vaccines aren’t