My mentor is an internal medicine doc here at our teaching hospital and he was one of the go-to guys for us in the ICU when Covid first hit. What his experience demonstrated, and the evidence really supports, is that this isn't the flu. It's natural course is definitely worse and people can decompensate very quickly. It is a nasty virus, and people should/should have taken it seriously.
But, we also didn't need to give our lives away and I think the over-correction cost us in the long run. In the future, when this happens again (because it will, and with antibiotic resistance only increasingly a problem it will actually become more commonplace) my theory is we will need to provide N95s to vulnerable populations and allow the healthy populations to get exposed and build herd immunity that way. It'll be uglier, and those of us in healthcare will bear the brunt of the burden, but we had to do that anyway.
All in all, I hope people take the simple act of taking the vaccine. I understand the hesitations, but after 3.5billion doses administered worldwide we definitely have as good a sample size as we ever will. IF it hadn't been rushed, the use of mRNA technology would've been celebrated as an incredible achievement because it's actually a brilliant approach to vaccination. Shame, a missed opportunity
But, we also didn't need to give our lives away and I think the over-correction cost us in the long run. In the future, when this happens again (because it will, and with antibiotic resistance only increasingly a problem it will actually become more commonplace) my theory is we will need to provide N95s to vulnerable populations and allow the healthy populations to get exposed and build herd immunity that way. It'll be uglier, and those of us in healthcare will bear the brunt of the burden, but we had to do that anyway.
All in all, I hope people take the simple act of taking the vaccine. I understand the hesitations, but after 3.5billion doses administered worldwide we definitely have as good a sample size as we ever will. IF it hadn't been rushed, the use of mRNA technology would've been celebrated as an incredible achievement because it's actually a brilliant approach to vaccination. Shame, a missed opportunity

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