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Dr. Jeff Deal (left).
By Dr. Jeff Deal
I love Toccoa. I love Stephens County and Northeast Georgia. I love the people who loved me, gave me a great education, cheered for us and with us, and cried for our losses.
From this love, I must be blunt.
We live in the Age of Pandemics and in such a dangerous world, we cannot indulge the sharing of misinformation in the name of freedom.
The January issue of The Lancet, an old and globally respected medical journal, contained the following chilling warning.
“Pandemic frequency was found to be on the rise, driven by increasing incidence of emerging disease events, with more than five new diseases emerging in people every year, each with potential to grow to pandemic proportions.”
If more Americans, and especially those of my beloved hometown, continue to trust their Facebook friends over trustworthy scientific and regulatory agencies, hundreds of thousands of us will die unnecessary deaths.
These deaths will again be multiplied in the next, inevitable pandemic.
We all can acknowledge that the discourse about COVID-19 is loud right now with confusing messages coming from all sides.
While it is not possible to chase every bit of erroneous information people use to avoid getting their vaccine, a couple of them deserve attention.
First of all, the mRNA vaccines are not as new as many think. In fact, they have been around for decades and have been studied for influenza, Zika, rabies, cytomegalovirus and others and have undergone numerous animal and human trials.
The mRNA platform was and is the most exciting development in vaccine technology of our lifetime and we are blessed that it was ready and primed to be adapted to the COVID-19 virus.
This leads to the next misunderstanding. Because the mRNA system was already studied and developed, most of the time consuming science had already been done.
When Operation Warp Speed came online, the other time consuming task, funding, was also done. The country can be proud of how we led the world in saving millions of lives.
But while all of sub-Saharan Africa, India, Pakistan and all the other poor countries beg for more vaccines, for most Americans we can take a short drive to a pharmacy and get the vaccine at no cost to ourselves.
The last misconception to address is what protection is actually provided by the vaccine.
A fully vaccinated person can still contract the virus and for a short period still spread it.
The period of being contagious is dramatically shorted by the vaccine and the chances of serious illness reduced by at least 90 percent.
In fact, many cases of the virus in vaccinated people are detected in routine surveillance, such as in Congress, where tests are done on a regular basis with no clinical indications.
Keep in mind that the vaccine is no force field to keep the virus out of your body. It simply preps your immune system to keep the virus from being as dangerous as it would be in an unvaccinated person.
You may not like the Federal Government, and I know of very few who do, but this is one task that they did well.
You may not trust some officials, I get it. But every living U.S. president, all 50 state governors, nearly 100 percent of Congress, and 96 percent of the medical doctors have taken the vaccine.
The ones who have not been vaccinated include 99.2 percent of the people presently dying of COVID-19.
As our hospitals exceed capacity, people die of non-COVID illnesses because the system is flooded with COVID cases.
As the unvaccinated allow this virus to freely circulate, it predictably mutates toward increased infectivity.
To my thinking, the most compelling reason to get your vaccine is not for your own health. We should all take the vaccine to do our part in protecting our community, our families, and our friends.
As Pope Francis said, getting the vaccine is an act of love.
Bob Pierce, the founder of Samaritan’s Purse prayed, “Let My Heart be Broken by the Things that Break the Heart of God.”
It breaks my heart to hear from and about intelligent people deciding against getting this amazingly effective and safe vaccine.
I think God weeps over any unnecessary death and so do I. Please get your Covid vaccine now. Our hometown deserves it.
(Dr. Jeff Deal is a graduate of Stephens County High School, Furman University and the University of South Carolina Medical School. He is senior fellow of public health at the College of Charleston and resides in Charleston, S.C.)