Coloradans are so close to seeing an end to this pandemic. We just need to hold out for a few more months — perhaps one more year of avoiding indoor public places, wearing masks, and limiting gatherings of friends and family — until a healthy majority of Coloradans have received a safe and effective vaccine that will substantially reduce the spread of the coronavirus.
There’s no need for an analogy — the novel coronavirus is the gravest threat Americans have faced in a hundred years and relief is on the way. In less than a year, 296,000 Americans have died from COVID-19.
Now is not the time to give up or get complacent.
This highly communicable virus kills an estimated .6% of the people who are infected, but older Americans are at considerable more risk as it kills 1.4% of those 65 to 69; 2.3% of those 70 to 74; 4.2% of those 75 to 79 and 10.8% of those older than 80. There were about 1,755 Coloradans hospitalized on Dec. 8 who were COVID-19 positive and had severe symptoms.
Vaccines that are remarkably effective at preventing infections and severe illness from the novel coronavirus are arriving next week in Colorado. Gov. Jared Polis and his vaccine task force officials, including Colorado National Guard Brig. Gen. Scott Sherman, outlined for The Denver Post editorial board their plans to distribute 46,000 doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine beginning next week and 96,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine beginning the week after that.
These vaccines represent a chance to protect our loved ones, friends, neighbors, and even strangers who we interact with in grocery store lines or in a doctor’s office elevator.
We are not scientists able to attest to the safety of these vaccines. But we do trust the doctors and scientists who have been working overtime since SARS-CoV-2 was identified as a major public health threat on Jan. 30, and declared a pandemic on March 11 by the World Health Organization.
Overseeing Operation Warp Speed are public officials with the Department of Health and Human Services including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and the Department of Defense.
Moderna received almost $1 billion from HHS to assist with the vaccine development and the expedited trials in April and July. Pfizer was granted up to $1.95 billion in July for the manufacturing and distribution of 100 million doses of the vaccine. Both vaccines require a second dose within 22 or 28 days of the first dose, respectively, to reach the almost 95% effective rates observed in the trials.
Both are using a new technology in the field of vaccination. The shots include messenger RNA that tricks cells in our bodies to develop a protein similar to the now notorious protein spike that gives the coronavirus its crown-like appearance and its namesake. The body then develops antibodies to attack these proteins. If the real virus later arrives in the system, the body’s immune system immediately identifies the spike protein as a threat and attacks. This is different from the flu vaccine which uses deactivated proteins from an actual flu virus grown in an egg and then sterilized to stimulate an immune response in a person’s body.
While this is the first time this type of vaccine has been licensed in the U.S., the technology itself has been studied for years. Part of why the vaccine was able to be developed so quickly is that researchers were already working on mRNA vaccines for other (more deadly) strains of SARS and MERS. Moderna had human trials underway for mRNA vaccines for Zika and other disease treatments. Those trials provided the groundwork for the COVID vaccine.
Scientists have reported that while the vaccine may have more intense side effects than a traditional flu vaccine for some (fatigue, headache and fever), there have been no reported life-threatening effects.
Obviously, the long-term effects of these new vaccines have not been studied in humans.
In normal times we would urge scientists to hold off on mass distribution until more time had passed to observe long-term effects. But even with the vaccine being rushed to market now, another 250,000 Americans could die in the next year.
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December 13, 2020 at 12:50AM
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Editorial: The COVID-19 vaccine will save lives if Americans will get it - The Denver Post
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