Hoyman Hong, M.D.

( sharing a very informative post from a brilliant doc and copied from a colleague)

- My weekly missive, this one about getting the 12-15 year olds vaccinated

Hi, I'm back as Robin-Schoenthaler-the-Boston-cancer-doctor-who-writes-about-Covid.

(And it’s okay with me if you want to share.)

As an update, almost everywhere you look in the US: oh my gosh it’s like a pandemic miracle.

Oh, I know, I’m a doctor, I’m not supposed to talk about miracles. But look:

Numbers almost everywhere are just down, down, down. There are now some hospitals where there are NO Covid patients at all.

In Boston’s March 2020 surge, we topped out at close to 4000 people per day hospitalized with Covid. In our post-Christmas surge it was over 2500. Yesterday it was 258. It’s like magic.

Well, actually, it’s “science magic.”

Or more precisely, “Vaccine Science Magic.”

Vaccinated people just don’t end up in the hospital much now and it’s even rarer, like super rare, to die.

So almost everybody in the hospital now with Covid is somebody who didn’t get vaccinated, somebody who turned the vaccine down, or couldn’t make time, or couldn’t get access, or has really significant powers of denial or disbelief in science. I keep wondering how they feel lying in those hospital beds.

My friends who are working on the frontlines say most of those patients have incredible regret, talking again and again about wishing for a do-over.

I’ve seen that kind of regret in cigarette smokers with lung cancer as well. It’s brutal.

We sure don’t want those kinds of regrets with our kids, so lots of people are flocking to get their 12-15 year olds vaccinated.

Still, some people have the same concerns about the vaccines for kids as they did about vaccines for adults, only more so, because after all, it’s our kids. So let’s address a few of them:

Q. How can we know the vaccines are safe for younger kids?

A. So far over 160 million people in the US and 1.6 billion people in the world have gotten a vaccine. No significant serious persistent side effects have been seen with any frequency. And, there’s been no new safety issues with the kids’ trials either. This is turning out to be one of the safest vaccines in history.

Q. What about future consequences of the vaccines in young teens?

A. The reality is vaccines in general don’t cause problems in the long-term. It’s not what vaccines do. When they cause problems, it’s all in the first couple of days or occasionally the first week or two. (The FDA required an average of two months of follow-up, way past when they expected any trouble.)

So since these vaccines have been out in millions of people for lots of months, I think we can safely say we are past the point of finding any common long-term side effects.

Q. What about DNA changes? What about future babies?

A. Some of the things people have said they’re worried about — DNA changes, fertility threats — make zero theoretical sense. There is just no way the way these vaccines can cause those problems, it’s not how they’re made or how they work. It’s not what mRNA vaccines do. It’s like Aunt Petunia saying, “I don’t want to eat your chocolate cake because it will make my car door fall off the hinges.” WhUt? It’s that unrelated.

Q. What about super rare side effects?

It is true, we MIGHT end up finding a “one in a million” side effect (in fact we may well find one).

But any “one in a million” side effect has to be measured against the way higher chances of problems from Covid. Here is one way to look at the choice:

— a one in 1,000,000 chance of a very rare side effect, or

— a one in 5000 chance of dying of Covid ��

One in a million is just super dooper rare. This is made clear to me every time I buy a losing lottery ticket.

Q. Other vaccines took four years to make, this feels like it happened too fast: “they must have cut corners.”

Two things helped these vaccines get made so rapidly:

—- One is eight gajillion dollars.

Maybe money can’t buy happiness but as we all know it can sure move a lot of mountains and make things happen super fast without cutting corners.

—- And the other is eight gajillion people.

Think of it like building a house. If you have one guy building a house by himself, how long does it take — maybe a year? If you have two hundred people building a house, how long does it take — maybe two weeks? And having eight gajillion people? You get a super effective super safe house/vaccine in no time. But again, without cutting corners.

Q. People are still getting Covid even though they got vaccinated

A. Yep. A few. This always happens, with every vaccine. But it’s a tiny number, and post-vaccine-illness is not landing people in the hospital and it’s not getting people ventilated, and it’s not killing any but a tiny tiny number.

Let’s look at those fabulous miraculous numbers again: 4000 people in the hospital last April, 258 yesterday.

Also there’s this: another thing they’ve learned about Vaccine Science Magic is that when vaccinated people get Covid now, it’s usually one or two symptoms (or none), and just a day or two, kind of like a little cold.

This is so different from the four-or-five symptoms, totally-miserable, in-bed-for-days-maybe-weeks when you get unvaccinated Covid.

With all the school our kids have missed, we totally don’t want them to miss any more, so this is yet another reason to vaccinate.

��Q. I thought kids don’t get Covid or don’t get it bad

Four million kids got it. Well, four million kids tested positive — the real number is probably double that (triple? quadruple?) since we didn’t test enough and kids can be asymptomatic.

It’s absolutely true that Covid in kids is usually milder, but not always; some kids were miserable, some missed a lot of school; some ended up hospitalized and a tragic mercifully small number died and some got the inflammatory thing (MISC) and some got long-haul stuff. And some gave it to grandma by accident.

All of which is preventable by our Vaccine Science Magic.

As a side note: ��I worked at another vaccine clinic this week-end as the “check-out girl” and again it was just an amazing cavalcade of youth and hope and earnestness and hilariousness. One boy lost a tooth while waiting! (This is NOT a vaccine side effect, LOL.) One kid found out he got accepted off his college waiting list two minutes after he got his shot — he was so pumped he was practically dancing. One family sat down in the observation area after their three teen-agers’ shots and in unison the whole family did the sign-of-the-cross.

At this clinic, each person gets a little sticky note showing their check-out time, and when they’re leaving each person has to hand it to me so I can double-check they’re good to go. I would give them a congratulatory elbow bump as they left and then I would toss the sticky note in the trash.

The picture below is of a four-foot tall trash can filled with gazillions of those sticky notes.

Every one of those sticky notes is a person with their own story, their own hopes and dreams and ups and downs and lost teeth and college applications and deep faith and pandemic drama and dinner table conversations about their parent going through the hassle of getting them an appointment.

And now virtually all of them get to live their lovely lives out without a Covid twist or turn, without the suffering and dread of a Covid diagnosis, without the worry or guilt about passing it accidentally on to a loved one, without the fears and miseries of long-haul symptoms; every single sticky note is now someone saved by Vaccine Science Magic. Every one.

It’s a miracle

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine-teens.html

The F.D.A. is set to authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those 12-15 years old by early next week. The move opens up the U.S. vaccination campaign to millions more Americans.

https://apple.news/ABhQdXCV-RuOui0hTy7pOrg

The Crushing Burden of Healthcare Microregulation — The Wall Street Journal To improve patient care, doctors need freedom from the intrusive rules set by insurers, medical societies and government agencies.

Carotid and Airway compression...

Medical examiner says police restraint, neck compression ‘more than Mr. Floyd could take’ The medical examiner's remarks capped an emotional second week of testimony in the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

AP sources: Tool behind crackdown on opioids could expire The Biden administration has been slow-walking the extension of a legislative order that would keep in place a sweeping tool that’s helped federal agents crack down on drugs chemically similar to fentanyl