VTDigger hosted an FAQ Live event to answer reader questions about Covid-19 vaccines and variants on Wednesday, March 17 at 5:30 p.m., featuring Dr. Jan K. Carney of the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont.
Carney is the associate dean for public health and health policy and senior advisor to the dean at UVM’s Larner College of Medicine. She previously served as commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health for 13 consecutive years until 2003. In addition to her faculty and advisory roles, Carney actively leads research efforts related to rural health, social determinants of health, and local and national health policy.
Below are selected questions and responses, edited for length and clarity.
Anne Galloway: We’ve had a lot of readers ask if they could choose which vaccine they could get. My understanding is that it’s kind of luck of the draw. Do you know if there’s any way in which people could opt to get Johnson & Johnson versus the Madonna or Pfizer vaccines?
Jan Carney: Well, I got my first one. I have my second one in about a week or so. I’ve never been so happy to be getting a shot in my life.
I went in, I had no idea. I was trying to guess. I happened to get the Pfizer one. And I said, “I’m thrilled.” And if they said, “you’re getting a Moderna one,” I would say, “I’m thrilled.” Or the Johnson & Johnson one.
Whichever one they offer, I really encourage people to take it. They’re all highly effective — safe, and effective — against severe disease and dying from the coronavirus. Unfortunately, we know that we’ve had more than half a million people die in our country so far, and we still have an awful lot of infection around the country. So take whichever one is offered, and be delighted.
Penelope, East Charleston: I have heard that a fully vaccinated person is protected but can still infect others with Covid-19. Is this true?
Jan Carney: There’s some unknowns on that, which is another reason why people are saying: Keep wearing your mask. Practice the behaviors that the health department and the CDC are telling us: wear your mask, avoid crowded — particularly indoor — spaces, keep your physical distancing. It’s likely, based on the science, that our transmission is reduced, but there’s some gray area in there. There’s an element of caution there. Which is why CDC put out the recommendations — and our own health department has, too — about once you’re vaccinated, what should you do and what shouldn’t you do.
You can be with other vaccinated people with no mask on, but there’s a little bit of limitation. You could be with people who haven’t been vaccinated, but if they’re in a high risk population — like they have a chronic condition — you need to be a little more careful about that.
We’re in the process of learning, and not having everything 100% determined. We try not to be uncomfortable about that, because that’s just the state of how fast we’re learning, and the amount of scientific knowledge that’s coming out every day and every week is amazing. That will help us in the long term. There’s a little bit of ambiguity in the short term. And my advice continues to be: Our health department puts out great recommendations. CDC has guidelines for all these same things we’re talking about. Check for the latest on those.
Fred, Chester: What are the side effects from each of the three current vaccines and from the variant boosters, if/when available?
Jan Carney: Generally, you might get a sore arm for a day or up to a week with the booster shots. Some people could have a low grade fever or muscle aches, sometimes headache. It really depends on the individual. Those are the kinds of things — and that actually is a reflection that, yep, you’ve got your shot, and your booster.
Ree, Saxtons River: How long will the vaccination be good for? Will it be like getting the annual flu shot? For example, if I plan to travel a year from now, will I need to get vaccinated again before leaving?
Jan Carney: You might need to check back with us in about six months for that one. The current recommendations are, even if you’ve had and recovered from coronavirus, you still get a vaccine. Because one of the things that the scientists and public health researchers are looking at very carefully is, if you’ve been infected, how long does that immunity last? And likewise, if you get a vaccine. That’s another thing that people are studying, so stay tuned for that.
The question about the variants: will we need to have a booster? This is not the flu — it’s a different virus, a different category of virus. But I think that flu comparison is familiar to people: it changes a little bit, so we need a different vaccine every year. We don’t know that yet, but those are some of the things that are being discussed, and people are asking and trying to answer.
Mimi, Hyde Park: My husband and I will have had our first vaccine three weeks ago. Can we eat dinner inside with a couple who’s fully vaccinated? Is it safe to fly once fully vaccinated? And is it safe to visit our grandchildren unmasked inside once fully vaccinated?
Jan Carney: Get your second vaccine. And look at the CDC guidelines and the guidelines on our health department. Start there and then say, “Hmm, can I wait another couple of weeks till I get my booster, and then I know I’m protected?”
Two weeks after your second shot, you should be pretty good to go and travel. The [CDC] vaccine guidelines — I looked at that very carefully, and they hadn’t yet changed their recommendations for travel generally. They haven’t opened up everything and said, “do everything.” They’re saying to be cautious, and we’re still not having contact with large groups of people in large crowds.
I think all these things require some judgment. I would check with that on the CDC website. I would suggest getting your booster and waiting a couple weeks, and then revisiting all those things that you just asked.
Linda, Burlington: I have a coworker who’s obese and has asthma. She will not get the vaccine because she says she heard that it is dangerous for people who have asthma. I’m worried about her. What studies or information can I provide to her to dispel her fears?
Jan Carney: There’s lots of great sources of information. Some is on our health department website, CDC. Our FDA has great information on the process these vaccines have gone through for the emergency use authorization to be determined to be safe and effective for widespread vaccination of our population. That’s on a general level.
There’s a great ongoing survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation that’s available through the Kaiser Family Foundation website. They’ve been doing studies on vaccine hesitancy: who’s concerned? But on the flip side, they’re also looking at: where do people want to get a vaccine? And if they’re just not sure, who do they trust? And pretty much across the board, more than 80% trust a health care professional.
My advice is to have your friend talk to their health care professional, someone that they trust, who knows them and their health, to have that conversation. It’s a really important decision, to protect our individual health, the health of our families — but you have to have that conversation, if you’re not sure, with someone that you trust and has your best interests at heart.
Randall, Rutland: I have more of a concern about when these vaccines will receive FDA approval. My understanding is that the approval process is still ongoing and that currently we are under what is known as an emergency use authorization, but not a full approval. What are the uncertainties of taking a vaccine that is only under emergency use authorization rather than full FDA approval?
Jan Carney: The process for emergency use authorization — it goes through all the same steps for vaccine approval. It’s gone through what’s called phase one, where you look at safety, any kinds of side effects, what dose you need to use? That’s up to like 100 people. Then you might have 100 or more, where you do more of the same, and refine that — see what are the most common side effects.
Then you move to thousands of people and efficacy studies, where you compare the efficacy of the vaccine in people getting it and the control group getting placebo. And those were, for the Pfizer vaccine, on the order of 40-some thousand people, and for the Moderna vaccine, 25,000 people who got it. Those are large numbers of people in these trials. And then you get this emergency use authorization, phase three.
Phase four means you don’t stop after you do the authorization. They keep looking at any long term adverse effects. They continue to study people who’ve gotten a vaccine. It’s very important to do that, to see if something that can be very rare comes up after a long period of time.
But I guess my message is, we don’t need to wait for all that phase four data to be in. What it’s gone through in that emergency use authorization, I have a high level of confidence in that, and the steps that have been taken to get this out to everyone.
FAQ Live is sponsored by Garnet.
