This commentary is by Dr. Jack Mayer, who’s retired from Rainbow Pediatrics in Middlebury.
A successful public health victory over Covid-19 requires the efforts of as many people as possible in service to the greatest good of our communities.
The most remarkable advances in medicine over the last 100 years have been associated with public health initiatives that have been written into our legal system — mandates. Clean water, sewage treatment, pasteurization, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, to name a few.
It is no more our choice to ignore these rules than it is to drive through a stop sign or drink and drive. Freedom does not absolve us from responsibility.
I believe that, when our descendants look back on the 20th and 21st centuries and consider medical advances that alleviated death and suffering, they will point to vaccines as one of the most noteworthy. Not antibiotics that treat infections, but vaccines that prevent them.
The science is clear about Covid vaccinations — they work extremely well. Efficacy of 90% to 95% is considered a home run in the vaccine world.
Our current surge is predominantly infections of the unvaccinated. More people have died. More and more young people and children are becoming infected. Long-haul Covid is becoming recognized as a common complication of infection. Our medical infrastructure is strained and nearly overwhelmed.
Vaccinations work because we agree to the social contract that binds us together in the name of safety, health and the common good. When the polio vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, there was very little vaccine refusal.
I have cared for a baby dying of whooping cough, too many children with meningitis, and a 6-year-old who died of chicken pox — all vaccine-preventable illnesses. My teachers, the ones who taught me the art and science of medicine, told me about losing patients to these diseases as well as the ravages of polio, diphtheria, tetanus, smallpox, mumps and measles, all vaccine-preventable infections.
The odds today of dying from these diseases are exceedingly small, thanks to vaccines. But for the mother of the child who died from chicken pox, it was 100% and it was devastating.
Children ages 5 to 11 now have the highest rates of Covid-19 infection and some are dying from it. We have a very safe vaccine to protect against the worst outcomes. It is now available to protect our 5-to-11-year-olds from infection, death, and from spreading the deadly virus to family, friends, other children, to people with underlying conditions or immune deficiencies, those who are not eligible for the Covid vaccine, and those too young to be immunized.
There are always risks, whatever we choose. Our challenge is to weigh the risks and benefits and choose what is safest for ourselves, our children, and our community (village, city, state, country, planet).
It is abundantly clear that the risk of vaccination is far, far less than the risk of Covid infection. Life on earth is a team sport. Let’s do a full-court press on this tiny virus that we know how to defeat.
