Nearly all practicing U.S. doctors – better than 19 out of 20 – had been vaccinated against COVID-19 as of mid-June, the American Medical Association reported. That’s hardly surprising since other vaccines have eliminated or all but eliminated diseases such as polio, mumps, and rubella.
There is so much misinformation flying around these days. It’s tough to know truth from fiction when your source is social media or political rhetoric disguised as medical opinion.
Here is medical fact from this doctor: All three vaccines being used in the U.S. have proven highly effective at preventing serious illness and death from COVID-19. In August, unvaccinated people were 11.3 times more likely than vaccinated people to die from COVID-19 and 6.1 times more likely to test positive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
If you still have questions about COVID-19 vaccines, your healthcare provider will always be the best source of medical advice. I fully expect that she or he will tell you what I am telling you now as a medical doctor: Vaccines are the single greatest medical advance in history, and they save lives.
How confident am I in the COVID-19 vaccines? I am vaccinated. My children are vaccinated. With ages 5 to 11 now approved for the Pfizer vaccine, last week my daughter and I took my 11-year-old grandson to get vaccinated. We are still at war with a deadly disease, and I want those I love protected.
Science has given us a way to put this invisible killer in its place, if only we will take advantage of it, as we have for other menacing but vaccinatable diseases.
So please, ask a doctor.
