Pfizer – It’s Not Just For Boner Pills Anymore!
Vaccines are a freaking modern miracle. Before we had vaccines, everyone just had to run the risk of catching potentially debilitating/fatal diseases and hope they didn’t catch them, and if they did catch them, hope they weren’t debilitated or killed by it. We are so lucky that we have safe and effective vaccines against so many disease – COVID-19, of course, being the one that is top of mind!
This past week was quite exciting for people my age, because on Monday/Tuesday it was announced in BC, ON, and AB, people 40+ years old were eligible to get Astra-Zeneca COVID-19 vaccine (#TeamAstraZeneca). Before that, it was only people 55-65 years old that that could get that and the age-based stream of the Pfizer & Moderna vaccines was still up the upper 60s+, so most 40-somethings ((With some exceptions for people who were eligible through work, extreme clinical vulnerability, or a few other circumstances.)) weren’t expecting to get vaccinated until some time in May. And pretty quickly my emails, texts, Facebook, and Twitter feeds were on fire with news of friends and acquaintances getting on registered on wait lists, getting appointments, getting jabbed in the arm with that sweet, sweet AZ!
I know some people are worried about AZ, due to the reports of people who have gotten blood clots after the vaccine that caused its use to be restricted while the issue was being further investigated. Two thoughts on this: (1) this is a very rare side effect. You are an order of magnitude more likely to get a blood clot from COVID than you are from this vaccine, (2) the fact that the use of the AZ vaccine was paused when these rare blood clots were identified is a sign that the systems in place to monitor the safety of vaccines is working. Any new vaccine (or medication) that goes to market is closely monitored for unexpected side effects, because when a side effect is 1 in 250,000, you probably aren’t going to see it in a clinical trail of 30,000. It’s only when something is given to millions of people that those rare side effects will surface.
The other issue is about the different vaccines is efficacy. The mRNA vaccines are reported to have an efficacy ~95%, whereas AZ is reported as ~65%, so some people think “oh, maybe I should wait for one of the “better” ones. The thing is, the efficacy rates are about how good the vaccines were at preventing any COVID symptoms. And we know that some people who get COVID have no symptoms or mild symptoms, whereas other people have quite severe symptoms, and the disease is fatal in some cases. The good news is that all of the vaccines are 100% effective against serious illness and death from COVID. The best vaccine for you is the first one you are offered, because the first one you are offered = the soonest you can be protected against serious illness and death.
There was a really great video on CBC’sThe National Facebook page explaining why all the COVID vaccines that are approved are awesome. I tried to embed it here, but the embed code isn’t working, but I think I can sum up the take home message as: don’t turn a vaccine that is 100% effective against serious illness and death from COVID to wait for a vaccine that is a little bit better at preventing you from getting the sniffles.
Fortunately, many, many 40-somethings were on top of getting the first vaccine they could get their hands on, and it filled me with delight to see so many people getting jabbed.
Also delighting me are the tweets and parodies about this phenomenon:
And finally, I have this song stuck in my head since Kalev for brought it to my attention:
I am on #TeamPfizer, which I got a few weeks ago when I became eligible. But the good thing is that no matter if you are on #TeamPfizer, #TeamAstraZeneca, #TeamModerna, or #TeamJ&J, we are all really on the same team: #TeamFUCOVID!
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