Local dentist: Get COVID-19 vaccine as soon as possible
Area dentist Myriam Raber receives her first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.
As an immigrant and a dentist in Wayne and Holmes counties, I am writing to encourage all residents to take the COVID-19 vaccine as soon as they have that privilege.
The two biggest public health measures in any country are access to safe water and immunizations. Access to treatment is important, but prevention and protection of the most vulnerable is essential.
My husband’s grandmother, Trasie Yoder Raber, lost her only brother Clarence, age 30, to the Spanish flu in 1918. Influenza took her 39-year-old husband Ernest in 1929 and her 11-year-old son Blaine in 1934. She was left to raise the other three children alone. Today, they would have had access to both the flu shot and antibiotics.
Just days ago I was reading old letters written by relatives in the early 1900s, and there was a lot of mention and worry about the various epidemics including smallpox and whooping cough.
What is seen as American history is still reality in many countries. Entire much less-privileged and less-educated populations understand and have lived through multiple epidemics (cholera, ebola, yellow fever) and highly contagious diseases (tuberculosis, chikungunya, malaria). Without immunization of pregnant women against tetanus as part of routine prenatal care, an approach pioneered in Haiti in 1967, millions of babies born in unsanitary conditions around the world would still be dying of umbilical cord-acquired tetanus.
Poorer countries understand and respond much better to epidemics. They are quicker to act and in many ways have done better at facing COVID-19 than richer countries. They know their populations do not live in spaces large enough to social distance, and their populations appreciate the value of public health measures. Their government will not and cannot provide individuals and employers with stimulus money. Their people must be out and about daily to carry water, look for today’s food and get to the marketplace if they are to survive.
India, Bangladesh, Egypt and other African countries have found novel, safe, economical ways to lessen how deadly the virus is.
Unfortunately, leaders in rich countries have dismissed this real-world evidence, stating there were not enough studies while refusing to undertake their own studies. I believe this is now one of the reasons some in the general American public are suspicious about the vaccine. The table has turned, and they are asking for more studies. The American public has gotten a bit too comfortable. They demand pills or shots researched for a decade and available for most diseases. In epidemics and pandemics, you do not have that kind of time.
What the public needs to understand is that vaccine technology is extremely safe and well-studied. The main downside of a fast-to-market vaccine is that it may not be as effective in all age groups as the next generation of the same vaccine (HPV and shingles vaccines are two recent examples). This is why everyone taking the vaccine is so important. The elderly typically have the least success rate with vaccines.
The speed with which the two currently available vaccines were made is due to existing technologies developed by children of Turkish immigrants to Germany (husband and wife Dr. Sahin and Dr. Türecie) and by a Hungarian immigrant (Katalin Karikó) to the United States. Their costly but effective technologies existed long before COVID-19. There just had not been a reason to use it for vaccines. Their technology was being used to manufacture customized treatment to help our own immune system fight cancer.
Katalin Karikó grew up in a one-room house in Hungary with no running water and no refrigerator. In the United States she struggled to keep her position at the University of Pennsylvania after nobody would fund her “mRNA research.” She accepted a lower-paid research position so her daughter could get the staff discount at the prestigious university. Karikó was eventually let go by the university, a decision it probably now regrets.
Her synthetic “mRNA” discovery would turn out to be a key element in speeding up the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, allowing scientists at Moderna, as well as Pfizer, to dramatically accelerate the time usually needed to develop a vaccine, which previously took several years.
Messenger RNA is a fast but a very expensive way to make vaccines and must be kept at extremely cold temperatures. Such vaccines will not reach 75% of the planet due to cost and temperature requirements. The less privileged will have to wait for the traditional, cheaper and slower to manufacture vaccines that will come to market later. Those later vaccines will either have pieces of actual COVID-19 viral DNA inserted in another harmless virus or a weakened form of the actual COVID-19 virus.
When my husband and I went to the health department to take our first of two doses of the vaccine, we met other excited doctors and healthcare providers waiting their turn. We have studied biology and genetics. We understand how the vaccine is made. We know the mRNA technology cannot harm us. We would not be taking it if not convinced no harm will be done. We would prefer to be taking a 99% effective vaccine but are settling for 90%.
Millions including 112-year-old Hazel Plummer have safely rolled up their sleeves. I personally think Hazel is a great and true patriot who is hoping to show the world the vaccine is safe and tells others to “just do it.”
I do appreciate we still have freedom to choose. Freedom also comes with responsibility and acceptance of consequences. I realize sometimes lawmakers make rules that are enforced for others and not applied to them. This vaccine is not one of those situations.
The COVID-19 vaccine may be least effective in the elderly. Unfortunately, the virus is most deadly for their age group. I am especially pleading with anyone working in or ever entering a nursing home, ever in contact with immune-compromised or elderly friends and relatives, to please protect them and take the vaccine. It’s not only easy but also crucial to lifting all the restrictions we are living under worldwide.
Myriam Raber is a dentist in Kidron, Holmesville and Mount Hope.