COVID-19 Update, Monday February 22nd.

A funny story, vaccine info, history, and the CRAAP test.

1. I would like to address the concern of what long-term effects you may experience from the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines. This is something lots of people ask about. There are a few things to know about that. a) the vaccines (particularly Moderna and Pfizer) don't remain in your body. They go in, do their job (which is to trigger your immune system) and then they degrade/dissolve so to speak and they are gone. From there it is your immune system that does the rest. The vaccine is gone. Consider how temperature sensitive the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are requiring storage at negative temperatures. Your body is 98.6 degrees inside - well beyond the tempature the vaccine can tolerate. So it degrades, it is not left inside your body waiting to cause future problems. Also, worth noting, b) historically, any negative effect we are going to see from a vaccine is seen within 6 weeks of when we give the vaccine. Things don't show up years later - the reason we continue to study vaccines for years is to determine how long immunity lasts, not because we are expecting new, long term health issues. We are well passed the 6 week mark for both of these vaccines.

2. Just a reminder that vaccines aren't 100% effective in 100% of people. So it is possible to get vaccinated and not develop immunity. It is not common but it does happen.

3. Some vaccines (like the measles vaccine) work in a way that prevents you from being able to shed the disease - so you can't spread it, but this is not true of all vaccines - in fact, many do not. Polio is an example of one that doesn't work that way. If you are vaccinated for Polio it means you wouldn't ever experience polio but you could possibly still shed it. In areas with spotty polio vaccination rates this can be seen (vaccinated people not getting sick but spreading it). This is normal. One of the things we don't know about the COVID vaccines (because of the shortened time we spent studying them) is if you can still spread COVID even though you don't get sick. We don't know - which means it could go either way. This is why people are asked to keep masking - at least until enough people are vaccinated that we no longer need to.

4. When assessing information to determine if it is a trusted source I advise people to use the CRAAP technique. It stands for: Currency (how current is the information, for COVID information is changing quickly so things that are many months old may no longer be right. Relevance - make sure the information has direct relevance to the way it is being applied. This seems obvious but it is not uncommon for people to use X to try to answer Y when the two things aren't really the same. Authority - is the person providing the information qualified to do so? Expertise in one area does not translate to expertise in all areas so pay attention to this. So if someone is speaking to statistics related to COVID, do they have biostatistics or epidemiological training? Because all stats are not the same. Just because someone had letters after their name doesn't mean they have the expertise on the subject at hand. Accuracy - is the information correct? This requires fact checking. Can you verify the information from an independent source? Again, be cautious trusting that the person quoted from studies so it must be right. Misinterpretations happen. Misunderstandings happen. And intentional misinformation happens. Be critical. Finally, Purpose - what is the purpose of the information? Just ask yourself about their intention.

5. Finally, another thing I hear is that quarantine, social distancing and mask wearing are examples of government overreach and an attack on religious freedom. So I wanted to just share that these techniques have been used since the time of Moses and are actually outlined in Leviticus, which is considered the first ever written code of public health. In Leviticus you see that the Israelites used all three of these techniques to prevent the spread of infectious diseases - even masking (Leviticus 13:45). Masking was last used in the United States during the 1918 pandemic (people hated it then too) but it has never lasted beyond the outbreak.

FINAL THOUGHTS: it seems only right to end with a funny, albeit embarrassing story. Saturday I did a FB live event for the Society for Disease Prevention. Hundreds of people were signed up to attend and I had never done a FB live event before so I was a little clunky with it. When I went to log in and go live I had trouble getting it to work, so I was a couple of minutes late - which sort of flustered me. Then my screen was sort of blank - not blank blank, but I couldn't see if anyone was there, if I was actually live or if comments/questions were being posted. Instead, I just saw how much bandwidth was being used and a picture of myself which was super distracting.

This caused me to question if I was really even live, if anyone was there etc. Needless to say, it caused me to be a little distracted. Eventually, things seemed to "fix" themselves, and all of a sudden I could see there were people there. 10 to be exact. I was very thankful for those 10 people. They were kind and inquisitive and asked some great questions so I felt the session ended much better than it had started. When I was done, I was a little disappointed in how bumpy it had gone (entirely from my end). Then.....I got an email from the Society of Disease Prevention (ummm, thank you Dr. Cameron, but....) I did it on the wrong day! It wasn't supposed to be until NEXT Saturday. People had signed up for next week so they wanted to know if it would be possible for me to do it then as originally scheduled. How embarrassing! So, I guess I get a do-over. The video was deleted (so as not to cause confusion) and I will do it again- hopefully, this time with fewer distractions. Wherever you are today, if you didn't show up for a public event a week too soon you can consider it a win.