US Senator's Tweet On COVID Vaccine Vs Natural Immunity Is Exactly What You Shouldn't Believe

Anti-vaxxers is a real thing, though not much prominent in India, they are a strong community in the west.

They are opposed to getting vaccinated themselves and those around them and will peddle often unproven and baseless conspiracy theories to make their argument sound legitimate.

AFP

As the majority of the world is eagerly waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine, the anti-vaxxers are back, doing what they do best - discrediting vaccines and fighting to resist it.

US Senator for Kentucky, Rand Paul is one such case, and he appears to be playing down the efficiency of the COVID-19 vaccine.

AFP

Great news!?

- Pfizer vaccine 90% effective

- Moderna vaccine 94.5% effective - Naturally acquired COVID-19 99.9982% percent effective*

?* (estimating 200 reinfections out of 11 million Americans, which is likely an overestimation of actual reinfections)

Paul said in a tweet, which is riddled with problems.

To start with he appears to be favouring herd immunity by infection than from a vaccine.

This is something that the WHO and some of the top scientists have repeatedly warned that betting on herd immunity through infection is potentially dangerous.

AFP

The WHO had said that herd immunity has never been used as a strategy to respond to an outbreak in the history of public health, let alone a pandemic.

While the data so far suggest that someone who is infected by COVID-19 will be immune to the virus for a long time, it is still unclear how long will it last.

Another argument that those advocating for herd immunity often make is by pointing at the low mortality rate of COVID-19.

AFP

The mortality rate of COVID-19 is around 1 percent, which means there are chances that 99 out of the 100 infected patients could recover.

While that sounds good in theory, it is much more complicated in real life. Letting the aged, those with comorbidities get COVID-19 on the presumption that they will be safe can have deadly consequences.

Another issue more infections will create is it will overburden the hospitals and could lead to those in need of urgent critical care being denied it.

As expected, Paul's tweet did not go down well with a lot of Americans, including many in the medical profession.

??

Incidentally, this is not the first time the Republican senator has made unsubstantiated, potentially dangerous comments about dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak.

“We should tell them to celebrate,” Paul said during a Fox News interview on Thursday evening. “We should tell them to throw away their masks, go to restaurants, live again, because these people are now immune.”

AFP

This was immediately rejected by doctors.

“I don’t know why he would say that,” Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist at the University of Washington Medical Center, told MSNBC of Paul’s comments. “There is no evidence that if you’ve been infected with COVID-19 that you are immune from reinfection for any period of time.”