Laurie Garrett: 'We're In A Time Of Real Confusion' - Deadline - MSNBC

[Rhiannon12866]

Foreign Policy Magazine columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett breaks down where the country is in its fight against covid, and how to balance both the good and bad news that the American public is hearing. Aired on 04/05/2021.

[cilla4progress]

1. How did the video make you feel,

Rhiannon?

[Rhiannon12866]

2. I'm certainly not complacent and those who behave as if this is pandemic is "over" make me anxious

I may have received my second shot this week, and I was so grateful to finally be able to get it, but I'm not changing anything, cases are up in my New York county and we need to continue to observe precautions.

[cilla4progress]

3. Right, agree.

What I am still "confused" about are 2 main things:

Is the risk from variants ONLY to the UNvaccinated?

Efficacy duration of vaccine. I understand that at this time, they only know about 6 months out for obvious reason that the vaccine has only been around that long. Wonder what the long term plan is for boosters - heard anything about that?

[myccrider]

4. Cobbling together what I've read and heard...

There’s still a 5%-10% chance of catching the wild type Covid even if vaccinated, you just have near zero chance of getting sick enough to be hospitalized and/or dying.

There is probably a variable amount of protection against the variants for the vaccinated in terms of catching Covid at all or getting really ill. Not all the variants have been studied against all the vaccines, so we just don’t know. Even if the vaccines are less effective against some or all variants, it’s still important to get vaccinated as part of the strategy to STOP.THE.PANDEMIC. Reducing the number and severity of infections is vital to reducing the spread of all the Covid types (and the evolution of more variants). There may need to be boosters but mRNA technology makes it relatively easy to target the specific variants and produce new vaccines rapidly, if necessary.

Regardless, people shouldn’t be congregating together unless everyone in a small group is vaccinated. We should still be wearing masks, social distancing and washing our hands. Those remain the most effective ways to STOP.THE.PANDEMIC right now and all the economic/social pain and disruption it causes. Not enough people have been vaccinated, yet. A new wave is probably already building because of relaxing restrictions too soon and not following guidelines, so there will be more people sick and dying and spreading the virus. Hopefully the number of deaths will be much less because of the people already vaccinated. We’ll see, unfortunately.