With Americans on the brink of getting access to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, you probably have some questions about how everything is going to work. Here, we’re collecting answers as best we can, and we’ll update this page as more information becomes available.
What vaccine is approved right now?
The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is expected to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday night. This means that the Pfizer vaccine will likely be available within days. Hospitals are already scheduling shots for doctors.
The FDA advisory committee is slated to discuss the Moderna vaccine on Dec. 17, the other one with promising clinical trials.
Those are just the front runners, which will get to us first. For updates on the rest, we suggest fervently refreshing the New York Times’ vaccine tracker.
How will I know when it’s my turn to get the vaccine?
That’s still being worked out. It’s possible that there will be messaging from your local government, or a message from your primary care doctor, when it’s time for you, specifically, to get the vaccine. (Or, let’s face it, you’ll see an Instagram post from someone in your demographic who got it.)
By now you’ve probably heard that the Centers for Disease Control is recommending that most vulnerable people—like healthcare workers, the elderly, and people with risk factors—get access to COVID-19 vaccines first. Maybe you’ve “found your place in line” using the New York Times’ snazzy quiz thing. Getting the vaccine to those at the very front of the line will be somewhat straightforward, since clinics can just be set up at those places, like hospitals and nursing homes. For the rest of us, vaccine providers will need to submit a form saying that they’ll adhere to the order of groups laid out. It’s not clear how they’ll vet people.
I get people in nursing homes and ER doctors. But how are they deciding the order of the line otherwise?
The CDC is hashing out who to recommend in each stage of the rollout, and how to prioritize elderly people versus people deemed “essential workers.” The elderly are at higher risk of dying from the virus, but essential workers stand to spread it to more people. Who to put first “depends on what impact you’re trying to achieve,” former Food and Drug Administration Scott Gotlieb said on Face the Nation. Ultimately, it will be up to states, which have their own rubrics of how to prioritize different groups of people, and then to the clinics that give them out on how to enforce those, and to what extent.
Where will I get the vaccine?
Probably just a drug store or your doctors’ office. The CEO of CVS told Today that you’ll be able to book a vaccine appointment in the pharmacy’s app. “I don’t foresee there being long lines,” a Walgreens executive told CBS This Morning. “A lot of details are still being worked out.” Optimistic!
Which vaccine should I get?
Whichever one you are offered. But if you could choose, yes, we have somewhat non-scientific opinions on that.
How do we know it’s safe so quickly?
Scientists were able to do the part that comes before testing a vaccine much, much faster than usual. They sequenced and share the genome soon after the novel coronavirus was discovered. Then, there were people clamoring to participate in the trials. And part of the reason the rollout is happening so fast is because companies had vaccines manufactured and ready to go basically the second they had enough safety and efficacy data. That’s a big financial bet they were able to take because of all the money available to work on this.
When will Joe Biden get the vaccine?
Probably before you and me. In an interview with CNN, Biden suggested that he’d be “happy to” get the vaccine in public, as past U.S. presidents have said they will, the moment “when Dr. Fauci says we have a vaccine that is safe.”
It’s unclear if Biden was speaking off the cuff to show his support for the vaccine, or if he will get his first dose immediately after the vaccine is approved. According to the New York Times’ tool, a 78-year-old man from New Castle County, Delaware, with no risk factors for COVID, would be 118.5 millionth in line for the vaccine, even if he’s considered an essential worker. It would probably make sense from both a national security and public health perspective if the incoming president got to skip ahead, though.
If I have already had COVID-19, should I get the vaccine?
Unclear. The CDC’s official position is that the organization “cannot comment.” Reinfection from COVID-19 appears exceedingly rare, and there have not been many reported cases. However, that “may mean that either it is rare or it is rarely detected,” as virologist Angela Rasmussen has written in Slate. If we already had enough vaccines for everyone, it might be a no-brainer to get the COVID-19 vaccine, just in case, if you’ve already had COVID-19. But we are not in that world yet, so the answer is more complicated.
Why do you need two doses of the vaccine?
It’s not uncommon for immunizations to involve two jabs. “More than one dose means more opportunities for the immune system to figure out exactly how to counter a future infection,” explains Kait Sanchez in The Verge. You might still be somewhat protected after the first dose–that’s the case with Pfizer’s vaccine, data shows. And while there’s a recommended number of days between doses (21, in the case of Pfizer’s), the exact timing of the second dose is something of an art. So you probably won’t have to worry about squeezing vaccinations into your calendar too precisely.
What will you be able to do once you are fully vaccinated?
Not as much as you’d hope. The vaccines are good at preventing disease, but it is unclear how good they are at preventing infections. It’s possible that you could get the vaccine and be an asymptomatic carrier of the virus. “If vaccinated people are silent spreaders of the virus, they may keep it circulating in their communities,” writes Apoorva Mandavilliin the New York Times; the piece is headlined “Here’s why vaccinated people still need to wear a mask.” In the Atlantic, Sarah Zhang refers to the period we’re about to enter, where some people are vaccinated but many are not, as a “vaccine purgatory.”
Stop! I just want to be excited right now.
We suggest looking at the delightful coverage of 90-year-old British people getting the vaccine.
from Slate Magazine https://ift.tt/2JVtYGt
via IFTTT
沒有留言:
張貼留言