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As the date of your vaccination approaches, you need to be more careful and vigilant than ever. Covid-19 is a respiratory virus carried in the air that is easily transmissible when we are around other people. That’s why we need to practice the 3 W’s—Watch our distance, Wash our hands and Wear a mask. And we should continue to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people even when the 3 W’s are employed.
Each of us are exposed every time we encounter another person, even if we stay entirely at home and a caregiver or family member who lives with us goes to the store, work, & etc. Those outside contacts can lead to spread in the home, no matter how careful the “at home” persons are. Some of my “at home” patients have still contracted Covid-19.
The two available vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, are equally effective and are both unlikely to cause significant side effects. Everyone receiving vaccines must wait a minimum of 15 minutes afterwards in order to be monitored for any problems. Immunity begins to develop within one week after your first immunization and reaches about 50% after three weeks. Two weeks after your second shot immunity should reach 95%.
Once you have been fully vaccinated*, about two weeks after your second dose of vaccines, your life shouldn’t change very much. At first, most other people will have not yet been vaccinated, and while the vaccines are 95% effective, 1 in 20 vaccinated persons can still contract the disease. With nearly 25% test positivity in Oklahoma, there is still considerable risk of acquiring Covid-19, even for the fully vaccinated, so even the vaccinated need to remain careful.
However, it will be safer for you to go to the grocery or hardware store, the post office and other stores where social distancing is practiced and people are wearing masks. Small group activities in which you know that all the participants have been vaccinated will clearly be safer. But being in large groups and traveling will remain risky until the US population reaches herd immunity, which will require at least half of the population to be immunized and much of the rest to have recovered from the disease.
Once herd immunity is reached, it will be much safer to do such things as eat in a restaurant, ride a bus, attend religious services and attend parties, weddings and funerals. Families will be able to gather in ways that were impossible in 2020. But it is unknown how soon we will attain herd immunity. Until that time, I will continue practice the 3 W’s.
*People such as health care and other frontline workers who work in high-risk-of-exposure occupations can significantly decrease their risk if immunized. This is why these workers are among the first Americans to be offered the vaccine.