Page 146 - South Mississippi Living - March, 2021

FINAL SAY
DR. GEORGE
LOUKATOS
AlphaCare Urgent Care
When we look back on the past year, I think we can all agree that 2020 will not be ranking at the top of many peoples’ lists of “best years ever.” Most of us cannot remember a year during which our country seemed so divided, anxious, and vulnerable. At the heart of our struggle was the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spilled over into 2021 and seems to be becoming an endless fight. While the promise of a vaccine appeared to be
the light at the end of the tunnel as 2020 came to a close, the reality of limited supplies, poor logistics, and misinformation about the vaccine have proven to be continued challenges.
As a frontline worker, I was thankfully one of the
first in line to receive the vaccine. On the day of my immunization, I was chatting with the nurse who gave it to me, and she told me that only one third of the hospital staff had agreed to take the vaccine. A few days later,
an administrator at another major hospital system in
the area told me that only 40 percent of their employees agreed to receive the immunization. Sadly, when the vaccine became available to my employees, despite my best efforts to educate them, only about a third would take it.
Let me be frank – this does not bode well for us. We know that we need to vaccinate approximately 80 percent of the population to achieve herd immunity. We also know the coronavirus is already starting to mutate, and at an increasingly rapid rate. New mutations already have us wondering if our tests will detect the new strains, or
if the vaccine will work against them. We can infer that new strains may not respond to the few treatments that we have for COVID-19. Furthermore, experience tells us that if a virus is allowed to mutate enough times, we may never get ahead of it.
The perfect example is the flu, which has countless mutations and continues to mutate at a rapid rate. Each flu season, scientists make their best guess as to which strains will be most prevalent and develop the vaccine based on those guesses. This is why we can’t get rid of
the flu, and why the vaccine is only approximately 50 percent effective each year. If we allow the COVID-19 virus to continue spreading through hosts unchecked, we run the very real risk that it will become endemic (never goes away), just like the flu.
So the way I see it, we all have a decision to make. Do we give into fear, false information and selfishness, or do we step up and do what needs to be done? Over the next few months, the vaccine will be available to almost everyone reading this article. I pray that each of you take the time to educate yourselves about the vaccine, block out the hysteria and noise surrounding this issue, and make the right decision for you, your family and all of us.
146 | March 2021
www.smliving.net | SOUTH MISSISSIPPI Living