Yale Doc: Covid, Not Vax, Is What’s Dangerous

Asked yet again about whether or not the Covid-19 vaccine causes more harm than good, a Yale emergency medicine doctor pointed to an Iowa hospital inundated with patients.

Those patients are suffering from Covid-19, he said, and not from vaccine side effects.

Arjun Venkatesh offered that response Tuesday night during a Covid-related question-and-answer session at the latest monthly meeting of the Dwight Community Management Team. The virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

Venkatesh — whose many titles include associate professor and chief of the section of administration in the department of emergency medicine at Yale University — swung by the online meeting to answer community questions about the latest with the ongoing pandemic.

Those queries touched on the most recent guidance around booster shots, when vaccines will be available for kids, and how long one has to wait to get the vaccine after contracting Covid — all as the more contagious Delta variant continues to wreak havoc, overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated, all across the country.

“These Are Really Safe Vaccines”

While many of the questions raised were specific to this particular moment in the 18-months-and-counting-long pandemic, Venkatesh singled out one question as being the most common he’s received ever since vaccines became available to the public.

That question came from Tymothee Anderson, who wrote in the Zoom chat asking for Venkatesh’s take on ​“adverse reactions” that he’s seen among people who have gotten vaccinated.

“I’ve been answering this question for a while,” Venkatesh replied.

He said that now, when he gets asked about vaccine side effects, he’s going to refer to a response that Iowa emergency room doctor Lance VanGundy gave on CNN the other night.

The cause for VanGundy’s national news appearance was a video he posted online about his small-town Iowa hospital being overwhelmed by patients with Covid.

“There’s so much misinformation out there,” VanGundy said in his Facebook Live video. ​“We are drowning in people who are dying with this illness. But I have yet to admit a single person because of a vaccine-related incident.”

Venkatesh said that the same is true for his own experience at Yale.

He has seen patients die from Covid. He has seen patients hospitalized and intubated due to Covid. He has seen young, healthy people contract serious cases of Covid. But he has never had to treat anyone due to side effects from the Covid vaccine.

“I still haven’t seen one patient with an adverse reaction to the Covid vaccine,” he said.

“For every day that passes, thousands more people are being saved from hospitalization or death” thanks to the vaccines, he added. Some may come down with a small fever. Some may suffer from a little body ache.

Overall, though, ​“these are really safe vaccines that do save a lot of lives.” And, most importantly, they are tremendously successful at protecting people from hospitalization and death due to Covid.

“Additional Shots?” Yes. Boosters? Not Yet

In addition to the perennial question about vaccine side effects, Venkatesh also fielded a diverse array of other queries Tuesday night about the latest with the pandemic.

What’s the latest with boosters and third shots? YNHH staffer Andy Orefice asked, passing along a question from management team Chair Florita Gillespie.

There is a difference between ​“boosters” and ​“additional shots,” Venkatesh replied. The latter are for severely immunocompromised people who did not achieve an adequate level of immunity to the novel coronavirus from the regular two-dose regimen of the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines.
Those people — making up maybe 5 to 10 percent of the vaccinated population — need an extra shot to get to the same level that most other people got to from their previous shots in order to be adequately protected from hospitalization and death due to Covid.

“Boosters,” meanwhile, would be extra shots for the vast majority of people who have already gotten their full vaccinations over the past year.

“As of today, in the U.S., we have not approved booster doses for anybody,” he said. ​“We have approved additional doses for people with weakened immunities.”

If and when boosters are approved will depend largely on whether or not those boosters prove necessary to protect people from hospitalization and death due to Covid.

How long does someone have to wait to get vaccinated if they’ve recently contracted Covid? asked Dwight Alder Frank Douglass.

Twenty-eight days, Venkatesh replied.

“If you had a Covid infection four weeks ago, you’re still in a window where you have a lot of natural immunity,” through antibodies and t‑cells that may remember how to fight the virus. The minimum most health systems, including Yale New Haven Hospital, are asking people with Covid to wait is 28 days from when they first contracted the virus.

That recommended wait used to be longer, at upwards of 90 days from infection. That timeline has shrunk significantly thanks to the ready availability of vaccines for all who want them. ​“We are now lucky. We’re fortunate. We live in a world of abundance. We have plenty of supply out there.”

So, if it’s been 28 days since you got Covid and you have not yet been vaccinated, go get the vaccine.

When might kids under the age of 12 be eligible for vaccination? asked Dwight resident Kate Walton.

Difficult to say, but all the evidence is pointing towards sooner rather than later, Venkatesh said.

Vaccine manufacturers like Pfizer have been conducting trials with patients between the ages of 5 and 12.

The very fact that those trials are continuing, and that the federal government has allowed the manufacturers to broaden enrollment and get more people involved in the trials, ​“tells you this is heading in the right direction.”

Depending on what data the vaccine manufacturers submit to the federal government over the coming weeks and months, the feds will likely drop the vaccine eligibility age in phases: probably first for kids aged 5 to 12, then for kids aged 2 to 5, then for babies. Hopefully that phase in will begin by the end of this calendar year.