COVID-19 vaccines have ‘proved their merit at this point’: Doctor
Dr. David Katz, Preventive Medicine Specialist & True Health Initiative President, joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the latest in the coronavirus pandemic.
Video Transcript
- And Dr. Katz, it's great to see you again. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Andrew's just going through some of the numbers, some of the states where we are seeing the biggest increase in cases. How much worse do you think this could potentially get over the next couple of months?
DAVID KATZ: Well my hope, Shauna-- and good to see you again as well-- is that it isn't going to get too much worse because although cases are going up, hospitalizations so far are not going up much. The death rate hasn't ticked up at all. And my hope is that basically the virus is now encountering a population that's mostly immune. We should bear in mind, what made this germ particularly bad, what made pandemic is that we had no immunity to it.
Once we have immunity to it, it's a lot like other viruses we deal with all the time. Maybe a bit like flu, maybe a bit more like common cold coronaviruses. We're also much more capable of testing everybody with symptoms now than we were in the early going, so we can see a high case count because we're good at finding the virus when it's there. A lot of those people are not terribly sick. I have a case in my own family. We were due to get together for Thanksgiving, and sadly, part of the group can't come because someone had what seemed like a cold, got tested, and it was COVID.
They're not very sick, but it was enough to disrupt the Thanksgiving gathering. But there's a lot of that, a lot of people who have immunity following vaccination, maybe people who've had prior infection. Once we're mostly immune, we can still potentially get this and test positive but people don't get very sick. So it really ought to be a very different experience this year than last.
- I'm glad you brought up that whole issue of, you can still test positive even if you've gotten the vaccine because as we know, over time, the vaccine's effectiveness at preventing the breakthrough case wanes, but hospitalizations, the data show the outcome is much less severe if you're vaccinated. That said, what do we know about once you've gotten the booster? Do you have this permanent protection after the booster, or does that wane after a period of time?
DAVID KATZ: Yeah, good question, Adam. And you know, all immunity does wane over time. Even when you allegedly have lifelong immunity following an infection like, say, measles, you go far enough out, either just because your immune system little by little starts to forget the experience or simply the aging process which weakens immune response, is that combination conspires against you.
So boosters are a good idea. The question becomes, how often do you need them. So while we're still dealing with the ongoing pandemic, we're really trying to maintain very robust levels of immune defense. And so the boosters are coming early. Once this becomes an endemic virus-- in other words, we are all immune either because we've been vaccinated or because we've been infected or both-- will we need boosters once a decade, every five years? Will we not need them at all because we're exposed to the virus and not getting very sick as we are to other coronaviruses? Remains to be seen.
But the emphasis right now is people who are exposed early in the pandemic are seeing a new variant, the Delta variant. People who weren't exposed and got the vaccines need high levels of immunity now until we get out of the pandemic phase. And so the boosters are recommended early. I do think one important omission in the public health discussion of this topic is differentiating people who've had the infection from those who have not. I think one of our problems in public health policy is acting as if one size fits all in the pandemic, and it really doesn't.
So I'm a case in point. I had the infection and I was vaccinated twice. I've been boosted. Arguably my first vaccine was a booster following infection, and then I was boosted again. I don't think I need another booster now. So I think we could probably do a better job of constructing public health guidance that acknowledges that millions of Americans have already had this infection.
- Now, I want to ask you, doctor. So there will be no heightened restrictions in the US, right? As opposed to what they're doing in Europe. But then on the flip side, there's also some relaxation when it comes to mask mandates for in Washington DC, for example. So what sort of a mixed message does that send to people? How do you keep people still being vigilant to do what they need to do when while the vaccines are now waning, people are also getting weary of all of this? And I think one of the questions I hear the most is, when does this end. When does this turn from a pandemic into an endemic? How do we get there?
DAVID KATZ: Well, we get there the way we're getting there. It's basically one of two things. Everybody gets exposed-- and you know, there was a fairly dramatic statement out of Germany that everybody is either going to recover, die, or get vaccinated. It sounds dramatic, but in a sense, it's true. With the virus circulating widely, you're likely to get exposed. If you're not immune, you're likely to get infected.
And if you get infected, you're either going to survive or die. So it really does divide up the likely experience. But everybody in the United States can be vaccinated. It's a choice now. And I think when we didn't have that choice and the only way to keep the population safe was lockdown, then selective use of that tactic made good sense. But now there is a reliable way to defend against probably getting infected but certainly getting a severe infection. And it's available to everybody. Everybody who wants to be vaccinated can be.
Everybody who wants to get a booster now should have access. I think we've done a very good job of making the vaccines available and freely available. And what that means is, you opt out of that, you know, it's a little bit like deciding to drive and not wear your seat belt. You're taking a risk you don't need to take. And so I don't think we need that heavy-handed society-wide response anymore, because we have the more targeted and highly effective approach of safe and remarkably effective vaccines.
So I do think it makes sense to relax the public health restrictions and empower individuals to protect themselves. That some people are opting out of that is unfortunate. To some extent, they're playing Russian roulette with this virus.
- Hey doctor, how should we be thinking about travel? I think a number of people are planning to travel domestically over the holidays. A number are planning to travel internationally. Should we be comfortable doing this?
DAVID KATZ: I think so. You know, again, I've done some traveling. The one thing I'll tell you, Shauna, is it's a bit tedious. When you're on a plane, you have to wear the mask the whole time. And I was recently on Delta, and they said you have to wear the mask even when you're eating. So you know, take a mouthful, put the mask back on, take it-- you know, not a lot of fun. So you know, we're all putting up with a certain level of inconvenience, but other than that-- again, if you've been vaccinated-- I mean, the point here is not to get to zero risk.
We're never at zero risk of getting something infectious from one another. So the issue really is, is this risk now down at the level of the prevailing background of epidemiology. And if you are basically healthy and have been fully vaccinated, the answer to that question is yes. It's a completely different scenario than when we had no immunity to this virus. So are you taking some risk? Might you get infected? And if you get infected, might you get sick? Yes, but wasn't that always the case when you were out in the world before the pandemic? Also Yes. And you know, for a while, SARS-CoV-2 was a case apart. We were all-- we had no immunity to it. It was a very, very dangerous exposure.
If you've been vaccinated, the danger of that exposure is now much like the danger of exposure to other pathogens that are circulating in the environment all the time. So I think you take the relevant precautions. In particular, I highly recommend being vaccinated. The vaccines really have proved their merit at this point. And then, yes. I think it's reasonable to travel. Who you get together with, how you get together, I think it's reasonable for families to make those decisions. Some families have people with serious immune deficiency, chronic diseases.
So you want to adjust your behavior to accommodate the highest-risk member of the group, but as long as families are empowered with those options, I think it's safe to travel. I think it's safe to gather.
