Ignore junk science and get COVID vaccine now, top SC doctor urges

Surpassing 750,000 lives lost to COVID-19 in the U.S. is both a painful milestone and a wakeup call that this deadly virus still poses a serious threat to anyone who is unvaccinated or in another high-risk category.

This is why physicians in South Carolina and across the country are urging everyone who is not yet vaccinated against COVID to make the responsible choice to protect themselves and their loved ones by taking the shot.

And it’s why, now that the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for children 5 and older, the American Medical Association strongly urges parents to vaccinate their children for COVID to safeguard them and their families as we enter the holidays.

As a family physician in coastal South Carolina, I have heard nearly every excuse under the sun why people have chosen not to get vaccinated against COVID.

Sadly, most of their apprehension is rooted in misinformation and junk science being spread widely online and through social media.

Ten months after COVID-19 vaccines first became available in the U.S., it pains me that about 45 percent of eligible South Carolinians are unvaccinated.

Ours isn’t the lowest vaccination rate in the country, but we are well below the national average.

Part of the reluctance is the unusual nature of this virus, which effects people in very different ways. But if everyone had a chance, like I have, to see the horrors of COVID-19 up close in our hospitals and intensive care units, the only question people would ask about vaccination is right arm or left?

I recently logged more than 100 hours in a week-long teaching rotation at a South Carolina hospital for a family medicine residency inpatient program.

During that rotation, I saw previously healthy people in their 40s and 50s – hard-working husbands and wives – draw their last breaths as their families wept and prayed underneath protective gowns, gloves and masks.

Each life we lose to COVID-19 brings immeasurable pain into another circle of family and friends, whose own lives are forever changed by that loss.

At times, I shed some tears as well, as did all the other members of the medical team.

We had done everything in our power to save these patients, including treatment protocols newly approved by the National Institutes of Health. But the virus overpowered them.

COVID-19 cases are much lower in South Carolina today than what we experienced during the fall surge a few weeks ago, but the threat is ever-present. And even at this low ebb we are seeing more than 600 people a day hospitalized with the virus and 28 COVID-related deaths.

The patients who died during my teaching rotation were unvaccinated.

In fact, all of the COVID-19 patients who were sick enough to require ventilators or admission to critical care units were unvaccinated.

As a family medicine physician who has practiced in the same small community for decades, I knew many of these seriously ill patients.

I knew their families.

At every turn, I have counseled patients to take advantage of the life-saving vaccines that have been widely available at no cost to all of us for many months now.

I have seen the devastation of COVID-19 up close, and I have given counsel to surviving friends and family who – despite all we have been through together the last 18 months – can’t believe it has so profoundly impacted their lives.

And, inevitably, they ask two things: Would a vaccine have prevented this loss? And how quickly can I get one?

Dr. Gerald E. Harmon is president of the American Medical Association and lives in South Carolina.

This story was originally published November 5, 2021 at 3:00 PM.