Summing Up: COVID Vaccines Save Lives

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, June 29, 2022

All of us have been in constant learning mode since COVID arrived on Vashon more than two years ago.

We thank The Beachcomber for this opportunity to sum up what we now know about COVID vaccines. One thing, for sure, being well-informed helps people make choices to stay as safe as possible, and that’s one of the main reasons Vashon has done as well as it has so far in this pandemic. The Beachcomber has been a major part of that effort.

Fortunately, those who get vaccinated and boosted are safer from COVID, according to the latest data from Public Health – Seattle & King County (PHSKC). People who are not fully vaccinated and have not been boosted are 1.4 times more likely to get COVID. More importantly, people who don’t get vaccinated and boosted are six times more likely to be hospitalized, and nine times more likely to die from COVID. We publish these figures for King County in each weekly newsletter, from the source that can be accessed at bit.ly/PHSKC_VaxOutcomes.

The big vaccine success story has been keeping people out of the hospital and preventing deaths.

Even as wave after wave of COVID variants have swept our island community, vaccines and boosters have tamped down the worst effects of the pandemic. The official public health case count for Vashon is now at 1,000, yet the PHSKC dashboard shows only 17 people have been hospitalized in all that time.

Sadly, five Vashon residents have died, but just think about how many more of your Vashon neighbors could have died without vaccinations and boosters, augmented by the work we have done to reduce the spread of infections through masking education, testing, and contact tracing.

In fact, if Vashon’s COVID death rate had matched King County’s death rate, our total deaths would have nearly tripled to 14. Fortunately, our community has embraced vaccination – we have one of the highest vaccination and booster rates in the country. Because of this, many Vashon residents have survived COVID infections without the need for extraordinary medical care.

In one of our recent weekly newsletters, we covered the topic of immunity. In it, we talked about the extra protection of getting vaccinated and boosted and also surviving COVID – hybrid immunity. Indeed, we said, that’s the best level of protection you can get.

Unfortunately, hybrid immunity has one major disadvantage: You must survive COVID to obtain it.

That’s not a trivial risk on Vashon, where our average age is 54, 20 years older than folks on the mainland. Age matters in this case – nearly every COVID death in King County in the past 30 days (97%) was a person aged 50 years or older. If you are going to get COVID, it’s dramatically safer to get it after you have been vaccinated.

We also pointed out that immunity is not 100% protection. Individuals may develop more or less of it after an infection or vaccination, and immunity wanes over time. A recent New England Journal of Medicine article (bit.ly/NEJMimmunity) made this point strongly, showing that both post-infection immunity (the so-called “natural immunity”) and immunity gained from vaccination fade over time, although it appears that post-infection immunity wanes at a significantly slower pace.

In addition, immunity tends to be specific to a pathogen. Each new COVID variant evolves to evade prior immunity. As the new BA.4 and BA.5 strains become dominant in our area, we have no way to know how much protection you will get from an infection from an earlier variant. We look forward to new vaccines and boosters under development that may protect against newer COVID variants.

All this adds up to our strategy of public education. People can do a lot to keep themselves safe, even if they decide against vaccine boosters. The goal was never to achieve zero COVID, because it was known from the outset that our community is tightly integrated with the mainland, and complete immunity is not possible. We have, however, rung the alarm when a COVID wave has been approaching, so people can take steps to stay well and prevent the spread of infection.

Here’s the bottom line: The more immunity you have, of whatever type, the better off you will be. A prudent choice is to get both vaccinations and boosters because they provide additional protection whether or not you’ve had COVID. Then, if you happen to get sick, you will be as safe as possible.

Meantime, wear a mask in indoor spaces and do a personal risk assessment when considering travel and large group gatherings. Then you will have some physical protection against infection, in addition to vaccination or post-infection immunity.

After all, the best way to avoid COVID is to avoid inhaling the virus in the first place.

We hope everyone will find this information helpful, and thanks again to The Beachcomber for this opportunity.

This commentary was written by Dr. Jim Bristow and Dr. Zach Miller, for Vashon Medical Reserve Corps; Rick Wallace, manager of Vashon Emergency Operations Center, and Vicky de Monterey Richoux, president of VashonBePrepared.