Today we can say goodbye to a less-than-great year and welcome a new and better one!
December 31 was one of the best days of the year for me. I got stuck in the arm with a needle! As a physician at Family Health Centers of San Diego, I was able to receive my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. I wore a BandAid on my arm and a smile on my face all morning, I was so thrilled.
Smallpox used to be a scourge of humanity. It decimated the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, and other New World populations after introduction from Europeans. Those it didn't kill were often scarred for life, disfigured by its horrible lesions.
We now remember Edward Jenner's 1796 invention of the smallpox vaccine and happily forget how deadly, disfiguring, and feared the disease was.
Polio used to be horribly feared. It killed some, crippled others, put children in Iron Lung respirators, and caused widespread public panic in the 1950's. When Salk and Sabin developed vaccines to prevent the disease they were hailed as national heroes, and now polio is only a memory in the developed world.
The flu kills tens of thousands of Americans each year. The 1918 flu killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and tens of millions around the globe. Fortunately, we now have a yearly vaccine that decreases the risk of flu in those who choose to be vaccinated, which also decreases the risk of transmitting the disease to those who, for whatever reason, decide not to be.
The list of diseases mostly eliminated or significantly decreased by vaccines is long: Smallpox, polio, tetanus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rubella, measles, mumps, whooping cough, Haemophilus influenzae b, shingles, diphtheria, Q-fever, rabies (by vaccinating dogs), and pneumococcus. If you haven't heard or thought about most of these diseases, thank the vaccines and the scientists who developed them.
Vaccines with undreamed-of efficacy and safety have now been developed to eliminate our present scourge of COVID-19, which has killed one of every thousand Americans. If you don't personally know anyone who has died, just think, otherwise-healthy 41 year-old congressman-elect Luke Letlow died on December 29, and 82 year-old actress Dawn Wells (Mary Ann of Gilligan's Island) passed away from COVID-19 on December 30, 2020.
Scientists succeeded with "Warp Speed" to deliver these vaccines, one of the triumphs in the history of medicine. If enough of us respond by being vaccinated then 2021 will be a much Happier and Healthier New Year.
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