The shots are coming.
Friday, January 15, 2021
Lockdown and Shots..
Happy New Year! The pandemic is a year old. The message from government and politico-docs continue to be confusing and difficult to understand. Although primary care doctors are on the front line, we have no pipeline, meetings or coordination with other parts of the system such as health departments and political sources. This makes answering your questions difficult at times. I have been active attending meetings and updates on the number of inroads and progress in treating this years virus, particularly by a group of non-biased science based doctors who deal with covid daily. Browse for FLCCC on the internet'. Good advice on what vitamins help, how important excercise and fresh diet devoid of sugars are.
There has been a race by large companies to provide vaccines. Great profits are the golden goose to the winner. Canada ordered early, and have had vaccine supplies for about a month now, but have barely vaccinated a 100,000 people. With the help of primary care docs, pharmacists and some others, we distribute large amounts of flu vaccine yearly, and have capabilities of giving over a million shots a week if focally tasked with it. From the onset storage was a problem. Lets hope that better co-operation, communication and co-ordination will be able to solve this quickly.
We have no idea of how and when you will be able to get a vaccine, and will update this feed when it happens. Both the Moderna and Pfizzer vaccines are new products to the human race. They are expensive and privately produced for profit. They are mRNA vaccines that can replicate protiens carried by the virus using our own machinery and allow the body's immune system to react. A second dose is required to get the long lasting effect. IMPORTANT.. This means that from the time of first injection to considering some degree of immunity it takes 6 WEEKS. Technically your risk continues during those 6 weeks. Both vaccines underwent large scale testing and seem quite safe, but longer term data is yet to come. Most respiratory viruses including covid naturally mutate, and there are variants. These vaccines can protect against some variants, but the technology allows for a new vaccines to be developed rapidly, exciting but expensive. We may be in for a very expensive annual vaccination program. Vaccines will put a dent in the numbers, and no indications that will erradicate the virus. In the last months, there's been lots of chatter in front line trenches of ways to prevent and soften the disease using combinations of existing, cheap, safe medications such as invermectin, vit d, vit c, zinc and steroids. I sincerely hope that those in charge of policy, at least look at prevention as a complement to vaccination. I fall in the high risk group and will take the vaccine with my patients.
I agree with the shelter in place order, except the part about closing ski hills while keeping LCBO's open?? I hope it was a typo. Complete erradication is doubtful. We all worry about the hospitals being overrun. Some already are. Hospitals are always full to the brink in January. This year it will be much worse. You cant provide good care in that environment and patients suffer when resources are lacking, backed up and overwhelmed. The working idea is to SLOW the spread of virus in our population. I applaud the vast majority of people who exert common sense in their daily decision making. The term "lockdown" is misleading. Some Chinese cities are truly locked down and citizen rights dont exist. We hope that common sense trumps dictorial rule. Evidence is weak that is works, but options are scarce.
I also need to clarify the announcement about medical care. When the premier stated that doctors visits are fine, I didnt expect a deluge of calls for regular monitoring items such as normal physicals, requests for screening tests etc, as a way to fill the lockdown days. The system is overwhelmed and backed up. Clinics, labs and hospitals are full of covid and rarely discussed, but contribute significantly to the spread of disease. We are faced with deciding, wether to coax a patient out of safe lockdown and send them to a place where the risk of exposure is high to deal with a deferrable problem. I am watching my medical colleagues burn out one by one. We are providing phone advice, virtual consults and do personal visits as a last resort. Our support systems are broken. Covid is overwhelming our ability to do diagnostic testing, elective surgery, education and prevention. Please use common sense or stay in your bubble for the next month.