Either way, they paint a clear picture: If you’ve been vaccinated, you are much more protected against contracting a case of COVID serious enough to land you in a hospital bed.
“I like those odds,” Dr. Hill said. “I’ll take those odds any day.”
For Dr. James, it all started on the July 4th weekend when his daughter, then in the middle of a move, came to stay with him and his wife for a few days. Not long into her visit, his daughter developed a fever. A test confirmed it was COVID.
As has become common since the emergence of the Delta variant of the virus, which is estimated to be 250 times more contagious than the previous variant, it went through his household like wildfire.
“Eight days later, I had fever, cough, headache, muscle aches. I just felt terrible,” Dr. James said.
He got tested. It was COVID. His wife got tested. She had it, too.
“She had no symptoms at all,” he said. “It took me about two weeks at home to get to where I would be able to even think about going back to work.”
He’s COVID-free now and has returned to work. Still, even two months later, he doesn’t quite feel like his old self yet.
“This stuff is real,” Dr. James said. “I’m still a month out and I’m not well at this point. I’m still coughing and fatigued.”
Asked what he would say to those concerned about the vaccine’s safety, he pointed out that more than 163 million Americans have been fully vaccinated since December and that serious side effects – that is, those more severe than a sore arm and other temporary discomforts that indicate the vaccine is working – are exceedingly rare.
“We’ve got 52 people with COVID in our hospital, and we had two die yesterday,” he said this week before the COVID inpatient number at the health system’s Covington hospital surged to 67 Wednesday morning. “And a lot of these folks are young people now, so folks need to rethink this and do something that’s not only good for themselves but also for the community and their family.
“The risks of the vaccine are so miniscule compared to the risks of the illness. We all need to get vaccinated.”