Local Docs Make Vaccination Plea

With two more COVIDrelated deaths in Fayette County the past few days (raising the total to 76 since the pandemic) a trio of longtime Fayette County doctors are expressing frustration about locals’ hesitancy to get vaccinated – and urging anyone who has not gotten their COVID vaccination to do so.

“It is gut-wretching that people have died for no reason, including people in this community,” said Dr. Wess Blackwell. “How many people have to die from this illness before people realize the vaccine is safe?

“Think about society as a whole, think about your community. This is not a political issue, unfortunately it’s been made into a political weapon. It’s purely scientific.”

According to the latest state data, 41.39-percent of the Fayette County population over the age of 12 remains unvaccinated.

Early this year vaccines were only available at mass vaccination sites, but vaccines are available now at just about every local pharmacy and clinic.

“The vaccines are safe,” said Dr. Thomas Borgstedte. “You are protecting yourself, your neighbor, your grandparents, and your kids. During Hurricane Harvey, so many people came out and helped one another. This county as a whole is a good county, but for some reason they don’t see this vaccine as helping the person next to them, they just see it as a personal offense on their liberty, which is isn’t.”

Borgstedte said recently there’s been a lot of people in their 40s and 50s admitted to St. Mark’s for COVID (by contrast 83-percent of the 65-older population in Fayette County is vaccinated). The vast majority of this summer’s patients were not vaccinated and their average stay is 8-10 days.

“If we don’t get enough people vaccinated we’ll be in even more trouble,” Dr. William Mike McBroom said.

“I’d say for the last two months we’ve had between 5-11 people on average at St. Mark’s hospitalized for COVID. Ninety percent of them were not vaccinated. The ones that were vaccinated got better quicker and got discharged quicker,” Blackwell said.

The doctors said that three times recently heart attack patients came to St. Mark’s and needed to be transferred to a larger heart hospital for special care, but they could not because those hospitals were full of COVID patients.

“We called 7-8 places – nothing,” Borgstedte said. “When a person makes the decision not to get vaccinated and gets ill, they are taking away care from someone else.”

100-percent of the active medical staff at St. Mark’s is vaccinated, they said. A common thing the doctors

A common thing the doctors said they hear from patients is a claim to have a medical condition that should keep them from getting the vaccine.

“It is truly a very short list (of medical conditions that would keep someone from getting vaccinated),” Blackwell said. “Other than an absolute allergy to one of the components of the vaccine, there is no reason not to get vaccinated.”

Borgstedte said he has visited with adult patients that have lost siblings to COVID who still don’t want to be vaccinated.

“If there had been this much opposition to the polio vaccine, there would currently be a lot more people today with the effects of polio,” Blackwell said.

All three doctors said they have patients come in, refuse to get vaccinated and only want to discuss alternative treatments – like ivermectin.

“Studies have shown it does nothing,” McBroom said. “Statistics can be manipulated to make anything look good.”

And online, you can find anything to reinforce your own beliefs, they said.

“The vaccine is the only treatment that is not experimental,” Blackwell said. The FDA officially approved the Pfizer vaccine last week, and is expected to do the same soon with the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Previously those vaccines were available but with an “emergency use” authorization by the FDA.

The doctors also said there is some confusion among people who think they don’t need the vaccine because they have already had COVID. The current recommendation is to get the vaccine two-three months after getting COVID, they said. For folks already vaccinated, the Center for Disease Control this week was set to announce booster shot recommendations for the general public.

“There is no logical reason not to get vaccinated,” Blackwell said. “There just isn’t, based on the body of evidence that has materialized before our eyes.”