Health care workers answer questions about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Rhea Boyd, MD, MPH explains how the more transmissible variants mean you don’t want to wait any longer to get the COVID vaccine.
We’ve waited long enough. And I know many of you are still waiting even longer to see if the vaccines are safe. But at this point, in addition to the clinical trial data, that was extremely reassuring, we now have data on over 150 million Americans to tell us that the COVID vaccines are safe and they are the only way that we are going to get out of this pandemic.
Often, people ask me, “Well, are there other treatments that we can use for COVID?” I’ve heard circulating in our community, “What about vitamin D? Can we just take vitamin D to get over COVID instead of the vaccine?” And what I say to them is, “When you look around the globe and you see countries that are desperately fighting a surge of COVID, like we recently saw in India, do you know what they’re asking for? They’re not asking for vitamin D. They’re asking for the COVID vaccines, something that our country has more access to than any other in the world right now.” And among our country, the population that is least likely to have gotten one of those vaccines are people who look like me. If you look like me, if your kids look like me, and you’re still wondering if you should get that COVID vaccine, I’m here to tell you you’ve waited long enough. We know they’re safe, we know they’re effective. Please get the COVID vaccines for you and your loved ones.
