“What they showed in that paper was that the air flow went from the contagious person, directly all the way to the other side of the room. And even though it was beyond six feet, they made a pretty compelling case that these other individuals got sick from that contagious person on the other side of the restaurant.”
Dr. Richard Martinello, Medical Director, Infection Prevention, Yale New Haven Health System.Still, Martinello said, while people need to go to the grocery store, and want to support restaurants, “There is a great deal of chance we take with our health and that of our family when we go to indoor locations like restaurants.”
Skepticism about the Pandemic, Distrust of the Vaccine, and Conspiracy Theories
Dr. Balcezak and Dr. Martinello talked about potential skepticism about the safety of vaccines, disbelief that the pandemic existed, and conspiracy theories.
“This is real. This is causing significant morbidity and mortality, and it is stressing our health care system across the US.”
– Dr. Tom Balcezak, Yale New Haven Health chief clinical officer.
Balcezak said he believed the virus had disproportionately impacted elderly people living in congregated environments, and people of color in densely populated or urban areas.
“Those are people who are marginalized and left out of mainstream discussion,” he said, adding that since visitors are restricted, especially in hospitals in hot spots, there is a degree of invisibility of the virus to the general public.
Still he said he anticipated that over time there would be increased acceptance of the vaccine as safe and effective.
“We have to accept that this is the only way to get out of this trouble we are in in this pandemic,” he warned.
Dr. Martinello said he believed people tend to look for simple answers, and those tend to be amplified on social media – even when they are incorrect.
“The ability for messages, some of which aren’t based in fact or reality, is to become amplified,” he said. “We desire to understand them in simple terms. Some are conspiracy theories. They are simple and spread more readily than facts.”
“Like a cancer, (conspiracy theories) degrade our understanding of reality, and it gets very confusing for people in terms of what to believe and how to make decisions based on facts,” Martinello said.
Immunity and Antibodies
Dr. Martinello said in the US, only about 10-15% of the population have antibodies, but that one recent paper indicated that the number of people with antibodies was decreasing.
“Some of the antibodies people are developing after they get infected are starting to go away,” Martinello said. “The concern about that is if you get infection, we don’t know at this point how long you may have a degree of immunity against Covid.”
“What we do know, and what’s been very well studied, are these vaccines,” he added. “We do know that the vaccines produce high levels of antibody and high degree of immunity.”
He said research to date indicates that receiving a vaccine will produce higher levels of antibodies compared with infections of the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself.
“Especially mild infections, which sometimes have been reported to produce somewhat lower levels of antibodies,” he added.
He said even for people who have been infected, he anticipated it would be strongly recommended they be vaccinated.
See also:
Lamont Shares Vaccine Timeline for CT; Camillo Reports Another Jump in Greenwich’s Covid-19 Numbers
Dec 5, 2020