It’s back to school, get vaccinated!

There is the return to work, the children who go back to school, the electoral campaign which is in full swing. Back to school is always a busy time, and that’s especially true this year.

But through the frenzy of routines that are restarting, there is one thing we should all take the time to do: get (re)vaccinated against COVID-19.

The mark to put on the calendar is easy to calculate: it’s five months after your last injection or three months after you got COVID-19.

We hear your sighs.

Yes, it becomes tiresome to be vaccinated in this way repeatedly. And, no, the COVID-19 vaccines have not lived up to our early hopes. In 2020, they were expected as the Messiah. We believed that they would give us herd immunity and stop the pandemic.

Vaccines have saved countless lives and have contributed greatly to ensuring that subsequent waves do not upset our societies like the first. But they didn’t fix everything. So much so that we look at them today with the same eye as these new hot air fryers which promised to revolutionize the kitchen. For every convinced, there is a disillusioned.

This is why it is worth examining the reasons justifying the new vaccination campaign that is starting in Quebec.

In the spring of 2021, vaccination was presented as an altruistic gesture. By rolling up the sleeve, the healthy young adult reduced his risk of contracting the virus. But the gain came mainly from the fact that he was less likely to pass the virus on to a vulnerable person.

The argument has faded since the Omicron variant managed to break through vaccination protection. But he is not dead. British and Quebec data show that even with Omicron, vaccinated people were less likely to contract the virus (protection around 70%), and therefore to spread it.

Is this still true with the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants that currently dominate in Quebec? More data will be needed to confirm this, but British Public Health experts believe that “the protection conferred by vaccines seems to remain comparable to that previously observed.¹ “.

This protection drops almost completely after six months. But during the crucial back-to-school period, we can assume that mass vaccination will reduce the number of infections and therefore the level of collective contagion.

We also have reason to think that vaccination reduces the risk of developing long-lasting COVID, a real scourge for those affected.

But the main strength of vaccines is in the spectacular reduction in the risk of hospitalization if one contracts the disease (roughly between 80 and 90%). It is a strong effect, solidly documented, which prevents both individual and collective dramas. We know that our hospitals do not have the capacity to absorb new waves of patients.

This extraordinary protection diminishing over time, it must be reactivated by booster doses.

The new “bivalent” vaccine, designed to better combat Omicron? He could prove to be slightly superior, but has not yet demonstrated this superiority on the ground. His arrival is not likely to dramatically change the course of the pandemic. Not enough to feel cheated either if you have just received a booster dose of the “old” vaccine. The latter still brings valuable benefits.

It will be said that the vaccine carries risks. It’s true. But after billions of injections around the globe, these are very well known. Those whose job it is to weigh the risks and the benefits encourage us to take up the sleeve. Wisdom commands to listen to them.

Many Quebecers today feel they have lost control of their lives. Getting a booster dose allows us to act against COVID-19 and put the odds on our side, both as individuals and as a society. We would be crazy to do without it.