The Vaccines Are More Effective Than You Think
Andy Slavitt was shocked when he joined the Biden administration.
\u201cI was under the impression coming in\u2014as many, many Americans were\u2014that there were big stockpiles of vaccines waiting to go out the door that were produced over the course of the last year. It's been much, much less the case than I think we'd been led to believe,\u201d the White House senior adviser for COVID response tells Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on the latest episode of The New Abnormal.
It was one of a host of shortcomings the Biden team found, Slavitt says: \u201cNot enough vaccines, not enough vaccinators, not enough places for people to get vaccines.\u201d
\u201cSo when we got here January 20th, one of the things we learned as an only 46% of the vaccines delivered to states had actually made its way into people's arms. Now you'd never expect that to be 100%. But 46%? It was low,\u201d Slavitt adds.
There\u2019s now a plan in place to purchase as many as 600 million doses, hopefully enough for every American. States are now using 75% of their doses, a big step up from a few weeks ago. And there may be another vaccine around the corner, from Johnson and Johnson. \u201cI would love to tell you, we weren't going to be starting with a huge stockpile of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The truth is we're starting with a small number and we've got to build it as quickly as possible.\u201d
Meanwhile, the virus is evolving. More contagious, deadlier variants are spreading, fast. But even here, Slavitt sees some signs for hope. \u201cAll of the vaccines work very well against the English B117 variant. So that's good. The South African variant\u2014and there's another one that looks like the South African, that's the Brazilian variant\u2014that one it's interesting. There is a degradation of performance of the vaccines against the South African variant. However, that degradation is thankfully still above the scientific threshold for effectiveness,\u201d Slavitt says. \u201cIt still generates antibodies. It doesn't generate as many. But it\u2019s good.\u201d
The vaccines may even be a bit better than advertised, Slavitt says. \u201cYou know, we may have done a little bit of a disservice to ourselves when with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, we talked about the end point as including [serve] and mild [COVID-19 cases], because we really don't care as much about the mild. And so we get very fixated on the fact that they're 95% percent effective against both, right. And we probably should have stepped back and said, \u2018you know what, let\u2019s just measure it against more severe symptoms.\u2019 In which case, the Johnson and Johnson does very close to comparable.\u201d And all of the vaccines seem to stop severe cases\u2014from all the variants.
There are even some indications that \u201cviral load\u201d\u2014the amount of virus a person carries\u2014\u201cis decreased for people who are vaccinated,\u201d indicating \u201cthat these vaccines not only reduce disease and save lives, but these vaccines also will reduce the ability of people to affect one another, which if it holds up, will be terrific news.\u201d
But only if the vaccine gets into the arms of the people who need it the most, Slavitt cautions.
\u201cIt's not just how many vaccines are being administered, but also how equitable equitably they're being distributed. Because look, we all know there are half the population or more would crawl over broken glass to get the vaccine, right. But the problem is they\u2019re crawling over other people,\u201d he adds. \u201cYou know, they're getting online and going into communities, maybe neighborhoods they've never visited or visited in a long time, but [where] we put vaccines that are really hard hit by the virus. People are coming in, refreshing their browser, and going in and getting these appointments. It's really important that we not just focus on how many people we vaccinated, but that we do it as equitably as possible. And that's a big, big push for us.\u201d
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