By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — It's important for the public to know that getting the COVID-19 vaccine, when it is available to you, is about saving your life, not necessarily getting back to normal right away.
"We don't have good data yet on if this vaccine stops transmission," said Dr. Scott Pauly with the Hutchinson Clinic. "That's going to be a real kind of gut punch for a lot of people. The intent of the vaccine at this point is to decrease people's severity of symptoms, hopefully avoiding hospitalization and death."
Following logically, that means precautions like hand hygiene and mask wearing are here to stay for a while longer.
"I could become infected with the virus, have minimal to no symptoms, but act as a carrier of sorts to seed the virus to those in my home, my loved ones, etc. At this time, the recommendations for those who are immunized is the same for those who are unimmunized."
That doesn't mean the science won't eventually show protection from spread, but the vaccine hasn't been around long enough to know for sure.
"This vaccine at this point does not give you a 'get out of quarantine free' card," Pauly said. "I would love to say we should do that, but this is what evidence based medicine looks like. We don't make assumptions. We base our recommendations on what we know. Until we know this vaccine would stop or inhibit a person's ability to spread it to those around them, we're going to hold."
That means if it wasn't safe to see grandma and grandpa before the vaccine, we don't know yet if it will be after as long as there is still active virus around.