key: cord-0744717-xduwuyks
authors: Mann, Douglas L.
title: Now That We Have an Effective Vaccine for COVID-19, Will It Also Inoculate Us Against the Virus of Indifference?
date: 2021-01-06
journal: JACC Basic Transl Sci
DOI: 10.1016/j.jacbts.2020.12.001
sha: 57beba4907a15a886620168f188bcc1c11c29b52
doc_id: 744717
cord_uid: xduwuyks

nan

which revealed that only 6 in 10 Americans indicated that they were somewhat or very likely to get a vaccine if being vaccinated would lower their risk of becoming infected by 50% (2) . What was more perplexing, at least to me, is that nearly two-thirds of the people who were surveyed reported they would be willing to get a vaccine if the vaccine lowered the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 by 75%.

In other words, a 50% increase in vaccine efficacy There is a growing public desensitization to the enormity of the crisis that we are all facing. Although the pandemic has united us in some of the ways that the September 11 terrorist attacks brought us all together, the sheer duration of the social distancing and social isolation imposed by the pandemic has pulled us apart and isolated us from our communities in a way that most of us have never experienced before.

Soon we will be asked to take a novel RNA vaccine against an enemy we cannot see. Although the RNA vaccines appear to be safe in carefully monitored *Although the word "covidized" has not yet been added to the English language, it is on my personal short list for the word of the year. Should that happen, lexicographers would likely characterize it as an adjective that signifies being infected, affected, or influenced by coronavirus disease 2019 (1). clinical trials, the stark reality is that we know very little about the long-term safety of RNA vaccines (4).

There will be no shortage of people with vaccine hesitancy. Pope Francis warned recently that "indifference is a virus that is dangerously contagious in our time . . . for it is indifference that paralyzes and impedes us from doing what is right even when we know that it is right" (5) . Science has given us the opportunity to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 virus and to put an end to the pandemic that has cost so many lives and destroyed so many families and economies. My hope is that we can overcome our hesitancies and preconceived biases, and that we pull together and vaccinate against SARS-CoV-2. In doing so, we will also be inoculating against the virus of indifference that will impede us from preventing future loss of life if we do nothing to end the pandemic. I would like to close this "Editor's Page" with the words of Pope Francis, not because I am Catholic (which I am not), but because I believe it is the single best advice that I have read thus far for we can get to the other side of the pandemic: "To everyone: let us not think only of our interests, our vested interests.

Let us welcome this time of trial as an opportunity to prepare for our collective future. . . . Because without an all-embracing vision, there will be no future for anyone" (5) . 

Poll: The share of Americans interested in getting Covid-19 vaccine as soon as possible is dropping

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Indifference a virus that is contagious in our time