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Editorial: This could be the best gift you give yourself and your loved ones this year
"Nearly five years after it first emerged, COVID-19 remains a major killer in the United States and around the world. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported this fall that deaths from COVID dropped 69% last year, but the disease remained the 10th leading cause of death in the United States.
"CDC data show that in the past 12 months, COVID killed more than five times as many Americans as influenza and RSV combined.
"Yet we don’t talk about it a lot anymore, except as part of our culture war fights. That’s because COVID has become largely an optional illness: We have a vaccine that significantly reduces the chance of contracting the virus or of becoming seriously ill or dying if we do get it. We also have treatments that further reduce the risk of serious illness or death.
"But the vaccine protects us and our loved ones only if we take it. In that, it’s very much like the vaccines for influenza and pneumonia and a host of other infectious diseases that don't have to be major killers unless we choose to let them be.
"Unfortunately, few people ever get a flu shot, and fewer get a COVID shot. There’s also no huge rush for vaccines that protect against RSV, pneumonia, shingles and other diseases for which vaccines are available to reduce the likelihood of infection and the severity of the illnesses.
"Part of the problem is our resistance to preventive medicine. In that sense, it’s similar to our refusal to stop smoking and reduce our drinking and exercise more and eat less, all of which can reduce the incidence of chronic diseases.
"One difference is that most people at least acknowledge that those healthy lifestyle changes will make them less likely to die an early death. Too many people don’t acknowledge — or even realize — the life-saving effects of vaccinations.
"The other difference is that alcoholism isn’t contagious, and obesity won’t kill innocent bystanders. That’s why we had to mandate the childhood vaccines that too many states — including South Carolina — are now making it too easy to opt out of for what are essentially political reasons. The growing refusal of parents to protect their own children from measles and polio and whooping cough and other deadly illnesses — which simultaneously increases the risk to all the children that their children come into contact with — is a problem we needed to fix before COVID. It remains a problem we need to fix, although we fear it will take a major outbreak and too many dead children to create the political will to do that.
"As with those childhood illnesses, when you contract COVID or the flu or RSV or pneumonia or other communicable diseases, you risk infecting, and potentially killing, everyone you come in contact with. The best way to reduce your chance of killing people who have the misfortune of being around you — and of killing yourself — is to get vaccinated. (You can also protect yourselves and others by thoroughly and regularly washing your hands, by staying away from others when you’re sick and by wearing a mask if you are sick and must be around others.)
"So this is our annual reminder that vaccinations are simple and effective lifesavers. And that you should get vaccinated against the flu, COVID and any other infectious diseases your physician recommends. It's the best gift you can give yourself and your loved ones during this holiday season.
"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates, for example, that during the 2023-24 influenza season, vaccines prevented 7,900 flu-related deaths, 120,000 hospitalizations and 9.8 million illnesses.
"The COVID vaccine has saved far more lives, and if you’re upset that it
was distributed before it was tested as vigorously as all those safe
vaccines that left-wing conspiracy theorists have always insisted cause
autism, blame Donald Trump. He’s the one whose Operation Warp Speed cut
red tape and sped development of the vaccine — and thank goodness for
that."
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