{"id":50785,"date":"2021-08-06T17:14:43","date_gmt":"2021-08-06T16:14:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/?p=50785"},"modified":"2021-08-18T09:59:46","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T08:59:46","slug":"abraar-karan-we-must-stop-blaming-and-start-protecting-the-unvaccinated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/08\/06\/abraar-karan-we-must-stop-blaming-and-start-protecting-the-unvaccinated\/","title":{"rendered":"Abraar Karan: We must stop blaming\u2014and start protecting\u2014unvaccinated\u00a0people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"standfirst\">We need to stop viewing &#8220;the unvaccinated\u201d as a homogenous group, writes Abraar Karan, and instead understand them as individual people<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the United States covid vaccination rates have<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/57889961\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">slowed down<\/span><\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/health-shots\/2021\/01\/28\/960901166\/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">tremendously<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> since the peak in April, while infections, hospitalizations, and deaths from<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">covid-19 have all begun to increase once again. Amid<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">this worrying reversal in our struggle<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">against the virus, a public sentiment that is catching on is that \u201cthe unvaccinated\u201d<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">are at fault for not protecting themselves, especially with vaccines widely available.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As a physician, I am immediately struck by how harmful this stance can be to controlling the outbreak. Among all of the unvaccinated patients<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">that I have cared for who became sick from covid-19, the most common feelings are ones of <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AbraarKaran\/status\/1423492098393731075?s=20\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">regret<\/span><\/a> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and genuine confusion. As one of my<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">patients put it, \u201cDoc, I was really confused with all the mixed messaging coming out. I\u2019m going to wear my mask now.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I spent most of last year <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/bwhbulletin.org\/2020\/07\/09\/brigham-resident-contributes-to-statewide-covid-19-response\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">working<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on the Massachusetts<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">covid-19 state response and one of the most important lessons I learnt<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">was that epidemics and pandemics are only overcome when we believe in protecting the community more than just the individual. That meant no one is left behind. That meant <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/hbr.org\/2020\/06\/we-need-better-masks\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">ensuring<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> most people had access to and were wearing masks. That also meant preserving<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">community <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/2020\/11\/30\/opinion\/stigma-is-making-covid-19-pandemic-more-invisible\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">trust<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> sufficiently so<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0that people could share with family and friends if they were infected, and would <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">quarantine or isolate when sick. It meant <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/health-shots\/2020\/11\/13\/933835868\/opinion-to-solve-the-pandemic-biden-must-focus-on-equity\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">supporting<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> those who needed to continue working while others worked from the safety of their homes. We didn\u2019t do this all perfectly\u2014but over time, we began to realize that our health was only as good as the health of those living near us.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">While earlier I had <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2020\/12\/03\/abraar-karan-pandemics-are-stopped-by-people-heres-what-we-as-individuals-can-still-do\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">written<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> about how pandemics are stopped by people, I have to say I was wrong. Pandemics are stopped by communities, not individuals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Once vaccines arrived, the same community-mindedness was still needed, and initially we were able to increase our vaccination rates in the US to among the highest in the world, especially among our older population.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But since then, especially with the spread of the dangerous delta variant, attempts to protect unvaccinated people\u2014for example, by indoor public mask mandates\u2014have been met with resistance by many, especially those who are vaccinated. Some people in the latter group feel that they played by the rules, and now should reap the rewards, whereas the former group did not<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and thus deserves the fate which awaits them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201ceveryone<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">for themselves\u201d<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">approach will leave us isolated, vulnerable, and destined to fail\u2014even those who are now vaccinated. We must refrain from reverting to the reckless individualism that left us ill prepared against this pandemic to begin with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Millions of people remain<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">unvaccinated in the US. Yet<\/span> &#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the unvaccinated\u201d<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">are <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/health\/archive\/2021\/07\/unvaccinated-different-anti-vax\/619523\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">not a homogenous group<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, although our tendency to group them as such may come from a place of needing to blame someone or something for what has otherwise been a lackluster vaccine rollout in the US. They are individual people who have, for many different reasons, not yet been protected from this disease. We must begin to think of them as vulnerable, whether to misinformation or to a lack of resources; this can be hard during a crisis, but it may be exactly what is needed to close the vaccine gap.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">For some, the intense challenges of accessing a vaccine have truly precluded them, whether that was due to an inability to get time off work,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">difficulty in navigating online registration systems,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">or the absence of a vaccine site close by. For other people, the lack of appropriate information to assuage their fears and doubts once again has left them confused, afraid, and hesitant to engage with the medical system. And for many, the active barrage of misinformation from organized groups intending to prevent vaccinations has created an even more unclear picture of what to do\u2014this was the case for<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">some of the patients I have treated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As it stands, the US is<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">far behind in our vaccination campaign, and yet, shockingly and tragically, still<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">millions of doses ahead of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South America. While our current vaccines are excellent, our current vaccine <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/interactive\/2020\/us\/covid-19-vaccine-doses.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">coverage is not<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> (just about 50% fully vaccinated thus far)\u2014and is in fact so insufficient that it cannot alone provide the level of community protection quickly that we need to control local covid-19 outbreaks. For this reason, places such as<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/california\/story\/2021-07-15\/l-a-county-will-require-masks-indoors-amid-covid-19-surge\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Los Angeles County have reinstituted indoor masking in public spaces<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. Unlike previous mask mandates, which seemed to focus on the outdoors (where spread is negligible), the new mandate focuses on high<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">risk settings: those which attract crowds of strangers in poorly ventilated, cramped indoor spaces. Moreover, it is a reminder that winning against<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">covid-19 is not about whether you are safe, but about whether your family, your neighbors, and your community are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We know that the more<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the virus spreads among<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">unvaccinated people, the more that viral mutations will continue and eventually threaten the health of vaccinated people as well. This is<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">true on a<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">global scale,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">where<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">vaccine inequity poses an ongoing risk to us all,<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">and it will be seen in the US locally as well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As physicians and public health leaders, we must understand that those who are unvaccinated are not people who are hoping to get sick or die from covid-19. They are people who, for various reasons, remain vulnerable to this disease, as well as to the social and economic<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">systems that have led to so much immense suffering and death in our country. Our job now is not to blame those who remain in harm\u2019s way\u2014it must be to protect them. Figuring out how to do this is our task at hand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Abraar Karan<\/strong> is an infectious disease doctor at Stanford University and a columnist at <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The BMJ. <\/span><i>Twitter\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/AbraarKaran\">@AbraarKaran<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p><strong>Competing interests:<\/strong> none declared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We need to stop viewing &#8220;the unvaccinated\u201d as a homogenous group, writes Abraar Karan, and instead understand them as individual people [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/bmj\/2021\/08\/06\/abraar-karan-we-must-stop-blaming-and-start-protecting-the-unvaccinated\/\">More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":419,"featured_media":50786,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18906,1357],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-abraar-karan","category-us-health-care"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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