Don’t listen to no-vax and closing squads. Word of prof Silvestri
The post by Guido Silvestri, pathologist, immunologist and virologist, professor & Chair at Emory University in Atlanta
(Post taken from Professor Guido Silvestri's Facebook profile )
On Friday 2 April in the US we reached 101,804,762 people who received at least one dose of the vaccine (57,984,785 received two). Meanwhile, the 7-day moving average, 7-DMA of deaths from Covid-19 has dropped to 862 (the lowest since October 30).
Having vaccinated mostly health workers and the elderly, we expect mortality to drop earlier than total cases, for now always on 65,000 per day (the next two to three weeks will be essential to confirm this trend).
Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, cases fell by 93% compared to the January peak and deaths by as much as 96.6% (7-DMA today at 43, less than a tenth of Italy). In Israel, where everything is now open, cases are at their lowest levels since June 2020, with 7-DMA at 332 (equivalent to ~ 2,000 cases per day in Italy).
Honestly, it seems impossible to deny how these numbers really speak for themselves, while in the meantime new data are accumulating both on the duration of vaccine efficacy ( we now know that Pfizer protects for at least six months, and in all probability this protection will be even longer. ) and on their ability to protect against the so-called "variants of concern" (VOC), such as those in South Africa (B.1.351) and Californian (B.1.427 / B.1.429).
In this situation it is becoming increasingly clear how the return of our societies to a fully normal life will be closely linked to their speed in vaccinating the population (and here I repeat myself if I had not been clear enough in recent days: for the whole population I mean all the population, including young people and children).
It is interesting to note how this situation puts two types that haunt Italian social media on the ropes.
The first category is that of the no-vaxes, who are receiving in front of the eyes of the whole world the most sensational, total and incontrovertible demonstration of the absolute absurdity of their pseudo-scientific theories (and who, pardon the comment in a personal capacity, now I have put back in the crosshairs as I am pushing hard for the mass vaccination of young people and children against Covid-19).
The second category is that of the well-known closure squads, those who "optimism is dangerous" and that "whoever talks about the two rocks is a denier", all zealous servants of a certain gang of power, and who now look good from using the " Zangrillo treatment" towards the possible culprits of the delay in vaccination programs in Italy (because, as we all know, for some people the dead and the guilty are "screamed" or ignored depending on how the wind blows).
But we must have the strength to go beyond these two opposite extremes of stupidity and bad faith, while our priority must remain to speak and confront the vast majority of people.
I'm talking about all those serious people, intellectually honest, without prejudice but curious to know and understand the results of the research, respectful of the rules but tired of the media catastrophism, really worried about protecting the weakest (and not saving a few seats), eager to protect the health of our old people but also to protect the sociality of our young people, ready to get vaccinated as soon as possible, despite some human fear, supported by trust in science (and by the fantastic results I mentioned above). These people, who have now understood perfectly well how things are, are the reason why day after day we do what we do until we arrive in Berlin.
Guido Silvestri
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/no-vax-squadristi-delle-chiusure-silvestri/ on Mon, 05 Apr 2021 08:49:07 +0000.