00:00Most people that I know are vaccinated. And up until recently, they were feeling pretty confident.
00:05And now they're hearing breakthrough cases, right? And people are, vaccinated people are being alarmed.
00:11So Dr. Boyd, we'll start with you. Can you explain a breakthrough case for us? And then
00:17tell us, should we be concerned if we're vaccinated?
00:20This is something we all have to have a conversation about. So when the vaccines
00:25were first approved back in December, right? Now we've had more than seven months of the vaccines
00:30being authorized. We knew that people could get COVID even if you had the vaccine. We knew that
00:37from the beginning. What we knew from early data was that you were less likely to get symptomatic
00:41disease. So you were less likely if you got COVID to have symptoms of COVID. And obviously you were
00:46extremely less likely. The original, the vaccines protected you from that original strain alpha of
00:52COVID. So that you were more than, you know, you had a 90% protection against hospitalization and
00:58death, right? So we always knew people could get it. But then came Delta. And this is what we've been
01:03trying to have conversations with Black folks around the country about. Delta is different. And by
01:09different, we mean way worse, right? Right now, people are more likely to be exposed to COVID because
01:17Delta spread so easily. And if exposed, infected with Delta, because it's so much more infectious,
01:23then the common cold, then chickenpox, then the original strains of COVID. And so because of that, more
01:32and more people who are vaccinated are also going to get infected. There are varying rates of how many
01:39people are actually experiencing breakthrough infections. That's really based on how much COVID is in your
01:45area. How likely are you as a vaccinated person to have run into somebody else who had COVID? So if
01:50you have an area who most people aren't vaccinated, you're more likely to run into people who have
01:56COVID. And that's why rates of COVID are highest in those areas. In those areas, the rates of breakthrough
02:01infections or COVID infections in people who are fully vaccinated, who have two doses of an mRNA vaccine,
02:07or one dose of Johnson & Johnson could be as high as 20% as one out of five people, right? So
02:14breakthrough infections will be common. And as more folks get vaccinated in this country,
02:19more people are going to have breakthrough infections. That's just math. The more people
02:24that are vaccinated among the people who get infections, you're going to catch more vaccinated
02:29people. I hope people understand that breakthrough infections does not mean that the vaccine did not
02:34work. And if we can explain that for a second, the analogy I like to use is a raincoat, right? If I'm
02:40walking through in a rainstorm, a raincoat does a fantastic job. If I jump into a pool of water,
02:47it's not going to keep me dry, right? So when we're talking about the vaccine, the vaccine is not a
02:52shield that prevents someone from being able to cough into your face, right? It's not some imaginary
02:58border. What a vaccine does is to say, I am going to prepare your body to give you this blueprint
03:04that if you see this piece of protein. So when we're talking about the mRNA vaccines in general,
03:11what they do is they teach your body how to recognize the coat of the virus, right? Just a
03:16little piece of the virus. And so the idea behind a vaccine is that if someone does cough into your face
03:24and this virus gains interest into your body, that when your immune system recognizes this coat,
03:30immediately it starts to fight off that virus. So it can't replicate to high, high numbers.
03:36Typically on normal infection, it takes your body about five days to fully ramp up with an immune
03:42response. And with COVID-19, if you're waiting five days before your immune response is ready,
03:47you're more likely to be in my hospital with a breathing tube because it's overwhelming of your
03:53system. So when people say, Oh, I had the vaccine and I got infected anyway. Um, it's, it's one of
04:01those things of the vaccine, you got infected, but the vaccine literally saw the virus and tried to kill
04:07off as many of those viruses before it overwhelmed your system to the point that you can talk to me
04:12and say, I got the vaccine and I still got infected. That's the difference. The thing to underscore for
04:18everybody is that the reason we have the vaccines is to save everybody's life. It's to make the fact
04:23that you get COVID, not a death sentence. It's to ensure that if you get COVID, you can still breathe
04:28comfortably. It's to ensure that you don't get long COVID. It's to ensure you never have to go to the ICU
04:33and see Dr. Hilton or show up in the, you know, ER, um, and see Dr. Cleveland. So I think we all have to
04:42recalibrate our understanding of the pandemic because Delta has truly changed everything. The vaccines
04:48are incredibly effective. The vaccines people have already received are working well to protect them
04:53from hospitalization and death, but we will see more breakthrough infections.
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