Ozarks Healthcare recently held a Question and Answer panel which was live streamed on the hospital’s Facebook page. View the video here.
One of the physicians who sat on the panel, Dr. Chris Cochran, spoke to Ozark Radio News about the vaccine. Cochran, like everyone else, wants to be able to live his life like he did prior to the start of the pandemic. He says the vaccine is our best bet to get back to pre-pandemic life:
Audio Transcript:
“I don’t have to tell you what we’ve been through since March. We all know we’ve been through the many phases of shock, denial, anger, all of the things that we’ve been dealt with. We’ve watched Cardinals games with no one in the stands, we’ve worn masks, we’ve gotten fights about masks, we’ve we’ve missed events, we’ve missed loved ones, we’ve lost loved ones and so when the vaccine came out and they said here it comes and you’re gonna be at the front of the line I felt guilty but I felt so happy it was the immediate relief that finally there was hope that we could finally eliminate this.
Well, okay, the fact this the this is gonna all burn out, right? Well, we’ve been saying that all summer and it didn’t burn out. It’s not going to it’s going to be here until we get enough immunity across the community so that we don’t continue to give it from one person to the next to the next to the next. Epidemiologists, they suggest that we probably have to get to about seventy percent immunity.
Now, there’s two ways to get immunity and the first way is not perfect, we know that the first way is getting the disease. If you had measles as a kid. Some of the older folks if they had measles as a kid, they’re not going to get measles again, probably, usually.
There’s a pretty high percentage of immunity for that. All those other diseases, but there’s a second golden ticket way that you can get immunity and that is a vaccine and you know, my dad’s generation saw the eradication of horrible diseases like polio and measles and mumps all of these diseases that that that caused so many medical issues through through his lifetime that he is he he’s his attitude is fantastic about it and he’s ready to get it as soon as it’s offered because he knows what vaccines can do for folks and what they’ve done for folks in the past. This is our hope and and and the numbers are not very good right now, so in order for us to get kind of where we think we can start to crawl out from this disease bunker that we’ve been locked down in for so many months is we got to get to 70% immunity.
And as hard as it is to believe since the only way we’ve had it so far is to get the disease we’re only at about seven percent. That means only about seven percent of Americans have any sort of immunity to covid-19. And I was really surprised by those numbers myself, I had to do the math over and over again, but we’re only at about seven percent so in order to get where we need to be we’ve got to get to 70 so with the hope of the vaccine there and the daunting numbers on the other side of the scale those of us that are in health care, we don’t have any choice this is our mission, we we are we’re charged with with the health of the community and so this is the most important thing that we can do right now as a as a healthcare providing community.”
If you would like to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once it is made available to your tier, please use our online form to sign up: https://www.ozarkshealthcare.com/…/covid-19…/.
Once the vaccination is made available for your tier, Ozarks Healthcare will use your information from the sign-up form to contact you with further instructions on how to schedule an appointment to receive your vaccination.
