It's the Second Dose, Stupid
That number is relatively low compared to other two-shot vaccinations. For example, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 26% of people who get the shingles vaccine fail to show up for the second dose.
Missing a second shingles shot puts you at risk of painful blistering, but it's not going to kill you. Risking COVID-19 is another thing.
There is a range of reasons for missing the second shot, including difficulty finding a place to get it, laziness, fear of side effects, and thinking one shot is enough. That latter excuse is the dangerous one, because it indicates that people have a false sense of security.
Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical analyst, said, "And then some people believe that one vaccine will give them, somehow, enough protection. The second one is just for good measure. That's not true. I don't want them to be walking around thinking that they have immunity from Covid-19, when actually they don't, because they only got the one dose."
A recent study by led Imperial College backs this up. They compared people who had been previously infected to people who had not been previously infected after both had received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
The group who'd had a previous infection showed a robust immune response sufficient to protect against the UK and South Africa variants. The people who had not been previously infected, not so much.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottleib thinks it's especially important to get this message out to young people. They are more likely to think they are not really threatened by the virus, and this attitude might make them less likely to be diligent about getting their second shot.
It may have been true at one time that COVID-19 is not a serious threat to the young. But that is changing now that the variants are taking over.
So, if you know someone who needs but hasn't gotten their second shot please encourage them to do so.
Image by torstensimon from Pixabay
