Doctors in Tallahassee say vaccination could save lives, including your own

Local doctors are urging more people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Officials say COVID-19 hospitalization rates in Tallahassee are now higher than they will be in about 8 months.

“Everyone has the right to vote, but there are currently sick people in our hospital who regret not getting the vaccine.”

Dr. Trey Blake

Dr. Dean Watson is Vice President and Chief Integration Officer at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. He says there are currently 30 coronavirus patients being treated for TMH.

“That’s important, and more importantly, 29 of these patients are not vaccinated, which is the most important point. Most of them could have been prevented, ”says Watson.

Watson says most of the COVID-19 patients he speaks to are voluntarily unvaccinated.

“We ask every single person who walks into the hospital and they are voluntary and that is unfortunate,” says Watson. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there. There are many myths that carry on from individual to individual. We really need to focus on facts. These vaccines work. You are not dangerous. You are beneficial. They have been extensively studied and again more than 180 million people in the United States have received at least one injection. “

Dr. Trey Blake is the Chief Medical Officer of the Capital Regional Medical Center. He says his hospital has treated 25 COVID-19 patients since last week. Most were not vaccinated.

“Everyone has the right to choose, but there are people in our hospital who are sick right now who regret not getting the vaccine,” says Blake.

Blake says if anyone has any concerns about a vaccination or has heard a myth that troubles them, it is best to speak to a doctor.

“There can be a lot of news to look at, but the vendors really are the people you should seek advice from,” says Blake.

Do “breakthrough” cases mean the vaccine is not working?

One reason some people don’t get vaccinated is because they worry that the vaccines won’t work. Some people who have been vaccinated have still contracted the coronavirus in so-called “breakthrough cases”. Blake says while he understands this could be worrying, it doesn’t mean the vaccine isn’t working. He says that with almost every vaccine, people sometimes get sick even after being vaccinated.

“The way vaccines work, there is no 100 percent guarantee that you will not get infected. So there are always groundbreaking cases. But you’re right, if someone does discover a breakthrough case, the vaccine still offers a huge benefit as it reduces the risk of the disease becoming serious or life-threatening, “says Blake.

Blake claims that when a person gets sick, vaccination greatly improves their outcome.

“If you are fully vaccinated and have a normal immune system, the chances of you being hospitalized are greatly reduced. The probability of death is also very rare. ”

Dr. Trey Blake

As evidence of this, Blake points to the area’s elderly population. He says that before the vaccination, the people most likely to be hospitalized for the coronavirus were people 65 years of age and older. But he says Leon County did a great job vaccinating people in that age group. Now the people who end up in hospital for COVID-19 are getting younger.

COVID-19 patients in the hospital are now largely unvaccinated and tend to be younger.

“The average age of inpatients with COVID has dropped to their 40s and 50s as our elderly population is protected and doesn’t need to be hospitalized,” says Blake.

At TMH, Dr. Watson that some of the COVID patients he sees are people in their twenties. He says no one should assume that they are not affected by the virus.

“Everyone thinks, ‘Well, I won’t be. It won’t affect me. ‘ Well it is. It will affect you. It will affect your family, ”says Watson.

Watson says unvaccinated people also impact the community by thining Leon County’s health resources.

“They fill all of our beds with general COVID care. We close proceedings. So it affects you all. We cannot perform our procedures on the heart. We cannot do a valve replacement. We cannot do elective surgery. And just go through the list. So if you are scheduled for an operation this week, next or next week, it can be delayed by months. “

“We are tired. We are frustrated. We are sad. We are sad to see that people are dying who could have been saved. ”

Dr. Dean Watson

While Watson strongly supports a person’s right to vote, he also believes it is important to take into account what he calls “personal responsibility”. He urges people to remind themselves that things are not back to normal, and he says that they won’t until more people are vaccinated. As a medical professional, Watson says it makes him sad to see the consequences of some people’s choices.

“Everything is normal when you are driving up Thomasville Road or wherever you are going. But that’s not normal in the hospital. It is not normal for us to take care of sick and dying people. And here we have a very distorted opinion. So, we’re tired again. We are frustrated. Were sad. We are sad to see people die who could have been saved. We’re sad to see people have what they call long COVID … it just makes us sad, “says Watson.

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