HJBR Sep/Oct 2021

VACCINE HESITANCY Q&A 16 SEP / OCT 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF BATON ROUGE go up without any real sign that it is abat- ing. I say that with some shock and almost disbelief that that’s where we are 16, 17 odd months into the pandemic. It’s unfortunate. It’s disheartening. But, it is a reality that we find ourselves in. We have 2,247 patients hospitalized with COVID throughout the state today. That is the larg- est number of hospitalized COVID patients we have had at any one point in time in the pandemic. We have, of all emergency department visits right now, well over 13% of individuals seeking care for COVID-like symptoms such as chest pain, fever, short- ness of breath. That is the highest it’s been at any point in the pandemic, and our percent When we first set up this interview, we were all hoping we were on the back side of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot has changed in a few weeks. Would you give us an update, from your perspective, on where we are in the pandemic from a global, U.S. and statewide level? We’ll talk about statewide first. Today is August 4, 2021. It is not an exaggeration or an aberration of the data by any stretch to say right now that this is the worst point of the pandemic than any point prior in the state of Louisiana, by nearly any measure that you’d look at it. What’s more concerning than that is our rate of increase continues to positivity of all tests being conducted right now is 15.4%. That is the highest number it has been since the last week of April 2020, when we had five times lower testing vol- ume, so the percent positivity was artifi- cially inflated. And again, what’s more concerning than all of those stats is that they have gone up very quickly, literally over the past month, and have shown no sign as of yet of turn- ing around. So, we are in the worst of it right now, despite all the good work and all that we have endured, and we still have, I think, a challenging few weeks ahead of us before we turn this around and get out of the woods. At the time of this interview, Delta has dawned. The COVID-19 pandemic we once thought and hoped was put to bed has resurfaced as a more contagious variant — and fingers are pointing. The vaccinated are getting COVID-19, some blaming it on the unvaccinated. At this point, 16% of the world, 50% of the U.S. and between 26% and 49% of Louisiana’s nine health regions are fully vaccinated. The unvaccinated are beingpressured fromgovernmental and healthcare leaders to get the vaccine — ignorant, obstinate, untrusting, naive, misled, misinformed, stupid, hesitant, anti-science, shameful are nowwords thrown out to those refusing. Journalists are being pressured to write pro-vaccine articles, and social media outlets are being called out by the U.S. president as providing misinformation that is killing Americans. Yet, in the hallowed halls of hospitals around Louisiana, nearly 40% of those healthcare workers have opted out of the vaccine so far. Ignorant? Maybe. Most, especially women of childbearing age, would put themselves in a corner of “wait and see”; a lot of folks are wondering if they are already immune; some folks just don’t trust the government; some have an earned mistrust of the medical system. We sat downwith our state health officer andmedical director, Joseph Kanter, MD, and will be playing “devil’s advocate,” bringing up some questions many patients and colleagues feel strongly about in an effort to understand this SARS-CoV-2 virus and the “solution,” if there is one, and to do our part in “dispelling the misinformation.”