Your Health: Covid Vaccine Will Be Coming ... Sometime

Below are a number of questions I’ve been asked about the covid vaccine, which will be coming, we just don’t know when.

QUESTION: What is in our future with Covid-19 the rest of the year and the rest of the winter, with flu season starting?

ANSWER: We can only hope that we have a mild influenza season, because to have 2 dangerous diseases and those 2 diseases having almost identical symptoms, we could have a lot of trouble. That is why there have so been so many public service announcements saying that even if you have never had a flu shot in other years, you should get one this year. Even if you get the flu after getting the flu shot it is usually much milder.

QUESTION: If the symptoms are the same for Covid and the flu, how can we know which illness we have when we get sick?

ANSWER: We will have to test people for both at the same time in most cases, at least after we find that flu season has begun. We expect these tests to be available when needed. We’ve been fortunate last summer that anyone who wanted to be tested for Covid could do so, and we hope Covid testing will continue to be easily available, though there’s no reason to test for flu unless you are ill. Your health care provider will determine that.

QUESTION: Many people are hoping for a Covid vaccine to be coming out soon, and yet lots of people are afraid of vaccines, and they are especially afraid that Covid-19 vaccine might be produced in a hurry, so will it be safe?

ANSWER: Last week I mentioned that the standard for any scientific study is the “Prospective, placebo-controlled, double-blinded” study. Let me go through these words one-by-one, because this is of life-anddeath importance:

Prospective: We don’t dig up old data and analyze it, we design a study to be the best it can be, get it reviewed by an Institutional Review Board, and THEN start signing up volunteers to enroll in the study.

Placebo- controlled: Roughly half the study participants get the active vaccine, and the other half get a blank, or salt water in the case of a vaccine injection, so there are 2 large groups to compare when the results come in, to show if the actively treated group is different from the placebo group, and that the 2 groups were similar enough in all other respects that we can assume that the differences are because of the treatment.

Double-blinded: We know that we behave differently and see things differently if we know what treatment we are getting, so neither the study participant nor the observer measuring the result can know until

the study is finished who had the placebo.

I should say that I am one of the study participants, in the study being done at Lillestol Research in Fargo, part of

a larger study of roughly 30,000 participants. I got my shot, but don’t know if it was a vaccine or a placebo. I’ve committed to being observed, tested and followed for the next 2 years, but perhaps a real answer might appear by that time, at

which time the study could be stopped early.

QUESTION: Do you have any fears when being a guinea-pig?

ANSWER: The guinea-pigs have already been tested in previous stages of the trial. I’m a human, in the human

phase of a well-designed trial, according to a procedure that has all the respect of science over very many years. When these trials are completed, everyone should have the same confidence that I do that the product (the vaccine)

can do what it is meant to do, and there should be very few surprises.

A safe, effective vaccine is probably the only hope of getting Valley City, Barnes County, and the rest of the world back to normal activity. Until then we’ll be wear

ing masks, washing our hands, and keeping our distance.

Dr. James Buhr is the Barnes County Health Officer. The Your Health column is organized by the City County Health District.