/
Health care workers at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin receive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 18.
As the pandemic surges in West Texas, the vaccine expert praised the state for trying to simplify vaccine distribution.
Texans are starting to receive doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, and it can t come soon enough as a new, and potentially more infectious version of the coronavirus, was recently detected in Britain.
Dr. Peter Hotez is one of Texas leaders in the worldwide effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. He told Texas Standard that large-scale vaccinations will help turn the tide of the pandemic, but misinformation, complicated government protocols and confusing communication about the risk of new lineages of the virus create roadblocks to public health. Hotez is dean for the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and is co-director of Texas Children s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.
THIS article follows on from my original piece in
The Conservative Woman last week which discussed a large number of concerns which I have with the precipitous UK rollout of the Pfizer vaccine. This follow-up stands on its own, but is best read after the first article.
Pfizer have no idea if the vaccine can prevent symptoms or transmission
I wrote in my original article that ‘the trials for this vaccine . . . were not designed to test if the vaccine can reduce severe COVID-19 symptoms, ie hospital admissions ICU admission or death. The trials were also not designed to test if the vaccine can interrupt transmission.’
fighting an “infodemic” of rumors and misinformation, and you can help.
Find out what we’ve learned and how to inoculate yourself against COVID-19 misinformation.
Read the latest fact checks about the vaccines. Submit any questionable rumors and “advice” you encounter.
Become a Founding Member to help us hire more fact-checkers. And, please, follow the
WHO for guidance on protecting your community from the disease.
A letter authored by a controversial physician and alternative medicine practitioner named Frank Shallenberger began making the rounds on social media in December 2020. The initial version of this Snopes article did not confirm Shallenberger’s authorship of the letter, which has been shared as copy-and-pasted text across various social media platforms. Following publication of this piece, Shallenberger responded to our request for comment. “I am the author,” he told us by email on Dec. 17, 2020, “I sent it out to my patients about a week ago.”
Vaccination processes are set to start this coming week, with Houston expecting its shipment on Monday.
Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and the co-director of the Texas Children s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development said this historical moment has been 17 years in the making, as coronavirus vaccine research has been ongoing since the SARS outbreak in 2003. It s really the culmination of a decade, arguably 17 years of work, Hotez said. I think that messaging is important because people have the impression that somehow these vaccines just popped out of nowhere.
FacebookTwitterEmail
Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children s Hospitals Center for Vaccine Development, poses for a photograph outside the lab Thursday, June 18, 2020, in Houston.Yi-Chin Lee, Houston Chronicle / Staff photographer
New vaccines are on the horizon but is it too late to blunt the pandemic’s winter surge? Might Houston fare better than the rest of Texas? And why could a traditional-method vaccine be better for kids?
To answer these questions, we once again check in with vaccine researcher Peter Hotez, one of the country’s best explainers of COVID-19 science. He’s a professor and dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, and he co-directs the Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, where his lab team is developing COVID-19 vaccines.