State officials, lawmakers pledge to take COVID-19 vaccine to boost public trust

Published 11:00 am Thursday, December 17, 2020

ATLANTA — In an effort to sway Georgians who may be weary of taking the newly approved and distributed COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, high-ranking officials and lawmakers have pledged to take it themselves.

Gov. Brian Kemp and Dr. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Department of Public Health, vowed they would be vaccinated when the time is right to lead by example as cases and hospitalizations in the Peach State have skyrocketed.

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Toomey took the vaccine publicly Thursday afternoon.

“Once the vaccine gets here with people like Dr. Toomey taking it, myself and other prominent people,” Kemp said when he announced the first shipments were on the way, “I think will give people more confidence that the vaccine is safe.”

While they still have months to convince the general public the vaccine is safe and effective — there won’t be near enough doses to vaccinate everyone in Georgia for months — hospitals have expressed that their health care workers, those first in line to receive the vaccine, are also hesitant to take it.

State Sen. Ben Watson participated in the Moderna clinical trials, another vaccine expected to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the coming days. The Savannah lawmaker is a primary doctor and chairs the Health and Human Services committee. Watson said he decided to take part in the clinical trials both to set an example for his patients and protect them when they are seeking medical care.

“We as health care workers have a responsibility to our patients,” he said. “They do not expect to get sick from us. So it’s not all about me. Because in health care, when you’re working in a hospital or you’re seeing people in the clinic, they don’t want to catch COVID from you.”

Politicians hope their “lead by example” strategy pays off as more and more people are able to be vaccinated in Georgia — and it couldn’t come any sooner. Georgia saw its largest case increase on record and surpassed 10,000 COVID-19 deaths last week.

Five of the state’s 14 hospital districts have more than 90% of their beds in use, according to the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.

On Monday, the Department of Public Health announced the state received its first shipment, 5,580 COVID-19 vaccine doses sent to the Coastal Health District to dole out to high priority individuals in Chatham, Glynn and surrounding counties.

Toomey, Georgia’s top health official who has been thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic, said she has been bombarded by friends and family, both in and out of state, wondering if she will be taking the vaccine.

“I can say with great enthusiasm, I can’t wait to be vaccinated,” she said. “I’m so looking forward to that opportunity and I hope that we can convey that same desire to people throughout Georgia, because until we can vaccinate as many Georgians as possible, we will not have the level of immunity within the state as a whole, to prevent the continued spread.”

The effort is not partisan. Republicans and Democratic lawmakers have found common ground on the stance that elected officials must do everything possible to boost public trust in the vaccine — including taking it themselves.

During the Atlanta Press Club debate for the U.S. Senate seat held by Sen. Kelly Loeffler, both the Republican and Democrat challenger Rev. Raphael Warnock agreed they would take the vaccine once available.

“I could not be more proud of what we’ve done this year to deliver (COVID-19) relief, but also get cures, vaccines and therapies that are effective,” Loeffler said. “So I’m going to encourage my fellow Georgians to stay safe, to get that vaccine.”

Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have all volunteered to take the vaccine on camera to use their high-profile positions to gain confidence of the general public.

Regardless of political affiliation, every American has suffered immense losses due to the virus that has shaken the country for nearly nine months. But the politics that have plagued the vaccine process and the speed at which it has been developed still gives many pause over whether or not to take it.

Dr. Ben Lopman, infectious disease epidemiologist and professor at Emory University, said on Georgia Public Broadcast’s “Political Rewind” that the vaccines have gone through extensive trials.

“These vaccines have gone through the same safety and efficacy testing that any vaccine would go through,” he said. “They first start in these small trials to show that they’re first safe and get larger and larger trials to show people have an immune response and finally these very large scale ones that we’ve been hearing over the last month showing how really remarkably effective these vaccines are. Although the timeline has been short, it’s not because any steps have been skipped. I think it’s really important for people to know that.”

Watson, 61, was one of the 30,000 participants in the Moderna trials. In a two-dose series, half were given a placebo shot while the other half received the vaccine. Ultimately, the state senator said, he wanted to take the vaccine to be able to relate to his patients.

“I want to be able to talk to my patients so if you come in to me and say, ‘listen, I’m not so sure that I want to get this vaccine,’” he said. “I bring up the subject, I am in the Moderna study, I think I got the vaccine and I did fine. … It makes it an easier conversation. Many times it relaxes the patients to know that I probably had the vaccine and I did OK.”

Watson does not know for sure he was stuck with a needle filled with the vaccine or if he received the placebo, but he did experience mild symptoms after the second shot including a sore arm, fatigue and muscle stiffness.

Out of all the patients who call his primary care office, he said, about one-third want to be first in line to receive the vaccine, another third are hesitant and the final third say they will outright refuse. But he thinks the fraction of the population that says they won’t take the vaccine will be smaller than expected as the pandemic drags on.

“I think that last third is probably going to turn out to be maybe 5 or 10% of the population,” Watson said. “If we get herd immunity which is probably somewhere between 60 and 70%, so about basically two thirds of the population need to either have had the illness or have gotten the vaccine, I think we’ll have herd immunity and see this disease hopefully go away.”