It appears as if the Covid vaccines produced by several companies are not doing their job. The breakthrough cases are on the rise. It is now reported that people who first got their Covid shots in the early stages are now coming down with Covid-19. Apparently, the shot loses its effectiveness after just a few months. Booster shots have been offered to the seniors and those with immune deficiencies, and now there's talk about giving the boosters to everyone over 18.
The question I ask is why didn't they produce a vaccine that lasted at least a year? They rushed into the research to quickly produce a vaccine, but it didn't prevent breakthrough cases, which are now on the rise. It appears as if the vaccine gets less effective as time goes by and is almost useless after half a year. This whole thing may have been a money making scheme and it wasn't done as a long term answer to this epidemic.
According to the article today in the Buffalo News, one third of the people hospitalized in Erie County were breakthrough cases. Fifty percent of the new cases in Niagara County were breakthrough cases.
We were told, over and over by the “scientists” and health experts that the Covid shot was the best way to prevent getting Covid and staying out of the hospital. Now we know that we were being lied to.
Breakthrough Covid cases on the rise as vaccines may be “running out of gas.”
Multiple studies find efficacy begins to wane within months
By Thomas J. Prohaska
Nov 12, 2021
The number of people who have been vaccinated against Covid-19 has continued to go up in Western New York. So is the percentage of people who are testing positive for the virus, one of the more vexing statistics associated with the pandemic.
But a doctor who specializes in infectious diseases has seen a wrinkle in that trend that could explain why it is happening and why hospitalizations are not seeing as sharp an increase.
Dr. Kevin Shiley, an infectious disease specialist at Catholic Health, said Wednesday that breakthrough cases – confirmed Covid infections among people who already have been vaccinated – are being seen most often among the people who obtained vaccinations first.
As of Tuesday, the Erie County Health Department said, one-third of the 168 people hospitalized with Covid in the county were patients who already had received the vaccine. That proportion was lower in Niagara County, where seven of the 30 residents hospitalized with Covid on Tuesday were breakthroughs.
Erie County did not offer a figure for the number of breakthroughs among the 2,690 new cases it reported for the week that ended Tuesday, while Niagara County estimated about one-half of its 703 cases for the week were people who had already been vaccinated.
"From what I can tell, a lot of this is, the vaccine seems to be running out of gas, so to speak, in terms of that protective effect against severe illness," Shiley said in an interview.
The idea is taking hold among public health experts and researchers. The New York Times on Thursday cited multiple studies showing that vaccine effectiveness begins to wane within months. A study in England found that the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is about 90% effective at preventing symptomatic infection two weeks after the second dose but drops to 70% effective after five months, the Times reported.
That research is behind the push in some quarters to make booster shots available to anyone who wants one. But it also shows that while breakthrough infections are rising, the vaccines are doing what they are supposed to do when it comes to preventing serious illness and death in most people.
Now, it seems, that protection is wearing off, and that could be a factor in the region's rising positivity rates.
Some officials and doctors have said the region's positivity rate, higher than elsewhere in the state, can be blamed on a lower percentage of people being vaccinated than in other regions. Shiley said he does not believe that is the case.
“Our vaccine rates are probably not the main driver," Shiley said. "For a lot of the people who are having breakthroughs, it times out very well with when they were vaccinated. If anything, it may reflect that we as a community need to do a better job getting booster shots for anyone that’s eligible.”