I’ve gotten a lot of questions in the office from patients about the news these past couple week about Pfizer’s and now Moderna’s early results. Its pretty common for a vaccine trial to take an early look at results before the trial finishes and these early results were a welcome bit of good news, efficacy that far exceeded what we had hoped for and a side effect profile similar to other vaccinations (injection site reactions mainly). I get asked a lot if the COVID vaccine is something I will recommend/take myself/give to my family. My answer until 2 weeks ago was “We’ll see” , and now I’m cautiously optimistic that the answer will be “Yes”. If the final data when it comes out is as promising as the preliminary data, I will take it without hesitation.

Keep in mind there are other vaccines in the works as well. What is exciting to me is that most of them share the same target on the virus, which could mean good things for their efficacy as well. We will need as many manufacturers as possible operating at full capacity to vaccinate as many people as possible. There are a lot of people out there and it takes time to make these things.