On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” Brown University School of Public Health Dean Dr. Ashish Jha said that the CDC’s study of the coronavirus outbreak in Provincetown, MA is a demonstration of “the vaccines working exactly as we expected,” and “vaccines turn what is a potentially deadly disease into a mild one. Your chances of passing it on are much lower.”
Jha said, “What I would say is that, actually, this study, looking at what happened in Provincetown, is the vaccines working exactly as we expected, and let me lay out why: What you had was, you had an influx of a lot of people coming to Provincetown for July 4 celebrations, a lot of unvaccinated people, Delta virus surging. You did have a good number of breakthrough infections, not surprising when you have a lot of people packed into bars and clubs.”
He continued, “But let’s see what happened to those people. Almost all of them did extraordinarily well. A small number ended up in the hospital. No one died. And it did not fuel this massive outbreak that has led to more and more cases in an exponential growth. In fact, that outbreak has more or less faded away. Case numbers have declined. Infection numbers are down now. No one died from this, thank goodness. This is the vaccine working. So, what I would say to people is, vaccines turn what is a potentially deadly disease into a mild one. Your chances of passing it on are much lower.”
Jha later stated that “if you’re in a hot zone with a lot of infections, it makes sense to potentially wear a mask indoors. I think it makes sense to avoid large, crowded indoor gatherings like nightclubs and super-packed restaurants. That isn’t necessarily the policy I’d have for every part of the country. But for those hot zones, I think that’s pretty reasonable.”
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