Today marks 18 months since the first
diagnosed case of COVID-19 in Texas and
as we head into another holiday weekend,
National Health leaders are urging those
who are not vaccinated to stay home and
those who are vaccinated to still mask up.
I want to bring in our medical expert,
Doctor David Winner.
I don't know doctor Winter how realistic
it is to ask people to stay home at
this point if they're not vaccinated.
I don't know that they'll adhere to that.
But anyway, we are more than a
year and a half into this pandemic.
COVID cases are peaking, can we?
Attribute this solely to the Delta variant.
Indeed we can.
Sony is more than 90 plus
percent in America right now.
We know it's more contagious.
We're likely to spread from person to person.
We were seeing a little tapering
earlier in the week of cases,
but now they're going back up again.
Today was the highest number
of cases since last January,
so this thing is on the run and I hate
to hear this about the school kids,
but it's spreading among them
and everyone else right now.
Can we break this down?
'cause I think I've heard a lot
of people go well, then why does
it matter if I'm not vaccinated?
Vaccinated people are still
getting this, you know?
Breakthrough cases I listened
in on the ACIP meeting earlier
this week and heard data that
indicates that these vaccines
are still highly effective,
even months after so even with delta,
why are there breakthroughs?
Yeah, it's a very important question.
The vaccines are doing exactly what they
were designed to do prevent serious illness.
There's a big difference in COVID-19
and unvaccinated patient and in
the vaccinated patients hospitals.
Now we're bursting at the seams,
running out of room for the COVID cases.
As of this morning,
actually 92% of all COVID cases in
our hospitals are unvaccinated.
Look at the folks on respirators breathing
machines 95% or unvaccinated most folks
that are vaccinated and get COVID.
I've seen a bunch of mild.
Illness two or three days,
stuffy nose, sore throat,
then they recover.
Big difference between vaccinated
and unvaccinated.
When you get this virus in your body,
you know Doctor Winner.
I'm wondering I'm looking at
these numbers and I know you're
talking about the adults here.
I have asked a lot of the
children's hospitals in this area.
I haven't gotten a response.
Have you heard anything about
any common thread between what
kids are being hospitalised?
I mean do they have underlying
health conditions?
Are they you know the older
kids versus younger kids?
This is information that.
You know I haven't heard
about or read about anywhere.
Yeah, it's an important question.
In fact, most of the kids who are
hospitalized are healthy kids.
Now a small percentage of kids get
sick enough to go in a hospital.
The most kids have no symptoms or
minimal symptoms, but as this virus
spreads more and more kids get it,
that's small percentage gets larger and
larger and it's clean up our hospital beds,
so kids forcing it usually do well,
but I think we need to protect our
kids also because of small monard,
those folks get very, very sick.
A recent study from Israel reported
that people have been sick with COVID.
Are better protected than
those who've been vaccinated,
so is this so called natural immunity.
Better protection than immunity
that you would get from a vaccine?
Yeah, so I read that study.
It's very interesting actually
goes against previous studies when
criticism is a retrospective study.
Looking backwards when you look back,
you don't always get the number of cases in
the different categories exactly correct.
Other thing to point out again is
that they're measuring total cases,
but a COVID case.
An unvaccinated person is totally
different in a vaccinated person,
so that doesn't really change my feeling
or my thinking all about the importance
of getting the vaccine right now.
Yeah, I'm with you.
Not all studies are created equal,
and doctor winner finally flu
season around the corner.
And worldwide studies on influenza are
showing fewer cases than in past years,
but we usually look at Australia to
determine or predict how we might fare here.
Australia, as we know, is locked down,
so of course they're going to have few cake.
You know, fewer cases,
so how important our flu shots this year.
And you know how will we determine
or predict what we might see in
terms of flu in this country?
Yeah, Sony last year you remember
we saw very few cases of influenza.
Also very few common colds and
other respiratory illnesses,
masking, distancing,
washing our hands makes a difference.
Will it be back again this year?
Hopefully not. It depends on how
well we do those three things.
It may not be a big thing,
but I'm very convinced that
flu vaccines are important.
Look back at 2018.
The biggest surge we've had in a long
time with influenza 80,000 Americans died.
Half of those folks were young,
healthy people. So yeah,
I think you should get a flu vaccine.
If you don't,
you're rolling the dice with influenza also.
Yeah,
we certainly don't need that all right.
Doctor David winner, thank you so much.
Good to see you appreciate it.