If you’ve been following the developing vaccines, you know that there has been a lot of positive news released over the last few weeks.
And as more data comes out, the better the outlook for these vaccines tends to be.
The latest good news comes from the Moderna trials that involved 30,000 people.
Only 11 people who received both doses of the vaccine developed coronavirus symptoms after being infected with the virus.
Compare that to the placebo group which had 185 symptomatic cases.
That is a very drastic difference and if you were to consider those numbers at scale, such as when we are talking about millions and millions of people, that would be a huge difference in lives saved.
But that’s not even the remarkable part.
The Moderna vaccine candidate had a 100% efficacy rate against severe disease.
Out of the placebo group, 30 individuals developed severe symptoms while zero individuals who received the vaccine did.
Severe symptoms in this case (I believe) involved people who needed hospitalization.
So this is extremely encouraging.
Although I’m sure we need to wait for more data to roll in and we are still working with sample sizes of “only” around 30,000 people, it looks like vaccines like the Moderna vaccine can make it virtually impossible for someone to suffer severe coronavirus symptoms.
Moreover, not only does it decrease the odds of you getting the disease to a large extent but if you do end up getting it, chances are you will only have to deal with mild symptoms.
Obviously, it is still early when it comes to these vaccines.
I know many people will not feel comfortable getting the vaccine until millions of people have been administered these vaccines which is understandable.
The good news is that they are expected to start shipping out in the middle of next month as long as the emergency use authorization process goes smoothly.
There have been reported side effects of receiving the vaccine such as flu like symptoms but they have been in a small percentage of people and only last for a short amount of time.
I don’t know about you but I would trade off spending a day with mild flu like symptoms if it means a virtual certainty that I will not experience severe coronavirus symptoms.
Moderna plans to charge around $32-$37 per dose in developed countries although there have been talks about the vaccine being made free for some people in the US.
Once the FDA meets with Pfizer on December 10, I think we will have a better idea as to who will be eligible to receive the vaccines early on and what type of costs Americans will be looking at.
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Daniel Gillaspia is the Founder of UponArriving.com and the credit card app, WalletFlo. He is a former attorney turned travel expert covering destinations along with TSA, airline, and hotel policies. Since 2014, his content has been featured in publications such as National Geographic, Smithsonian Magazine, and CNBC. Read my bio.
