Republican Governor of Alabama Kay Ivey urged people to get vaccinated on Thursday, continuing a trend of Republican governors pushing for vaccinations against COVID-19.
“Let’s be crystal clear about this issue,” Ivey said. “The new cases of COVID are because of unvaccinated folks. Almost 100% of the new hospitalizations are with unvaccinated folks. And the deaths are certainly occurring with the unvaccinated folks. These folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain.”
“We got to get folks to take the shot. The vaccine is the greatest weapon we have to fight COVID,” she continued. “There is no question about that the data proves it. I’ve taken the shot back in December, both shots. It’s just the thing to do. The unvaccinated is who we need to focus on.”
“I want folks to get vaccinated … that prevents everything, why would we want to mess around with just temporary stuff?” Ivey later said. “We don’t need to encourage people to just go halfway with curing this disease, let’s get it done and we know what it take to get it done, let’s get a shot in your arm. And so, I’ve done it, it’s safe, it’s effective, it’s, the data proves that it works. It doesn’t cost you anything. It saves lives.”
She added, “Folks are supposed to have common sense. But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down.”
Ivey’s push for COVID-19 vaccinations comes after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that the vaccines reduce the likelihood of a severe infection to “effectively zero.”
“So, here’s I think the most important thing with the data,” DeSantis said. “If you are vaccinated, fully vaccinated, the chance of you getting seriously ill or dying from COVID is effectively zero. If you look at the people that are being admitted to hospitals, over 95% of them are either not fully vaccinated or not vaccinated at all.”
While the vaccines do not eliminate the chance of infection, they do drastically reduce the likelihood of a severe case. According to NBC News, “Such breakthrough infections do not mean the vaccines are not working. No vaccine is 100 percent effective against infection. Though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially tracked all breakthrough infections, as of May 1 the agency shifted to only tracking those linked to hospitalization or death. At that point, its tally had topped 10,000.”
“But NBC News found that many states continued to track all breakthrough infections, with 27 states reporting they have logged, in total, more than 65,000 cases,” NBC News continued. “That still represents just a tiny fraction of the more than 160 million fully vaccinated people in the U.S. And the vast majority of these breakthrough cases ‘tend to be milder,’ Dr. Jay Butler, head of the Covid-19 response at the CDC, said during a briefing with the Infectious Diseases Society of America last week. ‘Even if infection occurs, it reduces the risk of hospitalization.’”
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