Vaccines, very safe, and very effective.

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'A modern miracle': Experts marvel at CDC data showing fully vaccinated
make up less than 1% of COVID deaths. Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY, 8
hrs ago.

Scientists knew the COVID-19 vaccines were highly effective at
preventing severe disease and death, but didn’t know exactly how
effective until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released
data last week showing what experts called a “modern miracle.”

As of Oct. 12, the agency found only 7,178 deaths occurred among fully
vaccinated people in the U.S. In a country that has reported more than
720,000 COVID-related deaths, the fully vaccinated make up less than
1%.

“We were all hoping for something to help save our neighbors and our
patients and certainly this data is tremendous,” said Dr. Joseph Teel,
vice chair of clinical operations for the department of family medicine
and community health at Penn Medicine. “It’s a modern miracle in many
ways.”

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Fully vaccinated people who died from COVID-19 may make up an even
smaller fraction of all COVID-related deaths, health experts say, as
modeling has shown 728,000 deaths is likely an underestimation.

The vaccine is not a miracle because it worked, health experts say.
Scientists have been working on mRNA technology for more than 30 years
for other diseases. The COVID-19 vaccine is a miracle because it worked
so well despite the uncertainty of a new disease among a diverse
population, an unprecedented scale-up and a lack of uptake.

The odds were stacked against it but it still prevailed, said Kirsten
Hokeness, professor and chair of the department of science and
technology at Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island.

“It’s very surprising that it works so well across the board,” she said.
“We’re seeing consistent efficacy in different age groups, genders,
ethnicities … for whatever reason, all the cards fell together.”

In November 2020, Pfizer-BioNTech’s clinical trial of 44,000 people
showed their then-candidate COVID-19 vaccine was about 95% effective
against infection. Moderna’s 30,000 person trial found it was about 94%
effective.

Not long after, Johnson & Johnson released data from a large, human
trial that showed its "one-and-done" shot was about 85% effective.

“When we first saw the data from the clinical trials, it almost felt
like we were reading something that was inaccurate,” said Jodie Guest,
professor and vice chair of the department of epidemiology at Emory
University’s Rollins School of Public Health. “How in the world were we
going to end up with a vaccine that was so exceptional?”

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Scientists expected the vaccines to be less effective in the real world,
Hokeness said, but real-world data indicated they weren’t far off from
what the clinical trials found.

“The way biology works is that things don’t work the way you predicted,”
she said. “We’re continuously surprised by the success of this thing.”

This was especially surprising as the virus continues to rage at
pandemic proportions and medical professionals are still learning about
SARS-CoV-2 and the COVID-19 it causes. Other diseases like polio or
smallpox were around for decades, even centuries, before a vaccine was
widely available to the public.

Outbreaks were typically restricted to a number of months every year,
experts added. COVID-19 has had no semblance of seasonality.

The COVID vaccine is “a league of its own,” Guest said. “This set of
vaccines were studied to prevent severe disease and death and that’s
exactly what they’re doing."

The vaccines continue to work exceptionally well despite the slow uptake
in the U.S, experts say. As of Thursday, the CDC reported a little more
than 57% of eligible Americans are fully vaccinated.

Although many experts have moved away from the possibility of herd
immunity, some say at least 70-90% of the population need to be fully
vaccinated to protect the unvaccinated or those more susceptible to
infection despite vaccination.

General Colin Powell’s passing is a grim reminder of that, Guest said.
The 85-year-old former secretary of state died of COVID-related
complications Monday while battling multiple myeloma, a blood cancer
that attacks immune cells key to fighting off infections.

“The vaccine is less likely to work at fully capacity with people who
have underlying health conditions,” Guest said. “His death is incredibly
sad and another reason vaccinating everyone is so important.”

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part
by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and
Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide
editorial input.