Dr William "Andy" Nish Debunks Common Reasons for Not Getting COVID-19 Vaccine

William "Andy" Nish, MD, is a medical director and provider with a specialty in allergy and immunology at Northeast Georgia Physicians Group in Gainesville, Georgia.

Transcript:

What would you say to a patient with asthma hesitant to get vaccinated, with the delta variant surging and vaccination rates lagging?

So, number one is get vaccinated. I hear so many people say, "Well, it hasn't been around long enough," or "I'm gonna wait until a second round," or "I'm just going to see how it goes," or "I'm young and I'm healthy, so I'm gonna be fine." Well, locally, 90% of the people that are getting the delta variant are people who have not been vaccinated. And I saw on the TV this sad story of a young couple that said, "Oh, we're healthy, we're going to be fine." The wife was pregnant, they both got sick, and the wife lost the baby. That probably could have been avoided if they'd had their vaccinations, had been healthy, didn't get the the delta variant, and then they wouldn't have gotten sick like they did.

So, I would just encourage people to get vaccinated. There's just not a good reason not to do it. Is there a small risk of having some reaction to a vaccine? Of course there is. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is without any risk. But the risk of getting COVID-19 is so much higher and so much worse than the risks of getting the vaccine that it's just not even debatable. It's just something that people need to do. They need to get the vaccine. I would just plead and encourage that people do that, get the vaccine, it's going to be potentially life saving for you and potentially for your family and for people who can't get the vaccine. Small kids cannot get the vaccine currently. So, you're doing it to help them also. And just because they're small kids, it does not necessarily mean they cannot have serious adverse events with COVID-19. So, I would say, please get vaccinated. People who have asthma are not more likely to get COVID-19 but if they have moderate-to-severe asthma, and they get COVID-19, they're much more likely to have severe, or potentially severe, consequences.