Faces of the Fight from Dr. John Froh: If you are not vaccinated, I fear for your safety

Dr. John Froh has been the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, Pandemic, working with the Saskatchewan Health Authority’s Emergency Operations Centre for the past 18 months. He is also an Emergency Room physician, a trauma attending physician and a STARS physician.

I can’t imagine not being vaccinated, and if you are not vaccinated, I fear for your safety.

The degree of distress I felt during the pandemic waves prior to vaccines being available was extreme. As a physician, son, husband, father and friend I was terrified that colleagues, friends and family were going to die.

Now, we collectively have had the chance to become fully vaccinated and I no longer have that distress and fear. My colleagues, friends and family are fully vaccinated. Because of that, I know that they are well protected against death and severe disease requiring hospitalization.

I can’t imagine not being vaccinated and if you are not vaccinated I fear for your safety.

Unfortunately, although vaccination reduces the risk of becoming infected and transmitting COVID, the fully immunized can still transmit it. This is a really big problem because our current foe, the Delta variant of COVID-19, is the most “fit” of all the variants to-date.

You see, the Delta variant makes people sicker, it appears to be attacking unvaccinated children more than prior variants, and it is extremely infectious.

How infectious?

We have said it is as infectious as chicken pox, which is very infectious. But I don’t think people understand that reference.

A better way of describing Delta’s ability to spread is that it is more infectious than:

• The Common Cold
• Influenza
• Tuberculosis
• SARS
• The Bubonic Plague
• The Spanish Flu of 1918
• Ebola

In fact, the only infectious disease that I can think of more transmissible than Delta is the measles, which to my knowledge is the most infectious disease known to humanity.

Let that sink in.

We are into COVID-19’s fourth wave. If you are eligible to be immunized but have chosen not to be, you will very, very likely become ill. For you and the hundreds of thousands of people in our province like you, COVID is still a novel virus, meaning you have zero immunity.

It is probable that Delta will cause illness and death in our province on a previously unseen scale amongst the unvaccinated and if our healthcare system is overwhelmed, the same will occur in the vaccinated who may be unable to access needed care.

I can’t imagine not being vaccinated and if you are not vaccinated I fear for your safety.

If you have kids under 12, you may feel like you cannot protect them, but there are ways that you can decrease their risk.

Surround them with immunized people.

Ensure your family, your teachers, your babysitters are fully vaccinated. Ask the question. If these people in your circle are not vaccinated, demand that they become so.

Mask at school. Demand it. Talk to your principal, talk to your board members. Demand it.

This fourth wave is frightening and we in Saskatchewan are not exempt from it. The actions we take today will have real consequences for us as individuals and for our communities.

I implore you to:

• get fully vaccinated today,
• encourage those in your circles to vaccinate,
• wear a mask in public indoors and in crowded places,
• decrease your social mixing,
• isolate if you have COVID-19 symptoms and get tested.