Unvaccinated getting much worse COVID-19 cases than those vaccinated, White says

Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. is living proof that while getting vaccinated against COVID-19 might not prevent you from getting the virus, it generally can help keep you from getting deathly ill.

Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. shown getting his COVID-19 vaccinations several months ago. White recently contracted COVID-19, but didn’t suffer serious illness, which he credits to having been vaccinated.

“There is a lot of talk about breakthrough cases, but in talking to people in the medical field – I have a lot of friends, who work at the ER (emergency room) – there are a lot of these breakthrough cases that are like the story that I have. I did catch COVID on a breakthrough case, but it is not as serious as when many of my friends are getting COVID when they are unvaccinated. I think it is important for people to hear that side of the story. The vaccination may not have stopped me from getting COVID, but it stopped me from catching severe COVID,” White noted during a telephone interview Monday afternoon as he was still quarantined until Tuesday evening.

White was vaccinated and received his last dose of the Moderna vaccine in January.

About a week ago Saturday, he started getting a stuffy nose so he stayed home from church the next day, and tested positive for the virus that Monday.

White said that his symptoms subsided the next day, but he has remained in 10-day quarantine period since then to keep from spreading the virus to others. His quarantine period ends Tuesday evening of this week, and he expects to be back to work Wednesday.

White said that one of his buddies summed it up best when he noted that White wasn’t so much sick as he was just contagious.

White said that he would encourage people to consult with their doctors in regards to making vaccination decisions rather than just relying on information that they might read on the Internet.

White said that he tried to consult with people, who had more knowledge about the vaccines than himself, such as his pharmacist wife and his doctor sister, before making the decision about whether to take the vaccine himself.

“I do think the vaccine has helped me, and I think it has helped a lot of other people,” he added.

White concedes that there are risks in taking the COVID-19 vaccines as there are in taking any vaccines, but he feels the risks from the vaccine are far smaller than the risks from the virus based on the numbers he has seen locally.

So far about 36 percent of Whitley County residents have been vaccinated against the virus, but only about 3 percent of the COVID-19 cases being diagnosed in Whitley County involved vaccinated individuals.

White noted that he would expect the percentages of unvaccinated to vaccinated people being infected to be much closer percentagewise if the vaccines weren’t effective at all.

“I think it has been quite effective,” he added. “Our local numbers seem to show very clearly that the vaccine has helped people.”

White said that he is not sure the virus will go away after a certain period of time because so many animals can transmit it, but he concedes that there is a lot of debate over this particular aspect of the virus.

“I don’t think it can be made extinct through isolation like smallpox and other viruses that are only transmitted through humans,” he said.

White said he thinks that a much more realistic scenario is the virus will never go away completly, but become less common because people have developed antibodies from either getting vaccinated or getting the virus itself.

“I feel like the vaccines are our way back to normal. That is the what I thought when I took it back in January was that it was a way to get my kids back in school. It is a way to keep businesses open. The way to keep people generally healthy is to take the vaccine. That seems to be supported by my status now and the numbers hopefully,” he added.