Why Did You Get Vaccinated and Still Get Sick?

The immune system is complex, as are the viruses and bacteria we vaccinate against, and so are you.

Photo by Ed Us on Unsplash

I’m going to confess something to you. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I made the mistake of telling people that the vaccines were going to mean the end of the pandemic. Time after time, I stood in front of cameras, telling reporters and community members that the pandemic would wind down and end if we all did our civic duty and got vaccinated.

I call it a mistake because I knew very well that vaccines are meant to protect you from disease, not necessarily from the infection. And that the clinical trials of these vaccines saw disease as the end point, not infection. If I had put two and two together, I would have known that the novel coronavirus’ (SARS-CoV-2 virus) extraordinary ability to mutate would mean an increased likelihood of vaccine failure, or at least diminished vaccine effectiveness. But I didn’t because I was too focused on convincing people of getting the vaccine as a strategy to lower disease rates and, most importantly, keep people from dying.

After all, we knew, a few weeks after its rollout, that the vaccine effectively prevented severe disease. We saw this clearly in the steep drop in deaths among older folks living in nursing homes…