Should you get the COVID-19 vaccine? Hear what leaders in the community have to say.

“Being married to a Registered Nurse, the importance of vaccinations has always been a part of the family conversation. All vaccinations have kept me safe, healthy, and prevented the very things I am seeking to avoid.” – Bill Roby, Executive Director, El Dorado Community Foundation

“Getting vaccinated as soon as you are able will not only protect you from the devastation from COVID-19 but it will provide you with peace of mind.  Vaccination offers protection for yourself, your family and friends and it’s also the pathway to a return to normal life.  Even if you don’t fear COVID, choose to vaccinate to help end the pandemic.” – Terri Stratton, MPH, Chief Executive Officer, El Dorado Community Health Center

“The vaccine is a safe, effective, and powerful tool that, when added to the best practices of consistent masking, social distancing, and hand hygiene, provides us the best opportunity to stay healthy and return our communities to normalcy as soon as possible.” – Chris Proctor, MPT, MBA, Directory of Community Benefit, Barton Health

“Recognizing that the vaccine is the way out of this pandemic, I encourage you to get vaccinated.  It’s for your family.  It’s for your community.” – Wendy Thomas, El Dorado County District III Supervisor

“Immunization to protect against the SARS-CoV-2 virus (that causes COVID-19 illness) is important for a number of reasons.  

• First and foremost, the vaccine has proven to be extremely effective in protecting against the most serious COVID-19 disease outcome, death.  
• When vaccinations are new, they are judged for success based on whether or not they are effective at preventing illness.  The two vaccines we have now were both determined to be about 95% effective in doing that.
• Not only that, none of the tens of thousands of people who were vaccinated in those trials died from COVID-19, not even the 5% of them who still got infected.  However, their illnesses were typically milder than illnesses in people who were not vaccinated.
• Scientists are still gathering data, but we are pretty sure that getting vaccinated will not just reduce your symptoms if you happen to get infected.  It should also make it much harder to transmit COVID to other people.  Most vaccines make it harder to pass illness to others and there is no reason to believe that the COVID vaccines won’t do the same. That means by getting vaccinated you are almost certainly protecting not just yourself, but also your family members, close friends, roommates, coworkers, and other people from the disease if they have not yet been vaccinated.
• It will probably be months before we can vaccinate everyone, so if your turn comes up, please get vaccinated not just for your sake but for everyone else’s.
• A few people experience side effects after receiving a dose, but most say that it’s a small price to pay for protection against dying from COVID-19 and for protecting other people.  
• Finally, another very good reason to get vaccinated is to reduce opportunities for the virus to mutate and become new variants.  A number of new variants cropped up around the world from the random mutations that naturally occur.  Some of the new variants are turning out to be easier to spread.  It’s possible that these or future variants could cause people to be sicker when they get COVID.  We don’t want the virus to get new variants because they are risky.  But virus only mutates when it is making copies of itself in a person’s body while that person is infected.  If we can keep people from being infected, we can keep the virus from mutating.

So… when you are invited by the county because it’s your turn, please get vaccinated!  You and those close to you will be thankful in the end.” – Nancy J. Williams, MD, MPH, Public Health Officer, El Dorado County Health and Human Services Agency