After Colin Powell’s corona death: There is no 100 percent protection

Fully vaccinated
After Colin Powell’s corona death: There is no 100 percent protection

Colin Powell was United States Secretary of State from 2001 to 2005 – the listing was made in 2005

© Indranil Mukherjee / AFP

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell died of complications from Covid 19 – despite being fully vaccinated. The case is tragic. But there is no reason to doubt the benefits of the vaccinations.

Former US Secretary of State Colin Powell died this week at the age of 84 from complications from a corona infection. Powell was fully vaccinated against the virus. “We have lost a remarkable and loving husband, father and grandfather and a great American,” read a Facebook post in which the family announced the death of the former politician and US Army veteran.

Corona death despite complete vaccination? Reports like this can be unsettling and are used by vaccine skeptics to stir up suspicion about vaccines. For medical professionals, however, they are by no means surprising. A look at the data.

Study shows very high effectiveness

The current vaccines basically offer very reliable protection against severe courses and deaths from Covid-19. A recent study by the French showed just how good this protection is Epi-Phare-Institute with data on around 7.7 million fully vaccinated people aged 50 and over and just as many unvaccinated people. The vaccines from Biontech / Pfizer, Moderna and Astrazeneca reduced the number of expected severe disease courses in this age group by more than 90 percent. The magnitude of Covid-19-related deaths in clinics was similar. Mind you: The study included older people from the age of 50 who, due to their age, were already at an increased risk of severe disease.

A 90 percent risk reduction in this age group also means: not 100 percent. In rare cases, people can become seriously ill and even die despite having a full vaccination.

There is no one hundred percent protection against severe disease or death in medicine – not even with the other common vaccines, for example against flu. Each person has different, individual requirements. It can happen that a vaccination or a drug is of great benefit to many people and saves lives, while others benefit less.

In the case of corona vaccinations, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the immune response in the elderly, immunocompromised people and also certain cancer patients can be weaker. As reported in the US media, Colin Powell suffered from Parkinson’s disease and multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, which, among other things, increases the susceptibility to infection. The disease, the therapy, but also the advanced age must have significantly inhibited the effect of the vaccination.

Vaccinations have prevented tens of thousands of deaths in Germany so far

This information is not new. The Standing Vaccination Commission (Stiko) recommends booster vaccinations with an mRNA vaccine for people with immunodeficiency, people over 70 years and medical staff. People who had received the single vaccine from Janssen (“Johnson & Johnson”) should also receive a second vaccination. Already in the approval studies, this vaccine showed a somewhat lower effectiveness than the double vaccines from Biontech / Pfizer, Moderna and Astrazeneca. The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) has had more than 1.4 million so-called booster vaccinations so far recorded in his digital vaccination rate monitoring. Most of these people can assume that, thanks to the “booster”, severe gradients can be prevented even more reliably. But the same applies here: there is no such thing as 100 percent protection.

Another number helps to classify all this information: 38,300. That is the number of people in Germany who received the corona vaccination according to a model calculation and estimate by the RKI has saved life so far. The number of prevented reports is put at over 706,000 – that of inpatients to more than 76,600, that of patients in the intensive care unit to 19,600. However, the data only take into account the period up to the end of July 2021 and should have increased further in the meantime. Around 90 percent of the people who had to be treated in the intensive care unit due to a corona infection in the past few weeks were not vaccinated.

Deaths and severe disease that cannot be prevented often generate a lot of attention. Touching fates like Colin Powell’s. However, it should not be forgotten how much benefit the vaccines have provided in the fight against Covid-19 so far and continue to do so.

Epidemiology and medicine have a name for this phenomenon: the prevention paradox. In simplified terms, it can be broken down into the following slogan: “There is no glory in prevention”. No fame can be earned with prevention.

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