“I work in a Petri dish every day,” said Bradley, an internist in Savannah, Georgia, who treated more than a hundred coronavirus patients. “I’m at high risk.”
Since his work endangers him, Bradley has been extremely careful in his personal life. He did not set foot in a restaurant, did not go to the gym or made a trip in March. And worse, him he became a grandfather during the pandemic and failed to support his first two grandchildren, who were born in April and July.
On July 27, Bradley’s team made history by administering the first blow in the first phase 3 clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine in the United States.
The patient was Dawn Baker, a news anchor at the CNT branch of WTOC.
“He really is a remarkable human being,” Baker said. – You couldn’t find a better doctor.
Bradley’s team continued to enroll more than a thousand volunteers in clinical trials of the coronavirus vaccine for Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax, but Bradley never received a coronavirus vaccine.
Everything changed on Wednesday, when it was finally time to roll up your sleeves and receive the Pfizer vaccine, just days after receiving the emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration.
“All this time, all this hard work later, I did,” Bradely said.
Surprising texts from “doctor friends”
The night before the vaccination, Bradley received surprising texts from some of his “doctor friends.”
They wanted to know if he was sure he wanted the vaccine. They suggested that maybe they should wait for other people to take it to see how they did it.
His answer was unequivocal.
“No, I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to wait. Every day is an opportunity to catch Covid and practically die. No, I don’t want to wait,” Bradley said.
Over the years, Bradley has become accustomed to answering questions from patients who are hesitant about the vaccine, but not from “practicing physicians with higher education.”
“This phobia or hesitation is not limited to uninformed people who are not medical,” he said.
“I’m worried (the vaccine) will change my DNA? Or that I won’t be able to get the chip out of me? No, I’m not,” he said.
Pfizer and Moderna coronavirus vaccines, the only two that have so far received emergency use approval from the FDA, use the same scientific approach to activating the immune system. In their clinical trials, tens of thousands of participants received vaccines from companies and had no serious side effects.
But those participants were followed for months, not years, which makes some people worry about the unknown long-term consequences of the shootings.
While Bradley acknowledges the lack of long-term data, he jumped at the chance to get the vaccine for two reasons.
First, historically, vaccines have not had long-term safety issues. When people have had bad reactions, it usually happens shortly after they are shot.
Second, regardless of the risk that the coronavirus vaccine might pose, he says the risk is far – enormous, wild – outweighed by the risk of what could happen if he caught Covid-19.
It is known that people died of Covid-19. He watched others survive after suffering months in the intensive care unit.
Some of them have not yet fully recovered on Monday.
“That’s why I keep telling people, ‘You don’t want that.’ Even if you go through it, there are all sorts of things, like brain fog and blood clots. I had a poor guy, 45, his coronary arteries got clogged and he needs a bypass operation, “Bradley said.” It’s scary there.
Therefore, the decision to vaccinate was easy.
“I see him as crazy. Really,” he said.
The big day
On Wednesday, at 6 a.m., Bradley arrived at St. Louis Hospital. Joseph / Candler to shoot his Covid-19.
He brought with him a very special person: his daughter, Dr. Brooke Halpern, the mother of one of the grandchildren he never hugged.
Her daughter joined her doctor’s office a few months ago, just as Covid-19 rates began to rise.
The decision was easy for her too.
“I couldn’t be happier to get the vaccine,” Halpern said. “We are already at risk every day with patients, and now I can have a little more ease going to work and not bringing any virus back home to my family.”
30 minutes later, the father and daughter received their vaccinations.
They were both delighted.
“It’s just profound. It’s so simple, but it’s profound,” he said. “This is the hope to return to normalcy.”
When Baker heard the good news that her doctor had been vaccinated, she said she was relieved.
“It’s just a relief for me to go to work with him every day and take care of all of us, that he can be protected,” Baker said. “I am very happy for him and for all the health workers who have priority.”
“True Heroes”
Now that Bradley is vaccinated, he says he is “reaping the benefits” of “true heroes” – thousands of clinical trial volunteers who volunteered to test the two vaccines, both of which have been shown to be effective with about 95 %.
“I’ve always told them they’re heroes, but now they look like geniuses,” he said.
As hopeful as he will feel, he says returning to normalcy will require much more work, since the virus has exploded in the United States.
“I call it a plague – it’s a pandemic – but it’s a dang plague in the Bible,” he said. “It affects us all and we have to overcome this together.”
But to do that, the American public will need to trust the vaccine, and Bradley worries that “crazy politics” has already sown significant mistrust.
“It will continue to be a challenge to get most people to get this vaccine,” he said.
He said he hoped people would come to understand that without the vaccine, people would continue to die by the thousands every day in the United States, just as they are now.
“It’s literally a matter of time before each of us arrives, except when we finally have a solution,” he said.
In about a month, when the full effects of the vaccine begin, Bradley plans to make a restaurant reservation, which he has been avoiding since March. He will be able to enter an examination room without fear of contracting the virus and dying.
And he will be able to do the thing that escaped him the most.
“I will be able to hug (my) grandchildren,” he said. “Be like a normal, real person again.”