The effectiveness of vaccines — and, in some cases, the need — have been increasingly questioned as one of the side effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Newman Regional Health offered a town hall to the public Tuesday night at the Flint Hills Technical College main campus to dispel those and other concerns.
Dr. Valarie Creswell, an Emporia native who has been practicing infectious disease medicine for 30 years and is now a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Kansas School of Medicine, opened the forum with a roughly 30-minute presentation covering several specific vaccines like flu, COVID, pneumonia and HPV as well as general information about the vaccine process. Creswell says vaccines are safe because they have to be fully researched — and because they are given to the healthy, not the sick.
A larger testing phase is next, followed by a larger-scale clinical trial involving thousands of people.
Creswell also says it is virtually impossible to get a disease from a shot, using flu as an example.
Responding to a question about delayed or split vaccination schedules for children, Dr. Jennifer Esau, a physician at Newman Regional Health Family Medicine, says the ultimate goal is to get children vaccinated, regardless of whether it’s on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention schedule or one decided by parents.
Ultimately, Newman Regional Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Alana Longwell says the goal is to get everybody vaccinated for themselves and the others around them.
KVOE aired the town hall live as a public service to get more information out to the area with flu season ramping up faster than it has in over 10 years, cases of RSV gradually increasing locally but spiking nationally and new COVID-19 variants developing.
