The interview follows another Israeli researcher, Prof. In that sense, and I’m extremely cautious, there is a possibility that Omicron will accelerate that transition.”
Never, never,” and predicted that COVID will eventually become “like flu, I think there is going to be bad waves and better waves, with a better immunity at the level of the population, with better vaccines with better treatment.
UNHERD VACCINE HESITANCY FREE
There is a thin nuance here, if I may say, that people have to grasp.”Ĭohen also suggested that, as COVID is a relatively recent and evolving situation, a modicum of humility was in order regarding people’s personal decisions: “It’s a free world, we are all experimenting to some extent what’s the best strategy to go with.”Įlsewhere in the interview, Cohen said he was “extremely sorry” about closing schools over COVID, that “education was the thing we shouldn’t have touched. “I’m all for a nasal vaccine, for example, that would be able to better mimic the immunity that we get from the disease … we have to take into account that still the virus is better at immunizing than the vaccine.” Cohen took pains to clarify that he was not advocating that people intentionally infect themselves for the sake of acquiring natural immunity, but simply describing the situation: “Herd immunity is a consequence for me. “We need better vaccines to prevent transmission,” he said. “We were surprised to discover at the end of the day that no, the vaccines are not protecting us, are not providing what we call sterilizing immunity.” Particularly with the rise of the omicron variant, which is believed to now be the dominant variant of COVID-19, “we don’t see virtually any difference, a very narrow gap between people who are vaccinated and non-vaccinated, both get infected with the virus more or less at the same pace.”Ĭohen went on to agree that the Green Pass, Israel’s vaccine passport system, should be phased out of use, noting that as a practical matter it is already “not too much enforced” and saying, “I don’t think there is a point right now to maintaining a Green Pass, especially in the Omicron era.” He added that “it’s not a secret” that the purpose of the pass was “not necessarily to prevent transmission,” but to “encourage people to get vaccinated.” “And suddenly, we were opening and opening and opening, and cases were going down, hospitals were getting empty, people were, I’m not joking, my colleagues, doctors were dancing in the corridors out of joy, ‘It’s over!’’ So we did believe at that time that vaccines can prevent transmission.”īut that initial promise did not last, he said. “The feeling we had in Israel last spring, after we had a deadly month of January with more than 4,000 people that died, we were after our third lockdown,” he recalled. While continuing to believe that the COVID vaccines “can prevent severe disease,” Cohen spoke candidly about how their utility in halting spread of the virus failed to meet expectations.
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