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“I work every day in a Petri dish,” said Bradley, an internist in Savannah, Georgia, who has treated more than 100 coronavirus patients. “I am at great risk.”
Since his job puts him in danger, Bradley has been extremely careful in his personal life. He hasn’t set foot in a restaurant, gone to the gym, or taken a trip since March. Worse yet, he He became a grandfather during the pandemic and has not been able to support his first two grandchildren, who were born in April and July.
On July 27, Bradley’s team made history when they administered the first injection in the first phase 3 clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine in the United States.
That patient was Dawn Baker, a news anchor for CNN affiliate WTOC.
“He is truly an extraordinary human being,” Baker said. “I couldn’t find a more caring doctor.”
Bradley’s team went on to enroll more than 1,000 volunteers in coronavirus vaccine clinical trials for Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax, but Bradley never received a coronavirus vaccine.
All that changed on Wednesday when it finally came time to roll up your sleeves and get the Pfizer vaccine, just days after it received emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration.
“All this time, all this hard work afterwards, I got it,” Bradely said.
Surprising texts from ‘medical friends’
The night before his vaccination, Bradley received surprising text messages from some of his “medical friends.”
They wanted to know if he was sure he wanted the vaccine. They suggested that maybe I should wait for other people to take it to see how they fared.
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 basically die. No, I don’t want to wait,” Bradley said.
Over the years, Bradley has become used to answering questions from patients who doubt vaccines, but not from “highly educated practicing physicians.”
“This phobia, or indecision, is not limited to uninformed, non-medical people,” he said.
“Am I worried that (the vaccine) is going to change my DNA? Or that I can’t get the chip out? No, I’m not,” he said.
Pfizer and Moderna’s coronavirus vaccines, the only two so far to have received emergency use clearance from the FDA, use the same scientific approach to activate the immune system. In their clinical trials, tens of thousands of participants received the vaccines from the companies and had no serious side effects.
But those participants were followed for months, not years, causing some people to worry about the unknown long-term consequences of the injections.
While Bradley acknowledges the lack of long-term data, he took the opportunity to get the vaccine for two reasons.
First, vaccines have historically had no long-term safety issues. When people have had bad reactions, it is usually shortly after receiving the vaccine.
Second, whatever the risk the coronavirus vaccine may pose, he says the risk is vastly outweighed by the risk of what could happen if you contract Covid-19.
Meet people who have died from Covid-19. He has seen others survive after suffering for months in the intensive care unit.
Some of them have still not fully recovered months later.
“That’s why I keep telling people, ‘You don’t want this.’ Even if you get over it, there are all sorts of things, like mental confusion and blood clots. I had a poor boy, 45, with clogged coronary arteries. and he needs bypass surgery, “Bradley said. “It’s scary out there.”
So the decision to get vaccinated was easy.
“I see it as a no-brainer. I really do,” he said.
The big day
At 6 a.m. Wednesday, Bradley arrived at St. Joseph’s / Candler Hospital to receive his Covid-19 injection.
He brought with him a very special person: his daughter, Dr. Brooke Halpern, the mother of one of the grandchildren whom he never hugged.
His daughter joined his medical practice a few months ago, just as Covid-19 rates started to skyrocket.
The decision was easy for her too.
“I couldn’t be more excited to get the vaccine,” Halpern said. “We are already at risk every day with patients, and now I can have a little easier to go to work and not bring any of the virus to my family.”
Thirty minutes later, father and daughter received their vaccinations.
They were both elated.
“It’s just deep. It’s so simple, but it’s deep,” he said. “This is the hope of getting back to normal.”
When Baker heard the good news that her doctor had been vaccinated, she said she was relieved.
“It’s a relief to me that with him working day after day and taking care of all of us, he can be protected,” Baker said. “I am very happy for him and for all the healthcare workers who are being prioritized.”
‘The real heroes’
Now that Bradley is vaccinated, he said he is “reaping the benefits” of “the real heroes” – the thousands of clinical trial volunteers who volunteered to test the two vaccines, and both were found to be 95% effective.
“I told them all the time they were heroes, but now they seem like geniuses,” he said.
As hopeful as he may feel, he says that getting back to normal will still require a lot more work, as the virus has spread across the United States.
“I call it a plague, it is a pandemic, but it is a bloody plague out of the Bible,” he said. “It’s affecting us all, and we have to get through this together.”
But doing that will require the American public to trust the vaccine., and Bradley worries that “crazy politics” has already sown significant mistrust.
“Getting the majority of people to get this vaccine will remain a challenge,” he said.
He said he hopes people will come to understand that without the vaccine, people will continue to die by the thousands every day in the United States, just as they are doing now.
“It is literally a matter of time before it catches each and every one of us, except now we finally have a solution,” he said.
In about a month, when the full effects of the vaccine kick in, Bradley plans to make that reservation at a restaurant he has been avoiding since March. You will be able to enter an exam room without fear of contracting the virus and dying.
And you can do what you have missed the most.
“I’ll be able to go hug (my) grandchildren,” he said. “He is like a normal and real person again.”
