The Good News Among the Bad News About COVID

With Christmas now just a few days away we all wish the news about COVID-19 was better.

Especially with family gatherings and other holiday events coming. The number of confirmed cases of the new Omicron variant is rising, along with the Delta strain, which is still the primary form of the COVID virus out there. And health officials are the rising number of cases will make it more difficult for hospital staffs.

But there is good reason to look at some of the good news about all of this.

The latest good news this morning that Moderna says it booster dose offers protection against the Omicron variant with their lab tests showing that even the half dose booster shot increased antibodies against it by nearly 40 times, with their full booster causing more than an 80 times jump in those antibodies.

And despite the continued hesitancy among some, the number of fully vaccinated people is still growing, with more than 83-percent of Californians now having received one shot and more than 65 percent now fully vaccinated and the number of people who have gotten booster shots is rising.

The vaccines themselves are good news, with all of them greatly reducing the chances of hospitalization and death.

While not everyone will ever choose to be vaccinated, the vaccines, which began being administered just one year ago after a successful effort to develop them rapidly, remain key to ending the pandemic, just as all the other vaccines that have helped us get rid of all the other diseases during the last 70 years.

(Photo Getty Images)