“I work in a petri dish every day,” said Bradley, an internist in Savannah, Georgia who has treated more than 100 coronavirus patients. “I am at great risk.”
Because his job puts him in danger, Bradley is extremely careful in his personal life. He hasn’t set foot in a restaurant, the gym, or a trip since March. Worse, he became a grandfather during the pandemic and has not been able to hold on to 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 at WTOC, an affiliate of CNN.
“He’s a truly remarkable person,” said Baker. “You can’t find a more caring doctor.”
Bradley’s team then enrolled more than 1,000 volunteers in clinical studies of coronavirus vaccines for Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax, but Bradley never received a coronavirus vaccine himself.
That all changed on Wednesday when it was finally time for him to roll up his own sleeve and get the Pfizer vaccine, just days after it received emergency use approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“All this time, all that hard work later, I got it,” Bradely said.
Surprising texts from ‘doctor buddies’
The night before his vaccination, Bradley received surprising text messages from some of his “doctor buddies.”
They wanted to make sure he was sure he wanted the vaccine. They suggested that maybe he 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 actually die. No, I don’t want to wait,” said Bradley.
Over the years, Bradley has become accustomed to answering questions from patients reluctant to vaccinate, but not from “highly trained, practicing doctors.”
“This phobia or hesitation 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 of me? No, I am not,” he said.
Pfizer and Moderna’s coronavirus vaccines, the only two so far to receive emergency use approval from the FDA, use the same scientific approach to activate the immune system. In their clinical trials, tens of thousands of participants received the companies’ vaccines and had no serious side effects.
But those participants were followed for months, not years, leaving some people concerned about unknown long-term consequences of the shots.
While Bradley acknowledges the lack of long-term data, he seized the opportunity to get the vaccine for two reasons.
First, vaccines traditionally have no long-term safety concerns. If people have had bad reactions, it is usually shortly after taking the shot.
Second, whatever risk the coronavirus vaccine may pose, he says that risk vastly – huge, huge – outweighs the risk of what could happen if he got Covid-19.
He knows people who died of Covid-19. He has seen others survive after months of suffering in intensive care.
Some of these have still not fully recovered months later.
‘That’s why I keep telling people,’ You don’t want this. Even when you get through it, there are all kinds of things, like brain fog and blood clots. I had a poor man, 45 years old, clogged his coronary arteries and he needs bypass surgery, “Bradley said.” It’s scary out there. “
That’s why the decision to get vaccinated was an easy one.
‘I see it as a no-brainer. Really, ”he said.
The big day
Wednesday at 6am, 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 he never hugged.
His daughter joined his medical practice a few months ago, just as Covid-19 rates were skyrocketing.
The decision was easy for her too.
“I couldn’t be more excited to get the vaccine,” Halpern said. “We are already at risk with the patients every day, and now I can have a little more convenience in going to work and not taking the virus home with my family.”
Thirty minutes later, father and daughter received their vaccinations.
Both were delighted.
‘It’s just profound. It’s that simple, but it’s profound, ”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 just a relief to me that if he goes to work day after day and takes care of all of us, he can be protected,” said Baker. “I am very happy for him and all the health workers who are prioritized.”
‘The real heroes’
Now that Bradley has been 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, both of which were found to be about 95% effective.
“I’ve told them all along that they were heroes, but now they look like geniuses,” he said.
As hopeful as he feels, he says a return to normal will still take a lot more work as the virus exploded in the United States.
“I call it a plague – it’s a pandemic – but it’s a plague from the Bible,” he said. “It affects us all, and we have to beat this together.”
But to do that, the American public has to trust the vaccine, and Bradley is concerned that “crazy politics” has already created significant mistrust.
“It will still be a challenge to get most people to get this vaccine,” he said.
He said he hopes people will come to understand that without the vaccine, people in the United States will die in their thousands every day, just like they do now.
“It’s literally a matter of time before it gets to each of us, except now we finally have a solution,” he said.
In about a month, when the full effects of the vaccine begin, Bradley plans to make that restaurant reservation he’s been avoiding since March. He can walk into an exam room without fear of contracting the virus and dying.
And he will be able to do what he missed the most.
“I can go and cuddle (my) grandchildren,” he said. “Be a normal, real person again.”