If you saw my COVID patients, you'd know we're still in danger

And don’t say the United States is done with COVID-19 to the mother from India, who was fully vaccinated with the Astra Zeneca shot and flew here to visit her son. I admitted her shortly after her arrival a month ago and she has now been on a ventilator for three weeks. She recently underwent a tracheostomy – a procedure in which a hole is cut in the neck to allow oxygen to be more easily delivered. Remarkably, she tested positive for the California variant of COVID-19. This means she did not become infected in India, where the outbreak remains rampant and uncontrolled, but rather here in America – more than likely from an unvaccinated individual... The daughter of my elderly patient with cancer, who almost certainly passed COVID-19 to him, told me she refused vaccination because of the newness and unknown safety of the vaccines. But by now, after hundreds of millions of vaccinations, the shots have a proven track record of safety and efficacy.