Rafael Vilasanjuan: “The effectiveness of vaccines against Covid-19 cannot be questioned”

Vilasanjuan said this in response to a question from a participant in the conversation he had with Keshia Pollack of the prestigious John Hopkins Institute in the United States, one of the most important health research institutes on the American continent.

This assistant questioned the two experts about the information that appeared in the press this week in which it was collected that one of the laboratories that had released one of the vaccines against Covid-19 (Pfizer) had not completed its validation processes, and that ” a sterilizing vaccine had not been obtained ”, that is, one that prevented the spread of the virus.

Having said that, the journalist stressed that “all vaccines are used to give information to cells and that they know how to attack viruses” and as regards those of Covid-19 he pointed out that “none of the vaccines that exist now are sterilizing”. However, he said that there are “one or two” who are still in the first phase of the evaluation whose laboratories, once they have passed all the phases, “could surely say they are sterilizing”.

Along this line, he assured that Pfizer “did not cheat in the evidence” prior to the commercialization of its vaccine, a dose that “is not sterilizing” but instead added “it may be that (Pfizer) lied in contracts or in price, but not in the effectiveness of the vaccine “.

Invest in prevention

Before the questions from the audience, Vilasanjuán and Pollack talked about health after the pandemic and both agreed that in the next “five years there will be new pandemics or disasters” and decided to invest in prevention and public health systems.

Something difficult in the United States, where health is almost one hundred percent deprived. In fact, the American expert explained that the patients went to the hospital emergency room “treated them, gave them medicines and returned home healed, but with a large bill for the service provided”. Faced with this, the health systems of Europe and Spain, where this service is free, although this year it emerged that each hospitalization of a patient with Covid-19 in hospitals cost the public coffers an average of 6,000 euros and in the case to have been treated in intensive care rises to 19,000 euros.

At the same time they stressed that the “covid” is still here and now in this month of October “coexists with two other viruses”. At this point another difference has been established between the Spanish and the American health systems, in this case in their favor: in the US, any citizen can be vaccinated against the flu, in Spain only over 65 years of age.

After the post-Covid health talk, writer Sophy Roberts offered a talk, with her work The Pianos of Stalingrad as a basis for talking about geopolitical power movements in an ever-changing (technological, economic, social) world, which it makes us think of the appearance of dynamics that propose to look at a past perceived as real and desirable, to take refuge in a world of its own.

And finally, the official closing of the Dénia Human Sciences Festival was celebrated, in charge of its content director, Josep Ramoneda and the mayor of Dénia, Vicent Grimalt.

Ramoneda acknowledged that “the response from the city of Dénia has been fantastic. We are left with the desire to return next year to continue thinking and discovering things about human beings”.

Vicent Grimalt was equally satisfied, underlining that the municipality “was the agora in which this debate on the essence of humanism and the urgent need for it to be very present in our societies again”. The mayor announced “the continuity of this event, which will go beyond the two-year program of the festival”.

The competition ended with a muixeranga at the doors of the auditorium of the Dénia Social Center which is, commented the mayor, “the union of people to make human castles, and means the commitment of the local, to reach the universe” .