CLC’s Academic Scholars have been watching a series of online lectures from Gresham College, Cambridge. LC3 student Jasmine gives an overview of what she learned from Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty’s Vaccination Lecture.
I attended (virtually) Professor Chris Whitty’s lecture on vaccination at a time where the topic discussed was very current and significant in the UK. It has helped me gain a better understanding of something that is in the news all of the time at the moment: distributing a Covid-19 vaccine across the UK.
In addition to learning about the process that a vaccine must go through before being used by the country, I learned about strategising the distribution of vaccinations and that you should begin with the categories that are most at risk to death if exposed to Covid-19 and work your way down the demographic risk band. I also gained an understanding of the broader picture of vaccination and that it is predicted that between 2000 and 2019, an estimated 37 million deaths have been prevented with vaccines.
It was fascinating to find out more about the inner workings of vaccines. The vaccines do not actually kill the virus but they teach our immune systems how to cope if exposed to harmful diseases and respond more rapidly to infectious disease. Some vaccines do not decrease transmission or infection but do however decrease severity. It was clear to me from the lecture how vaccines have made our society safer and the impact they have on decreasing mortality from diseases.