Americans who refuse vaccinations are endangering millions of immunocompromised people

Americans who refuse vaccinations are endangering millions of immunocompromised people   All Kimberly Cooley wants to do is hug her 6-year-old nephews -- but she can't because tens of millions of Americans are choosing not to get vaccinated against Covid-19.   Cooley received two doses of Pfizer's Covid-19 vaccine in February, but blood tests show the shots didn't give her antibodies against the virus.   That's because, like millions of Americans, Cooley takes medications to suppress her immune system -- after she had a liver transplant in 2018. A study by Johns Hopkins researchers published Monday found that vaccinated immunocompromised people like her are 485 times more likely to end up in the hospital or die from Covid-19 compared to the general population that is vaccinated.   Based on an estimate by the CDC, about 9 million Americans are immunocompromised, either because of diseases they have or medications they take.   It has been known for months that Covid-19 vaccines might not work well for this group. The hope was that vaccination rates overall would be so high so that the "herd" would protect them.   But it didn't work out that way, because about a third of eligible people in the US have not received even one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.   A study published Monday in the journal Transplantation found fully vaccinated organ transplant recipients were 82 times more likely to get a breakthrough Covid-19 infection compared to the vaccinated general population, and 485 times more likely to be hospitalized or die from Covid-19.   "This is a stark reminder that there are many vulnerable people around us who have been unable to achieve the same levels of protection that the rest of us have been able to achieve, and as a result are at much higher risk of getting sick or dying from this terrible virus," said Dr. Dorry Segev, a transplant surgeon at Johns Hopkins Medicine and lead author of the study.