If you’ve been vaccinated, Gov. Murphy says the pandemic is over

Have you received your COVID-19 vaccination yet?

As the Garden State enters the home-stretch in the push to get 70% of the adult population vaccinated by the end of June, Gov. Phil Murphy said Wednesday that if you have gotten either the Pfizer, the Moderna or the J&J vaccine, for you the pandemic is over.

“There is no pandemic among the 4,627,717 million we have counted who are now fully vaccinated against COVID,” he said. “There is only a pandemic among those who have yet to get their shot.”

He said the simple fact is “these vaccines work, our own data has shown them to be 99.94% effective against infection of the coronavirus, with even stronger protection against hospitalization and death.”

The governor said the Health Department has not yet started posting specific data showing the people now being hospitalized and dying of COVID are unvaccinated “but we do know based on every anecdotal evidence it’s overwhelmingly, if not exclusively.”

So why is the target of 4.7 million?

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The governor said with a little more than 9 million state residents in New Jersey, “70% has some amount of magic to it, particularly if you add to that folks who have already had COVID, you’ve got, we haven’t used the phrase herd immunity in a long time.”

He said this is a “critical mass that is where you need to tip your society into a much better place.”

As for why some Garden State residents continue to resist the idea of getting vaccinated, Murphy said: “I think it’s a combination of didn’t have information, couldn’t get to a site, homebound or for whatever reason, work schedules. We still have a lot of folks in the state working two or three shifts.”

He also noted in Black communities, in particular, there remains distrust about vaccinations because persons of color were used as guinea pigs in the past for medical procedures.

"There’s also a block of folks who are so-called anti-vaxxers in this state," he added.

Murphy said he feels confident we will hit 4.7 million adults vaccinated by the end of June.

“I really believe we’re going to get there,” he said.