Ken Jeong gave a great analogy for the Delta variant and vaccines on The Late Late Show

If you spend any amount of time on social media at all, you know there's a whirlpool of information and misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that help prevent severe illness and death from it.

Getting vaccine information from a random individual doctor isn't generally advisable, since there are plenty of misinformation mongers with impressive degrees out there. (They are one reason we have medical associations and public health institutions to maintain standards of research and information.) However, sometimes an individual doctors have a knack for taking scientific information and translating it into layman's terms.

Comedian and actor Ken Jeong did just that with the Delta variant and vaccine efficacy on The Late Late Show with James Corden. Jeong is best known for his TV and film roles, but prior to his success in Hollywood, he had a whole career as an internal medicine physician. Watch:

Jeong explained why the Delta variant is so much more contagious than the original coronavirus strain, then compared the vaccine to an umbrella. With the original strain, the vaccine was highly effective at protecting us from the virus, just like an umbrella during a normal rainstorm. Delta is more like a monsoon in which an umbrella still protects you from being soaked to the bone, but doesn't fully protect you from getting wet at all.

Yes, vaccinated people can still get and spread the virus, but they are much less likely to than unvaccinated people. For the record, if you were unvaccinated from May to July of this year (when Delta became the dominant strain), you were five times more likely to get infected with COVID and 29 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID than a vaccinated person, according to a CDC analysis. Hospitals around the country have begun posting statistics of unvaccinated vs. vaccinated patients in their ICUs, which show the vast majority are unvaccinated.

The numbers are clear. The best thing we all can do to protect ourselves and others is to get vaccinated.