As the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines distribute across the United States and the rest of the globe, it is important that, in all of the wealth of knowledge out there regarding the vaccines, that the right knowledge is getting to people thinking about getting the vaccine.
In the short span of distribution and the ramping up of distribution, as well as in the development stage, rumors about the danger of the vaccine have gone hand in hand with worries about folks worrying about the coronavirus.
So, with that in mind, I would like to dispel some myths regarding the coronavirus vaccines. With all of this, it is crucial to get the proper, correct knowledge from experts who work within the medical fields of epidemiology, virology and any other experts who might know enough about the nature and science behind viruses to make informed decisions regarding vaccinations. It’s important to note that the field of medicine is very big and the knowledge is vast and specialized, though you should always consult your primary caregiver for questions regarding your personal health.
Myth 1: You can get COVID-19 from the vaccine or get otherwise sick as a result of taking the vaccine.
The Truth: The reality is, in most cases, vaccinations have a small amount of the virus in them as a way to give your body a small dose to fight off the virus and build up an immunity to the said virus. With both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the virus is fought off using messenger RNAs or mRNAs, which effectively build up small factories in your cells to help fight off the virus.
“There’s no live virus in the vaccines, so they can’t infect you,” says Dr. Dennis J. Cunningham, a pediatric infectious disease specialist from Columbus in an article by the Henry Ford Health System. “Basically, the vaccines make our bodies produce one single protein from the virus—the protein that infects our cells. By making that protein, we prevent infection. You might have side effects like a headache or chills, but that’s because your body is creating an immune response, not because you have an infection.”
Myth 2: The mRNA inside the vaccine will alter your DNA.
The Truth: “The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use messenger RNA (mRNA) to protect us from COVID-19, and I think that is where this rumor comes from,” says Dr. Cunningham. “mRNA basically gives our cells the blueprints for the factories that will build the protein to protect us from COVID-19. People get scared that mRNA will cause the virus to go into our DNA and mutate us, but it does not even go into the center part of the cell where we have our DNA.”
Myth 3: The vaccine is not safe because it was developed so quickly.
The Truth: It is true that the fastest vaccine developed before this one was the vaccine for mumps, which was developed in 1963 and took a total of four years to develop. That being said, the science of medicine has vastly surpassed that of the medicine of 1963, and with mumps, they weren’t dealing with a virus that had infected people in every nation in the world in less than a year. The pressure to find a vaccine, thus the need to put resources is far greater than that to develop a vaccine for mumps in 1963. Not to mention the research already done on several similar viruses like MERS and SARS.
“The COVID-19 vaccines themselves were developed quickly, but the clinical trials, which examine safety and efficacy, weren’t rushed at all,” says Dr. Cunningham. “Safety was not compromised in any way. What happened quickly was finding the vaccine to test. In the 1980s, it took scientists so long to do this, but thanks to scientific advances we’ve made over the years, we can find viruses so quickly.”
Myth 4: I already caught COVID-19, so I don’t need to take the vaccine because I’m immune.
The Truth: Though in some cases catching a virus and your body fighting it can lead to your body being immune to the virus, that is probably not the case with COVID, as there have been multiple cases of people becoming reinfected after their initial infection.
“There is preliminary evidence that the vaccine offers better protection than having had the virus,” says Dr. Cunningham. “Plus, it’s sometimes hard to know whether you actually had COVID-19. People who had COVID-19 in the early days, before we had laboratory testing available, were being diagnosed based upon symptoms and not a test. Also, some of the tests aren’t always 100% accurate.”
Myth 5: The vaccine is as dangerous as the virus.
The Truth: There is no substantial proof that the vaccine is dangerous for the general public. Some point to trials that took place during the Pfizer vaccine trials in which six participants out of 44,000 died after receiving the vaccine.
For a full report on their deaths in FDA briefings, please check out the following two links: here and here. That being said, one of the recipients had a cardiac arrest 62 days after receiving the vaccine, another died of arteriosclerosis three days after the first dose, a third, who received a placebo, died of myocardial infarction, another from hemorrhagic stroke, and two others from unknown causes. Though, it should be noted that these deaths are at the normal percentage of deaths for the general population.
“None of these deaths were assessed by the investigator as related to study intervention,” it is written in the FDA briefings. “All deaths represent events that occur in the general population of the age groups where they occurred, at a similar rate.”
In other words, the deaths were normal, non-vaccine-related deaths that people correlated as being related to the vaccine.
There are many, many more myths floating around the internet, from a woman in Alabama dying from the vaccine (which was later debunked by the Alabama Public Health authorities) to a 30-minute video featuring health experts from around Northern Europe making unsubstantiated claims about the virus, which the BBC wrote extensively about, debunking some time ago.
It is important to stay diligent, to fact-check posts on social media, and to, above all else, put your trust in true medical professionals that you trust to have knowledge pertaining to viruses and vaccinations. The internet can often be a sort of Wild West, wherein an expansive wealth of knowledge is readily available at our fingertips. It’s critical that we find the discipline to wield such knowledge correctly and know the difference between fact and fiction.
Richard Foltz
Associate Editor