Two COVID vaccines are now available in the US and are currently being administered to health care workers and residents.long-term care facilities. But it is new, and new things are frightening, and both COVID and its vaccine have been constantly politicized. Rumors are flying.
If people in your life doubt the safety of the vaccine or are still wondering if the coronavirus is a scam, we have some tips on talking to them here. There you a lot of strangers about the vaccine, so just because someone has doubts or questions doesn’t mean I’m anti-vaxxer. If you have questions or if you want to talk to people in your life who do, we will download some myths and facts here.
Was he in a hurry?
The vaccine was developed rapidly and was launched and distributed much faster than any other vaccine in history. But this does not mean that it is not tested or that the corners have been cut.
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Each of the two vaccines was tested in a study of more than 30,000 people, half of whom received the vaccine and half did not. Bottom line, there is a lot of data to support the belief that the vaccine is safe and effective.
The vaccine cannot give you COVID
Both vaccines contain a piece of mRNA which our body can use to make spike protein, a small piece of the virus. Shot no more contains mRNA and some ingredients that help mRNA turn it into your cells. This means:
- It does not contain the virus itself.
- It does not contain any protein from the virus.
- It does not contain the complete RNA of the virus, but only the part encoding the spike protein.
All this means that COVID does not and cannot offer you. The virus simply does not exist. Also, the virus is not involved in the vaccine production process. (Some other vaccines use modified or eliminated viruses; the COVID vaccine does not use any virus in its production at all.)
The mRNA in the vaccine cannot change your DNA
Coronavirus has RNA for its genetic material, and we have DNA for our own. But the two are not interchangeable. Your DNA is safe.
Your DNA lives in the nucleus of every cell, and our bodies make mRNA copies of our DNA as part of our normal daily activity to keep us alive. vaccine introduces a new mRNA that would not normally be there. MRNA does not alter DNA.
Now, there is other viruses in the world called retroviruses, which can produce DNA from RNA and which, in some cases, can be inserted into DNA. But this is not relevant here, because coronavirus is not a retrovirus. He uses RNA, but he doesn’t know how to produce DNA.
Neither the virus nor the vaccine include a reverse transcriptase, a special molecular machine that is needed to produce DNA. Even if reverse transcriptase is somehow present in the cell, neither viral RNA nor vaccine mRNA include the binding sites required for reverse transcriptase to function.
Or if you want an analogy, think of your DNA as a reference library. The books remain in the library, but you can take notes on your own notebook paper to use elsewhere. (Notebook paper is RNA.) There is no way your notebook will somehow become part of the library’s permanent collection.
What is actually in the vaccine?
Both vaccines are amazingly simple. The ingredient lists for both contain only three types of ingredients:
- mRNA
- lipids with very long names (these are basically fancy oils and form the envelope around the mRNA)
- sugars, salts and / or simple chemical buffers
In the Pfizer vaccine, the third category includes potassium chloride, monobasic potassium phosphate, sodium chloride, dibasic sodium phosphate dihydrate and sucrose. These may seem scientific, but you probably have three of them in the kitchen (sucrose is sugar, sodium chloride is salt, and potassium chloride is sodium-free salt). Here is the information sheet for the Pfizer vaccine, which includes the list of ingredients.
The Moderna vaccine is formulated with different ingredients, but on the same formula. In addition to mRNAs and lipids, it includes tromethamine, tromethamine hydrochloride, acetic acid, sodium acetate and sucrose. Again, these are simple ingredients that are extremely common in medical solutions. Tromethamine is just a Tris tampon, which you probably used in science class. Acetic acid is the sour component of vinegar. Sucrose is sugar. Here is the fact sheet for the Moderna vaccine.
But I heard it contains …
Even before COVID, there was a lot of misinformation floating around vaccines. Sometimes people heard that there was a certain ingredient some vaccines and concluded that it must be in all vaccines. Like mercury, for example, which is only in very few vaccines. (It was in several.) So let’s go through a few elements that are not in the COVID vaccine:
- COVID vaccines do not contain aluminum or mercury.
- COVID vaccines do not contain preservatives.
- COVID vaccines do not contain fetal cells.
- COVID vaccines do not contain microchips.
Let’s talk about the last two for a second.
There are no microchips in vaccines
The idea that vaccines contain microchips is just flat groundwrong caliber. There is a whole conspiracy theory that has been blown up in the form of microchips and has been shared in groups discussing Qanon conspiracies and anti-vaccine propaganda. It is not based on any realityany truths of the world.
There you Injectable microchips in this world, and your pet can get them at any vet’s office. (They also don’t really do anything because they don’t have a battery; their only task is to store a serial number.) Sometimes pets get their microchip at the same meeting they get a vaccine. Maybe that’s where the rumor started?
If you have ever seen an injected microchip, you will know that they are slightly larger than a grain of rice, and the needle that delivers them is sized to fit. In other words, inside of the needle is large enough to fit a grain of rice. Meanwhile, those delivering vaccines are extremely thin, with a width of less than 1 millimeter. Here’s Vice President Pence shooting his COVID in front of the newsrooms. You can see that the needle is of normal size. There is no microchip there.
There are no fetal cells in COVID vaccines
Some vaccines are developed in cell lines that are grown in laboratories, and in some cases these cells come from cells that were originally grown from human fetal tissue. This has led to a myth that “pieces of aborted babies” are in vaccines, which is not true at all.
COVID vaccines are not cultured in cells, fetal or otherwise. Remember, I’m just an mRNA. Laboratory machines can synthesize them without involving cells. Both Pfizer and Moderna made use some fetal-derived cell lines for some of the tests they did in the vaccine development process.
If this is a problem for you or your loved ones, an approval from the Pope statement of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops can help understand how a vaccine tested on fetal-derived cell lines fits an anti-abortion religious framework. The bishops argue that the “remote connection” of abortion vaccine development should not interfere with the fact that “safe vaccination against COVID-19 should be seen as an act of love for our neighbor and part of our moral responsibility for good.” common. “
There is no evidence that vaccines will harm fertility or pregnancy
Studies for both COVID vaccines have ruled out pregnant women, so we have limited data on their safety and efficacy during pregnancy. But based on the workings of these vaccines, scientists and doctors say there is no reason to believe that the shot would be harmful to pregnant, breastfeeding or pregnant women.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said that considers that the vaccine “should not be withheld” from pregnant women even if the processes did not include them. The CDC agreed when they wrote the vaccine recommendations, saying people who are pregnant have the opportunity to get the vaccine and should talk to their provider to decide if it makes sense to them.
Meanwhile, it is rumored that the spike mRNA protein has a resemblance to a protein in the human placenta. If true, this would suggest that antibodies to coronavirus would also react to the placenta and could interfere with pregnancy. If you have heard the incorrect statement that the vaccine can “make you sterile” or “cause infertility”, this is probably the myth that the person is thinking about.
But again, this is not supported by evidence. In fact, we have a pretty good reason to believe it is not case. The spike protein encoded by the mRNA is the same as that on the actual coronavirus. So, if antibodies against coronavirus could cause problems during pregnancy, this would be equally true for people who received the virus naturally, as well as for those who received the vaccine. But this turns out to be a debatable point because there does not appear to be any significant match between the spike protein and the placenta.
But don’t just take my word for it. If you are pregnant or planning to become pregnant, talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits of COVID for you personally.
Are there any scary side effects?
For most people, the side effects of COVID vaccines are what you would expect from an immune response. These include pain and possibly redness or swelling in the arm where you received the vaccine and possibly a day or two of fatigue and fever. As with other vaccines, the severity of these side effects varies from person to person.
If you’ve heard of serious side effects, they fall into two categories: those that are real or plausible and those that are just invented to scare people on social media.
Here are some of the ones that doctors and public health experts are really concerned about:
If you’ve heard of anything weird or scary, you’ve probably been compensated for clicks. Don’t just trust yourself blindly; look at him. E.g, a nurse fainted after receiving the vaccine (people faint after injections sometimes, it’s quite common) and rumor has it that he died. She does not.
Or to take another example, a woman who is in the process of being vaccinated she developed a frightening skin condition on her feet, and posted online that he thought it was because of the vaccine. It turned out that he was in the placebo group and had not received the vaccine at all. But her story kept circulating.
Will I have to get shot?
This is your choice. There is no government plan to force anyone to get it. You don’t have to tell your doctor special words to get out of it; “No, thank you” will always be enough.