ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — At this point in the pandemic, there have been over twelve million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. And now with Pfizer and BioNtech as well as Moderna concluding phase three trials of their COVID-19 vaccine candidates, you may be asking yourself should I get vaccinated? There are some insights on what you should know about these potential vaccines.
At least one in three of Americans say they will not get a COVID vaccine if and when it becomes available.
One myth floating around is a vaccine will make you test positive. A COVID-19 vaccine will not make you test positive for a current COVID infection on a viral test. However, you could test positive on some antibody tests if you develop an immune response. Myth number two: I don’t need a vaccine if I’ve already had the virus. If you’ve already been sick, you can still benefit from a vaccine. This protects you both from getting sick again or becoming a carrier. And the last myth: herd immunity, or the idea of letting the virus infect as many people as it can until it runs out of people to infect, is better than vaccination. An institute at the University of Washington says for herd immunity to be effective at least 13 million people will have to die globally of COVID-19 and one million in the U.S.
“So that’s important that people still be mindful of getting their vaccines,” stated Ketan Pandya, MD, FACEP, Emergency Department Medical Director, TEAMHealth.
Even as vaccines start rolling out, for now the best protection is still …
“Being a good citizen, wearing your mask, socially distancing yourself if you’re feeling sick or just avoiding large crowds, frequent hand-washing, all those things will continue to be important,” continued Dr. Pandya.
One of the most common myths is vaccines give you the virus. While vaccines do protect you, they do not infect you. The CDC says vaccines typically contain only a single protein of an inactivated or dead virus.
Contributors to this news report include: Sabrina Broadbent, Producer; and Roque Correa, Editor.
COVID VACCINE MYTHS: WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
REPORT #2819
BACKGROUND: Vaccines contain the same germs that cause a disease but have either been killed or weakened to the point that they don’t make you sick. Some vaccines contain only a part of the disease germ and stimulates your immune system to produce antibodies, exactly like it would if you were exposed to the disease. After getting vaccinated, you develop immunity to that disease, without having to get the disease first. Immunity is defined as protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected. Vaccinations have accounted for a decrease in the number of annual cases of many diseases within the United States, such as diphtheria, influenza, measles, mumps, rubella, and hepatitis A and B. Children in the U.S. receive recommended vaccinations when they reach certain ages and many states require such vaccinations before children are allowed to enter public schools.
(Source: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/vpd-vac-basics.html and https://www.statista.com/topics/3283/vaccinations-in-the-us/)
COVID VACCINE: GET THE FACTS: The COVID vaccines currently in development in the United States do not use the live virus that causes COVID. There are several different types of vaccines in development with the goal to teach our immune systems how to recognize and fight the virus. Sometimes this process can cause symptoms, such as fever, which are normal and are a sign that the body is building immunity. If your body develops an immune response, which is the goal of vaccination, there is a possibility you may test positive on some antibody tests. Antibody tests indicate you had a previous infection. Experts do not know how long someone is protected from getting sick again after recovering from COVID. The immunity someone gains from having an infection is called natural immunity and varies from person to person. Receiving an mRNA vaccine, which stands for messenger ribonucleic acid, will not alter your DNA. It’s most easily described as instructions for how to make a protein. The mRNA from a COVID-19 vaccine never enter the nucleus of the cell, which is where our DNA are kept. The vaccines that use mRNA work with the body’s natural defenses to safely develop immunity to disease.
(Source: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/vaccine-benefits/facts.html)
NEW VACCINE RESEARCH: Researchers demonstrated that a phage-based inhalation delivery system for vaccines generates potent antibody responses in mice and non-human primates, without causing lung damage. These findings suggest that a safe and effective lung delivery system could one day be used for vaccines and therapeutics against respiratory diseases. “This translational strategy potentially enables more effective delivery of therapeutics or vaccines while reducing the chance of toxic side effects,” says co-senior study author Wadih Arap of Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. Pulmonary delivery has many advantages over other routes of administration because the vaccines arrive directly at the site of the infection and are needle-free and minimally invasive. Lung delivery could protect against airborne pathogens that cause diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza, Ebola, measles, and COVID-19. However, this approach has not been adopted widely because the underlying physiological mechanisms remain largely unknown.
(Source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201210112118.htm)
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Dan Collard, Public Relations
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