COVID-19 Vaccine: what you need to know

There’s been a lot of buzz in the news lately about a vaccine for COVID-19. Two different companies (Pfizer and Moderna) are very close to having an effective COVID-19 vaccine ready for distribution. That’s two different versions of the vaccines that should be available within the next month! And there are a few other companies that are getting close to having a vaccine ready within the coming months as well. 

AWESOME!

But the COVID-19 vaccine will be different from all other vaccines in a very significant way. It will do the same thing as other vaccines (train your body for the fight), but in a new way that has not been done before. That’s interesting. Let’s talk about it.  

What makes the COVID-19 vaccine different from other vaccines?

Firstly, the COVID-19 vaccine happened fast. Like, really fast. Most vaccines take at least ten years to develop (source). However, the COVID-19 vaccine was developed in about nine months. That’s 93% faster! 

Vaccines usually take so long to develop because they are researched, tested, retested, and retested again. They must meet very strict standards before they are allowed to be given to the general public. But in the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, a lot of people put their heads together and developed a shortened version of the trial to develop a vaccine that wouldn’t compromise safety. Also, the people who make the rules (the FDA) agreed to give emergency clearance to allow this shorter time period. This allowed a vaccine to be produced rapidly, yet safely, because that’s what the world needs right now. Out of hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine attempts/trials over the past year, only two have made it to completion as they were shown to be effective and passed rigorous safety testing. 

Secondly, the new COVID-19 vaccine will be the first vaccine ever to use something called “mRNA.” Even though the possibility of an mRNA vaccine has been studied for many years, all other vaccines to date use actual pieces of the virus itself, or possibly a weak version of the virus itself. For example, the flu vaccine is made of dead flu viruses. If you want to read more about how those vaccines work, CLICK HERE. The COVID-19 vaccine, however, will not inject you with any part of the COVID-19 virus itself. Instead, you will be injected with mRNA which teaches your body how to fight off the virus.

What is mRNA and how does an mRNA vaccine work?

mRNA stands for “messenger RNA (ribonucleic acid).” mRNA is something that every cell in your body has naturally. Essentially, mRNA teaches your cells how to make things by reading the instructions from your DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). Imagine you are cooking supper and you ask a friend to read the recipe to you from the cookbook on the shelf. mRNA is the friend. It reads the instructions (recipe) from the DNA (cookbook) that’s in the nucleus (on the shelf) and brings it to the cytoplasm (the kitchen counter) of your cells so that you can build immunity (make the meal).

An mRNA vaccine essentially gives your body the instructions on how to prepare for a fight against the COVID-19 virus, rather than just giving your body a small sample of the virus and saying “figure it out,” like traditional vaccines. It’s like having the actual recipe for a dish versus trying to replicate it from a picture in a magazine. 

Is this vaccine safe? 

As far as we can tell, yes. And by “we” I mean the really smart people who conducted and independently reviewed the vaccine trials and studies. 

Before we get too far, remember that no vaccine (or any medicine) is 100% safe, not even Tylenol or aspirin. But neither is eating food, driving a car, or taking a shower. One limitation of a new vaccine is that millions of people haven’t received it yet. The Pfizer trial, for example, had 43,538 people in the study which means about half of those people actually got the real vaccine instead of a placebo (fake vaccine). In those tens of thousands of people there was no evidence that the vaccine was harmful in any significant way. However, if we’re honest there are likely to be some significant side effects that will be revealed once hundreds of millions of people receive it. Just like if hundreds of millions of people eat a meal, there’s a very good chance some will choke and die; 1 in 2,700 in fact (source).

Consider the flu vaccine, which is considered EXTREMELY safe. Still, sometimes people have serious side effects and die from the flu vaccine. That’s EXTREMELY rare, but it does happen so we have to talk about it. I expand on that in my blog post about vaccines in general.

So is it 100% safe? Probably not. Nothing is. But the vaccine WILL NOT be allowed to be given to people unless it passes a very rigorous review by multiple experts that have a lot of experience in analyzing vaccines and their safety. The people in charge of ensuring the vaccine is safe make up the FDA Advisory Board, and they are meeting over the next few days to closely examine all of the data in order to approve or deny the vaccine. If it helps ease your mind, the people making this decision have nothing to gain financially or otherwise if the vaccine is approved. In fact, they and their families will be getting the vaccine if it’s approved, so they have every reason to be extremely cautious about approving these new vaccines.

Basically, if approved the COVID-19 vaccine will certainly be safer than taking your chances with COVID-19 itself. And even much safer than eating food or driving. So if you drove somewhere and ate lunch today then you already risked your life more than you would by getting the vaccine. 

Speaking of safety, I’m planning on writing another post soon specifically discussing some of the COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories. Stay tuned for that! But in short, no. The vaccine will not alter your DNA, allow the government to track you via microchip, or make you a human antenna for 5G signal. Here it is folks! CLICK HERE to read about some COVID vaccine conspiracy theories!

So the COVID-19 pandemic is basically over, right?

No, we’ve still got a ways to go. I recently heard Dr. Nicholas Christakis on the Joe Rogan podcast say something to the effect of “the vaccine marks more of the ‘end of the beginning’ of the pandemic, not the end of the pandemic itself.” There are still the logistical issues of manufacturing hundreds of millions (if not billions) of doses of the vaccine, transporting them safely in super-cold freezers, and then figuring out who gets the vaccine first, second, third, and so on (which is not particularly as easy to decide as you may think). Those are complex issues that will be difficult to solve. Meanwhile it will still take quite a bit of time for enough people to get the vaccine to cause the number of COVID-19 cases to start decreasing. 

Additionally, the vaccine is only meant to help your body fight off a COVID-19 infection so that you do not get too sick from it, if you develop symptoms at all. But as far as we know currently it does not stop the virus from initially entering your body and infecting you. Therefore, vaccinated people can still be infected and spread the virus to others even though they don’t get sick themselves (or have the disease). The vaccine will reduce the number of people getting sick, but it likely won’t stop the spread of the virus. 

Quick side note: Technically, there is a difference between being infected with a virus and getting the disease that the virus causes. COVID-19 is technically the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So you can be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but not have COVID-19 (the disease). That’s how you can still spread it even though you’re not sick (don’t have the disease). But for simplicity, it’s often all just lumped under the single term, “having COVID-19.” If it’s helpful, another example, although not at all similar, is HIV and AIDS. HIV is the virus that causes AIDS (the disease). You can be HIV positive, but not have AIDs.

Also, we don’t actually know how long the vaccine effectively protects you for yet. But fewer people getting sick with COVID-19 means fewer hospital and doctor visits. And that means more resources for hospitals to take care of sick people. That aspect alone will save lives.

Especially since the COVID-19 virus is not going away anytime soon. It will probably be similar to the flu, a yearly issue. But thankfully, there’s the flu vaccine. And soon, a COVID-19 vaccine.

So what should I do?

For now, keep social distancing and wearing your mask. And when you have the opportunity to get the COVID-19 vaccine, get it. And then continue to social distance and wear a mask in public because that still protects others in your community. Most importantly, don’t let all this pandemic drama get to you. Yes, it sucks. Yes, there are a lot of things that are reasonable to be frustrated about. But also, there are tons of things to be thankful for and tons of reasons to be happy! Seek out those things! I’ll stay out of opinions on what we should and shouldn’t do from an economic and political standpoint since that’s not the point of this blog. But I will warn you of putting too much hope in the vaccines. Will they potentially make an enormous difference for the better? Absolutely! But that will take time.

We’re not out of the woods yet, folks. But if we work together (but not too closely together 😊), we can make it through. And then we can all go back to enjoying mask-free meals at Waffle House!

Learn more, stay humble. 

TL;DR: The COVID-19 vaccine will be the worlds first mRNA vaccine, which means it simply gives your body instructions on how to fight instead of just giving you the virus straight up like other vaccines. It’s safe and will potentially be a game changer for the better, but we’ve still got a ways to go before this pandemic is over. Hang in there!