Experts Break Down Facts vs Fiction of COVID Vaccine
Vaccines for COVID-19 are finally here, but along with hope comes questions. According to health experts, this is understandable. COVID-19 has been a generation-defining event and with so many different platforms of information available, getting the facts can be a challenge.
We spoke with Dr. Charles Ericsson, infectious disease specialist at Harris Health System’s Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital and McGovern Medical School at UTHealth in Houston, and Dr. Matasha Russell, family medicine specialist and chief medical officer of Harris Health’s Ambulatory Care Services, to compile everything you need to know about the COVID-19 vaccines, how they work, why they’re safe, the misconceptions and what to expect going forward in a postvaccine world.
How Does the Vaccine Work?
“The biggest misconception I’ve heard from my patients is thinking the COVID vaccine contains the live virus,” says Dr. Russell. “This is not true.”
“There is no live virus in any of the vaccine platforms,” concurs Dr. Ericsson. “You can’t get COVID-19 from the vaccine.
It’s impossible.”
In actuality, the vaccine contains noninfectious material that directs your cells to make a spike protein which in turn activates your antibodies. If you are exposed to COVID, then your body has an immune response ready to fight it. Concerns that this process somehow affects us on a genetic level are unfounded.
“The vaccine does not mutate our cells or change our DNA,” says Dr. Ericsson. “It’s a piece of RNA code that instructs the cell to produce a protein similar to the one that exists on the envelope of the virus that accounts for its transmissibility.”
How Was the Vaccine Developed So Quickly?
A vaccine is like a set of instructions on how best to solve a problem. By receiving these instructions in advance, we give our bodies a much better chance at solving the problem before it has serious consequences. It takes time to put these instructions together, which is why many people were concerned with the speed of the vaccine’s development. How could something so intricate be put together so quickly and still be safe and effective?
The answer is simple, says Dr. Ericsson. “The science behind the vaccine is based on messenger RNA vaccines that had already been in development. We dumped a ton of resources into shortcircuiting the timeline, not the process.”
Lest we forget, reminds Dr. Russell, this is the first time in modern history that the technological and financial resources of the entire world were put behind a single goal: to develop an effective vaccine.
“The building blocks of vector vaccines have been around since the 1970s,” says Dr. Russell. “While it may seem like it was done quickly, no safety measures were skipped. Rest assured this vaccine is safe.”
What Are Some of the Side Effects of the Vaccine?
“The reason you feel off after being vaccinated is because your body is reacting to the vaccine with an immune response,” says Dr. Ericsson. It’s important to remember symptoms of illness are produced by our own immune systems, not the viruses themselves.
The only serious side-effect to be aware of are the extremely rare cases in which a person has an allergic reaction to the vaccine. Harris Health providers who administer the vaccine are prepared for this very rare possibility and monitor patients after the shot to ensure safety.
Just because you have allergies doesn’t mean you are more likely to have an allergic reaction to the vaccine, notes Dr. Ericsson. There is currently no correlation between having allergies and having an allergic reaction to the COVID vaccine. The only people who need to be concerned, says Dr. Russell, are those who had a severe allergic reaction to the first dose of the vaccine. For these people, the CDC recommends that those persons not get the second dose.
Now that the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine has received authorization, anyone who had severe reaction to one of the mRNA vaccines can receive a dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to help guarantee full protection, Dr. Ericsson says.
How Long Does It Take the Vaccine to Work?
It’s important to remember that just because you’ve been vaccinated, doesn’t mean you can immediately relax public safety measures, Dr. Russell reminds us. “Two weeks after your first shot, you are about 50% protected. You need to wait two weeks after your second shot to be 90-95% protected.” This protection is not necessarily from infection, but from having a severe case of COVID-19 – although both doctors agree the science will eventually show the vaccine vastly reduces infection and transmissibility.
“Even after vaccination, please, still wear a mask, practice social distancing and hand washing until we can get as many people vaccinated as possible as you may still be able to infect others,” Dr. Russell says.
The potential positives of vaccination far outweigh the negatives. Not only because being vaccinated, regardless of which vaccine you receive, astronomically reduces the chance of serious outcomes from the disease, but because being vaccinated also provides a valuable mental health benefit.
When Will Life Get Back to Normal?
Often forgotten in the vaccine debate is the fact that healthcare providers like Dr. Russell and research scientists like Dr. Ericsson have a common goal: to eradicate harmful diseases that affect an individual’s quality of life. They want everyone to receive a COVID-19 vaccine for their health and prosperity.
The more people get vaccinated, the sooner the world reaches herd immunity where a virus becomes endemic to a population, much like the common cold is today. Increased rates of vaccination means the less we’ll need to be concerned about virus variants, and the sooner we can get back to living the life we want to live.
“There’s much to be hopeful about,” says Dr. Ericsson. “If we can all get onboard on this, my prediction is late summer and early fall, we can relax mask restrictions, and get together in group settings.” This will be especially true if you’ve been vaccinated, he says. Life can move toward a new normality. “We can get there and it’s not that far away,” he adds.
Harris Health System is currently offering the COVID-19 vaccine to qualifying existing patients. To learn more, visit harrishealth.org.
For more information about where you can get a COVID-19 vaccine in Harris County or if you have questions about the vaccine in general, visit Harris County Public Health.