Local doctor educates others about vaccines through videos
After receiving several questions from his patients about the COVID-19 vaccines, Dr. Shawn Purifoy, of Malvern Family Medical Clinic, decided to make three videos and post them on his Facebook page to educate others about the vaccine.
Wearing a baseball hat and T-shirt, Purifoy, in the videos, discusses points such as general information about vaccines and viruses, how the new COVID-19 vaccines are different that vaccines of the past and how the vaccine was created so quickly.
He explains that usually for vaccines, people are injected with the dead virus. Their bodies then create antibodies to destroy the foreign bodies and remembers what the virus looks likes.
“Later during flu season when you breathe in the actual flu virus, before it gets a chance to really start taking off and infecting all your cells, your immune system sees it, shoots the bullet antibodies at it and kills the virus,” Purifoy said while explaining how vaccines help people not to get sick or spread viruses to other people.
The COVID-19 vaccines are slightly different and use a new technology. Instead of using the full virus in the vaccine, Messenger RNA is being used and people’s bodies can still create antibodies to kill the virus.
“With this new vaccine, you can’t get COVID-19 … you couldn’t get it if you wanted to. It doesn’t work that way,” he said.
He added that the downside of the vaccines is that they have been stored at extremely cold temperatures.
In this videos, he said vaccines usually take years to create because they are financially risky to create.
“In this case what the government has done is they have picked a few of these companies that had promising early results and they have made a deal with them,” he said. “The financial worry about is this going to be a good return on our investment isn’t there.”
He explained that the drug companies are not cutting corners with the phased tested but instead stacking those phases.
He ended the videos by explaining why the vaccines are so important noting that they protect the person who received it, as well as others.
“That’s how we put an end to the pandemic,” he said. “This is a community effort. Sure you get the protection as the individual, but you are really helping your neighbor and their mother and someone’s grandmother or someone’s newborn that might be that one baby that has a bad outcome…I hope that we can look back on this time in our history, some time in the future, look back and say this was the turning point… and we took back our lives, we took back our economies, we took back our togetherness. That’s what we need right now.”
All in all, he encourages people to be vaccination but also to do their own research.
The videos have been viewed more than 10,000 times each and Purifoy said he has received lots of positive feedback even from people across the country. He said he has received comments from people in areas such as California, Minnesota and Maryland who said they appreciated the posts.
Purifoy said he noticed his private discussions about the vaccines with his patients seemed to alleviate their worry,
and so he hoped the video would do the same for others. He mentioned that he felt that talking with people face-to-face in the video would be more beneficial than sharing information that people could read.
People are wanting to learn more about the vaccines and the more people are educated the better, he said.
Purifoy said he has received the first dose of the vaccine and other than his arm being sore for a day or so, he did not have any side effects.
Purifoy, who is a Malvern native, has worked as a doctor in his hometown for more than 20 years. He worked with Dr. Larry Brashears beginning in 1997 before opening his own practice in 2006.
In his clinic he cares for a variety of patients from newborns to individuals who are over 100 years old, he said.
Along with being available on Purifoy’s Facebook page, the videos have also been shared on the
Malvern Daily Record Facebook page.