COVID-19 Vaccine: Worthy or Risky?

                 

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                Our world is becoming scarier and scarier as the pandemic continues to threaten the well-being of the people. India for instance was struck by a surge of increased coronavirus case. This condition that they are in is one of the worst the country has ever experienced, as a result, the public has entered into chaos as hospitals ran out of medical supplies to tend the infected. This only shows how the vaccines are extremely important to be able to protect us from the virus and simultaneously keeping it from becoming more dangerous.

           

(Reuters photo)

            What really is a COVID vaccine if you’re wondering, it is a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease such as the COVID-19, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose. Although being vaccinated has its benefits, side effects are inevitable things, this specific thing is what keeps other people from taking those vaccines, they are more concerned on the negative effects it might bring rather than the positive one. It might seem counterintuitive, but side effects are signs that vaccines are actually doing its job. As stated by Dr. Susan R. Bailey, an allergist, immunologist and president of the American Medical Association, side effects develop because your immune system is reacting to the vaccine. People may start to develop fever, fatigue, headache and soreness around the injection area 12 to 24 hours after vaccination. Because side effects can be a sign of a robust immune system training to detect and destroy the virus, younger people may be more likely to have stronger side effects than the elderly. And, in vaccines that require two shots, such as the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, side effects may also be worse after the second shot than the first one, because our body recognize the previous protein from the first shot, as a result, our body unleashes a strong immune response to it.

            

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               But some serious side effects are tied also to the vaccine. In very rare instances, people may develop anaphylaxis — a life-threatening but easily treatable allergic reaction — to the COVID-19 vaccines. For example, anaphylaxis occurs in just 2.5 per 1 million shots for the Moderna vaccine, according to a January study in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention journal Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. But these circumstances are very unlikely to happen.

            In the near future, people might want to take these vaccines as they have no choice, because taking chances with the virus is much riskier than getting injected. So, set aside your concerns and worries. To be able for us to have a higher chance of recovering from the pandemic much earlier, we have to make a choice.

References:

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/imz-basics.htm#:~:text=Vaccine%3A%20A%20product%20that%20stimulates,or%20sprayed%20into%20the%20nose.

https://www.livescience.com/what-causes-covid-19-vaccine-side-effects.html