Concerns about the safety of the COVID Vaccine: – Current Happenings Across STEM Magazine

Why are people skeptical about taking it?

With the United States and the world starting COVID-19 vaccine distribution, many people have expressed skepticism about the drug’s safety; four in ten Americans say they will not receive the COVID-19 vaccine. As with any vaccine, the safety of this one has been proven in studies and approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but there are still people who do not feel comfortable injecting it. Many factors play into whether or not people believe in the vaccine’s safety, including political views, education, or just people’s worldview.

Many COVID-19 vaccine skeptics COVID-19 vaccines are the same people who do not “believe” in the virus and/or do not wear masks. This shows that for a great portion of the people concerned about the vaccines, they are not mainly concerned with the vaccine itself. Wearing masks and taking the vaccine are both what experts advise. Therefore, this shows that the people just refuse to listen to the experts when it comes to the coronavirus, so the vaccine is just one of the many things they are skeptical about.

However, there are also people who are skeptical about their safety from the perspective of the vaccine’s development time. Typically vaccines take years to develop while the COVID-19 vaccines only took months to develop and receive approval. Also, the RNA platform that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines use had already been in development. But the fact of the matter is that the further advanced technology allowed the vaccines to be produced so quickly. Concurrently, developing a COVID-19 vaccine rapidly was a priority, unlike many other diseases that are not seemingly shutting down the world whose vaccines took much longer to develop.

The way the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines work is that once it is injected, it sends mRNA instructions to one’s cells. The cells then create “spike protein”, the same protein that it on the surface of the COVID-19 virus. Basically, when our immune systems see the “spike proteins” on our cells, they begin to make antibodies, like the one’s our bodies would create naturally with the coronavirus. These antibodies prepare our bodies to protect us against a real COVID-19 infection.

Although the concerns about the long term effects of the vaccines are understandable, they should not get in the way of people taking the vaccine, as they have been approved by the FDA. Even after all of the studies and trials that were done on the vaccines, people still do not want to take the vaccine and “possibly” face negative long-term effects in the future. However, all the necessary trials were done to make sure the vaccines are safe as they were deemed safe and effective by the FDA, so this would be unlikely to happen.Americans are concerned about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccines. Some reasons for this include the short amount of time it took to develop the vaccine, what is inside of them, as well as the long term effects of them. Since all of the proper precautions were taken to make sure the vaccines are safe for injection, people do not have anything to worry about when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines. Not only is trusting the experts important when it comes to the vaccines, but it is essential to listen to them about anything related to the virus.

– Rahdin Salehian

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