December 4, 2020, 7:09 am
With a vaccine for COVID-19 likely beginning to roll out for those most in need soon, leaders are now faced with a new challenge: getting people to actually take it.
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Some Americans are hesitant to take a vaccine developed under the Trump administration’s rushed insistence, at least right away, while others throughout the world are hardcore anti-vaxxers who think COVID is just some sort of ploy to force vaccines on people. Unfortunately, the latter has sparked some fear among those they expose to their misinformation and conspiracy theories, so one doctor is going out of his way to set the record straight.
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Dr. Ben Janaway shared a video to Twitter earlier this week in which he shoots down inaccurate myths about the COVID vaccine in under a minute.
First, he takes aim at the idea that getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is the same as getting COVID itself, and could make you sick with the virus.
“Vaccines are made of an inert or dead form of a virus, inserted into the body so the body’s white cells, i.e. its immune system, can develop a natural immune response, so when encountering the wild-type version of the virus, it breaks it down without any systems,” Dr. Janaway says. “This breaks the chain of infection and reduces deaths by millions, in fact.”
Another major anti-vaxxer myth that somehow still persists is that vaccines cause autism. The CDC has refuted this claim in a section on its website, linking to various studies, but it’s one of those things that anti-vaxxers have been touting as fact for so long that Dr. Janaway still felt the need to touch on it.
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From there, he jumps to misinformation that had likely spread from reports that tissue from an aborted fetus had been used to develop the vaccine. The science behind vaccines is complex, but we won’t be putting any part of a dead baby in our own bodies when we get the COVID-19 vaccine.
“There are no babies, bits of dead babies, or bits of anything else in the vaccine that is going to harm you. This is all myth,” Dr. Janaway states.
“The actual risks of vaccines are that there is a risk of anaphylactic reaction, which is vanishingly low, and a risk of allergic reaction to foodstuffs that can be used — and they will ask before they give it, risk of local tissue damage — well, it is putting a needle inside somebody, and a small risk of more kind of general tissue damage,” he explains.
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Dr. Janaway also added that it’s possible for a person to experience some symptoms following vaccination, but that’s the body’s immune reaction, not a sign that you’ve actually been infected with COVID.
“Overall, vaccines save millions of lives and the myths cost millions of lives,” he concludes.
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Of course, it seems unlikely that any amount of reassurance from professionals will convince the most hardcore anti-vaxxers that the COVID vaccine is safe, but squashing misinformation should be beneficial for those who’ve just seen too many conspiracy theory posts on Facebook. And most of us will have to wait a few months while the vaccine goes out to those most in need before the general population can even come near it, so there will be time to see how it’s working.
But we already know COVID is pretty terrible — even if you don’t have to be hospitalized for it — and finding a way to stop the spread is the only way we’re ever going to get back to some version of life as we knew it before 2020 reared its ugly head.
*First Published: December 4, 2020, 7:09 am
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