https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-19-vaccines-pfizer-moderna-side-effects-astrazeneca-204923661.html
COVID-19 vaccines: Will Pfizer and Moderna have side effects like AstraZeneca in the long-term?
The recent decision by five Canadian provinces to change the way they administer the AstraZeneca vaccine should not deter anyone from getting vaccinated, or to regret getting AstraZeneca if they already did, one expert says.
Samantha
Yammine, a neuroscientist and science communicator, says that with more
than a billion vaccines already given out worldwide, it’s highly
unlikely that we’ll see any major, common issues develop with other
vaccines now.
“The comforting thing is that there have been
millions of doses of the mRNA vaccines given out, so at this point it’s
unlikely anything new would come up that would affect a lot of people,”
she said. “If anything new comes up at this point, it would be
astronomically rare.”
While the blood-clotting condition caused by
AstraZeneca is concerning, Yammine says there isn’t a lot of
unpredictability surrounding vaccines, and the benefits of receiving
them far outweighs any potential risks.
“Vaccines
are among the most well-studied medicines. We have got to keep all of
that in mind, and remember how many people have died of COVID-19. We’re
going to see that any place that has had a lot of vaccinations given out
has also seen a significant decrease in their COVID cases. All of that
has to be kept in perspective.”
Why do people doubt COVID-19 vaccines?
A
lot of the hesitancy encompassing vaccines comes from a poor
understanding of how the medicines actually work, Yammine says. And with
over a billion doses administered worldwide, and more than a year’s
time, most of the impacts of the vaccine have already been identified.
“The
vaccines themselves, the product in the vaccines, only stays in your
body for a very short amount of time. So any issue that the vaccine
products themselves could have show up rather quickly. Even in the case
of VITT (vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia), you’re seeing the
effects happen within a month window. So we’ve observed all of the
vaccine related issues that we could because now the vaccines have been
given out for over a year,” she said.
“The immune protection from the vaccines, that’s what’s long-lasting.”
Yammine
also attributes some of the hesitation around vaccines to the way our
brains are wired when it comes to thinking about risks vs. rewards. Most
medicines we take cure us of whatever’s making us sick, or offer some
form of instant pain relief. Vaccines, however, are preventative
medicines, so if they’re working correctly, which they predominantly
are, the reward is that you don’t get sick.
“Vaccines are a victim
of their own success because when they work, nothing happens. And
that’s not that interesting of a news story, and it’s not something
we’ll notice in our day to day. So that’s why people feel weird about
vaccines.”
B.C. and New Brunswick are the latest provinces to
announce they would stop offering first doses of the AstraZeneca
vaccine, following closely on the heels of Alberta, Ontario and Quebec.
The
vaccine has been linked to a blood clot disorder, and though it is
rare, researchers found it affects roughly one in every 26,000 cases to
one in every 127,000.