Answering Your Concerns About the COVID-19 Vaccine Development Process

Vincent Iannelli, MD

6 years ago

Are you surprised that some health care professionals, including many nurses, are a bit hesitant about getting their COVID-19 vaccine?

Where do you get information about COVID-19 vaccines?

Maybe you shouldn’t be…

Answering Your Concerns About the COVID-19 Vaccine Development Process

When the American Nurses Foundation surveyed nurses, they found that many had concerns, which is perhaps not unexpected considering where they had been getting their information.

Concerns about the COVID-19 vaccine development process that some health care workers have.

Fortunately, experts have already answered all of these concerns, which will hopefully help nurses and other health care professionals both feel more comfortable talking to their patients about getting vaccinated and making the right choice to get vaccinated and protected.

I got vaccinated as soon as I was able to find a dose. And I have had no side effects!

That’s why most healthcare professionals, who are fortunate to be first in line to get vaccinated and protected, are not skipping their chance.

And why everyone can be assured that:

COVID-19 vaccine development occurred quickly, but safely. How did things go so quick? For one thing, researchers had a head start because of their work on SARS and MERS. They were also planning for the next pandemic and knew a vaccine would be necessary, so many of the building blocks for creating these vaccines were in place. And they started manufacturing the vaccines even before the vaccines were approved. That they had a lot of money to spend to get this done quickly certainly helped too!
The COVID-19 clinical trial process was very complete (the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was given to around 43,500 people and the Moderna vaccine to around 30,000 people), but in many cases, things happened at the same time instead of waiting for other things to finish (overlapping trials), which helped speed up the process. Continued surges also helped with testing the vaccines, as it would have taken much longer to show the vaccines were effective if there had been fewer cases (a better scenario though, as then we would not have needed the vaccines as urgently). And the simple fact that there were very few problems during the clinical trials helped to speed them along.
The COVID-19 vaccine approval process has also been very thorough, with several vaccines gaining approval in the UK, the EU, Israel, Canada, and the United States after very careful review by a variety of experts. It happened quickly because agencies like the FDA didn’t get all of the clinical trial data and other information all at once when the trials were completed, but instead got rolling updates throughout the process.
Information about COVID-19 vaccine development is available from many different trusted sources (see the links at the end of the article).
Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Doctrine, and Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on Pro-Life Activities have said that, given the urgency of the crisis, “the lack of available alternative vaccines, and the fact that the connection between an abortion that occurred decades ago and receiving a vaccine produced today is remote, inoculation with the new COVID-19 vaccines in these circumstances can be morally justified”, which hopefully helps with any religious reservations you might have about these vaccinations.

Still, shouldn’t we wait a few more years to really make sure these vaccines are really safe and effective?

“Regulatory experts convened by WHO from around the world and WHO’s own teams reviewed the data on the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine’s safety, efficacy and quality as part of a risk-versus-benefit analysis. The review found that the vaccine met the must-have criteria for safety and efficacy set out by WHO, and that the benefits of using the vaccine to address COVID-19 offset potential risks.”
WHO issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine and emphasizes need for equitable global access

Considering that over 2,000 people are dying in the US alone each and every day with COVID-19, do you really want to wait a single day longer to end this pandemic?

Anyway, long-term problems are extremely rare with vaccines.

Still concerned because some COVID-19 vaccines use mRNA technology?

While mRNA vaccines are relatively new, they have been studied for over 20 years and have been studied in other vaccines, including therapeutic cancer vaccines and vaccines for flu, rabies, and Zika. The mRNA in the COVID-19 vaccines is simply an instruction for the COVID-19 spike protein. It is destroyed by our body in a few days once we start making these proteins, and we then start to make antibodies against the spike proteins, even though we were never actually infected with the COVID-19 virus. And no, the mRNA in the COVID-19 can’t change your DNA or do anything else that you might be worried about…

If you aren’t convinced, think about how the COVID-19 virus replicates inside your body.

Like other viruses, “COVID-19 hijacks the machinery of human cells to perpetuate itself.”

“To infect us, the SARS-CoV-2 virus gets its genetic material into our cells and then co-opts our own proteins, reassigning them to the task of making millions of copies of itself.”
Unveiling How Coronavirus Hijacks Our Cells to Help Rush New Drugs to Patients

And when it does that, the mRNA in the COVID-19 virus doesn’t change our DNA, does it? (It doesn’t!)

The bottom line is that thousands of people are dying each day (2,321 new deaths on January 2) in the United States alone, and these COVID-19 vaccines are our best shot at ending the pandemic.

“…during the first three months of the pandemic patient facing healthcare workers were three times more likely to be admitted with covid-19 than non-patient facing healthcare workers. Risk was doubled among household members of front facing workers, in analyses adjusted for sex, age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and comorbidity.”
Covid-19: risks to healthcare workers and their families

Why wait to take your shot when COVID-19 vaccines are safe, with few risks, and are very effective? Why wait when most healthcare workers are at increased risk to get sick, can put others in their household at increased risk, and are fortunate enough to be at the front of the line to get vaccinated and protected?

Answering Your Concerns About the COVID-19 Vaccine Development Process

More on the COVID-19 Vaccine Development Process

Share this: