I am not an expert in vaccinations, nor am I am expert in medicine. But I know many of you look to me for answers regarding your health and wellness. This is my own personal story and I wanted to share why I chose to take the Covid19 vaccination and received my first dose on Friday, January 8th. I did a lot of research before choosing to be vaccinated. As a science person, I went to sources like UPMC, scientific journals, the CDC and spoke with my medical expert friends. What I found out was that the technology behind the mRNA vaccine has been out for 30+ years. Yes, that’s right, more than 3 decades. The difference being it hasn’t been used on a large scale operation like Covid19. (We haven’t had a pandemic in my lifetime until now thank goodness.) Vaccines are created to get your own body to respond when it encounters an antigen. Did you know that measels and mumps are also highly contagious viruses and we developed technology (vaccines) to nearly eradicate them? So if you get a vaccine, (which are never 100% effective) , it creates an immune response in your body. Did you know that the MMR vaccine is only 97% effective and look what it has done to those diseases. This immune response helps to recognize, fight and get rid of any antigen that doesn’t belong in your body. The faster your immune system can respond, the less likely you are to become ill from the antigen. This information about the Covid19 vaccine is directly from the cdc.gov website: “mRNA vaccines contain material from the virus that causes COVID-19 that gives our cells instructions for how to make a harmless protein that is unique to the virus. After our cells make copies of the protein, they destroy the genetic material from the vaccine. Our bodies recognize that the protein should not be there and build T-lymphocytes and B-lymphocytes that will remember how to fight the virus that causes COVID-19 if we are infected in the future.”
It is truly fascinating to me that we have the technology to do these things. And the coolest thing that I find incredible is that the whole world has been working on this problem. Scientists and doctors from all over the globe have been working non-stop to create these vaccines. This is why the vaccine was faster than most because we have a collective group of people working on the exact same problem. Vaccine technology has been around for many years, so scientists can use that already existing information to help with new diseases like Covid19.
I chose to be vaccinated because I believe in science. I have seen it work over and over again in my lifetime, for example the vaccinations we receive as children giving us in some cases lifetime immunity against diseases that would otherwise be devastating. I chose to be vaccinated to protect other people that may not be able to get the vaccine. I chose to be vaccinated for my family and friends, so that I can help to protect them now and hopefully in the future. Again, I am not an expert, but I am happy to discuss with anyone the reasons why I chose to be vaccinated.