The year global health went local and focuses on the impact of covid 19. Among many important issues, how remarkable it is that a vaccine has already become available and equally how important it is to understand that even on this accelerated timeline safety standards were not compromised. Vaccine hesitancy remain elevated as the vaccine continues to be roll out expected side effects are starting to appear some of the less prevalent but seemingly once receive heavy media coverage and there some concern that scientists and medical professionals haven't communicated enough about this providing context with report of side effects leds less room for information scare tactics to infiltrate the conversation that's the topic of this week's health care.
Side effects are the common occurrence in the world of medicine the reason we do large amount of trials with new medicines like those we did with new covid vaccine is not Only to efficacy determine but also to defect the side effects and determine if they are tolerable overall the side of an approval drug are in most cases . People receiving the vaccine have definitely experienced some this is not surprising. The companies have developing the vaccine have reported as well.
The trail participants experience symptoms including fever, chills, fatigue, headache and muscles and join pain while those symptoms are often mild and expected to pass within couple of days, other reactions have been reported that despite their relatively low level of occurrence have people feeling a bit more alarmed these were of course reported heavily in the media and included like several allergic things and brief facial paralysis called Bell's palsy.
Allergic reaction specially severe can be scary but with proper monitoring they can also be handled very effectively it is important to note that this reactions are not a sign that something is wrong with the vaccine they are simply an overreaction of an immune system to a foreign substances. A reactions that is not unfamiliar to us even in the context outside of medicine several allergic reaction are known to occure in response to natural things.
Around 1 in 10 American report an allergic reaction to penicillin, and between one in 2500 and 5000 experience anaphylaxis which is severe and life threatening allergic reactions. Permanent and severe cases are extremely rare. It affects around 40,000 people in the United each year and has been linked to herpes, chicken pox and shingles , mono, mumps and flu. Importantly, 25-35 per 100,000 people get Bell's palsy in the Us which is more rate more frequent than that reported for covid 19 vaccine trial.
You have also probably also heard of nurse who got his vaccine and then tested positive for about a week later before receiving second shot he did not contract covid from the vaccine which doesn't contain live virus. It show that it takes time for immunity to build up after first dose and we know that Substantial immunity is achieved Only after the second dose.
We also know that these shots are not 100% effective. They are great, but they aren't 100% great. What we don't know is when he contracted covid–it could have been before and after his first shot. Vasovagal syncope occurs when a trigger such as blood, pain, or emotional, distress cause a sudden drop in heart rate and bood pressure that results in faiting . This is more common than you might think, and beyond the risk of a fall injury when fainting it is harmless.
Using data it has found that kaiser family foundation reported in the December that 59 percent of respondents listed concerns about side effects as one of the major reasons they were hesitant to get vaccine. We think better communication would help to mitigate this concern when dramatic side effects are not discussed in context it's reasonable to expect that people will get scared it's also unfortunately expected that some people will take advantage of that fear to stock vaccine hesitancy and futher spread misconception.
If we were more explicit about how this reactions compared to other allergic reactions we encounter in the US every year, that context could help people make more relational judgment if we encounter stories about severe side effects. If we talked to people about their risk for allergic reactions and how to approch the vaccine if they've had issue in past, and talked to them about how to weigh the risk of vaccination with the risk of vaccine disease, they might feel suffer.
Making vaccine available to many people as possible is critical to goal and is important for global health. The past year A global event has been reflected locally in ways most of us never experienced before and Ofcourse large scale equitable distribution of the vaccine will be critical it's also something we knew would be difficult. Fortunately many are hard to work to achieve this including the gates Foundation as detailed in their letter they have been working with partners on developing and manufacturing vaccines simultaneously rather than sequentially and sequentially and are working with both manufacturers and partners to deliver the vaccine cheaply and widely as written by gates " Covid 19 anywhere is thread to everywhere".
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