I am not here to tell you to get the vaccine or not. Do I think you should? Yes. But what I think doesn’t matter. What does matter is the facts and basing your decision on the right information.
There are plenty of vaccines we don’t have to get, but when it comes to viruses that could cause a worldwide pandemic… everyone who can should jump on that train of prevention. Even with those vaccines, there are options. Some are better than others.
As for me, I don’t know if I got the virus. If I did, I was asymptomatic so I could easily skip the whole vaccine bit and probably be just fine. I am not even a fan of vaccines, but I am a fan of life and those around me, so I chose to get the shot – twice.
Before I continue, let’s make one thing clear. The intention of this blog is to focus on whether or not you should get the vaccine – not if COVID-19 is a hoax or not. 3.8 million people worldwide didn’t get together and kill themselves for a joke. So, let’s make it clear – COVID-19 is a virus that has killed millions of people of worldwide. Not to mention the long-term side effects the virus has to those who have survived it. Ok, time to get schooled.
Quick History of Vaccinations
Vaccinations are scientifically made, but the concept of them has been used for centuries. There is documented evidence of inoculation of smallpox in China, African countries, and the Middle East as far back as 1000 C.E.1
Inoculation is taking a sample of an infectious disease and exposing yourself to it to make yourself “catch it” before you naturally would have. For example, it could involve taking smallpox scabs, grinding them up, and blowing them into the nostrils.
Fast forward through 777 years when the word about inoculation eventually spread through Europe and made its way to America. During this time, smallpox was being used as a weapon in the American Revolution. The British Army was sending infected civilians into the Continental Army camps, killing thousands of troops.
As a result, Commander-in-Chief George Washington, made inoculation mandatory for anyone that hadn’t been infected as a child. Let me repeat that – people were forced to get vaccinated by the man who first ruled the United States before vaccination was even a word. I’ll come back to that later.
Jump ahead to 1796 when English doctor Edward Jenner inoculated a boy with cowpox pus from a milkmaid’s hand also known as Variolae Vaccinae. After hearing milkmaids in England didn’t contract smallpox after being exposed to cowpox, he decided to test that theory and low and behold – it worked!
In case you didn’t make the linguistic connection, take another look at the phrase Variolae Vaccinae – this relates to pox from a cow because “vacca” is the Latin term for cow and that’s no bull. Ha! Ok, moving on.
To sum it up in simple terms, for over 200 years, we have been using the method of putting a strain of a virus into our bodies intentionally while our body is strong enough to fight it.
That is what the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is except it is an adenovirus, not a coronavirus. It does not give you a virus infection; it just gives your body the instructions on how to fight it. It’s like the user’s manual on putting together IKEA furniture. It doesn’t give you the supplies – just tells you how to put them together. How effective the vaccination is against contracting COVID is about the same as understanding those IKEA instructions the first time around– 66.3% in clinical trials.2
The New Vaccine
Ok so take all the history and forget about it for the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines. These vaccines are classified as mRNA vaccines and no, the “m” doesn’t stand for microchip. Again, more on that later.
mRNA stands for messenger ribonucleic acid, which is a natural occurring single-strand molecule that occurs in our body. These little homies are super important to our overall biology. In the most basic of terms, we have DNA, which is like the instruction manual on how to make protein for our body. Protein is responsible for pretty much every function our body does. But guess what? Protein can’t read!
Don’t worry, that’s where mRNA comes in. It translates the instructions and tells the proteins what to do.
Moderna and Pfizer created replicas of mRNA, provided it with a set of instructions to tell our proteins how to fight the Coronavirus spiked proteins, and wrapped in a protected shield to make sure it reaches the protein makers. After your body reads the instructions, it breaks down the mRNA. It’s like Mission Impossible – where every message self-destructs five seconds after you hear it. It doesn’t even talk to your DNA, so you don’t have to worry about it altering your DNA either.
In clinical trials, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines’ rates of effectiveness for preventing COVID are a lot higher than Johnson & Johnson. Pfizer was shown to be 95%3 and Moderna sits at 94.1%.4 However, they do require two shots instead of one and yes, you have to get them both.
Risk vs. Reward
Vaccines are great at controlling major outbreaks of deadly diseases. After time, some diseases can be fully eliminated, such as smallpox. However, a vaccine is still something we put into our body and sometimes our body doesn’t like that too much. There are going to be side effects and all three vaccines come with their own individual effect, which can impact people differently. There are also risks for those who suffer from severe allergies – sorry, that doesn’t include seasonal allergies. I’m not going to list the relevant allergies because you can read them yourself on CDC.gov.
Also, getting vaccinated doesn’t prevent you from getting infected with COVID 100% as mentioned above. However, if you do get it, you now have a weapon against it to prevent it from causing severe infection or hospitalization. It also helps reduce transmission, which is key in stopping a pandemic and avoiding putting other people’s lives at risk. So, before you say, “I don’t need it because I didn’t get that sick” or “I already had it” – cool, lucky you. But over 600,000 people in the U.S. have died as a result of COVID and asymptomatic people have a role in that.
Vaccinating Hypocrisy
COVID-19 has caused a wave of conspiracy theories and hypocrisy that that pains me every time I hear about it. The problem is that COVID-19 wasn’t “scary” enough for the mass population, even with alarming number of deaths and hospitalization. If the disease included the mass killing of children or young adults, or had caused pox outbreaks on the body, disfigured or paralyzed people, or had caused the same type of symptoms for everyone, the vaccine debate wouldn’t even be happening.
When a force of nature causes this much catastrophe and we are sitting here arguing if it was even real, we are mocking the universe. We are asking for something worse to come because we can’t even be grateful for the fact that it wasn’t a replica of smallpox or the Black Death. We are spoiled by the advances of medicine then shun those advances when they actually do something.
So, if an effort to avoid continuation of this exhausting pandemic and the invitation for the next one to be even worse, allow me to clear some things up.
My Body, My Choice
When it comes to getting the vaccine, I’m going to emphasize, it’s not just about you and getting sick. It’s about prevention and not getting other people sick. I’ve seen so many “my body, my choice” posts and as I would love to comment on every single one, I’m going to address that right here.
If someone wants to use that as a reason not to get it, then by all means take your stance, but don’t be a hypocrite about it then. If you’re all about pro-choice then you have to be pro-choice for everything when it comes to the body.
So that must mean you are pro-choice for abortion, right? Because that’s someone’s body and it’s their choice. You can’t care about killing a baby if you don’t care about spreading COVID that can kill potentially a pregnant mother.
You are no different than patient zero of the AIDS pandemic. This man’s doctors though he was spreading the disease and asked him to stop having unprotected sex because it was endangering others. In nutshell, he said, “My body, my choice,” and simply refused. He didn’t even need to get a vaccine, just wrap it up, and still he refused. But hey, his body, his choice, right?
Let me circle back to President Washington from the history above. Yes, it is your body and your choice because you have been given that choice with a moral obligation. It’s not a constitutional right – it’s a choice. In reality, your choice could be taken away if it really came down to national security. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that the government can’t make you get vaccinated. The only “right” you have is to be compassionate and empathetic and that’s what really matters.
Microchip
I am very confused how this has been taken even with a grain of salt, but I’m going to run with it. Some people believe that the vaccination has nothing to do with COVID and instead it is to inject some type of microchip so the government and Bill Gates can track you and your behaviors. Let’s just say this conspiracy theory is right.
Bill Gates and the government funded billions of dollars to develop a microchip to track the world population and thought a vaccine was the best way to deliver it? On top of that, they made it so you had to get two shots instead of one? I would think it would have been smarter to inject that with some serum that makes people look younger or smarter or something. People would hop on that in heartbeat and they could even charge for it instead of giving it away.
Second, people do know that Bill Gates owns Microsoft, right? Like Internet Explorer or Edge? Windows? Do you think any of those don’t already track your information?
News flash, people: if you think you aren’t currently being tracked in some way right now, then you need a wake-up call. Get rid of your cell phone, disconnect from any network including a landline and smart doorbell, close all your bank accounts, cut up all your credit cards, no ordering from any delivery service, get off social media including Snapchat (need a phone for that anyways), and basically never leave your house. Then you can use the microchip as an excuse not to get the shot even though there is not one shred of evidence for it.
There are many other excuses and theories that I could touch on, but what’s the point? The bottom line is there is no reason not to get vaccinated against COVID unless you are allergic to all of the shots. COVID-19 hasn’t stopped fighting to infect. It continues to mutate and the variants are worse than the original.
We have survived as a species due to innovation, so we should appreciate that we no longer live in a time where viruses literally whipped out city populations.We should also be grateful we live in a country that has the means and opportunity to deliver it. Some countries right now can’t even get the vaccine and would probably kill for it.
It’s time to ditch the hypocritical ignorance, ignore the ridiculous conspiracies, and take your body to get vaccinated because you made the compassionate choice.