COVID-19 Vaccine Debates Continue

With the continued fear of the Covid-19 virus, now with another variant making landfall, people are starting to wonder if to truly be free of the virus that the government must mandate vaccines. Some people are willing while others aren’t. The world is very divided and unsure of the future due to the never-ending crisis that is Covid-19.

The vaccine is now authorized for 5 years old and up. Though the Covid-19 vaccine in new, vaccines in general are not. A vaccine gives you immunity to a disease without giving it to you first. Scientists use a weaker version of the germ to prevent it. These vaccinations work because of biotechnology and chemistry (“How Vaccines Work” ).

Vaccines work because they “train the immune system to recognize and fight disease”.  When the body recognizes this foreign object in our body our natural defenses help build an immunity to the disease before we’re actually exposed to the disease (“How Vaccines Work”).

Mrna vaccines which is what Moderna and Pfizer are is made with new technology with the covid 19 vaccines being the first of its type. Much of what has actually been learned about Mrna vaccines has come from work with cancer. Though the technology is promising, “Because mRNA vaccines are only now beginning to be tested in humans, there are a lot of fairly basic unknowns which can only be answered through human trials” which in the past has typically taken years to a decade (Roberts).

One of the main reasons people disagree over mandating the vaccine is because it’s so new and they feel there hasn’t been enough time to gather enough data. Some are still hesitating because they want more time to know the long term effects.  Mandating of the vaccines could have a variety of impacts on people’s lives. If it were mandated, the hope is it would improve not only the health of the people getting the vaccine but also help protect those who can’t.  But others feel that they lost their ability to choose for themselves and their health choices should be their choice. With some places across the country mandating the vaccine some are having to give up their jobs in order to stand by their believe to not get vaccinated at this time or ever.

Yet for decades people have been taking vaccines but haven’t really known a whole lot about the science behind creating them. This practice of creating vaccines goes back over a century ago. Many Buddhist monks drank the venom a snake produces to build up immunity to a variation that was practiced around the 17th century in many parts of China. However, Edward Jenner is considered the founding father of vaccinology in 1796. He had infected a 13 year old boy with the vaccinia virus (cowpox) and this effort demonstrated the immunity to smallpox. In 1798 the first smallpox vaccine was developed and over the 18th and 19th centuries the immunization culminated up until its global eradication in 1979 (“A Brief History of Immunisations”).

Whether now is the time or not to mandate covid-19 vaccines is a debate that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. With the use of new technologies though, it does leave the question of whether it will change the approval process and the outlook of future vaccines.

Sources:

“A Brief History of Vaccination.” The Immunisation Advisory Centre. Koda Web. 2017. Web Accessed 19 November 2021.

“How Vaccines Work”. Public Health. Publichealth.org 2021. Web Accessed 19 November 2021.

Roberts, Joanna. “5 Things You Need to Know about: Mrna Vaccines.” Horizon: The EU Research & Innovation Magazine. European Commission. 01 April 2020. Web Accessed 9 December 2021.