If you wait to get vaccinated you run this risk, says Dr Fauci

An expert panel from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended approval of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on Friday, February 26, which means there will soon be three highly effective vaccines available in the United States to fight COVID. And while the White House COVID adviser Anthony Fauci, MD, said it was “nothing but good news,” he warns having these vaccines at hand are simply not enough. We will now have to put those doses in the arms at a rapid rate, otherwise run the risk of creating more mutations in the meantime. Read on to find out how this could present serious challenges to our containment efforts, and for another reason to get vaccinated ASAP, the CDC says you don’t have to do this again once you’re vaccinated.

As skeptics bristled at the rapid pace of COVID vaccine development, Fauci cautioned in a recent interview with Savannah Guthrie this reluctance to vaccinate could have disastrous consequences. “It’s a race, Savannah, between the virus and vaccinating humans,” Fauci explained. “The longer you wait to be vaccinated, the more likely the virus is to obtain a variant or a mutation,” he added.

Already, the viral variants from the UK and South Africa have been shown to be more contagious than the original virus and potentially more deadly. This week, two local varieties from California and New York sounded the alarm bells in the research community.

Yet despite the continued spread of the virus and the vaccine’s anticipated efficacy above, many Americans say they would prefer to delay their injections. According to a Pew Research poll from January 2021, only 47% of the adult American population intend to get the vaccine as soon as it becomes available. The remaining 53% plan to either “wait and see” how the vaccine works first (31%), get it only if needed (7%), or refuse the vaccine completely (13%).

However, these attitudes may soon change. In one of the largest public health education efforts in U.S. history, more than 300 businesses, community groups and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced a large joint advertising campaign aimed at to reassure the public about vaccines. safety and efficiency. Experts believe that a broader understanding of vaccines will allow us to quickly return to normal—before additional variants have the possibility of finding their place. Read on for more essential information on COVID vaccines and for an incentive to get vaccinated that will make you smile, Dr Fauci says it’s safe for you to do this once you’re vaccinated.

While it’s fair to have questions about the long-term safety of COVID vaccines, it’s important to note that they use technology that has been studied for more than two decades for use against other infectious diseases and cancers.

According to Ellen matloff, MS, founder of the Cancer Genetic Counseling Program at Yale University and CEO of My Gene Counsel, using this relatively new technology has several advantages. “Since mRNA vaccines do not use live virus, there is no potential risk of being infected with the disease,” she explained in a December article for Forbes. “Another advantage of mRNA vaccines is efficacy. MRNA is efficient and can be absorbed and used quickly by the body. Finally, mRNA vaccines are faster and easier to produce than traditional vaccines because they are produced in the laboratory rather than in an egg or other mammalian cell. Therefore, the production of mRNA vaccines can be controlled more tightly, and is cheaper and faster to produce in large quantities, ”she added. And for the latest COVID news straight to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter.

As Fauci points out, side effects from the COVID vaccine tend to be mild to moderate and only last 24 to 48 hours, if they occur. You might expect to experience injection site pain, body aches, chills, or other flu-like symptoms, but none of these symptoms are likely to cause you severe distress.

From his own vaccination experience, Fauci told CNN Dana bash, “The only thing I had was maybe six to ten hours after the vaccine, I felt a little pain in my arm that lasted maybe 24 hours, a little more, then I left, and Other than that, I haven’t experienced any other kinds of deleterious effects. ”And for the latest vaccine news from Pfizer’s CEO, here’s how often you’ll need a COVID vaccine.

Deciding whether or not to receive a COVID vaccine may seem like a personal choice – and of course to some extent it is true – but that doesn’t mean your decision exists in a vacuum. Beyond Fauci’s broader concerns about delayed vaccinations causing other mutations, other experts have suggested those mutations could start to have more serious consequences for children.

While pediatric cases of COVID are more likely to be mild or asymptomatic than those affecting adults, there have been hundreds of tragic deaths among children since the start of the pandemic. In addition, “more than 2,000 children and adolescents have developed severe inflammatory syndrome which can cause serious illness and damage organs,” according to the newspaper Science. Vaccines are unlikely to be approved for young children until 2022 (Moderna, for example, hopes to have efficacy results in children ages 12 to 17 by mid-2021, and will begin trials for children aged six months to 11 years at the end of the year). Until then, it is essential to keep our overall numbers low.

Fauci said we achieve herd immunity – the point at which enough people are immune to COVID and cases find it difficult to spread in the community – once 75 to 85 percent of the population is either vaccinated , or recovered from COVID-19. Once we achieve herd immunity, “even unvaccinated individuals (such as newborns and those with chronic illnesses) are offered some protection as the disease is unlikely to spread within the herd. the community, ”says the CDC.

However, according to a 2010 census, children make up 24% of the U.S. population and are currently largely ineligible for the vaccine (the Moderna vaccine is approved for those 16 and older, while Pfizer is only available for adults). This means that we will have to work quickly to vaccinate all eligible adults, otherwise we risk missing our window before new variants take hold. And when you’re ready to make your vaccination plans, the CDC says not to do it with the second dose of your COVID vaccine.