Skepticisms about vaccines have existed since Edward Jenner first immunized an 8-year-old boy against smallpox in 1796.
According to Wayne C. Koff, president and CEO of the Human Vaccines Project and adjunct professor, in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, unprecedented collaborative efforts in vaccine development have culminated in multiple vaccines testing in advanced clinical trials all in less than one year since global leaders understood we were in the midst of a global pandemic. One is now being given to health care workers, and another will soon follow.
As the first Covid-19 vaccines are being distributed in Ghana and other countries around the world, the main question now on many minds is, “Are these vaccines safe?”
The answer is yes, says Wayne C. Koff, president and CEO of the Human Vaccines Project and adjunct professor, in the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
He says vaccines are one of the great modern triumphs of public health. “They have helped add several decades to human life expectancy and are one of the best tools for preventing disease, debilitation, and death. Immunizations with childhood vaccines prevent 2 to 3 million deaths every year. They are also one of the most thoroughly tested and safest products in history.”
Comparing the Covid-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson
“We know from recently completed clinical trials of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for Covid-19 that serious reactions are rare.
And as these vaccines are deployed to millions, we will gain even greater confidence in their safety and effectiveness via post-marketing studies”.
“However, it’s important to be clear about what “safe” means. No vaccine — indeed, no medical treatment — is completely free from side effects.
And it is the responsibility of medical professionals to be honest about them so people are prepared and more likely to trust the science”.
“The reasons vary from religious beliefs to centuries of medical exploitation inflicted on communities of color and to rampant misinformation on social media. On top of these, Covid-19 vaccines are being developed, tested, and approved at record speed.”
“Before a vaccine is approved for use by the general public, it must go through a careful process in which it is tested in tens of thousands of volunteers. This system is set up to catch all but the rarest of side effects. Even after a vaccine is licensed, it is subject to stringent safety assessments to detect problems that arise when a vaccine is given to millions of people.”
“All of that complicates the ability of public health leaders to communicate that side effects and adverse reactions to the vaccine are normal, especially when such reactions become headlines, are amplified on social media, and become fodder for conspiracy theories.”
“In 2009, for example, the H1N1 vaccine, also known as the swine flu vaccine, was associated with an extremely small risk of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that causes nerve damage.
Researchers calculated that there were 1.6 extra cases of this syndrome among every 1 million people vaccinated. At the time, the CDC made clear communication a priority, holding near-daily briefings about the country’s vaccination campaign as a way to ease public concerns about the vaccine’s safety.
The U.S. had learned its lesson the hard way: In 1976, an overwrought response to a small, contained swine flu outbreak led to many false stories about the side effects of a then newly developed swine flu vaccine.”
“In other cases, experts have determined that the risks of a particular vaccine were too costly to bear. Take RotaShield, the first vaccine developed to prevent rotavirus, a serious gastrointestinal disease in children.
The vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1998. A year later, an investigation showed that the vaccine increased the risk of a rare intestinal obstruction by one to two cases per 10,000 infants vaccinated. Vaccinations were halted, and the manufacturer pulled the vaccine from the market.”
“This experience demonstrates the rigor of America’s vaccine safety and oversight processes and how quickly authorities act if there is a problem. Second-generation rotavirus vaccines were later licensed and deployed, and post-marketing safety evaluations found no increases in risk of intestinal obstruction.”
“To be sure, experiencing any adverse effect or developing a disease from a vaccine — something that is supposed to prevent disease — can be devastating for individuals and families and should never be taken lightly, even amid a global pandemic.
But the overwhelming benefits of vaccines to individuals and society significantly outweigh the risks for adverse reactions.”
“Thanks to vaccines that make it through the stringent system of testing and approval, infectious diseases that once affected hundreds of thousands of people per year in the U.S. are now exceedingly rare or, in cases, like smallpox, polio, and rubella, are fully eradicated.
The downside is that, once a disease is kept at bay by vaccination, we tend to let our guard down and lose sight of how critical vaccines are to keeping them that way.”
CONSPIRACY THEORIES ON COVAX
Vaccine-hesitant groups are peddling misinformation and conspiracy theories aimed at eroding trust in the COVID-19 vaccine and the public health systems that are disseminating them.
In the latest attempts to undermine the vaccination rollout, activists are exploiting the deaths of those who died of old age or underlying health conditions after receiving the shot.
In some instances, vaccine-hesitant activists are manufacturing stories of deaths related to the vaccine that never happened.
These groups are also latching onto reports of real deaths following the shot, blaming the vaccine and disregarding medical information that other causes are to blame.
By Kwabena Adu Koranteng, financial and Economic Journalists with the New Crusading Guide Newspaper
