WHEN the COVID-19 pandemic hit us and there was no available vaccine yet, everyone was…”when will they develop the vaccines?”
It seems everyone was in a mad rush to be vaccinated, and when the vaccines were finally developed – about seven brands developed by different pharmaceutical companies from several countries – the next question was when it will be available in the Philippines.
Now, the vaccines are coming in and the government has started the vaccination program nationwide, it would follow that everyone should be happy. But no. Some idiots tainted it with politics, racism and stupidity. As expected, the Filipino with a damaged and perverted psyche took it all in.
These folks now want to have a choice of which brand of vaccine they want not based on science but what’s trendy on social media. What do these fools think? The vaccines are some kind of designer brand i.e., “I’d much rather prefer Gucci over Yves Saint Laurent?”
Take note folks, based on science these vaccines are basically the same and only differ in some degree, and all serve the same purpose which is to protect you from dying of COVID-19 infection.
The best vaccine is the one that’s available…the risk in not getting vaccinated are far greater than the risk in getting vaccinated.
When you get bitten by a dog, do you act like some kind of primadonna and choose which anti-rabies you want to be vaccinated with? Definitely you don’t because any brand will do, because your life depends on getting your anti-rabies shots. The same goes with COVID-19.
In First World countries and the rest of the world, people don’t make a fuss about which brand of COVID-19 vaccine to be vaccinated with because the best vaccine is the one that is available while in the Philippines some people, particularly politicians, are choosy which vaccine to be vaccinated not for scientific reasons but politics, racism and stupidity.
Meanwhile here’s some good news still on vaccination:
Excerpts from a January 2021 article on www.gavi.org/vaccineswork;
Globally, COVID-19 VACCINE rollouts have gone about as well as efforts to get the pandemic under control in the first place. Some countries, like Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Bahrain, have managed to give significant portions of their populations the shots they need, others, like the US and Canada, have not.
Delays in vaccinations are partially the result of vaccine supply shortages, and partially the result of fragmented, underfunded healthcare systems lacking in federal support. People who have received one shot may have to wait much longer than the recommended three or four weeks to get their second dose.
Fortunately, these delays don’t necessarily spell disaster. “It’s really not a problem,” says David Topham, a microbiologist and immunologist at the University of Rochester in New York.
In the Pfizer-BioNTech clinical trials, participants received their shots 21 days apart; Moderna participants received theirs 28 days apart. When the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted these vaccines emergency use authorization, it did so prescribing those exact intervals for each, since that’s what they had data for.
The FDA has since acknowledged that spacing doses a little farther apart may not hurt. And on Jan. 21, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it’s okay to receive a second vaccine dose as many as four days early, or 42 days after the first dose. Neither agency has much data on what extra time between shots does to the vaccines’ effectiveness, but the CDC considers it a “permissible risk.” What is important is that both doses come from the same manufacturer.
And to answer your question why do most vaccines have 2 doses;
All of the COVID-19 vaccines on the market right now require two doses. This is because the first time immune cells encounter a potential threat, they need a few weeks to rev up their defensive engines and get their antibodies in gear. That’s why the first dose of the vaccine is called a priming dose: It’s like an immunological meet-and-greet. By the time of the second shot, the “boosting dose,” immune cells are already familiar with the general idea of the threat; they just need to fine-tune their antibody response to promote even stronger protection.
Cells that make antibodies, called B-cells, are doing most of their heavy lifting between doses. If B-cells don’t have enough time in between the first dose of a vaccine and the second dose, the antibody protection they generate won’t be as strong. (It’s also possible to be exposed to the actual virus, get the vaccine, and then become sick a few days later, once the virus had time to incubate—which is why it’s crucial to stay vigilant about mask-wearing, hand-washing, and social distancing.)
It does remain vitally important to get the second dose of the vaccine within six weeks. Although the first dose generates some protection, the second doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Sputnik vaccines have been shown to stop more than nine out of 10 COVID-19 cases (Sputnik is only being used in Russia, Argentina, and Belarus). After two shots, the AstraZeneca and Sinopharm vaccines stop more than seven out of 10 COVID-19 cases.
At the end of the day, it is your right to refuse to be vaccinated but you have no right to get yourself infected with COVID-19 and infect others. (brotherlouie16@gmail.com)/PN)
