This is wonderful. Thank you so much!
3 Likes
There are fact checks about those lawsuit claims. Basically, if someone is telling me they heard something on Facebook, I remind them that the top sites Christians are getting their information fed to them from are run by foreign disinformation bot farms. Thatās a bigger concern to me personally than the integrity of Pfizer.
The troll farm pages also combined to form the largest Christian American page on Facebook, 20 times larger than the next largestāreaching 75 million US users monthly, 95% of whom had never followed any of the pages.
6.27 BILLION vaccine shots have been administered worldwide at this point. We have tons of information about risks and side effects, because they have at this point been used on so many people. Itās very disingenuous of people to keep acting like the COVID vaccines are some kind of untested technology and no one really knows how people are going to respond to them.
In the centuries-long history of vaccines there is just no such thing as āside-effectsā that show up years later. If you are going to have a side-effect of a vaccine, you will see it within 6 weeks of getting vaccinated. After that point your body has processed the vaccine and the only thing remaining in your body from it are the antibodies your own body has produced in response. Claims that we just donāt know if people are going to be infertile 10 years from now because they got vaccinated are just made up nonsense and fearmongering that isnāt based in any medical reality about what could actually happen.
4 Likes
Greetings, and welcome! Thank you for your kind approach to discussion.
It was indeed a horrible thing that happened with Tuskegee. However, the majority of doctors and researchers have never had anything to do that. To paint all of medicine with that would be a mistakeāwould that help to tell them that? I am a family practice doc, and I am grateful for the shot, masking, and social distancing.
Here is a video that may help.
Can Black Americans trust the COVID vaccine? - Resources - BioLogos
Blessings. Randy
2 Likes
Thank you again, Christy for your thoughtful and kind response. I am so grateful to have found this community. Almost everyone Iām friends with, coworkers, family, church are all worried about this vaccine essentially killing people years down the line and I feel encouraged by these responses.
5 Likes
What is way more likely are the debilitating effects of having had COVID in the first place, or ālong COVIDā. Already noted above was the study that at least 37% of COVID survivors had long term effects.
The docs here have agreed that the side-effects that some are so fearful of or that they use as an excuse to not get vaccinated or to procrastinate getting vaccinated are really just mild symptoms of what they could get acutely if they actually got sick with COVID. Even the mild myocarditis that has affected a few teenage boys self-resolves within a couple of weeks with no interventions.
Long COVID should be the real concern, including permanent damage to any organ or limb due to the microclots associated with the disease. (That is why it is considered to really be a vascular disease rather than a respiratory one.)
4 Likes
Someone posted somewhere here that it is statistically more likely to be in an accident on the way to get a vaccine than it is to have a bad side effect from it (yes, there are a very few, but we know Who is in charge, and it aināt us 
).
1 Like
Sara, you do bring up a good point, in that this particular virus has a binding protein that mimics a naturally occurring system common throughout the body responsible for blood pressure control and vascular regulation, binding to the ACE2 receptors. I take on a daily basis a drug called an ACE inhibitor for high blood pressure, so I have a special interest in that aspect. There is a bit unknown about the what the long term effects will be, but at least the vaccine is a small dose of just that one protein, whereas an infection with Covid floods the body with it as well as other viral proteins. As mentioned, whatever side effects the vaccine has, the infection has many times over. Here is a link to a good article about spike proteins: Spike Proteins, COVID-19, and Vaccines | Science-Based Medicine
3 Likes
Why is this vaccine different than vaccines in times past and how does the way Covid spreads differ from the flu?
Traditional vaccines use a weakened or dead microorganism, a part of the microrganism, or a toxin the microorganism produces to stimulate the body to make antibodies that will recognize and fight the live version if it encounters it in the future.
Russiaās and Chinaās vaccines use a weakened virus. The J&J and AstroZeneca use coronavirus DNA to get your body to make a protein that triggers your body to make antibodies. The antibodies then recognize that protein on the COVID virus if you are exposed, and the body fights it off. The MRNA vaccines, like Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 use mRNA to get the body to make the protein, and you get the antibodies to fight that protein and same deal if you get exposed to COVID virus. Your body recognizes it and fights it before you get infected.
MRNA vaccine technology had been researched for a number of years but these are the first mRNA vaccines to be produced and tested in large-scale phase III human trials. The mRNA technology allows for faster development and production of vaccines than traditional methods and time was of the essence during the pandemic.
Hereās an interesting article on fhe development of the mRNA technology.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w
3 Likes
A woman I know from my church was in the hospital for three weeks with COVID. She is over the infection and off the ventilator, but she was just sent home on hospice and told that her lungs have been too damaged to live long. She needs a double lung transplant, but the lines for that are now very long. I wonder if she will be counted as a COVID fatality. This is the kind of thing I donāt hear many of those āthe death rates are really lowā folks facing up to. Dying in the hospital while you are fighting the infection is not the only way people die as a result of COVID.
3 Likes
Too true. That is a sorrowful underscore and exclamation point to my note about long COVID and permanent organ damage.
Chrissy, Iām sorry to hear about that. I have never heard of that happening. Is that more common? I know this seems really far fetched but could there be any way that masks cause lung damage? Just Iāve heard so many differing things and Iāve really appreciated all your answers and responses.
Christy* sorry!
2 Likes
I donāt think so. Surgeons wear masks for hours at a time and multiple times in a day, as well as OR nurses, and other occupations wear protective masks for extended periods, to prevent silicosis, for instance, in a variety of jobs. Dentists, dental assistants and hygienists, construction and demolition workers, remediation crews, minersā¦ Iām sure the list goes on considerably longer.
4 Likes
It isnāt common, because needing ICU attention for COVID isnāt common. It is something like 5% of cases that go into severe pneumonia. But scarring of the lungs is a known side effect of severe COVID and you can find multiple web pages dedicated to informing patients about transplant options after COVID. The scarring is caused by the infection of the lung tissue. Even if people insist that masks keep you from getting enough oxygen (they donāt) there is nothing about breathing low oxygen air that would cause scarring in the lungs. Many people who did not need to be hospitalized have scarring of their lungs, but itās not life threatening, it just makes heavy exercise more difficult. Many people heal within 3-12 months.
2 Likes
The main problem with all vaccinations is that you are in danger of dying from old age. It is vaccinations (as well as other modern innovations like clean water) that greatly extended our life expectancy. Did you know that covid took an entire year off our average life expectancy?
4 Likes
Regarding lung damage and masks, I have seen nothing in the way of that being documented, though a rare allergy to components in the mask could, I suppose. I wore a n95 type mask for a while doing Covid testing in a drive through setting, and when it got sopping wet with sweat can testify it was hard to breath through, but still was doable. Dry ones were not a problem. Some have gotten rashes from them, and that is real, but usually those who have to wear them 8 hours a day in health care, not the ones that wear them an hour to the grocery store or Bible study.
4 Likes
Even rashes are typically a kind of contact dermatitis due to bacteria, arenāt they, and not due to the mask directly?
1 Like
Well, rashes can be allergic, irritant, or infectious, either bacterial or fungal. I suspect most are from moisture retention and chafing, giving fungi and bacteria a little foothold. But again, I have heard of those mostly with health care workers wearing tight fitting n95 masks, not the common cloth or disposable masks you loop around your ears for short periods.
3 Likes
Thank you so much! Would you explain the situation in India? If so many are vaccinated then why are their cases rising?