Why Should You Get Vaccinated For COVID-19?

Have you been vaccinated for COVID-19 yet? Coronavirus vaccinations help reduce the spread and severity of COVID, yet many people refuse to get vaccinated due to political, religious, or careful reasons. Keeping these these obligations, should you get vaccinated regardless?

About The Vaccines

Over the course of this year (and late 2020), many vaccines have emerged for the deadly disease, COVID-19. However, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and J&J’s vaccines seem to rise to the top of effective and supplied vaccines. Lets take a dive into what they’re about before we find out why we should be vaccinated.

Pfizer vaccines, proven to be 95% effective at preventing the COVID-19 disease, after a year of clinical trials, has made its way to local clinics, recently getting FDA approval for ages 12 and up. This two-dose vaccine is a German-United States collaboration, from two companies: Pfizer and BioNTech.

Moderna is an mRNA vaccine, a vaccine type that doesn’t affect our DNA in any way, but teach our memory cells immunity against a disease without actually injecting a mini-disease into your body, which is approved for ages 18 and up. This 94% effective vaccine was approved by the FDA a day after Pfizer-BioNTech and is one of the leading vaccines right now.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine has gone through many hiccups, being un-approved by the FDA due to safety suspicions, but re-approved after a little while. A perfectly safe, 72% effective vaccine, is the only one dose vaccine currently approved.

Religion, Politics, and Safety

There are three main factors when coming to people not being vaccinated for COVID. Each of them play an integral role, and they are regard for religion, political obligation, and concern of medical safety. While these commitments and concerns should be respected, vaccination can be more important.

Religiously, vaccination for many diseases can be taboo. Realistically however, religion doesn’t evolve with modern culture. For example, Small groups of Christians, especially those that go to a few specific churches, oppose all vaccines. These Christians believe in healing through faith and prayer. In the past, that was all these cultures had. No medicines existed. Now that society has vaccines and ways to prevent life-threatening diseases and other sicknesses, religion should evolve to support that too. These vaccine oppositions kill people.

Politics. There are many contrasting opinions on vaccines, specifically COVID-19 vaccines, among different political groups. Although, these are just opinions, and even though political parties influence their followers to not take the vaccine, taking it saves lives. COVID is a deadly disease, and if you want it to stop affecting our daily lives, take the vaccine.

Many people worry about the safety of the vaccines. Most people in the US will get either Moderna, Pfizer, or Johnson & Johnson. These vaccines are 100% safe, but have a few side effects. According to the CDC, these include:

Pain throughout the body and specifically where needle punctured your skin
Swelling in punctured area
Redness in punctured area
Tiredness
Headache
Muscle pains
Chills
Fever
Nausea

Those are worth it side effects, don’t you think?

People Who Shouldn’t Get The Vaccine

As good as it is to get the COVID-19 vaccine, there are people who shouldn’t get it for their own health. According to the CDC, people with the following should NOT get the COVID-19 vaccine:

People who have (or will have) a severe allergic reaction to an ingredient in the vaccine
People who got a severe allergic reaction after the first dose of the vaccine

Please note a severe allergic reaction is considered to be on that has to be treated with an epinephrine (EpiPen) or medical care.

If you aren’t one of these people though, you should get vaccinated for the good of yourself and others.