Call it a generalization, but from personal experience with colleagues in the industry, a lot of journalists ended up in their current field in part because science was not their forte.
Most of us would rather write a 3,000 word essay than say, learn the role photosynthesis plays in the life cycle of a plant.
The point of confessing a lack of science proficiency is simply to note when it comes to talking vaccines, there’s several books that could be filled with what this writer doesn’t know about them.
So when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines, there’s a conscious effort to seek out information that’s put out by professionals in the medical community. Studies that have been verified and peer reviewed by people who know a thing or two.
Understandably there are a lot of questions surrounding COVID-19 vaccines. Just this week the shot was given to select Ontarians. It’s only natural that there’s some trepidation around the mysterious substance that is being injected into the arms of people all around the world. It’s perfectly naturally to wonder what the long-term effects will be for a vaccine that was created to fight a disease that didn’t even have a name until about February of 2020.
While we can’t control our instinctive skepticism, we can control where we get the information from to satiate that curiosity. Speaking with a family doctor or medical professional is a great place to start. An unsourced post on social media that argues a billionaire is using the vaccine to take control of the world, is not. The very real fears associated with COVID-19 have made for the perfect conditions for misinformation to spread and find a captive audience for those looking for answers.
Keeping in mind the earlier admission of no medical training whatsoever, this is by no means an attempt to say nothing can ever go wrong when receiving a vaccine. There exists a chance that a person can suffer a bad reaction to just about anything that is ingested or injected into the body. That’s where talking to a doctor comes in. They’ll be far more qualified to list any potential side effects and give a ballpark as to the likely hood of them occurring based on a patient’s medical history with far more accuracy than an unnamed social media ‘expert’.
For all we don’t know about the forthcoming vaccine, there is one message (that ironically enough) has been circulating on social media that may help put it all in perspective.
On Dec. 7, 1941, an air raid on Pearl Harbor killed 2,403 people in what is considered one of the worst attacks on U.S. soil. On Dec. 3, 2020, the New York Times reported 2,857 deaths of U.S. citizens caused by COVID-19. In other words, doing nothing and hoping the virus goes away on its own comes with its own risks.
-Adam Prudhomme