Since Edward Jenner’s discovery of the cowpox vaccine in 1796 anti-vaxxers arguments frequently found in anti-vaccine literature. In this era of social media, anti-vaccination messages have got wings. The rapid development of coronavirus vaccines has fuelled this hesitancy and myth. You could see your WhatsApp messages or Facebook/Twitter timeline filled with rumors, unscientific views, infodemics. People are more likely to see negative messages about vaccines on social media than positive ones.
Disinformation and misinformation around vaccines can endanger lives, let us try to dispel some -Vaccine uses your body’s natural defenses to build resistance to specific infections by training your immune system to create antibodies, just as it does when it’s exposed to a disease. However, because vaccines contain only killed or weakened forms of germs they do not cause the disease or put you at risk of its complications. The immune system remembers the disease and If you are then exposed to the germ in the future, your immune system can quickly destroy it before you become unwell.
Adverse event following immunization (AEFI ) is any untoward medical occurrence that follows immunization and which does not necessarily have a causal relationship with the usage of the vaccine. Most vaccine adverse events are minor and temporary, such as a sore arm or mild fever. More serious adverse events occur rarely (on the order of one per thousands to one per millions doses).
Vaccine Myth No. 1
Natural immunity is better than vaccine-acquired immunity. A vaccine may weaken the immune system.
Vaccines stimulate the immune system to produce an immune response similar to natural infection, It does not weaken or overload the immune system in any way.
If you wanted to gain immunity to measles by contracting the disease, you would face a 1 in 500 chance of death from your symptoms. In contrast, the number of people who have had severe allergic reactions from an MMR vaccine is less than one-in-one million .
Vaccine Myth No. 2
Vaccinations cause the diseases that they are meant to prevent.
Vaccines ‘mimic’ the diseases they prevent. The process of producing antibodies can sometimes cause a low fever or minor swelling, but not the actual diseases.
Vaccine Myth No. 3
Vaccines contain unsafe toxins.
It’s true that vaccines do contain trace amounts of formaldehyde, mercury, and aluminum as an adjuvant but in trace amounts that’s safe for children.
Vaccine Myth No. 5
The effectiveness of vaccinations has never been proven.
The number of cases for every vaccine-preventable disease plummets in the years after a vaccine for that disease is made widely available.
Smallpox killed hundreds of millions of people and was one of the most feared diseases for over 3000 years. Today is completely gone thanks to immunization efforts. Polio, Syphilis once affecting millions are rarely diagnosed now. Vaccination prevents 20 -30 million death worldwide.
Vaccine Myth No. 6
Vaccines cause autism.
There’s no relationship between any vaccine and autism -autism usually is determined before birth -well before any vaccinations.
The 1998 study which raised concerns about a possible link between the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism was later found to be seriously flawed and fraudulent. The paper was subsequently retracted by the journal that published it, and the doctor that published it lost his medical license.
Vaccine Myth No. 7
Not vaccinating my child affects only my child.
Herd immunity means having a high enough percentage of people in a population who are immune from a disease that there are few susceptible people left to infect.
But when a population dips below that amount of vaccinated people needed to prevent an illness from spreading, a disease that was nearly eradicated can resurface with a vengeance — spreading quickly and threatening many lives.
Not getting vaccinated is like failing to stop at a four-way intersection, If three people stop and one doesn’t, the risk of an accident is relatively small. If two or three people don’t stop, the risk is much higher to everyone at the intersection.
Vaccine Myth No. 8
I know some kid who was vaccinated but got the disease –
No vaccine is 100% effective. For reasons related to the individual, not all vaccinated persons develop immunity. Most routine childhood vaccines are effective for 85% to 95% of recipients. 100% of the children who had not been vaccinated may get the disease compared with 5-15% of those who had been vaccinated.
Vaccine Myth No. 9
Infant immune systems can’t handle so many vaccines. The vaccine schedule is too aggressive and should be spaced out.
The immunization schedule is determined by decades of medical evidence when vaccines are most effective in preventing these diseases. Infant immune systems are stronger, a baby would theoretically have the ability to respond to around 10,000 vaccines at one time. Babies are exposed to countless bacteria and viruses every day, and immunizations are negligible in comparison.
Though there are more vaccinations than ever before, today’s vaccines are far more efficient. Small children are actually exposed to fewer immunologic components overall than children in past decades .
Vaccine Myth No. 10
Vaccine Cause Infertility
There is no scientific evidence to suggest that any could cause infertility in either men or women. I remember as a child used to hear about the oral Polio vaccine causing impotency which had a enamors negative impact on polio eradication drive. The same lie is been propagated now about the Corona vaccine.
Vaccine Myth No. 11
If you’ve had COVID-19 already, you don’t need to get vaccinated.
While a previous coronavirus infection might provide people with antibodies against reinfection, experts are not yet sure how long this protection lasts.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest “people may be advised to get a COVID-19 vaccine even if they have been sick with COVID-19 before”.
Vaccine Myth No. 12
Myth: Once you receive the coronavirus vaccine, you’re immune for life.
It’s also unknown how long immunity from a coronavirus vaccine will last and whether it will need to be administered more than once, or even on a regular basis, like the flu shot.
Vaccine Myth No. 13
Corona vaccines use a live version of the coronavirus.
None of the vaccines use the live virus that causes COVID-19. The leading vaccine candidates use scientific techniques to train the human body to recognize and fight the coronavirus by either introducing a killed virus or a harmless piece of the virus (not the entire germ) to the body.
Vaccine Myth No. 14
Corona vaccines can alter your DNA.
While vaccines send genetic instructions to the body, these disappear quickly and do not alter your DNA.
Think of mRNA/dsDNA as an instruction manual: It directs the body to build an immune response to a specific infection. The time that this dsDNA/mRNA survives in the cells is relatively brief in the span of hours. What you are really doing is sticking a recipe card into the cell making protein for a few hours.
Vaccine Myth No. 15
You don’t need both doses of Corona vaccines.
You need both doses 3-12 weeks apart. The first shot starts building protection; the second shot boosts that protection.
Vaccine Myth No. 16
If you got the flu shot this year, you don’t need a coronavirus vaccine.
While the flu and COVID-19 share a similar list of symptoms, they are two different illnesses, caused by two different viruses.
Vaccine Myth No. 17
You can ditch your mask, forget social distancing after you get vaccinated with Corona vaccines.
“A vaccine will complement the other tools we have, not replace them”
Contact tracing, testing more and more people, isolation, the quarantine will need to continue. We had to continue to follow social distancing norms, mask-wearing, and hand hygiene practices,
India’s immunization program with Intensified Mission Indradhanush strategy is the largest in the world, with annual cohorts of around 27 million infants and 30 million pregnant women with about 400 million doses over nine million sessions. The whole program has been derailed because of the Coronavirus pandemic. With a target to administer 500 million doses of a COVID-19 vaccine by June 2021, India has to double up its already stretched vaccination delivery system and also has to educate it’s under-informed and misinformed populations.
Well-planned and implemented communication is an important component of limiting the spread of rumors.
TAKE-AWAY points
- There is no such thing as a “perfect” vaccine that protects everyone who receives it AND is entirely safe for everyone.
- Effective vaccines may produce some undesirable side effects which are mostly mild and clear up quickly.
- The majority of events thought to be related to the administration of a vaccine are actually not due to the vaccine itself – many are simply coincidental events, others are due to human, or program, error.
- It is not possible to predict every individual who might have a mild or serious reaction to a vaccine, although there are a few contraindications to some vaccines. By following contraindications the risk of serious adverse effects can be minimized.
