“Why Should I Get Vaccinated if I Can Still Get Covid?”

This is my most frequently asked questioned and OMG! I wanna curse but I’m not gonna. I am in no way an epidemiologist but I work in IT Healthcare and I follow a few scientists, I also like reading, and my college degree was in writing, so I’m pretty versed in finding credible sources. Now that we got the fact that I’m not an expert but I know how to cite experts out of the way, let’s talk about vaccines and vaccine hesitancy. 

If you’re looking for experts who are great at explaining vaccines and myths and what not check out Epidemiologists Kat and Jessica)

The main difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated is hospitalization rates. A San Diego hospital even made a diagram with pictures and facts that showed that most of their COVID patients filling up their beds are the unvaccinated ones. In fact, as it stands for the original strain, most fully vaccinated people (meaning it’s been at least two weeks since your last shot) who get COVID get it and have mild symptoms, and carry the virus for a shorter period (Rodriguez, 2021). These vaccinated cases are known as breakthrough cases and scientists knew it was a possibility because vaccines are not cures or we would call them cures. For example, I hate this example but when you are vaccinated for the flu since there’s so many strains out there you can still get the flu but your likelihood of dying from the flu is pretty minimal because you got vaccinated. 

The hope is that one day we’ll think of COVID like chickenpox (a lot of kids don’t even know what chickenpox are anymore because of vaccines) but until then we just do the best we can with the people who have the luxury of choosing to be uninformed. 

How was the COVID 19 Vaccine created so quickly? 

The short answer is money. The United States threw money at so many different manufacturers before trials were even finished. It was a gamble to see if any of them would even work. This did create a vaccine equity issue and ethical people question if The United States paying its way to the front of the line was morally right. We had a plethora of the AstraZeneca vaccine and didn’t even use it. 

Scientists have been begging for someone to fund mRNA vaccine studies for more than 30 years but because HIV and Influenza weren’t considered a pandemic, countries just weren’t throwing funding at these scientists to go further with their research (Nahm, 2021). It took a pandemic to get some funding and now Moderna has its sights on a vaccine for Influenza and they have their work cut out for them because the flu comes in so many strains (McEvoy, 2021). 

I already got COVID why do I need a vaccine? 

You can get COVID once, twice, three times. This woman survived it twice and this guy survived it three times and it just goes to show that COVID doesn’t care how many times you have it or what you believe in because it’s not political. Even if you don’t believe in science, COVID believes in you. By not getting vaccinated you’re already choosing to be a part of a very large experiment known as the Scientific Method. Every experiment needs a control group and an experimental group. Please make sure to choose wisely.

What about the survival rate? 

Some people have survived Covid and are going about their lives as usual and some just want to live. Some formally young and healthy people are now COVID long haulers living with debilitating side effects from surviving COVID. The goal shouldn’t be to survive COVID, it should be prevention and precaution. 

I’m too sick to get vaccinated. 

Full disclosure I worked at a vaccine clinic as a greeter. The cool thing about that particular post is I got to see what kind of people came in. A decent amount of the people who came to get vaccinated out of the 500 couldn’t walk on their own. I helped people out of their cars and get into wheelchairs to go get vaccinated. There have been people afraid because they’re allergic to one of the ingredients in the vaccine yet they still went out and risked it (I wouldn’t go that far). I know people who have recovered from chemo and went out to get vaccinated. Even the National MS Society cites, “Most people with relapsing and progressive forms of MS should be vaccinated. The risks of COVID-19 outweigh any potential risks from the vaccine.” (COVID 19 Vaccine Guidance for People Living with MS, 2021)

When people tell me, they can’t get vaccinated, most of the time they’re using that as a cover for won’t. There are truly some people who can’t get vaccinated and they depend on the people who can do the right thing to actually do the right thing and in all this chaos I feel bad for them. 

What about the side effects of the vaccine? 

I’m glad we’re past thinking we’re all so important enough to get micro chipped when the government isn’t that bored. If they wanted to track us they could use quicker methods like our cellphones, computers, tablets, and anything else we have with a chip in it and is attached to our hip. One theory is that the government wants to infect a certain amount of the population because of a hidden agenda. The government would have zero things to gain by infecting all their citizens with something else that could kill us as if you have no lower class, it’s quite impossible to have an upper class.  Also FDA approval doesn’t mean what you think it does.

Most people experience a low-grade fever, chills, headache, and drowsiness and some experience nothing at all. Out of more than 315 million doses in the United States, 0.0019% of vaccinations resulted in death. According to the CDC, ” Reports of adverse events to VAERS following vaccination, including deaths, do not necessarily mean that a vaccine caused a health problem. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and TTS, a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths pdf icon[1.4 MB, 40 pages](COVID-19 Vaccination, 2021).

Showing proof of vaccination violates my rights. 

Honestly, it doesn’t. The cool thing about The United States is that we have freedoms and these freedoms for the most part prevent people from suing other people based on feelings. People are feeling excluded because they are unvaccinated and businesses and employers are even asking for proof of vaccination. The fact is that you can’t sue someone because they made you feel bad.

It all boils down to two things. One, you can say “no, I don’t want to show you or I’m not vaccinated” and “it’s none of your business” but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to deal with consequences of such a decision. Hospitals, nursing homes, and people who work with the elderly are requiring vaccines for their employers but because a business can run itself the way it wants for the most

part it’s not a violation. Some of these same businesses require flu vaccines as the population that they work with are vulnerable. I remember being required to get a TB shot to work with kids and let’s not get started on all the vaccines for schools.

Some people claim businesses asking for proof of vaccines is a violation of HIPAA but it’s not. According to an Insider Article:

HIPAA only applies to entities within the healthcare field and it does not prohibit asking questions about someone’s health.

“People just generally think that HIPAA protects all health information at any time for any purpose whatsoever, no matter who is involved. And that’s absolutely not true,” Deven McGraw, cofounder of consumer health technology company Ciitizen, recently told NPR. 

“It does not cover restaurants. It does not cover stores. It does not cover your employer,” she said. “And it doesn’t cover you personally.” (Hartmans, 2021)

How do new variants keep appearing? 

The shortest answer is the longer we allow the pandemic to continue without getting it under control, the more room we are giving the virus to mutate. The only real way to stop those changes is to stop giving the virus so many opportunities. (Mass, 2021)

Why is COVID Vaccine free and not insulin or other important drug treatments? 

COVID is easily passed from person to person through droplets in the air. Other important drugs are important but these other diseases haven’t hit a pandemic level of urgency. In The United States, the COVID Vaccine is free to the consumer because the government already paid for the vaccine. They shelled out millions of taxpayer dollars in research to ensure the vaccine was free to the public (How Much Will the COVID-19 Vaccine Cost — Is It Really Free?, 2021). If for some reason you believe the government is out to make everyone sick with a vaccine that makes zero sense from an economic point of view and maybe we should put down the sci-fy and pick up something from the nonfiction section. 

What can we do to fight COVID? 

Those who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated. Those who can’t get vaccinated should wear a mask. 

Why can’t I just use my holistic health approach? 

I love Black Seed Oil and holistic health approaches but I also like science. Black Seed Oil, Irish Sea moss, vitamins, and supplements may be good but science has shown that sometimes it’s better to be safer than intubated with COVID. 

All in all, let’s not repeat the mistakes we made in 2020. We didn’t even have a vaccine back then. Now that we do, let’s do our parts for the sake of the nurses, scientists, doctors, elderly, and let’s not let all that hard work we did to stay away from each other be in vain. I feel for the nurses and doctors who will be haunted by this pandemic for years to come. I just hope they’re getting the therapy and care that they need.

As an optimist, I know that I can’t lump all the anti-vaxxers and vaccine hesitant people together but it’s very draining to have some of the answers and no one wanting to read them or believe them because scientists and doctors went to school for all that time to lie to us on a regular (sarcasm). Before the pandemic I enjoyed pandemic movies and television shows but for the most part I can’t watch them anymore because now I know that Americans for sure wouldn’t survive apocalypse from the movies. Pre-vaccine we were chanting we’re all in this together and when the tools to stop the spread were provided, we got really divided.

Why did I do all this homework?

Hopefully someone out there who is vaccine hesitant will read this and follow some of the sources and make an informed decision. Also, as someone who used to read the news every morning, I know how overwhelming information overload can be. Take it day by day, share this with someone. Do you own research.

Check my work: 

National MS Society. 2021. COVID 19 Vaccine Guidance for People Living with MS. [online] Available at: <https://www.nationalmssociety.org/coronavirus-covid&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].

Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination. 2021. COVID-19 Vaccination. [online] Available at: <https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/adverse-events.html&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].

Hartmans, A., 2021. No, it’s not a HIPAA violation for businesses to ask for proof you’ve been vaccinated. Here’s what the healthcare privacy law actually means and what it protects.. [online] Business Insider. Available at: <https://www.businessinsider.com/vaccine-proof-requirements-not-hipaa-violation-explained-2021-8&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].

Good RX. 2021. How Much Will the COVID-19 Vaccine Cost — Is It Really Free?. [online] Available at: <https://www.goodrx.com/covid-19/how-much-will-the-coronavirus-covid-19-vaccine-cost&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].

Mass, K., 2021. Why so many Covid-19 variants are showing up now. [online] Vox. Available at: <https://www.vox.com/22537118/covid-19-variants-alpha-beta-delta-gamma&gt;.

McEvoy, J., 2021. Moderna Begins Human Study Of MRNA-Based Flu Shot After Covid Success. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/07/07/moderna-begins-human-study-of-mrna-based-flu-shot-after-covid-success/?sh=f840bde64c9a&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].

Nahm, M., 2021. COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: How could anything developed this quickly be safe?. [online] UAB News. Available at: <https://www.uab.edu/news/youcanuse/item/12059-covid-19-mrna-vaccines-how-could-anything-developed-this-quickly-be-safe&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].

Rodriguez, A., 2021. COVID Transmission Among the Fully Vaccinated is Rare, But Possible, Experts Say. Here’s Why.. [online] Usatoday.com. Available at: <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/08/11/covid-transmission-among-vaccinated-unvaccinated-what-experts-say/5488398001/&gt; [Accessed 19 August 2021].