PART 2: Your COVID-19 vaccine questions answered! In this video, Dr. Tara Ralph of MMC Internal and Family Medicine answers the following common questions:
• Is the COVID-19 vaccine safe? How do we know there won’t be harmful effects in the future?
• Will I need a booster vaccine if I got one of the mRNA vaccines (Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech)?
• How do COVID-19 and Chickenpox compare in terms of natural immunity and vaccination?
• Why are we seeing a surge in COVID-19 cases in the summer months?
If you have any questions about the COVID-19 vaccine, please reach out to your trusted medical provider. You can sign up to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at www.mmclinic.com/covid19vaccine.
[Music] the technology and the research of an mrna vaccine is is much older than just this past year so this type of vaccine is not new the concept of it is not new there would have been no way really i don’t think to come up with a vaccine as quickly as they did if they were actually starting from scratch so what scientists were able to do is take this blueprint for a type of vaccine that we’ve used in the past and modify it to specifically address the covid virus so the efficacy and the studies we have on those other vaccines are show that they are safe and then we’re as you can see we’re getting more and more of the population vaccinated with you know out having bad side effects and things like that to keep that data coming in and prove time and time again that the vaccine in and of itself is safe no vaccine can be safe for everyone in the population everybody’s body is different you could be allergic to one of the ingredients in the vaccine so you can’t blanket statements say the vaccine is safe for everyone in the community but for the majority of people it is by far a very safe vaccine and i also tell my patients a lot of times i wouldn’t put anything in my own body or my family’s bodies that i wouldn’t that i don’t think is safe so and i wouldn’t recommend anything to my patients that i wouldn’t put in my own body and i have received both of my pfizer vaccines and so has my so have my family members so in terms of whether or not a booster will be needed for the moderna or pfizer vaccine i think that they’re researching that currently and from what i’ve read is that they said they have seen some benefit to giving a booster vaccine they’ve only done it in a very small population so that recommendation has not been made yet and they’ll have to do a little bit more research on a larger group of people before they are able to make that recommendation how it usually occurs is pfizer will make the recommendation to the cdc and then the cdc would release their recommendation as well it’s a really good question to ask well if i had chickenpox i don’t have to get the chickenpox vaccine so if i had covid why do i have to get the covet vaccine there’s a couple of things one is we could always test your immunity to chickenpox not everybody keeps immunity for their whole life but how often do we see chickenpox in the community right because of the vaccine we’ve basically gotten rid of chickenpox so the likelihood of you coming in contact with it and getting a second case of chickenpox years later after you had it when you were a child is very slim so but there are tests that we can do to check if you’re still naturally immune to the chickenpox just like there’s tests we can do to see if you’re still naturally immune to covid you can test for that antibody in your blood which would tell us that you’re still naturally immune to either one of those however if you think about it if you had chickenpox you still have to get the shingles vaccine well the shingles vaccine is protecting you against chickenpox that is living in your nerve cells that can manifest as shingles when you get older so it you couldn’t say i had chickenpox i don’t have to get the shingles vaccine so it’s it’s it’s hard to compare because you’re not comparing apples to apples when you think about that but in terms of just strict natural immunity there’s testing for both but the difference between chicken pox and kovid is that covet isn’t you’re in an active coveted pandemic whereas chicken pox occurring naturally is very rare to answer the question why are we seeing all of a sudden more covered now in the summer months and things like that when we usually expect to see respiratory viruses in the fall is a little bit multifactorial and somewhat hard to answer and i don’t know that i absolutely have the correct answer for this we know that it took a while for the delta variant to become prominent in the united states and once it did due to its rapid replication and high in i guess high level of infection as a way to say that that it spread very rapidly so if you think about it we’ve had more gatherings we’ve all kind of you know we had our fourth of july where we saw a lot of spikes after that and you know concerts are back on everything you know going on for the most part as usual not a lot of mass mandates things like that so i think you know also the vaccination rate several months ago was a lot quicker so we were almost getting ahead of things because people were getting vaccinated at a rapid rate well vaccine rate dropped off the delta variant made its appearance and we also started having more gatherings and things in the summer and so due to how quickly and how infectious the delta variant is it’s why we’re starting to see a spike now so you know it’s hard to know what the future holds the best chance we have at staying ahead of this and fighting things is to get everyone vaccinated so my best recommendation to be able to enjoy our holidays with our families this year and to celebrate safely to keep our young people and our our family members out of the hospital the best tool you have in your tool belt is this vaccine so my best recommendation is to just get your vaccine wash your hands practice you know safe habits in terms of if someone’s sick maybe we don’t go over to their house maybe we you know would just use common sense in those manners but remember hand washing getting your vaccine those are your tools to fight covet and so you can do it you just have to start being aggressive with it [Music] you
