Hank GreenGeverifieerd account

In public health, there are differing opinions about how to talk about this...should we give people space to be worried, or do we say, “No, anyone who is afraid is being irrational.” Or...do we just ignore it because talking about it at all turns a definite into a question?!

I think we need both truth and story. So here are some truths: Side-effects from vaccines almost never show up longer than two months after the last dose, but we don’t have data for more than two months because that’s as long as it has existed.

It’s also true that very rare side effects (like one in hundreds of thousands or millions) may not yet have shown up in studies, and so we will continue to research these vaccines and we may yet uncover serious-but-very-rare side effects.

Another truth: Eventually, without vaccines, everyone will get COVID. And COVID definitely has serious side effects, and they are on the order of one in fifty, with death on the order of one in a hundred.

And here’s one more. Sometime in the next few months, someone will get the vaccine and they will die the next day, or the day after. They may have a stroke or an embolism, and people will ask if it was the vaccine, and that question will scare people.

But...one in 40,000 Americans dies every month. When you vaccinate lots of people, the weird health problems people have that would normally go unexplained feel explained by the vaccine. This is why we have epidemiologists who study background disease rates.

So those are some truths...here’s a story. Lots of people are working very hard right now to save lives with vaccines that are definitionally new. The work that was done to make them is unprecedented, but the safety trials were completely unchanged and normal.

That being said, some people understand risk differently than others. And people like me will gladly take the vaccine ASAP, which will give us even more data on safety and efficacy so that others who are more concerned can be more comfortable getting vaccinated.

COVID vaccines are a big deal, and our brains want to analyze (and yes, over-analyze) big deals...and that’s ok. You don’t have to be first in line. And you don’t need to be ashamed if you’re a little worried...worrying is what brains do best.

The gravity of the crisis is making us feel like we all need to become instant epidemiologists, but we can’t do that. My suggestion: Listen to stories from the people who have gotten vaccinated. There will be many of them, and their stories will likely be very boring.