If you’ve been keeping up with current events, you’d know that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine has been approved by the FDA and the authorization of Moderna’s vaccine is still pending but expected.
For weeks Pfizer’s vaccine was so close we could all collectively smell it, only barred from the public by the watchful eye of the FDA, which approved the emergency use of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine Dec. 11. Even now, as the first vaccines have been administered to healthcare workers and nursing home residents across the country, people have lots of questions regarding it; they all want to know if they should take it or not.
The coronavirus vaccine would be extremely beneficial for as many people to take as possible. Experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have said that the vaccine will help the United States achieve herd immunity against the coronavirus. Viruses rely on the speed that they can spread throughout a population. We must spread the cure faster than the illness.
Some are afraid the vaccine won’t work or may even hurt people because it was developed so quickly. There is nothing to fear now that the FDA has approved the vaccine for public use; in order to be approved, drugs and vaccines must go through rigorous testing, lest someone has an extreme negative reaction.
If the FDA approval doesn’t convince you that the vaccine is safe to take, then the reactions others have once it’s widely available will prove that it is.
So far, there has been nothing to fear about the vaccine itself. Things have been going smoothly, and we can look forward to a better attempt at controlling the spread of COVID-19, even if that comes later than we’d like.
