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COVID-19 vaccine facts and myths – what you need to know about the new vaccines

COVID-19 vaccine facts

There are so many myths about the COVID-19 vaccine, I wanted to post some facts about the new vaccines which we can use for debunking purposes. I used to think that the HPV vaccine brought the most hatred and misinformation from the anti-vaccine world, but it’s clear that the new COVID-19 vaccines are their new targets.

This article will only focus on the five vaccines that I believe will eventually receive FDA or European Medicines Agency (EMA) approval – the Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ Janssen), and Novavax vaccines. I remain unconvinced that any vaccine made in China or the Russian Sputnik V vaccine will ever get approved by countries with robust drug regulatory agencies. However, if they are, I will certainly add them to a future iteration of this list.

I’m going to make this in a basic chart form for ease of use. I will link to supporting evidence wherever relevant.

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New COVID-19 strains – what does it mean for vaccines

new COVID-19 strains

We have been hearing about several new strains of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. There may be hundreds or even thousands of variants of the virus, although most may confer no evolutionary advantage and just die out.

Of course, there are only a handful of new COVID-19 strains that are actually dangerous, but the issues are whether the new vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, JNJ, and AstraZeneca confer immunity to these new strains and what regulatory requires may be necessary for the vaccine manufacturers to respond to them.

Let’s take a quick review of these new COVID-19 virus strains and what we know about vaccine effectiveness against them.

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UK COVID-19 challenge study – intentionally infecting people to test vaccines

UK COVID-19 challenge study

Recently, the UK announced that they would begin recruiting young patients for a COVID-19-19 challenge study to observe the course of the disease, assess “rescue treatments” for the disease, and test the effectiveness of vaccines. I remain highly concerned about these challenge studies because I think they test the limits of ethics.

As I have written previously, I think that the data could be valuable, but this UK COVID-19 challenge study could be dangerous. And I am unconvinced that it will actually provide us with any information that could be otherwise determine from scientific research.

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Influenza activity and COVID-19 – not a conspiracy, and get the vaccine

COVID-19 influenza

With all of the bad news across the world regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the one tiny bit of good news is the substantial drop in influenza incidence during the 2020-21 flu season. Despite the weird and unfounded myths from the anti-vaccine and COVID-19 denier crowds, there is no conspiracy that someone is hiding the flu numbers by boosting COVID-19 numbers. 

The only reason why the influenza incidence has dropped precipitously is because of the public health strategies to contain COVID-19. That’s it – nothing deeper than that. 

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COVID-19 vaccine trials – FDA rejects ICAN petition to stop the trials

COVID-19 vaccine trials

This article about the Informed Consent Action Network’s petition to halt COVID-19 vaccine trials was written by Viridiana Ordonez, a J.D. candidate at the University of California, Hastings College of Law. 

This article summarizes the FDA’s response to Del Bigtree’s ICAN’s (petitioner) request regarding the Phase III trials for the COVID-19 vaccine.  The summary is divided into three parts:

  1. Petitioner’s Request;
  2. FDA’s description of vaccine process; and
  3. FDA’s response to the petition.

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What are COVID-19 mRNA vaccines? Science to help debunk myths

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines

There seems to be a lot of confusion about how the new COVID-19 mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. The purpose of this article is to give the casual reader a 15 minute (plus or minus an hour) scientific review of the mRNA technology that is the basis of those new vaccines. 

There will be several new COVID-19 vaccines that should be available widely in the next few weeks, but none of those will use mRNA vaccine technology. When those become available, I’ll try to write up a similar review of those technologies.

Let’s give this a go.

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Dr Gregory Michael dies after COVID-19 vaccine – what are the facts?

Dr. Gregory Michael

Dr. Gregory Michael, MD, a Miami, FL OB-GYN, died a little over two weeks after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine.  Almost everything that happens after someone gets this new vaccine is under the microscope by just anyone that has an interest in vaccines. 

Of course, anti-vaxxers jumped on the bandwagon after reading that Dr. Gregory Michael’s wife stated that he died because of the vaccine. Similar to the story about Tiffany Dover, who fainted soon after being vaccinated because she had a fear of needles and, of course, did not die, the anti-vaccine forces are doing everything they can to discredit the vaccine.

Dr. Michael was one of our brave healthcare workers who delivered babies during a pandemic. He was pro-vaccine, and that’s why he received the COVID-19 vaccine.

Let’s take a close look at what happened to Dr. Michael. Is there a correlation to the COVID-19 vaccine? Did the vaccine cause his death? 

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mRNA vaccine myths – anti-vax lies about COVID-19 vaccines (UPDATED)

mrna vaccine myths

This mRNA vaccine myths article will be updated frequently as new myths appear. To save you the time of reading the myths you already have, the table of contents will have NEW for new listings or REVISED if a myth debunking has been substantially updated. Please like, comment, and share this article, as I think it will be useful in debunking some of the nonsense that we’re seeing from anti-vaxxers. 

Also, please leave a comment if you come across mRNA vaccine myths that should be added here. And please, let’s not go down the rabbit hole of nanobots in this vaccine – there are no nanobots in this vaccine. Worry about Facebook on your iPhone if you think we’re being tracked.

Unless you have been hiding out in the secret cancer cure vault hidden in Greenland, you know that anti-vaxxers are pushing mRNA vaccine myths as the new vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna get closer and closer to launches in the USA and many other parts of the world.

These myths are more serious this time because we need to get herd immunity from vaccines (not from genocide). If we don’t vaccinate enough people, because too many people remain hesitant because of these mRNA vaccine myths, then we may be wearing masks for years.

I haven’t read all of the lies, tropes, and myths from the anti-vaccine crowd regarding various coronavirus vaccines, especially the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.

Right now, there are just a handful of these mRNA vaccine myths, but I plan to add to this article as new ones are uncovered. I’m going to do my best to cut off these lies as soon as I can.

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COVID-19 vaccine allergic reactions – a possible culprit hypothesized

COVID-19 vaccine allergic reactions

After the recent launch of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, some severe COVID-19 vaccine allergic reactions were observed in patients who received them. Allergic reactions are observed with all vaccines, with a rate of around 1 in 1 million. As of 19 December 2020, there have been six reported severe allergic reactions in 272,000 people who have received one of the vaccines.

In the Pfizer clinical trial data, the researchers observed that around 0.63% of the vaccinated group in phase II/III trials experienced a significant allergic reaction.

So does this mean that COVID-19 vaccine allergic reactions are a major concern about the safety of these vaccines? And do we know why we’re seeing them, even if very rarely? I think we can answer both questions in this article. Continue reading “COVID-19 vaccine allergic reactions – a possible culprit hypothesized”

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UK COVID-19 mutation – what does this mean for the new vaccines

UK COVID-19 mutation

Many of you have heard about the new mutation seen in the UK to the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Of course, once we hear a story about a mutation to the novel coronavirus, our first thought “does that mean the vaccines won’t work?”

It is a legitimate concern for any of us, so I wanted to give you a quick article that should allay our fears, for now. However, as with anything during this pandemic, what we know today may be out-of-date in a week.

So should we worry about the UK COVID-19 mutation? Let’s see. 

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