Misconceptions related to COVID-19 that you should be clear about

Because of the global pandemic due to COVID-19 and the lockdown imposed to control the pandemic, people got to spend more time in home and more time spent on social media. The social media turned out to be the place where lots of information and misinformation circulated. This has created a mistrust in severity of COVID-19 and the efficacy of vaccine. Some people are denying vaccine for deadly disease.

People start to believe false information when they hear it over and over again even though they knew it was a false information when they first heard it. Here are some of the common misconception and misinformation surrounding around COVID-19 that you should be clear about.

1.      The vaccines are not FDA approved.

Image shows different companies working for manufacture of vaccine

Although this is not false but the statement gives a misinterpretation that the vaccine is not safe or effective. There are different ways to getting vaccine to people. One is FDA approval. This requires at least two separate trials over a significant period of time with the necessary evidence of safety and effectiveness of vaccine. Another way to get vaccine to people is emergency use authorization. This requires only one clinical trial to establish clinical efficacy over a shorter period of time. However, this also requires well organized randomized controlled trial among a large group of people. In the middle of pandemic, it is logical to issue emergency use authorization but this doesn’t mean the study on vaccine has stopped. WHO gives emergency authorization to a vaccine that shows safety and has at least 50% efficacy. All the vaccines in the market seems to do so.

 

2.      You can still get COVID even after the vaccine.

No vaccine is 100% effective. But getting the vaccine significantly reduces the risk of infection. Even if you get infected, it surely prevents from serious complications and allow you to live. The goal of vaccine is not just to prevent infection but also to reduces the complications and hospitalization even if you get infected.

Not wanting to get vaccinated for this reason is not so justifiable. You can still get a woman pregnant even if you use contraception. You can still develop lung cancer even if you quit smoking. No measures are 100% effective. 90% protection is better than 0% protection at any given day.

 

1.      Vaccines were not studied enough.

COVID-19 vaccines came much quicker than the time it will take to manufacture a new vaccine normally. But this doesn’t mean that the vaccines were not studied enough. Developing a vaccine follows a sequential event. This includes research on virus, animal trials and three phases of clinical trials on human. If found unsafe at any point in these events, the manufacture of vaccine stops. This process was made faster because instead of going through these events sequentially, some of the research activities were conducted in parallel overlapping different phases. The manufacturers get this confidence because of the huge funding from all over the world on one global cause. Had the trial failed in any of the phases, the manufacturing company would not have lost the money.

This is what a normal trial looks like

This is how trials were conducted for COVID-19 vaccines
Image Credit: pfizer.com

The process was relatively quick also because of the fact that we had good understanding of the biology of SARS-CoV-2 (virus responsible for COVID-19) because of its similarity to Corona virus. Because the medical science has been very advanced, it did not take years to investigate the genetic sequence of virus and identify its target protein.

Moderna had been doing research on mRNA technology to produce vaccine since years. In fact, last three letters of Moderna is RNA. So, the concept of mRNA technology wasn’t new. Pfizer collaborated with BioNTech to produce a vaccine quickly using mRNA technology.  Brainpower, focus and energy from all over the world have helped to achieve this feat much quicker than ever before.

Another reason it was quicker was because there were lots of volunteers to study upon. Researchers were not short of cohort and control group to study various events in different demographic. It didn’t take very long amidst pandemic to make the effectiveness of vaccine apparent when compared to unvaccinated people.

 

2.      The vaccines don’t stop transmission.

In the initial phase of phase 3 of Moderna and Pfizer vaccine, scientists reported that there isn’t evidence of vaccine preventing the transmission of COVID-19 then but they believed it does prevent transmission. This statement was mistranslated as there was no evidence and further mistranslated that the vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission.

Multiple data show vaccine prevents transmission.

 

3.      Young people don’t need vaccine.

People say this since most of the people dying was elderly. But this is wrong thing to say. Young people when vaccinated prevents the transmission of disease to other people. Vaccine also prevents them from the serious complications they may face from getting infected with the virus. After all, its not only the death that people should worry about.

Furthermore, if unvaccinated, the virus can multiply in such people and get transmitted to millions of other people which can result in a different strain of mutated virus. In long run, the mutation can be so significant that the vaccine may not even work. So, its necessary for young people to get vaccinated as well.

 

4.      Vaccine cause infertility.

There is no data to support this. Many data shows that the vaccine does not affect fertility.

 

5.      People should only care about their own vaccination status.

As explained earlier, if all people are not vaccinated then the pandemic will last longer, virus will remain longer and it may evolve to a very different strain and can be more lethal.

 

1.      COVID is no worse than flu.

Seasonal flu doesn’t kill thousands of people. Hospitals are packed up with COVID-19 patients. COVID-19 is not like a flu. It causes severe progressive pneumonia and a number of intravascular clots. This can lead to severe hypoxia or sometimes silent hypoxia which is also referred as Happy hypoxia. You look perfectly fine even though it may be killing you from inside. You have to take all the precautions and get vaccinated.

 

2.      Thousands of people have died from vaccine.

This is not at all true. When millions of people take the vaccine and thousand people die after taking vaccine doesn’t necessarily mean they died because of vaccine. Everyday tons of people die from reasons which has nothing to do with COVID-19 or the vaccine. When compared to people dying before COVID-19 and after vaccination, the data was not statistically significant to suggest that the deaths were from vaccine.

There has been a rare side effect reported with Astrazeneca (also popular with Indian brand name Covishield) and Johnson & Johnson vaccine in which blood clots are seen in unusual locations like abdomen, dural venous sinus of brain especially in women with low platelets i.e. Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia. This can be a serious complication but this is very rare, seen in 2-4 in 100,000 population. This is mainly reported in Europe and said to be related to autoimmune etiology. These vaccines trial have been paused at different times due to this side-effect. However, it can be treated with anti-coagulants (Heparin is not preferred for treatment as heparin can further aggravates the case by causing thrombocytopenia). So, its use is continued since benefits overweighs risk.

 

3.      Doctors are promoting vaccine for money.

The demand for the vaccine has been far greater than the supply. Why would a pharmaceutical company pay off doctor for a product that they can’t produce fast enough? This makes no sense.