7 Questions Experts CAN’T Answer About the COVID-19 Vaccine
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When will we receive the vaccine too?
The first batch of vaccines offered to countries worldwide was heavily limited compared to how many people need it. Therefore, state officials have prioritized vaccination as following:
- Public health essential workers
- Essential workers
- First responders
Right now, public health officials are still vaccinating the categories of workers mentioned above and then they’ll move on to vaccinating the general population.
Dr. Aadia Rana, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Alabama-Birmingham University, estimates that we may start receiving vaccinations this spring (the end of March or the beginning of April).
Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and BioNTech are using all of their resources to manufacture and ship new doses around the world as quickly as possible. Even so, it’s still difficult to keep up with such overwhelming requests from across the planet, so all we can do is wait until spring for new announcements.
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Does life get back to normal after receiving the vaccine?
What will life look after we get vaccinated? Are we just going to return to our pre-pandemic lifestyle?
Although many people think that way, in reality it will take much longer until we can even begin to think of returning to normality. Not only are vaccines not 100% fail-proof (as I’ve mentioned above too), but it will also take some time until the majority of our population is vaccinated as well.
Henry Bernstein, DO, member of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, recently declared the following:
“Until we have 70 to 80 percent of individuals being vaccinated, there will still be large susceptible populations who are at risk for morbidity and mortality from the virus.”
I know it feels very hard to have so much patience and endurance, especially when it feels like the end of the pandemic is so close. However, it’s equally important to protect our loved ones as much as we can until public health officials say otherwise.
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Should you get the vaccine if you’ve already had COVID-19?
This has been one of the most common questions since the vaccine was developed.
So far, we know that people who have contacted the SARS-CoV-2 virus have developed antibodies naturally.
However, it’s still unclear how strong this naturally gained immunity is or for how long it lasts; some patients had more antibodies than others and specialists still can’t understand the cause behind this difference.
There have also been reported multiple cases of people being infected with the COVID-19 virus a second time, which proves that this immunity may not last enough to keep us safe. Therefore the answer is ‘yes,’ the vaccine is beneficial regardless if we’ve already had COVID-19 or not.
If you want the specialists’ opinion on this matter and more scientific evidence, our post right here covers all the information.