COVID-19 Task Force addresses vaccination concerns
Many common objections to receiving a vaccination for the coronavirus were the focus of discussion at the May 9 meeting of the Pine Island COVID-19 Task Force meeting.
“The goal is to take a step in the direction of getting the unvaccinated, vaccinated,” said Dr. James Koopman, one of the Task Force members.
Fellow member Mary Lewis Sheehan said while that may be a long-term goal, making a way for people to openly discuss their objection to being vaccinated should likely be the short-term goal.
One objection she admits having heard repeatedly is that the vaccine is too new and there’s no proof that it won’t harm you.
“I think that’s going to be a common theme,” said Koopman. “People worrying that there hasn’t been enough experience with the vaccine. The fact is 150 million people have gotten the vaccine and that’s just in the United States — around the world it’s much higher. There is very well organized data collection on the people who have gotten vaccinated so that we can detect complications.”
The complications people could expect, he says, would be relatively short term. The messenger RNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, induce the spike protein produced by the body which develops antibodies. The spike protein doesn’t stick around for a long period of time, for a much shorter time, in fact, than the COVID-19 virus.
“If you’re infected with the live COVID virus,” said Koopman, “that antigen can stick around for a long time. With the vaccine, that is not the case. It’s not something that’s going to create a long-term risk.”
According to Koopman, people who contend that they have a strong immune system and their own immune system will take care of the virus are, in fact, under the impression that they have something exceptional that isn’t affecting everyone else on a global level. This, he says, is very risky thinking at its core, and conversely, people must be thinking of those for whom the infection is especially harmful.
“While it’s true that people in their 20s are likely to be able to handle this virus quite well and the mortality rate is likely to be low, it’s still going to be much higher than what it would be if you had gotten vaccinated,” said Koopman.
Member Helen Fox said it’s important to note how much more transmissible the Sars coronavirus is than the flu virus, as well as how much more deadly the disease can be for older people.
“The viruses are transmitted quite differently,” Koopman said. “When this epidemic started, I was sure that this was going to behave like influenza and we would have large droplet transmission… and we weren’t very sure about how much was airborne but as we got into this epidemic, people started collecting excellent data so it really changed the view and we could see that so much of the transmission must happen via airborne transmission.”
Another factor, raised by Task Force member Sue Dahod, for many unvaccinated people, is their fear of needles.
Sheehan pointed out the availability of many experts trained in the field of phobias becoming a possible resource for the unvaccinated.
As an infectious disease epidemiologist, Koopman says the biggest thing people can do to lower infection levels in a population for any person-to-person transmitted infection is the utilization of interventions that stop the overall level of transmission. A great deal of protection comes from vaccinations, he said, which poses a problem when some think they will be protected by the vaccination of others.
“The problem with that is if there is a significant fraction of people who are not getting vaccinated, everyone who is not getting vaccinated is driving a crucial level of maintaining the circulation that will eventually infect a lot of others,” he said.
Fox shared that many who believe they already carry antibodies may feel as though they shouldn’t bother to get vaccinated, to which Koopman emphasized concern for the community.
“It’s much more crucial for that person to get vaccinated,” said Koopman. “Once you’ve been infected, you’re going to get re-infected. We have these similar coronaviruses that are mild diseases, but basically have the same structure of virus as the COVID virus and with these viruses we’re seeing people get re-infected every two to three years. Those viruses aren’t so bad because they aren’t killing people, but we don’t see any reason that it’s going to be different with the Sars coronavirus, and when you get re-infected the virus in your body tries to escape immunity from your last infection … then we’re transmitting a virus that is resistant to the immunity that people have and it’s going to spread faster. The need to protect others is greatest for those who have had a natural infection already.”
Fox pointed out the importance of the realization that remaining unvaccinated is not a simple choice made by one person.
“Their right to do what they want to do isn’t just for them,” said Fox. “It’s affecting everyone else in their community. This is a community action that we all have to take, like other actions we take, such as not speeding or stopping at a red light. There are a number of ways that we protect other people as well as ourselves.”
Regarding having had a strong immune system and hardly ever becoming ill before the COVID-19 virus, Koopman explained the reason behind COVID death for those who rarely, if ever got ill previously.
“What people die of with COVID is not the virus,” said Koopman. “People die from their immune system reaction to the virus. There’s no system more complex than the immune system. The variations in the antibodies that are generated by a COVID infection may have two or more million variants. All of those antibodies that are generated go to attack the virus and to eliminate the virus. A good part of those attack parts of the virus that have nothing to do with control of the virus, so the immune system gets really revved up. There are signals that go from one immune cell to another called cytokines and these signals try to coordinate the attack of the immune system on the virus, but what happens in the case of COVID is this system of communication between the immune cells, of all these cytokines, is disrupted and you get what’s called a cytokine storm. The whole effort of the body is going to attack and it’s attacking the lungs, it’s attacking the heart and that’s what people are dying from.”