This article will examine the front runners for the Covid 19 vaccine. You'll learn how these vaccines work, side effects and warnings to be aware of and at the end of this article look at six facts versus myth examples. Coming up! This blog is about physical and mental health beauty tips weight loss self improvement and advice to promote your health and to help you stay young, therefore Think Your Health and hit the notification bell and the subscribe button as well.
This year there's been a race to come up with a safe vaccine against Covid 19. Researchers are testing 54 vaccines in clinical trials on humans and at least 87 pre-clinical vaccines are under active investigation in animals. This article is being shot in the third week of November 2020 and there has been some promising news in the last couple of days. Moderna, a Massachusetts-based company states that preliminary results of its vaccine suggest it may be up to 95 percent effective. Pfizer and the German company called Biontech it has teamed up with state that their preliminary data shows that the vaccine to be 95 effective. AstraZeneca, a British Swedish company together with the University of Oxford announced that their vaccine is 62 percent or 90 effective depending on the manner in which the doses were given. Johnson & Johnson a US based company has yet to announce how effective the vaccine is going to be. Final results are expected by the end of the year.
let's crunch some more numbers and facts: Pfizer and Biontech as well as Moderna are developing messenger RNA vaccines. These can also be referred to as genetic vaccines. AstraZeneca and Oxford and Johnson & Johnson are developing viral vector vaccines. AstraZeneca is using a chimpanzee adenovirus and Johnson & Johnson are using human adenovirus. I'll talk what these terms and what they mean a bit later in this article.
In terms of volunteers and participants in their various trials here are the numbers and as you can see these are pretty impressive numbers for the number of people who were recruited for all four vaccine makers, however, just as important is that the demographic makeup of the trials is representative of the communities at the highest risk for Covid- 19 and that would be the people of color, minorities and older adults.
There's been criticism by many experts especially in the phase one and two trials where these groups who were disproportionately affected by Covid 19 were not adequately represented in these trials.So how are these vaccines stored? Pfizer and the Biontech vaccine needs to be frozen at minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit which is around minus 70 degrees Centigrade. Moderna has to be also frozen at minus 4 degrees fahrenheit which is around -20 degrees Centigrade. AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson both can be refrigerated.
How many doses of the vaccine will you need? For Pfizer, Moderna and Astrazeneca: two doses and Johnson & Johnson you'll need only one dose. The cost of the vaccine for Pfizer around twenty dollars, Moderna thirty dollars, AstraZeneca three to four dollars and Johnson & Johnson ten dollars.
What are messenger RNA vaccines? These are for Pfizer & Moderna. You take a small gene from the virus and inoculate the patient with a small piece of messenger RNA. In this way messenger RNA enters your body and this messenger RNA enters the cytoplasma of your cell. This is the area around the nucleus of the cell. Here a part of the virus is translated to a protein. This protein is in fact the Coronavirus spike protein. This is how the Coronavirus looks like. This is the spike protein. So, this is exactly where this is going to be made in your cell. This protein which is being made in your cell induces your body to activate your immune system to build antibodies. The way it does that is that this protein is displayed on the cell surface. In this way your body has learned how to protect against future infections when you get infected with the coronavirus. These antibodies stick to the coronavirus spike proteins and in this way prevent the virus from binding to cells. The virus is then prevented from entering your cells and infecting your cells.
What are viral vector vaccines? These are for AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson. This is another way to introduce the Coronavirus gene into the cell. So, how is this done? The scientists use adenoviruses. These are viruses which can cause the common cold. Researchers use these viruses as vectors or means of carrying the gene for Covid- 19 into the cell. This modified cold virus can then make the Covid-19 spike protein. This in turn stimulates your immune response and your body can build antibodies.
The effectiveness of the Covid- 19 vaccines? Like I mentioned earlier, the effectiveness has been about 90% or higher which are very high numbers for a vaccine. These numbers are on par with the measles vaccine and just below the polio vaccine effectiveness. The flu vaccine effectiveness is at best 40 to 60 percent. Is the vaccine really 90 to 95% effective? The numbers the vaccine makers are showing are very impressive, especially since this has been done only in this year. Typically, it takes years to go through these trials, but we're in the middle of a pandemic and we need quick answers and quick solutions without compromising safety.
Hopefully, the effectiveness of Covid 19 vaccines will match their impressive efficacy in clinical trials, however, we do not know how this information will translate when millions and millions of people will get the vaccine and if the actual effectiveness may prove to be lower. So, what side effects and possible warnings would you expect? SIX facts versus myth!
(1). Just Summarizing In Less Than Ten Percent Of The Participants: The main side effects were fatigue, joint pain, headache, muscle pain, feeling warm, sore arm & low grade fever. Some people's fatigue was described as more profound and some people might miss perhaps a day of work and might need a day of rest.
(2). messenger RNA vaccines have never been used commercially in the past. This is a new technology highly effective, but still new. Vector vaccines, on the other hand, have been around for a long time and are well studied number.
(3). You have to also remember that no vaccine is 100 percent effective. So, you can still get the disease, but a milder version of it after vaccination. It takes a couple weeks usually two to three weeks for your body to build an immunity. You could get infected just before or even after you receive the vaccination as explained earlier. This is because it takes a couple of weeks for your body to build antibodies.
(4). Currently none of the vaccines which are being developed in the US use live virus. There are other kinds of vaccines being developed such as protein based vaccines from Sanofi and Novavax.
(5). Once you get vaccinated the vaccine will not cause you to have a positive viral test, this is because viral tests are used to test current infection. There's, however the possibility that the antibody test will test positive indicating a previous infection. This indicates that you have a level of protection from the virus.
(6). Currently, the recommendation is to get the vaccination even if you have been sick with COVID-19 the reason being is that there is some evidence that our natural immunity for this virus does not last long. This natural immunity is different from person to person. The other reason to get vaccinated is the risk of reinfection remains a possibility. If you're interested other information about coronavirus visit this articles How To Beat Covid 19 With At Home Rapid Testing Cheap Frequent Testing masks-hand-washing-sanitizer-how to protect you from coronavirus . For the more contents subscribe my blog, thanks for joining.
No comments:
Post a Comment
wgdyrj@gmail.com