“Be safe, be smart, be kind”, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Health Organization Director-General, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 outbreak was announced by the World Health Organization in March 2020. It has claimed 2.5 million lives all over the world and the numbers are still increasing. It has impacted every person from all walks of life. Be it CEOs or children, economies got stalled, how people worked changed and healthcare got stretched to its limits. Governments had to enforce strict lockdowns to restrict the spread of the virus.
On the positive side, we have the vaccine for this deadly virus which is becoming available for everyone. Without these, scientists believe that the natural immunity of a person is not sufficient to deal with the virus. In March 2021 the world received just shy of 300 million vaccine doses. These numbers give us hope that the world will soon return to normal. Here is why getting your covid vaccine is important.
Why Should You Get Vaccinated?
- Once a person gets vaccinated they can carry out a lot of activities that they couldn't previously. For example, people can hang out indoors without needing a mask with other fully vaccinated people.
- We are still discovering how vaccines will affect the spread of COVID-19. Until we know more about how vaccines will impact the spread of COVID-19, people who are fully vaccinated for COVID-19 should keep taking precautions. This is especially true in social places. Precautions include using a mask, staying 6 feet away from people, avoiding crowds, and poorly ventilated areas, and cleaning their hands often.
- People cannot be considered fully vaccinated until after two weeks of their second dose. These include Moderna COVID-19 or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Johnson and Johnson’s Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. You should keep using all the precautions available to protect yourself and other people until you are fully vaccinated.
Covid-19 Vaccination Helps Build Protection
Getting the COVID-19 vaccination helps build protection against the virus in a safe manner. The COVID-19 virus can have life-threatening and serious drawbacks, and there is no way to know how the COVID-19 virus can affect you. The worst part, if you get sick, you can spread the disease to family, friends, and other people around you.
Clinical trials for all vaccines need to first show they are effective and safe before any vaccine can be approved or authorized for vaccination, including COVID-19 vaccines. The potential and known benefits of a COVID-19 vaccine need to outweigh the potential and known hazards of the vaccine before it is used under an Emergency Use Authorization Getting COVID-19 might offer some protection, known as natural immunity. Current evidence implies that reinfection of COVID-19 is uncommon in the months after the first infection, but might increase with time. The risk of severe death and illness from COVID-19 outweighs any advantages of natural immunity. The vaccination will help defend you by creating an antibody (immune system) response without experience illness.
Both artificial and natural immunity produced by vaccines are important parts of the COVID-19 disease that professionals are trying to understand more about, and the CDC will keep the people informed as new information becomes available.