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Which Vaccine Should I Get: Pfizer, Moderna Or Johnson & Johnson?

melody-dizon

By: Melody Rabor-Dizon

 

People are overwhelmed with fear, speculations, doubt, uncertainty everytime covid 19 vaccine is talked about and I do not blame one single one. It can truly be frightening based on the limited information that we know. There are those who are very eager to get the vaccine, some waiting on how others may react and there are also some that flat out refuses. It is everyone’s right to accept or decline offered vaccines. As we know it hasn’t really been that long that the vaccine has been studied and so the anxiety builds up knowing no one really knows what the complications may be 5 years from now. But yet Operation Warp Speed for Covid 19 is right on their timeline if any a slight delay with their production, we have all available technology nowadays that what used to be years in the making, is now almost short of an expedited one. Question is, is that good or bad? When you weigh things out, either get corona virus that has infected millions and claimed the lives of many or get the vaccine that to this date no death has been reported solely by the vaccine. There are some adverse reactions- yes, common ones, swelling on the site of injection, fever, chills, fatigue that went away given a day or two and responsive to antipyretics or fever- reducing medications.

Approval of the 3rd vaccine Johnson and Johnson.

Pfizer and Moderna are our two vaccines and with the recent FDA approved vaccine from Johnson and Johnson, we may see a quicker turn around for inoculation reaching massive heights in lowering cases of Covid, lesser hospitalization and lesser deaths. J & J states they have 3.9 million doses expected to be available right away. It will be the first one-shot vaccine, and one that can be stored in regular refrigerators, making it easier to distribute than the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which are more delicate and require two doses. This as actually good news knowing we can get more doses into the arms of the public and maybe sooner than later we can try to get this terrible pandemic behind us.

Some Misconceptions arise that Johnson & Johnson vaccine is ‘second class’. It may appear to have a lower efficacy rate than its earlier counterparts. But that does not make it a worse option because it appears to protect against some variants.”It clearly gets way over the bar and it’s nice to have a single-dose vaccine. “It’s difficult to make an apples-to-apples comparison between vaccines authorized, based on data collected before new variants are believed to have been in widespread circulation

US VACCINE TRACKER

Vaccine administration already has been increasing, with 2.2 million more vaccinations reported Friday than the day before and about 70.5 million doses given in total, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But with variants spreading and threatening to send new case rates skyrocketing once more, officials hope to get ahead of the spread with faster inoculations. Currently, new coronavirus cases have begun to plateau after a steady decline. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned it could be the “beginning effects” of more transmissible variants having an impact. “One dose will keep you out of the hospital, keep you out of the intensive care unit and keep you out of the morgue. Several public health experts told Congress on Friday that people who have the Johnson & Johnson vaccine made available to them should get it. You don’t feel like you would need to wait. They are all terrific vaccines for the things that we care about.”

NOT THE TIME TO CHANGE DOSES

Promising news also has come out for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. Just one dose can induce a strong enough immune response in people who have already had Covid-19 that it could protect from future infection. The vaccine is currently administered as two doses 21 days apart. The first dose primes the immune system and the second boosts it.

Some officials have suggested prioritizing the administration of first doses to increase the immune response in as many people as possible quickly. But with emerging variants, now is not the time to change the two-dose schedule for Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, “The vaccines have been studied and approved, authorized, recommended as a two-dose schedule. Our programs are built on that. We’ve communicated that to the public,” officials say. They added that they don’t think that there is enough science yet to tell us that it’s a moment to change what we know to be an effective regimen.”

FDA has authorized Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine.

Although the Johnson & Johnson vaccine does not appear to have the astonishing 94% to 95% efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, researchers told the committee that it was tested at a different time — when more virus was circulating and after new variants had arisen that have the ability to evade some of the immune response. In the US, this efficacy was 72% and it was 85% effective in preventing severe disease. No one who got the vaccine died of Covid-19 during the trial. FDA analysis finds that Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine is safe and effective, Janssen’s vaccine is different from the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which are made using a new technology that employs genetic material called messenger RNA or mRNA. Janssen’s vaccine uses a common cold virus and has been genetically engineered so that it cannot replicate in the body. Instead, it infects a few cells in the arm when injected, carrying the genetic code for a small part of the coronavirus. Those cells then produce material that looks like pieces of the virus to the immune system, stimulating an immune response. It’s an older vaccine technology that the military has used officials say Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to the White House and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has said Americans should not try to pick and choose vaccines but rather, get whichever vaccine is available. Take what you can get. At this point in the pandemic, however, Americans don’t have the luxury of choice. When it comes to Covid-19 vaccines, experts say to take what’s offered you.” If people are offered the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, they shouldn’t say, ‘I don’t want it. “We are not in a scenario where we can pick and choose vaccines.” “Getting the vaccine now, as soon as possible, it helps you, it protects you and gives you some level of immunity. “And it also helps us come to an end of this pandemic sooner.”

And I agree. Vaccination is the only way we can eradicate this virus. That’s how polio, diphtheria, bacterial influenza, measles and mumps, to name a few, stopped infecting people and not because the virus just decided not to infect anymore. Science, facts, statistics – all we could rely on. Get whatever vaccine you can get as contracting the covid virus has a higher chance of you going to the morgue than the vaccination itself. Let’s keep healthy, kababayans.

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