There are many confusing rumours about the pandemic.
These are the facts:
- COVID is dangerous, and has killed over 10 million people
- vaccines are safe, and have protected millions of people
People are naturally frightened because of the disease. The pandemic also isolated people, forced them to change their behaviours - and created huge financial strains.
It's hard to stay scared of a virus no-one can see, so anxieties transferred to simpler targets. This led people to create and spread conspiracy theories and rumours.
In Kenya, the rumours spread when we didn’t see many people getting sick at first. Some people spread rumours believing they were helping others. Once someone falls into conspiracy thinking, it can be hard to get them back. They need to hear more reliable information - and from people they trust.
Now more people have suffered from COVID - but we have vaccines to protect us. We believe most people will get vaccinated quite easily, if they are well informed.
I heard someone had bad side-effects from a vaccine.
I don’t want to risk that.
I don’t want to risk that.
All medicines have side-effects - but their diseases are worse.
Most of us get a mild reaction to vaccines, because of how they work. A vaccine stimulates our immune systems to think there is a real infection, which can create mild soreness, fevers and headaches. These normally last for a few days at most.
A very small number of people experience strong side-effects. However, these were monitored closely in countries with strong healthcare systems, and numbers have been extremely small.
The vaccines were made very quickly.
Why should I trust that they are safe?
Why should I trust that they are safe?
The COVID vaccines were developed very quickly - but only because there was a huge international effort to create them.
The science behind vaccines in general is actually quite old. The COVID-19 virus is fairly simple, so its DNA could be sequenced and understood very quickly.
(Even the 'new' mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are based on technologies which have been tested for several decades, which were ready just in time for this crisis. These technologies are now looking hopeful for other diseases, including malaria.)
Despite the urgency, substantial testing and monitoring took place, to make sure the vaccines were very safe for public use.
Extra Resources
| How COVID-19 vaccines were made so quickly without cutting corners ScienceNews (Jun 2021) |
| The Long History of mRNA Vaccines Johns Hopkins (Oct 2021) |
Can I catch COVID from the vaccine?
Unlike many other traditional vaccines, the COVID vaccines don’t contain a weakened form of the COVID virus itself.
Instead, they only contain instructions to create harmless ‘spike proteins’, which your immune system learns to attack. This prepares your body to fight an actual infection.
For this reason, you can’t catch COVID from a COVID vaccine.
Extra Resources
| COVID-19 vaccines - technical information Oxford Vaccine Knowledge Project (Oct 2021) |
| Different COVID-19 Vaccines CDC - USA (Oct 2021) |
Extra Resources
| Why do people believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories? Harvard - USA (April 2020) |
| The Unvaccinated May Not Be Who You Think New York Times (Oct 2021) |
| Eight Persistent COVID-19 Myths and Why People Believe Them Scientific American (Oct 2020) |
| Coronavirus (COVID-19) Mythbusters WHO Africa |