COVID-19 Q&A

The Covid-19 mRNA vaccines are new technology that hasn’t been tested before.

That’s a myth! Although these types of vaccines are newly introduced to the public, researchers have been studying and working with mRNA vaccines for decades. The history of mRNA vaccines started around 1978 when researchers used fatty membrane structures to transport messenger RNA (mRNA) structures into the cell into mice and human cells to produce the expressions on proteins within them. That’s essentially what the Covid-19 vaccine is! The injection of mRNA contains code for cells to produce the “spike” protein that SARS-CoV-2 uses to enter cells. This mRNA is transported using lipid nanoparticles, which are bubbles of fats, into cells. However, this wasn’t always that easy and prior to the advancement of nanotechnology to create the lipid nanoparticles, mRNA would quickly degrade before it could deliver the code for the production of proteins.Once that problem has been solved the mRNA vaccine has been used against the Ebola virus, however commercial development didn’t happen until the Covid-19 virus. This new pandemic urged manufacturers to produce new vaccines and brought a great increase in funding for its research and production.

You can still get Covid even after you’ve been vaccinated.

This statement is……… a fact! It’s true that even after you’ve received your vaccine shots against Covid, it doesn’t completely prevent you from contracting it. This concept is known as Vaccine Breakthrough Infections and isn’t specific to just Covid vaccines. Other vaccines are also not 100% effective against infections but rather decrease the likelihood of contraction as well as decrease the likelihood of a severe illness once an individual has been infected. The vaccine introduces a weakened pathogen or a blueprint for producing the active part of the pathogen (the antigen) into the body in order for the immune system to produce antibodies to combat it. When a new and more contagious variant emerges or when the virus circulates through the community more frequently, the antibodies developed may not be enough to fight the pathogen fully. This causes the breakthrough infections, and is more commonly seen in the elderly or individuals with weak immune systems.

Booster shots serve no purpose if I’m already fully vaccinated. This statement is a myth!

As the name suggests these additional doses of the vaccine are meant to help “boost” the body’s immune response system. Booster shots are administered in order to remind the immune system about the virus that it needs to defend against. This is done to allow the body to build a memory of the pathogen so it can fight more quickly and efficiently when encountered in the future.This is especially useful in cases where immunity wanes over time, such as individuals aged 65 or older.

Once I am vaccinated, the amount of protection I have will be permanently strong.

This is a myth! What is waning immunity? This term refers to the decline of protection a person has towards an infection or illness after being vaccinated or contracting the virus. With COVID-19, waning immunity poses a threat because the current vaccination schedule may not be enough to indefinitely control the virus to a baseline, endemic level. By the time the vaccine rollout has covered enough of the population, the people that were immunized first will have a substantially lower level of immunity. How exactly does this happen? The current vaccines contain either a piece of mRNA that encodes part of the virus, or the protein spike on the virus. When you are vaccinated, your body induces an immune response against the unknown particle. By doing this, many B cells, T cells, and many other immune cells are made to combat the illusion of an infection. B cells make antibodies, which are proteins that help your immune system recognize the pathogen in question. Right after vaccination, your body contains a high level of antibodies because it thinks that there is a threat of infection at that moment. However, our bodies do not have the energy needed to uphold such a high level of immune cells and antibodies for every single infection it faces. Slowly, the immune response declines until there are only a fraction of the original amount of COVID-19 immune cells. These are called memory cells, because they still have the information needed to recognize the virus in the future. The decline of immune response is one explanation to waning immunity after infection or vaccination. Although the effects of vaccines wane after a period of time, they are able to reduce the severity of infection far into the future. As previously mentioned, the memory cells in your body can recognize a future infection, and a robust immune response can occur faster than if there was no infection. A faster immune response means that the virus does not have as much time to divide and cause harm to the body. There are other factors that affect the appearance of waning immunity. The virus is constantly mutating, which means it can change in ways that evade the immune system. As mutations accumulate, the virus becomes more different than the original virus the vaccine was developed for. Infections depend on the person as well as the pathogen, so the vaccine losing efficacy is not the only explanation to why we see more breakthrough infections.

I can give COVID-19 immunity to my child

This is a fact….. kind of. There are many types of antibodies that can be made by B cells in response to a pathogen. These antibodies have different structures and functions, and are located in different parts of the body. When a mother is pregnant, a certain type of antibody can travel across the blood-placenta barrier into the fetus’s circulation. Another kind of antibody can be transferred to the baby during breastfeeding. The immunity the child gets from the mother is called passive immunity. As long as breastfeeding is occurring, some level of protection is offered, but this is not a permanent solution. Antibodies are proteins, so will eventually degrade. Babies do not have the memory B cells that make the antibodies because they never encountered the virus themselves. So after the pool of antibodies have been degraded, the baby cannot make more by themself. This means that although the mother can pass down immunity, it will always be weaker in the baby.