Though the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us into physical isolation, people haven't stopped trying to connect in whatever way they can.
Like so many other neighborhoods, mine has a Facebook group. Once a space where people used to post pictures of the community — present and historical — advertise their shops, or ask about lost pets, it's since turned into one giant pandemic panic fest, just like online groups everywhere.
As soon as a curfew was instituted in my country, the neighborhood Facebook group became as a vessel for folks to dump their pictures of dog-walking during the short time it was allowed, to show off their pandemic-era cooking, and to deal with their fears by spreading their new pet conspiracy theories about COVID-19.
So, I got permabanned from my neighborhood Facebook group.
That happens when one of the admins turns out to be in love with pseudoscience. COVID-19 is a hoax, he posted. Or it's not, but it's caused by 5G networks. Or it was the immigrants planting 5G transmitters in pigeons to turn us gay, or whatever the "fake news" video he shared was saying.
He then asked us to comment with our opinions.
So I did.
I'm a veterinary microbiologist, and I'm not cool with quackery. With the best manners I could work up, I wrote that it's dangerous to spread such misinformation, and that it could lead to people not respecting the protective measures against COVID-19, which would result in a catastrophe — as, indeed, it since has.
As all internet discussions do, this one spiraled.
True to Godwin's law (the longer an online argument goes on, the higher the odds that someone will start comparing people or ideas to Hitler), I was called a Nazi and compared to Mengele.
The discussion reached the topic of vaccines. Some 50+ comments later, I did the unspeakable. One of the admins asked: "Alright, "doctor", if you're so smart, how do you explain the fact that Novak Djokovic refuses to vaccinate?" I was already running out of patience, and choosing a (really successful) sports person's opinion over the scientific facts was just the last straw. I replied: "Because he's an idiot". So, the admins, clearly being really into Novak and really not into science, banned me.
Vaccines work.
Vaccines work, and can protect us against over 20 potentially deadly diseases at the moment. To understand why they work, you need to understand how they work, because of course you don't like simply taking someone else's word for it.
The oversimplified edition goes something like this. Our immune system tries to protect us from any possible cause of harm — be it a virus, bacteria, parasite, toxin, or even some of our own cells that go rogue and turn cancerous.
It does so in a number of ways; by producing certain molecules that have a bunch of different roles, from communication between cells to attacking the invader, or by white blood cells.
There are many, many, different types of white blood cells, and each type has a specific role in our immune system. The surface of each cell, or each virus, is covered with different proteins. Once our white blood cells learn how those proteins are shaped, they are able to "remember" that particular shape for decades, and quickly recognize the invader if it returns. The immune system can then swiftly deal with the threat.
The first time a... let's say a virus, attacks our body, our immune system needs to learn to recognize it, and needs to figure out how to fight it. Each subsequent time that same virus returns, it's easier, since we already know what we're up against.
We need vaccines because, while most people will survive the flu without long-term complications, it's a completely different story when it comes to polio, or smallpox, for instance, but also because "most" doesn't mean all.
Vaccines save lives.
The point of mass vaccination campaigns is to stop, and ultimately to completely eradicate, a certain disease. So far, we've only been able to do this twice: with smallpox in humans, which was officially declared eradicated in 1980, and rinderpest (an animal disease) in 2011.
Eradicating a disease is not easy for a number of reasons. How complex the production of a certain vaccine is, how easily it can be distributed, and which regions are impacted by a disease all play a role in determining just how hard a task is to essentially kill an entire disease.
Let's look at polio, as an example. Polio is an awful disease. Depending on the severity of the consequences, polio can cause different conditions, from underdeveloped limbs, to being permanently dependent of a mechanical ventilator to keep breathing. Yes, your whole life. Google iron lungs. Oh, and, depending on the form polio takes, in some cases, up to 75 percent of its victims die.
The 1950s, and the 1960s were the years when polio really appeared on the public health radar, as it swept through the globe and a large number of people were infected. Luckily, a vaccine was developed. It was estimated that, in the 1980s, more than 350,000 people got polio worldwide each year, and that's only the paralytic cases. Due to vaccination, the number of polio patients in 2016 was only 42. Worldwide. If this trend continues, polio will be the third disease ever to be eradicated, and this picture could never have looked this optimistic without a vaccine. (Yes, better sanitation helps, but it sure isn't the whole story.)
Or, let's talk about rabies. In this case, the math is easier, since very nearly 100 percent of people who contract rabies die painfully. Unless, that is, they get a vaccine. And, OK, one might say that rabies is a thing of the past, but you may be surprised to hear that rabies caused more than 17 thousand deaths in 2015, so it isn't. With continued vaccination, including the immunization of animals, it might one day be.
Vaccines are not dangerous.
A lot of people are worried about the effect the adjuvants in the vaccines have. These chemicals serve the purpose of alarming our immune system that there's an intruder, so that it can direct the white blood cells to that location. But their amount is so miniscule that it's not even worth mentioning.
For instance, if you eat one pear, you ingest 600 times more formaldehyde than you get in a single shot. Do you like eating pears, neighbor?
Vaccines don't cause autism, either. That story is way too long for this article, but you can read all about it in the link to your left.
Anti-vaxxers are dangerous.
Immunization is a group activity, because some people cannot get vaccinated. In some cases, they are too young. In some cases, the immune system is just too weak. Sadly, both of my parents died of cancer, but they both went through chemotherapy, which ravaged their immune systems. If they died of easily preventable diseases, I would consider each person who opted not to vaccinate, thereby reducing the strength of herd immunity and potentially exposing vulnerable people to, well, death, their murderer.
If there aren't enough susceptible people, the disease won't spread, and will eventually die out.
It's normal to be cautious when somebody wants to inject something into your body. But instead of listening to random unqualified people talking about ideas they just made up, one should consider only reliable sources, because it's our health we're talking about. And consider that there's a lot of money in the pharmaceutical industry. If one company faked anything, or was hiding how dangerous their product really was (hard, in the face of rigorous testing and regulations), their competition would be more than happy to point that out to the public in a matter of hours.
Unfortunately, the scam that caused people to doubt the safety of vaccines made some diseases reemerge.
- Prior to the vaccine, up to four million people would get measles each year in the US alone. Up to 500 would die. The number fell to just 85 reported cases iin 2005. But it has risen to 1282 in 2019. The Eastern European region, where I'm from, had more than 340,000 cases in 1980. In the year 1990, the number of infected fell to 59,000. The lowest number was around 10,000 in 2010. Because some people avoid the MMR vaccine amid autism fears, the number of reported cases rose three times in just seven years.
- The US also saw several mumps epidemics rom 2015 to 2017.
- Whooping cough claimed 138,000 lives worldwide in 1990. This number fell to 61,000 in 2013. In 2012, the US saw an epidemic of this disease, with more than 48,000 people infected. This is the highest number of confirmed cases since 1955. Shocking, isn't it?
Some anti-vaxxers can be cured.
Many anti-vaxxers, or as scientists call them, people who are vaccine-hesitant, are loving parents who have simply fallen into the wrong internet echo chamber. Once emotions get involved, the logic part of the brain can switch off, and convincing them that the scientific community has the right answers becomes increasingly hard. They were told, after all, that the pharmaceutical industry and doctors lie to them. And they lack the scientific knowledge to know the difference.
Raging at anti-vaxxers on the internet, isn't usually very effective. Instead, try calmly explaining the scientific research, and sharing scientifically-accurate information. Where that fails, some scary pictures of measles and polio may shock your (not-so-)friendly neighborhood anti-vaxxer back to reality. Or we could focus on the next generation, and educate anti-vaxxers' children about the benefits of immunization when they become adolescents.
We desperately need a COVID-19 vaccine.
Many different scientific teams are rushing to complete a vaccine for COVID-19 as soon as possible. A grand total of 169 possible vaccine candidates are currently being developed and tested.
The safety and efficiency testing is the reason why we won't be able to get a vaccine before 2021 (and this is the earliest proposed date). Some other vaccines are scheduled for much later. The reason for this is the different approach to making a vaccine, and different technologies used. The good thing about the process is that the more approaches we apply simultaneously, the faster we'll get the most efficient vaccine.
When it arrives, the COVID-19 vaccine will first be offered to the most vulnerable people, who have the highest risk of serious complications. Once the new vaccine enters the mass market, however, let's hope that people line up to get it rather than talking about how COVID is a hoax or vaccines are dangerous. Now that we have all lived through a global pandemic, you'd hope we've learned first hand how important vaccines are.
Sources & Links
- Photo courtesy of SteadyHealth