A dozen COVID questions for which people need answers

By Dr. Jerrol Thompson

1. True or False: As the vaccines are not fully effective and cannot prevent Covid 100% or cure it, then there’s no point in taking it? …

(False!). A medicine is a drug you take after a disease develops or to cure a disease, like using a diabetic or blood pressure pill or an antibiotic. A vaccine is taken to build your immunity long before the disease develops, to PREVENT catching a disease like Covid-19. All these vaccines are 90% to 95% effective. While this is not 100%, it is certainly not 0%. At 94% effectiveness only 5% to 6% vaccinated might still contract Covid but it will only be mild, (runny nose, sneezing, headache, sore throat), with no hospitalization or death. Vaccines also reduce transmission by 68% after a first dose and 90% after the second.

2. True or false: 99% of new infections are in the unvaccinated.

(True!). Almost all the cases anywhere in the world are in unvaccinated persons. However, in the UK 385,000 who had Covid, developed a further problem called LONG COVID months after they had recovered. This has extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain, brain-fog, palpitations, insomnia, dizziness, tinnitus (ringing in ears), nausea, loss of appetite, fever and loss of taste & smell.

3. True or false: ‘If you have a healthy lifestyle, your own immune system can defend itself and there is no need for a vaccine’

(This is False!). If there was such a healthy lifestyle that a person practiced all their lives, which allowed you to fight against such an aggressive viruses like Covid, we would have known, and we would have experienced or suggested it too.

If there was such a lifestyle or the view SVG has the healthiest foods, then diabetes, hypertension, cancer, etc., would be non-existent in SVG. Being in good health does allow you to resist the attacks of a virus longer and more strongly than someone who is unhealthy, but that, unfortunately, is all that can be achieved by having led a healthy lifestyle before contracting the virus.

Of course, if you believe a healthy lifestyle also means washing hands, wearing masks, physical distance, avoiding close contact and following public health guidelines, these are good ways to further protect yourself, but too often we let our guard down, our immune system can’t get boosted to spontaneously resist the virus – unless we take a Vaccine and also some Vitamin D.

4. True or false: ‘Vaccine’s side effects are more dangerous than the disease’.

(False!). Pain at the injection site, redness, fever, chills, fatigue and headaches, are considered Mild (Adverse Effects) which occur in one out of every 10 persons. This is also true for all the childhood vaccines. In fact, it tells us that the vaccine is really working and it is not any infection. If there is a severe allergy or you’re young and get a blood clot, (which is very rare) or myocarditis, (an inflammation of the heart muscle), these are considered; Serious Side Effect, (that is, if you don’t have other risk factors like smoking, birth control pills or the virus itself). These are all extremely rare, such that health agencies believe that the benefit far outweighs the risk. Covid-19 vaccines are safe apart from the rare side effects, but not all vaccines carry the same risk of serious side effects.

5.Vaccines are considered safe compared with many other fad-foods, drugs and medicines.

(True!). The vaccines we use are quite safe. Some groups and anti-vaccine activists have claimed that vaccines killed 341 people in Trinidad in June and the VAERS (vaccine reporting system) in the USA shows thousands were killed.

This is false. There are no deaths due to the Vaccines in Trinidad, however, the vaccine has not prevented breakthrough infections mainly because persons were either not fully vaccinated (2 Weeks after 2nd dose). Breakthrough can also occur with the bad Delta variant.

6. Are Facebook posts misleading persons, rather than educating them?

(True!). The US Surgeon General has stated – Misinformation is a Public Health Emergency.

People are being fed lies by shadow groups. Twelve individuals are responsible for 65% of false/fake Social Media posts. Many entities can continue to benefit if the pandemic is prolonged. Misinformation is pushed for financial gains, personal ideology or simply just for a laugh.

7. True or false: Vaccines modify our genetic code and can change our DNA.

(False!). When you catch the Covid-19 virus, huge strands of Virus-RNA enters your cells and takes over the role of our messenger- RNA to produce millions of virus proteins from our body’s cellular machinery. These viruses go on to infect more cells.

So when you’re infected by viruses, like influenza, dengue, chikungunya or Covid-19, it’s in fact an injection of real virus messenger- RNA, or if caused by a bite from mosquito borne virus like Dengue.

There has been no evidence of genetic modification in billions of people infected by any of these viruses. There is also no evidence that m-RNA-vaccination will cause genetic modification either. The Vaccine is not a virus, has absolutely no virus in it, so why should anyone be afraid that a vaccine will do something worse than the virus you want to fight. After stimulating immunity, a Vaccine’s m-RNA or carrier vectors are destroyed within hours to a point that a second dose is necessary for the full effect to take place. Vaccines do not persist in our body beyond a few hours.

8. True or false: ‘Messenger RNA & other vaccines can cause cancer’.

(False!, False! False!).

Cancer can be caused by carcinogens, but doesn’t appear in the weeks or months following exposure, but years later. Any speculation that cancer could appear decades after a vaccine and we’d then have a cancer epidemic is dismissed by the overwhelming majority of scientists. On the other hand, many things we inhale swallow and ingest, may also place us at risk of exposure to carcinogens.

The fine particles that we breathe in the atmosphere on high dusty polluted days may be carcinogenic too, so maybe we’ll develop cancer from the air we breathed. There is no case that has ever shown – that any vaccine can or has caused cancer over the last 100 years and no reason to think these vaccines do.

9. True or False: Covid-19 Vaccines contain dangerous and evil ingredients.

(False!). Vaccine ingredients are now natural & safe. There’s no chip, metals or a Mark of the Beast.

10. True or False: ‘Covid-19 vaccines were developed too quickly, so can’t be trusted’.

It’s true that they were developed very quickly.

Thank God we have them or huge numbers of deaths might have occurred if it took four (4) years. These innovative, new, vaccines, especially the messenger- RNA & Vector vaccines were being worked on for over a decade. Zica & Ebola vaccines emerged from this same research in 2019. In 2020 it was a matter of substituting these other viruses for Covid. Recruitment of 30,000 people, split in 2 groups to study the difference between a placebo group (no vaccine given) and a vaccine group was done. Study phases dealing with ethics & peer review were closely monitored and the usual lengthy phase of administrative review of clinical trials, (where documents are often placed in a queue, behind other drugs awaiting approval or staying on someone’s desks for years), these reviews were given priority, speeded up and this is what saved and shortened the time.

11. True or false: ‘Some vaccinated people still test positive or are hospitalised, which proves that the vaccine is ineffective, especially against the Delta variant’.

In highly vaccinated countries: Israel, UK, US or Canada which are currently experiencing a wave of the Delta variant, 99% of cases are occurring in unvaccinated persons.

There does not seem to be increased death from the Delta variant but, it multiplies far quicker and produces 1,000 time higher viral loads, it is 250 times more contagious and becomes contagious two days earlier than ordinary strains found in SVG.

At the same time, in BVI, Russia and South Africa, where the vaccination rates are low (around 15% – like SVG, compared to rates of more than 65% in the UK & USA), there has been significant mortality, with nearly 800 deaths a day. Vaccines are 90% -95% effective.

12. Should I get the vaccine now and should I encourage friends to take it?

(Yes!!!). Get Vaccinated Now! Don’t wait – take the first vaccine you can get. Do your readings, ask your doctor, Choose either Sputnic-V, Pfizer, Abdala- Cuba or AstraZeneca, if available, they are all great choices. Then help your nation by Encouraging Two Others to Vaccinate Too.