Ok, the bull crap meter is off the charts on Facebook recently. Not sure what to make of the vaccine? Let me answer some of the vaccine myths.
1. “It alters DNA”
Pfizer and Moderna are mRNA vaccines. mRNA (messenger RNA) is your body’s instruction for creating proteins your body requires. Proteins such as endogenous steroids, insulin, collagen, and more. Your body NEEDS these proteins.
What these vaccines are doing is giving your body the instruction to create a protein that is on the outside of the virus called an S or spike protein. This spike protein on the outside of the virus is responsible for allowing the virus into the cell and continue to use your “protein factories” (ribosomes) to make more viral particles, contributing to more viral spread.
In the same way that the virus cannot alter your DNA, neither can the vaccine. Using the same process the virus does to create havoc, we create a portion of the virus (the spike protein) which the body recognizes as foreign and creates antibodies to mount a defense. We are beating the virus to the factory assembly line and creating a product to prevent it from being able to replicate in our body.
2. “mRNA is vulnerable to destruction, so they are coated with lipid nanoparticles to allow inserting into our DNA.”
Well, I can see we need a little biology lesson. mRNA is regularly degraded in the body to make new RNA. These nucleic acid bases are used to make everything in your body, so these sequences are read and destroyed, read and destroyed, read and destroyed, continuously throughout your lifetime. mRNA DOES NOT ENTER THE DNA. It is a single-stranded version of your DNA in a gene that is unzipped and sent out of the nucleus to make a protein.
These scary “lipid nanoparticles” do not allow entry into the DNA, but rather allow entry into the cell where they are used by ribosomes (again, not in the nucleus where DNA is stored) to make proteins. Your cell has a phospholipid bilayer which prevents things from entering the cell that shouldn’t. This is something we do want in the cell, so we have to give it a key to get in.
3. “So many chemicals and toxins”
The list of ingredients is rather small and all serve a purpose. There is no aluminum, mercury, or formaldehyde. It has mRNA, lipids, sugar, sodium, and potassium. Trust me, you ingest a considerable amount of that every day. Polyethylene glycol, or PEG, is used in numerous cosmetic and drug formulations, including as an inactive ingredient in many many many tablets and under the trade name “Miralax” for constipation. This is an ingredients list that even I can cook with!
4. “This is the first time we’ve used an mRNA vaccine”.
Well, that part IS true, but it isn’t the first time we leave used mRNA technology in medicine. Most notably, mRNA technology is used in the field of monoclonal antibodies to help with rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other autoimmune disorders. Now, why haven’t we used an mRNA vaccine before? Because the vaccines we have work. Why recreate the wheel just to make something as effective. We will likely see more in the field in the upcoming years, but there should not be fear around the first mRNA vaccine. These myth points are being trotted out to demonize the very thing that is going to help bring an end to this horrible pandemic that has impacted so many negatively.
5. “The virus mutates, so what’s the point?”
COVID-19 does mutate, but very slowly. The need for frequent immunizations depends largely on how quickly it mutates. Currently, there is not ample evidence to suggest that we would need it every year (or that we wouldn’t).
The truth is we need it NOW. I’ve seen virality represented as working with glitter. It’s time to put the cap back on and start cleaning up our mess. I’m happy to discuss and explain with anyone who really wants to know more about it. I encourage everyone to not share without checking their work. You wouldn’t turn in a test without checking your answers, and this is a global test that you are sharing your answers with the world classroom online. We don’t want to fail.
