Health care workers answer questions about the COVID-19 vaccines.
Rhea Boyd, MD, MPH addresses concerns about safety of the COVID vaccines, and why not to wait to get vaccinated.
What we know for sure is that after we’ve given the vaccine to hundreds of millions of Americans, they’re incredibly safe and incredibly effective. And any of the serious side effects we’ve seen are exceedingly rare. What we don’t know is the additional variants that might pop up that might evade the immune response, might hide away from the immune response our body makes because you received the vaccines. What we don’t know is if the vaccines will continue to be effective two years from now or 10 years from now, just from the doses you’ve already received. But what we do know is that if you get COVID today, you have a very high risk of being, having long COVID or prolonged symptoms, of being hospitalized or even dying of COVID when you compare it to your risk of getting the vaccine. So, from what we know, this vaccine is the most effective way for us to limit the spread of COVID and protect yourself from COVID’s most serious complications.
