Local health officials say that myths and misinformation about COVID-19 are among the biggest obstacles for boosting demand in the shots.
Dr. Raymond Lee Kiser, medical director of hospital care physicians at Columbus Regional Health and the first person in Bartholomew County to be vaccinated against COVID-19, spoke with The Republic about some common myths about the vaccines and why he is encouraging people to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated.
Myth: The COVID-19 vaccine will alter my DNA.
A: “Absolutely not. There is no data that would indicate that at all, and I’m very confident in saying that for several reasons. First of all, with the Pfizer and the Moderna (vaccines), they’re actually messenger RNA vaccines. And so those cannot be incorporated into your DNA. Really, there is no enzyme available with this specific virus or with this specific vaccine that would turn that into DNA that can be incorporated. …Even with the so-called DNA vaccines, which is the (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine and the one that we don’t use, AstraZeneca … they contain small strands of DNA, but that DNA never reaches the nucleus, which is where we basically store our DNA. So this DNA only makes it into what’s called the cytoplasm of the cell, which is kind of the factory. …That DNA, once it’s there, it just gets turned into messenger RNA, which then gets turned into a protein. So even with the so-called DNA vaccines, there’s really no ability for it to be incorporated into our own DNA.”
Myth: I had COVID-19 and recovered, so I don’t need to get vaccinated.
A: “We certainly still recommend getting the vaccine. There is some concern that natural immunity, which is the immunity that you would get from actually having the virus, will start to decrease over time. …There is some indication (in studies) that it starts to wane with time, (but) what we have seen when we follow these folks who are enrolled in the vaccine trial is that they seem to have a fairly lasting antibody response, although it does decrease. But what we’ve also seen is this 90-plus efficacy, even now, when we’re talking three months, six months following these participants out. …What I tell folks is the vaccines certainly have significant efficacy against the early virus. The vaccines also have at least a decent efficacy against some of the new variants. We do not know if your natural immunity will give you enough efficacy against these new variants that are coming out. So for me, personally, even if I had had the virus, which I fortunately did not, I would want the vaccine just for the hope that it is going to provide me additional protection as this virus continues to mutate and as new variations come out.”
Myth: The COVID-19 vaccine causes infertility or miscarriages.
“Fortunately, now, we have some very, very robust data that absolutely says it does not. …What we know from those patients who, unfortunately, were pregnant and ended up getting the actual virus — not the vaccine — we did not see any indications of an increase in miscarriages or infertility. The good news is that this exact same protein that we’re giving to you (in the vaccine) was also given to those people by the virus itself, and neither your body’s antibodies to that protein nor that protein cause any issues with pregnancy. What was very clear, though, from those unfortunate pregnant women who got infected, was there was an increased risk for them to have a severe disease even if they had no other risk factors. Pregnancy by itself is a risk factor for severe disease. …We’ve now followed over 35,000 women (V-safe) who have gotten the vaccine during pregnancy, and that data actually just got released this week and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. So now we have very, very reassuring data that says there was no indication of any safety signals. So there was no indication of pregnancy loss. There was no indication of miscarriages. There is no indication of abnormal fetal outcomes or issues with the babies. What they did show, actually, was that women who got the vaccine were probably just slightly more likely to have some discomfort at the injection site, but, interestingly, we’re less likely to have some of the more common side effects, like fevers and chills and (muscle pain).”
Myth: The COVID-19 vaccines contain tissue from aborted fetuses
A: “I don’t make the vaccine myself, but I can tell you from everything that I have looked at everything that I have read, there is zero indication that they contain any fetal material at all. So I am extraordinarily confident that is not happening. I personally would not want to receive the vaccine in that situation, and I absolutely got the vaccine because everything that I’ve looked at, and I’ve looked at their submissions to the (Food and Drug Administration) in detail. There are no fetal cells contained in any of the vaccines that are available.”
Myth: The COVID-19 vaccines were developed too quickly to be safe
A: “The technology to develop this vaccine, specifically the messenger RNA vaccines, has actually been around for about 20 years. So that part really has not been new. It was really almost a technology without a disease to use it for. …They have used it in other situations, particularly in cancer therapies. So then to just turn that technology to vaccine making really was not a terribly difficult task. You can think of it as an auto plant that was used to making cars and now suddenly said, ‘We need to learn how to make trucks.’ It’s not that big of a leap to turn the factory around and make a truck. So it really was not difficult. The only difference was we really had never used a messenger RNA vaccine before. …The trials (the vaccine manufacturers) undertook were by no means small trials. When we compare this to other pharmaceutical agents, the trials that they did would be considered massive trials for any drug. So they definitely did not cut any corners. They used the absolute appropriate number of patients. They monitored them carefully. And so truly this was a robust effort by the scientists by the government to lend as much support as they could to get these done rapidly but by no means were any of the processes rushed.”
