Vaccine Fear | Part 2: What is included in the COVID-19 vaccine?

Editor’s Note: This is the second episode of a five-part series on the safety and hesitation of the COVID-19 vaccine and was first published in Chattanooga Times Free Press, one of Gazette’s sister newspapers.

People who are hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine may ask basic questions such as “what’s in it?”

Getting the answer is not as easy as the frequent public health messages about where and how to get the vaccine. But they are available.

Dr. Ruparilimaier, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of behavioral and practice sciences at the International Vaccine Access Center, said such concerns also existed in previous vaccines.

“Parents were particularly concerned about the types of ingredients in the vaccine,” Limaye said, and Limaye said this long-standing concern exists in the new vaccine.

“Because we are only in the middle of a pandemic, I think this vaccine has undergone more scrutiny compared to other vaccines that have undergone an (emergency authorization) process. The approval process. ” “I think there are still protracted concerns due to the speed and development of the trial, so I think we’re hearing more about certain” anti-vaccination agents. ” “How safe is the COVID-19 vaccine in the event of a rush to develop?”, A five-part series, Times Free Press, to some of the common questions about the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. I worked on it. In this article, we will consider the following:

Question: What is included in the dose of COVID-19 vaccine and are the ingredients safe?

Answer: Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, who use the COVID-19 vaccine available in the United States, have posted the vaccine ingredients on their website and the US Food and Drug Administration website.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also lists ingredients and states on its website. “Vaccines do not contain eggs, gelatin, latex, preservatives. All COVID-19 vaccines do not contain metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt, lithium, rare earth alloys, or Manufactured products such as microelectronics, electrodes, carbon nanotubes, and nanowire semiconductors. “

The COVID-19 vaccine does not contain coronavirus and cannot be inoculated with COVID-19.

Daniel Salmon, director of the Vaccine Safety Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, also has a detailed list of vaccine ingredients on its website, but be careful when reading the ingredient list. I advise you.

“Some ingredients look scary, so you need to be careful when looking at them,” Salmon said, citing formaldehyde, which is used in some vaccines, as an example.

None of the COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the United States contain formaldehyde, but some false articles widely distributed on social media state that they do. I will. The US Food and Drug Administration lists the common ingredients in a series of US-approved vaccines online and explains their function.

“In almost all cases, the poison is included in the dose,” he said. “Therefore, when looking at the components of a vaccine, you need to look at the amounts and take them into account.”

The active ingredient in Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is messenger RNA (mRNA). This is a small amount of genetic material that tells the body how to make the “peplomer” that is characteristic of the coronavirus.

The active ingredient in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is adenovirus, a family of viruses that cause the common cold. It has been modified to be harmless to convey the information needed to teach the body how to recognize peplomer proteins. Coronavirus to prevent infection.

The Inactive ingredients of the vaccine include a combination of lipids, salts, sugars, acids and acid stabilizers. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine also contains a small amount of ethanol.

Salmon said that Pfizer and Moderna vaccine mRNAs do not alter your DNA. He attributed this common misconception to those who confuse mRNA with DNA. This is because the two acronyms sound similar, but they have completely different functions. Adenovirus also does not change our genetic code.

“(Vaccines) haven’t changed your DNA. They contain bits of the viral mRNA that your body is reacting to,” he said. “It never gets into your DNA. It gives something that reacts to your body, and then it just disappears.”

For Pfizer vaccines, the inert ingredients are lipids (a group of organic compounds including fats and oils), potassium chloride, potassium monobasic phosphate, sodium chloride, sodium dibasic phosphate dihydrate, and sucrose (sulose). Contains sugar). The Inactive ingredients of Moderna are similar and include lipids, cholesterol, 1,2-distearoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine, tromethamine, tromethamine hydrochloride, acetic acid, sodium acetate and sucrose.

Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine inactivating ingredients include citrate monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol, 2-hydroxypropyl-cyclodextrin (HBCD), polysorbate-80, and sodium chloride.