Читать книгу Vaccines For Dummies - Sharon Perkins - Страница 13

Infectious diseases have not been completely tamed. COVID-19 reminds us there are many viruses and bacteria out there that we’ve never dealt with before. It goes without saying that COVID-19 changed the world abruptly for us all. In the first full year of the pandemic (2020), it led to at least 350,000 deaths in the United States and at least 1.8 million deaths reported worldwide. Vaccines have been an important part of the solution.

No vaccines have been watched as closely as the COVID-19 vaccines as they passed through phase I, then II, then III, and onto use in the general population. The world watched as controlled trials studied the use of the vaccines versus a placebo. These trials — as well as post-rollout monitoring — looked closely for any side effects.

As we discuss in more detail in Chapter 3, many different types of vaccine methods are used today. A lot of advances in vaccine science led to the COVID-19 vaccines. The first vaccines came from science that was only a couple of decades old. The COVID-19 vaccines currently in use are messenger RNA (mRNA) or viral vector vaccines.

Vaccines were also shown to provide better protection than natural infection, especially when facing new variants of COVID-19. As COVID-19 has spread around the globe, it has collected many new mutations creating new variants, so your immune system may not recognize new variants after getting sick with a prior one. It may become necessary to have booster COVID-19 vaccinations to remain immune, just like you need to remain protected against the flu.