No medical intervention or intervention is 100 percent safe, and researchers devote a lot of time to ensuring that the mentioned risks are as rare as possible - and that they are absolutely smaller than the benefits themselves. Obviously, due to the pandemic, a lot of attention is being paid to the COVID-19 vaccines and their side effects.
Approximately one in ten people experience side effects after receiving the vaccine. These are mostly pain at the injection site, redness and swelling near the injection site, but people also experience headaches, chills, fever, nausea and a general feeling of tiredness. Side effects may be worse after the second vaccination than after the first.
But what is the actual biological cause of side effects? The team at Technology Networks interviewed the professor Martin Michaelis and dr. Mark Wass from the University of Kent's School of Biosciences to explain what happens in your body after vaccination.
“There are two main reasons why vaccines cause side effects. One is actually an immune system response, and that's what we want," Professor Michaelis said in the video. “The other thing is that a lot of people will know but may not keep in mind when it comes to side effects or adverse events is the placebo effect. Because this can have positive, but also quite negative consequences. "
Although side effects are not welcome, they have a scientific basis and tell us that our immune system is active. The COVID-19 vaccines do not contain the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease. They simply trick our body into thinking we've been in contact with a virus, which our immune system can then learn to recognize as dangerous. This allows our body to be more prepared to fight in the event that we become infected with SARS-CoV-2.
Michaelis talks about our body's innate immune response and how it is the same in many diseases. He also points out that our body is not aware that there is no danger with the vaccine, so it reacts as if it were a new attack. And with this response, the body prepares for future attacks of the virus.
A special case is vomiting, which as a side effect is certainly rare. In trials AstraZeneca it is experienced by a few people in every 100. Vomiting serves as a response of the body and evolutionarily means to clear the stomach of something dangerous. In the case of vaccination, it has no meaning, but our body behaves according to how evolution has taught it to behave in such cases.
Another cause of side effects is the nocebo effect, similar to the placebo effect, but with negative consequences. Doctor Wass explains that the latter comes from the expectation of unwanted effects, which are basically triggered by our psyche.
