Outsourcing
Weighing the risks
Though vaccines are playing a huge role in the fi ght against Covid-19, some hesitancy remains. A few people have died from allergic reactions and blood clots likely sparked by the jab, but the plastering of such coverage on social media gives a narrow, rather than holistic, view of the risk. Andrea Valentino talks to Viktorija Erdeljic Turk at University Hospital Centre Zagreb and Lene Heise Garvey, an associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, to understand how the ingredients of vaccines might spark negative reactions in certain people, and how medical science and wider society have to work together to get populations on board with vaccination.
he headlines, when they came, were chilling. “Two Alaska health workers got emergency treatment after receiving Pfizer’s vaccine”, read the front page of the New York Times in December 2020. “Possible link between J&J Covid vaccine and rare blood clots, EU regulator finds”, reported the Guardian a few months later. By June 2021, the Daily Mail had splashed the story of Tanya Smith, a healthy mother who died of blood clots days after her jab. Quoting her partner, the paper described Smith as “just amazing, selfless. She was a childminder – a really good childminder for 19 years”. When she died, leaving behind three young children, Smith was just 43 years old. Stories like this are always depressing to read, especially given how readily they’re exploited by vaccine sceptics. As a popular comment on the
T World Pharmaceutical Frontiers /
www.worldpharmaceuticals.net
Mail’s story wailed, Smith’s death was just another example of officials “downplaying” the risks of Covid-19 shots, a sentiment echoed across social media. Naturally, it’s easy to dismiss these people as paranoid conspiracy theorists. But given one- third of people in the US are still reluctant to get their shot, it’s probably worth asking whether they have a point.
Of course, that doesn’t mean entertaining the notion that governments are deliberately obscuring the true cost of vaccines, let alone that every dose contains tiny 5G microchips. All the same, it’s undoubtedly true that every Covid-19 jab comes with some inherent risks. Despite these challenges, you sometimes get the sense that many lay enthusiasts would struggle to explain how vaccines actually work, while even pharmaceutical experts
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