FDA Approves Pfizer’s COVID Vaccine — So What's The Excuse Not To Be Vaccinated Now?
The FDA approved it, so why not get it?
Daniel Chetroni / Shutterstock The FDA has officially approved the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine and even Donald Trump is endorsing vaccine efficacy.
The vaccine, which will now be marketed as Comirnaty, was initially granted emergency authorization in December 2020 but had not received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration seal of approval.
This decision comes along with vaccine requirements that will be made by hospitals, colleges, corporations, and other organizations.
This FDA approval may even counteract some vaccine hesitancy. Many hope that now that the Pfizer vaccine is approved there will be no excuse not to get the vaccine.
Will Pfizer's FDA approval push people to get the COVID-19 vaccine?
This new official FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine means that people can't use the excuse that it's "experimental."
This may have been fear of people who were unvaccinated, but the approval shows that we have come so far in the world of science and technology that we are actually able to create an official FDA-approved vaccine after almost 2 years.
According to the Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, this means that "the public can be very confident that this vaccine meets the high standards for safety, effectiveness, and manufacturing quality the FDA requires of an approved product."
The FDA-approved Pfizer vaccine means people who get the vaccine can trust that it's safe and will protect against the effects of COVID.
New studies are indicating that, overall, COVID vaccines have a 55% effectiveness against COVID-19 infection, 80% against asymptomatic infection, and 90% or higher against hospitalization.
Vaccines are necessary to reduce COVID-19 deaths.
Even though vaccinated people can still contract COVID-19, the recent breakthrough cases could be from a result of the waning vaccine immunity after six months or more, not wearing a mask as a precaution, and the highly contagious Delta variant.
However, even with breakthrough infections, the vaccine has been proven to prevent hospitalization and death.
According to C.D.C. data, the vast majority of people who died even after getting the vaccine were people with weakened immune systems and 74% were also adults 65 and older.
Vaccine hesitancy must be challenged now as the spread of covid and the new Delta variant is continuing to grow.
Misinformation is continuing to fuel vaccine refusal.
The other threat to unvaccinated people isn't just covid but the spread of misinformation as well. Dr. Vivek Murthy, President Biden’s surgeon general, said recently that the speed, scale, and sophistication with how misinformation is spreading is "impacting our health."
“It’s happening largely, in part, aided and abetted by social media platforms.”
The office of the surgeon general even went as far as to release a formal advisory that stated misinformation is “an urgent threat” to public health.
Facebook has been heavily criticized for its possible role in COVID-19 misinformation. The social media platform reportedly delayed it's first quarterly "content transparency" report in order to disguise 3 months of concerning content.
The report which was obtained from The NY Times revealed that the most-viewed link was a news article suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine was to blame for the death of a Florida doctor.
They also found that "The Epoch Times," an anti-China newspaper that spreads right-wing conspiracy theories, was the 19th-most-popular page for the first 3 months of 2021.
"The Epoch Times" has also promoted QAnon conspiracy theories and spread misleading claims about voter fraud before the 2020 presidential election.
If you don't already, listen to medical professionals and government agencies about all things coronavirus, be careful of algorithms online and believing everything you see on Facebook, and please, once and for all, get vaccinated.
Megan Hatch is a writer at YourTango who covers pop culture, love and relationships, and self-care.