New Risks from the Covid Vaccine, is it Still Worth Getting?

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Rachel Foreman, Opinion Writer

While people start getting the COVID-19 vaccine there are now new risks.

One of the risks that has been discovered is people are starting to get blood clots from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. 

The most popular vaccine to get is Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Pfizer. While all three of these vaccines have one similar quality, which is to encourage your cells to produce more spike proteins. One of the big differences is you only have to get one shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine which is way more convenient then the 2 shot options. 

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine tries to build immunity by using a dormant adenovirus to carry genetic information to your cells. 

There have been 17 cases in total of people getting blood clots from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and one of the people died from the blood clots.

But how did these people get those blood clots?

Getting blood clots is a pretty rare occurrence while getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but researchers speculate why this is happening is because of low platelets levels in the recipients. 

There was an 11 day pause on the Johnson & Johnson but the pause was recently lifted by the FDA and CDC, they both deemed the vaccine is still safe to use. 

Vaccines are now required to put a new warning on the labels warning people about these blood clots and now people who are under the age of 50 are advised to be cautious when getting this vaccine. 

But do risks outweigh the benefits?

For example, in India COVID has spiked from having 68,020 new cases last month on March 28th to 360,927 new cases today which is about 5 times more cases. Currently India accounts for one-third of COVID cases in the world.

Hospitals are starting to get overwhelmed with the influx of people needing medical assistance for Covid, Hospital beds and ventilators are starting to get more scarce and people are now dying from just waiting to get a room. 

In Idaho there have been 1.06 million doses of vaccines given while 470 thousand people are fully vaccinated which is 26% of Idaho. In the whole United States 29% of people are fully vaccinated. 

Worldwide there have been 149 million cases and 3.15 million deaths so it may be worth the risk of getting vaccinated to have that extra protection.