National Institutes of Health director debunks COVID-19 vaccine myths

From blood clots to heart problems, some people are worried about the side effects from a coronavirus vaccine.

We asked one of the nation’s top doctors to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine.

Around 50% of Floridians have been vaccinated, and Dr. Francis Collins, the director of National Institutes of Health, is desperate to convince the rest to do the same.

“This is now a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Collins told WINK News.

Among reasons why many people are yet to be vaccinated is a worry about side effects.

“We have an awful lot of very reassuring data,” Collins said. “Yes, there are rare side effects of blood clots and the J&J vaccine of potential cardiac findings in the mRNA vaccines to Pfizer, Moderna, but those are like one and 100,000 kind of episodes, and mostly, they are completely reversible.”

Then, there’s the lack of complete FDA approval.

“I can tell you right now, the likelihood that FDA will not grant full approval is extremely remote because they’ve been at it now going through hundreds of thousands of pages of the application doing site visits of the factories to be sure everything is right with the manufacturing,” Collins said. “And I do think we’re, we’re going to get an answer to that is within the next month.”

Another myth Collins wanted to address was the idea floating around that children are immune to COVID-19. He says more than 400 children have died during this pandemic, and there are around 1,500 kids in hospitals presently.

Many people are also skeptical about getting vaccinated, arguing people can still contract COVID-19 regardless of vaccination status. So people are asking why they should get vaccinated at all.

“Because they want to survive?” Collins said. “I mean, it’s come down to that. If you’re unvaccinated and you get infected, your chances are getting up in the hospital in the icu or the morgue are substantial.”