Dr Peter Shepherd says the mission to survive and thrive beyond Covid-19 is possible if we all get vaccinated. Photo / File
OPINION: By Peter Shepherd
Many people in the Far North are worried about COVID-19 but are also asking whether the Pfizer vaccine is safe.
I am from Kaitaia myself and got my education at Kaitaia College but now head a large research laboratory at the University of Auckland and I have research links to Te Hiku through the Fructose in Schools Study that runs in many schools up north with the Moko Foundation.
Through my many years of science experience, I have a lot of insights into how this vaccine works so I thought now would be a good time to share this with the people of Te Hiku.
My research work focuses on understanding what causes diseases and using this information to develop new ways to treat these diseases.
To do this work I have to understand a lot of things and put them all together in a balanced way.
This includes understanding how messenger RNA works, how viruses work and how the immune system works.
Lucky for us there has been some remarkable progress in science in recent years and this has allowed us to develop new ways to detect the virus that causes COVID-19 and new ways to very quickly make vaccines to prevent COVID-19.
This has saved tens of millions of people from dying and now can protect the people of Te Hiku as well if enough people get vaccinated that is.
My opinion is that this new way of using mRNA to make vaccines is incredibly safe and a good analogy for this is the Mission Impossible movie.
Many of you will know that the premise of the Mission Impossible franchise is that a short message is given to the Mission Impossible team and that after the team hear it this message self destructs so it doesn't compromise the team.
However, it gives the team all the information it needs to complete the job. Same with mRNA. mRNA only lasts a short time in our body because it's quite unstable.
In fact that's why they have to ship the vaccine across the world at ultra-low temperatures or it would degrade.
I can assure you that the mRNA doesn't change our DNA. What it does is it gives the body a message or a code that allows it to make a protein called the spike protein.
This is one small part of the COVID-19 virus and so the vaccine is not making active virus as some people think and so it is actually 100% impossible for the vaccination to cause infections in other people.
Many of you will already know that making this one small piece of the virus can activate our army of immune cells.
This means they can see in advance this crucial part of the virus and so be prepared for the virus when it comes and stay ahead of the virus.
This new way of making vaccines has the advantage that we can very quickly make huge amounts of mRNA whereas old ways of making vaccines were very slow and time-consuming.
It is also a very flexible way of making vaccines as we can use our knowledge of the genetics of the virus to find parts of the virus that will be the best targets for our immune system.
This means we can make new vaccines much more quickly and ones that are actually even safer than previous vaccines.
So why are people still scared?
People fear side effects. The vaccine can cause a sore arm or a headache or feel tired for a couple of days after the vaccine. but this is to be expected as the immune system gets up to speed.
In an incredibly small number of cases, this can cause myocarditis but there is a much greater risk of getting myocarditis from getting COVID-19 itself.
Some people say they don't trust the government. This is not about the government, it's a battle between a virus that came from bats and the whole human race.
Governments just happen to be the only mechanism we have to actually distribute a vaccine to the whole population.
Some say they aren't worried about it for themselves.
This is just selfish because if you do get it, you will almost certainly pass it on to some one else and that virus that came through you is likely to kill some one down the line.
Therefore my message is to please get vaccinated as it's safe and it really does contribute to saving the vulnerable people in our communities in Te Hiku o te Ika.
Peter Shepherd is a Professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Pathology at The University of Auckland and is a Fellow of Royal Society of New Zealand- Te Aparangi. He has received his education and training at Te Hapua School, Kaitaia Intermediate, Kaitaia College, Massey University, Harvard Medical School, University of Cambridge and University College London.