Corona vaccination: why waiting is so dangerous
Updated onChristiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.
More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.Some people still hesitate to get vaccinated against the coronavirus. Some want to make sure that the vaccines don't eventually show risky side effects. Others want to wait for a vaccination update that is also tailored to the new mutants. But waiting is high risk in the pandemic - for the individual and for everyone else.
Those who do not get vaccinated become infected
Since the highly contagious Delta variant has determined the pandemic, one thing is very likely clear: Those who do not get vaccinated will be infected with Sars-CoV-2. According to experts, herd immunity, which also protects the unvaccinated, is no longer to be expected with this virus mutation.
Even if most people, especially younger ones, survive a Covid 19 disease well, without a vaccination you run the risk of getting seriously ill, carrying off consequential damage such as Long Covid - or even dying.
Vaccination significantly reduces these risks. Of course, like all effective medical interventions, it comes with its own risk. But this is so small in comparison to the benefit that the vaccination also makes sense for young people who rarely get seriously ill with Covid-19.
Waiting for better mutant protection
The newly emerging Sars-CoV-2 mutations should not discourage anyone from getting vaccinated. Because the current vaccines work a little weaker, but still very good against the current mutants. They would also offer a certain protection against future mutants, because these mutants do not hit the immune system completely unprepared, which reduces the risk of serious disease progression.
If the protection of the current vaccinations is no longer sufficient at some point, you can compensate for this with additional vaccinations. How, that is already being tested.
Worry about long-term vaccine damage
Many people worry that, years after vaccination, previously unknown long-term damage could occur. In fact, however, most of the side effects - including serious side effects - appear in the first few days after a vaccination, only in isolated cases after weeks and extremely rarely after a few months.
It is therefore extremely unlikely that long-term damage to the vaccination will not show up until years later. Also because vaccines - unlike many drugs - are not given permanently.
The swine flu vaccine thing
However, very rare side effects often take a long time to become apparent. That was the case with the swine flu vaccine Pandemrix and it still unsettles people today. At that time, children developed the autoimmune disease narcolepsy in rare cases after the vaccination. In fact, that only came to light a good year after the vaccine was introduced.
But: Even then, the corresponding symptoms appeared just a few weeks after the vaccination, very rarely after three months. Because there were so few people affected overall (1 in 20,000 children and 1 in 128,000 adults), it took a good year before it became clear that it was not a coincidence. The narcolepsy was actually a result of the vaccination. It is a misunderstanding that the damage appeared so late.
What else you need to know: Even unvaccinated people who actually contracted swine flu were more likely to develop narcolepsy, as studies from China have shown. So even without the swine flu vaccination, there would have been more cases of narcolepsy due to the swine flu virus alone.
Rare side effects are noticed earlier with millions of vaccinations
And one more aspect must not be forgotten: The word long-term damage in vaccines refers less to the time after which a side effect actually occurs, but to the time at which it is noticed. And of course, the more people have received the vaccine, the more likely it is.
Thus, late long-term vaccination damage is much less likely with the corona vaccines than with other vaccination campaigns. Because never before has a vaccine been inoculated so quickly to so many people worldwide. This means: Even rare, severe side effects are noticed much more quickly in the current situation.
Why waiting is dangerous
With every day and week that goes by, the unvaccinated becomes more likely to become infected. This goes hand in hand with the risk of a severe course of the disease - for everyone: old, young, fat, thin. It is still unclear how deadly the virus is. There are indications that the rampant delta variant could be more dangerous than earlier ones. However, this cannot yet be reliably assessed.
The risks of infection are well known
The risks of a Sars-CoV-2 infection have now been largely explored. On the other hand, there is no evidence that the corona vaccines often harbor serious risks. The risk-benefit comparison is overwhelmingly in favor of vaccination for most people.
Also think of Long-Covid!
There is also the risk of long Covid syndrome with often severe, long-term and perhaps permanent damage. This danger does not only exist for the seriously ill. Post-Covid syndrome can develop even after a mild course of the disease - at any age.
Failure to vaccinate will prolong the pandemic
What has been said so far concerns the personal health risk. However, hesitant willingness to vaccinate also means that the pandemic is losing momentum more slowly. That means: more people get sick and die. In addition, the danger is fueled that mutations also arise in this country and more dangerous variants spread from other countries.
All of this means for everyone that the onerous measures to contain the virus will be necessary all the longer. So whoever gets vaccinated is not just doing something for their own protection, they are helping everyone.
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