Quote Originally Posted by Johnisfun1969 View Post
That’s for sure. I was speaking to someone in Vietnam. They are being given the Chinese vaccine. There is a major distrust and misinformation circulating about this. All the influential people and political leaders are taking the AZ. Most people there would do anything for this vaccine. I did my research and looked at the risk online and have taken the AZ. If I was waiting for Pfizer it would have been in Sep. The risk of dying with covid is more than dying of blood clot for me. I am over 50.
Yes I've thoroughly researched the AZ vaccine and finally decided to take it.

The thing to remember is, the "active ingredient" in the vaccine... IE. The genetic code that allows your body to know how to create the antibodies against COVID, is the same as the other vaccines. Remember back in the early days of the pandemic, a major milestone was announced and rightly celebrated, that the genetic sequence of the coronavirus was decoded? That's the single piece of info that has been used to create all these vaccines. They all contain the same genetic code.

The only difference between them is the method of delivery of the genetic code.

The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines do it using mRNA, messenger RNA. The AZ one does it with an adenovirus vector, which is a "relatively harmless" other type of virus that carries the same genetic code. The adenovirus will then infect our body and deliver the genetic code in doing so. As a result, we feel slight flu-like symptoms from the adenovirus vector. It is the exact same delivery method used in flu vaccines and vaccines for measles and mumps (MMR).

So in terms of safety of the AZ vaccine, it's pretty straightforward, isn't it? If you've ever had a flu or MMR shot and "survived" that, then the AZ vaccine is going to be safe for you to take. It means that your body can handle the adenovirus vector.

This is also one of the reasons I did not wait to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. I have never had an mRNA vaccine in my life, so I do not know how it will affect my body. I have had flu & MMR shots before and was perfectly fine after taking them. In other words, the AZ vaccine is actually safer for me than the mRNA ones.

One more thing to note about the AZ vaccine is that its effectiveness is strongly correlated to your body's resistance to infection by the adenovirus vector. If your body kills the adenovirus vector before it can deliver the genetic code, the vaccine would've done nothing for you. Therefore, if you've recently taken a flu shot, you might want to take one of the other vaccines instead.

Now, apparently some people might develop blood clot issues from taking the AZ shot. I looked at the "normal" occurrence of this problem (5 per million people, pre-pandemic stats) against those people taking the AZ shot (8 per million). And then I considered that the AZ vaccine is the most widely used vaccine worldwide by a large margin. The clotting problem does happen with or without the vaccine. So who's to say, if the other vaccines were as widely used as AZ, they would also start to see people getting clots "from" those other vaccines too!