To Shoot or Not to Shoot, That is My Question…

To Shoot or Not to Shoot, That is My Question…

Dear Fellow Frustrated Folks,

Let’s chat about shooting – COVID-19 and shots, that is.

**Disclaimer** I’m not a medical professional. This is not about taking one side or another. I’m just an educated human being trying to take the pieces, apply them to my life and what I deem important, and see it to its logical conclusion. This is my journey, so follow along if you’d like.

This is for me. I have PLENTY of questions about COVID-19 and the infamous ‘shot’. I am definitely not telling anyone what they should do, and I might not even be sure how I feel. I can’t trust the media to give me good information all the time – they’ve rather lost it. Sadly, the same is true of the government since it seems to be in cahoots with the media. The questions on my mind stem around this: what’s with the COVID shot? Thoughts are swirling in my head so I’ve set out on a quest for information. And that, my friend, is how I’ve followed the rabbit trail.

I do want to be on a reasonable journey, so I only used sources that are government-related (we’re supposed to trust them, right?) and those medical sources in which it would be challenging to argue their credentials. So, nothing leftist, rightist, do the hokey pokey and you shake it all about…. I am doing my best for “reliable” and up-to-date sources – as much as you can expect these days anyway.

Here we go.

How does the virus travel?

This virus travels primarily through droplets in the air that exited the mouth or nose of an infected person. Proximity to said droplets is key because the droplets are weighted and will eventually fall due to what we call gravity. At the beginning of the COVID-19 experience, there was more concern with transmission through touching objects and aerosol transmission in the air. Not so much anymore as the experts have studied it. Stay out of people’s faces, don’t touch your face, and wash your hands. Six feet apart is the buzz.

What is the US death rate from COVID-19 and what happens that people die from it?

The death rate is a tough one, especially since we’ve had the whole issue with what exactly is being reported. Did they die FROM Covid or WITH Covid? Now that we’ve been at this for a year, the mortality rate will be anywhere from 1.8% of those infected to 0.1% depending on who you ask and how they are computing. If you take Covid deaths out of Covid cases it is around 1.8%. On the other hand, Covid deaths out of the total US population is around 0.015%. Either way, I have a better than 98% chance of recovery if I am infected. [At the time of this writing I used a US population of 330,100,000, the number of COVID cases reported as 27,700,000, and the number of Covid ‘related’ deaths as 501,000.]

Death occurs primarily from the cytokine storm. This is when your body has an overactive immune response to the infection. The inflammatory response goes beserko and you basically become autoimmune, where your body starts destroying its own tissues and organs. The impacts of this are understandably much greater when you have an individual with prior health issues or someone in a high-risk category.

What can I do to support my immune system and/or to derail the cytokine storm if I catch this thing?

There is a huge boatload of research about Vitamin D3 and Zinc in viruses, Covid, and cytokine storm. I researched from 2010 forward and the amount of data is mind-boggling! This is not new stuff. Managing my D3 and Zinc levels could be a game-changer when fighting this virus. D3 is known to prevent viruses from entering your cells and zinc hinders the proliferation of viruses. So keep them out and keep them from replicating.

I only went back to 2010 and the research is incredible. They are even using D3 and zinc to help treat the Covid patients in hospitals. There are, as always, those who say that the evidence is insufficient to believe that these two will help fight the virus, but this info has been around for more than a decade so…

Moving on. Ok, so what are the definitions of vaccine and immunity?

A vaccine is a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Immunity is protection from an infectious disease. If you are immune to a disease, you can be exposed to it without becoming infected. Active immunity is permanent, and that is not what the Covid shot is designed for.

What is this emergency-approved COVID mRNA shot and how does it work?

A synthetic messenger RNA sequence enters the cytoplasm of your cells via a carrier and delivers instructions to the cells to build a spike protein. This protein resides on the surface of the cells. Our bodies recognize this protein as an invader and begin building an immune response. When this spike protein encounters the virus it participates in the fight against it in the hope that you will not become seriously sick with COVID-19. In essence, it gives your body some new tools to use when it encounters the illness in the future. The purpose of the shot is to lessen symptomatic illness and hopefully help you from becoming seriously ill. There is not a lot of transparency about this.

Will getting the COVID shot prevent me from transmitting or contracting COVID-19?

Probably not. Right now there are only good estimates of whether the shot will prevent transmission of disease or just prevent symptoms. Research is centered around preventing you from getting symptoms. It is unknown whether someone who was vaccinated can develop asymptomatic disease and/or still transmit the virus. It is quite possible that the shot protects from illness but not from becoming infected. Ultimately it is unknown whether getting the shot will prevent you from spreading the virus to others. When you hear that this new injection has 95% efficacy, that means that it has a 95% rate of doing what they intended it to do, which is prevent symptoms of Covid-19. The endgame of this shot and the trials was prevention of symptomatic illness.

How long will the benefits of this shot last and will it protect from new variants?

The answers to these questions are unknown. Clinical trials have only followed patients for a few months. It is a protein, and our bodies break down proteins. An exact time frame is not known, but it is estimated to last from a few weeks to possibly three months. That is the question – how long will the shot last? Even with a natural immunity after you have already had and recovered from the virus, it is unknown how long the immunity lasts. There is some evidence that the shot may protect against a few of the new variants, but not all.

Is it still necessary to mask up and social distance after I get the shot?

Yes, because of all of the above. You can still transmit and still contract Covid-19 even after receiving both doses of the shot. Research for booster shots is underway – two may not be enough. Research for shots for the variant strains is also underway. Three may not be enough.

Well, there you have it. To shoot or not to shoot is a personal decision for each of us. This is a very real virus and I am not making light of the current situation. There is a place for the shot in our world and people with compromised immune systems or preexisting conditions who may benefit from it.

I still have some questions rolling around in this head of mine. If the shot doesn’t completely prevent me from contracting the illness, can I support my immune system in other ways? Definitely, yes. If this shot will need to be re-administered for continued effectiveness or new strains, am I all in for more shots in the future? Indefinitely? Not sure about that one. It all comes down to weighing the risks versus the benefits of getting the Covid shot.

And that, my fellow frustrated Americans, is our own personal decision. A decision that should not become the next target of division between us. A decision that should not prevent me from flying to a loved one in the event of a family emergency. But when this season has passed (as much as possible), another issue or illness will begin. What then? Have we learned how to take better care of ourselves for the long haul? Have we learned nothing about our health?

This is the rabbit trail I went down…

Thoughtfully,