As you all likely know, a pandemic called the coronavirus has been affecting the world since the start of 2020, which was much over a year ago. Although the virus has been around for so long, it wasn’t declared a pandemic until March 2020, which was when everyone was forced to stay at home in order to prevent the spread of the virus. Although it was proven that staying at home or meeting someone while wearing a mask was effective in slowing the spread of the virus, obviously no one can stay at home forever, and there must be another way of ending this virus altogether or at least making people immune to it. That was when three major companies came up with their own vaccine: Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. Although these three companies created a vaccine for the same virus, the side effects differed largely among these companies.
On December 11 2020, the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine was issued by the US FDA in order to prevent the coronavirus from spreading. Although the first vaccine was only for people ages 16 or over, in May 2021, another version of the vaccine was created which was suitable for kids ages 12-15. For kids under the age of 12, a new version of the vaccine is yet to come. Although everyone was hopeful due to the fact that a new vaccine to prevent COVID-19 was being released, little did they know that it was associated with side effects. Some of the side effects of the COVID-vaccine include pain, swelling, redness, tiredness, headache, muscle pain, chills, fever, nausea, etc. Although the CDC claimed that these are some of the main side effects of this specific vaccine, the number of side effects someone has and to what extent they have them depends on the body and the immune system.
Around the same time when the Pfizer vaccine was approved, the Moderna vaccine was also approved. The main difference was that the Moderna vaccine was recommended for people ages 18 and older. The side effects of this vaccine were very similar to the one for Pfizer, such as pain or swelling in the muscle of the upper arm and other body pains throughout the rest of the body. The side effects were usually present 1-2 days after getting the vaccine and were slightly worse for the second dose than the first dose.
Earlier this year, along with Pfizer and Moderna, another company called Johnson & Johnson had also created their own version of the COVID vaccine, which was actually stopped for a number of reasons. While the vaccines of the other two companies had been proven to be effective, this one wasn’t too successful. In April of this year, a couple of people received this version of the vaccine, which caused rare blood clots. These blood clots caused someone to die and a couple of women to be in critical conditions. Due to this blood clotting disorder that occurred after a couple of people received this vaccine, the production of the vaccine has been halted.
While some of these companies produced vaccines which turned out to be really effective and helpful, some of them weren’t as effective. There were several companies that created their own versions of the COVID-19 vaccine, but the only ones that ended up being successful were the vaccines made by Pfizer and Moderna. Since these vaccines are being widely produced now, it is recommended that everyone should take the vaccine.