Expert says Covid-19 mRNA vaccine is ‘safe and effective’
By Khushi Arora
Kentucky Health News
A bill that would have banned schools and workplaces from requiring a Covid-19 vaccine or any mRNA vaccine for student enrollment, employment or medical treatment and would have made it illegal to give such vaccines to children died while waiting on a hearing in its assigned committee.
Senate Bill 177, sponsored by Sen. Lindsey Tichenor, R-Smithfield, was assigned to the Senate Health Services Committee on Feb. 19, but was never placed on the agenda for a vote. Tichenor was not available to comment on the bill.
There are only two more days left on the legislative calendar. Following a 10-day veto period, lawmakers will return to Frankfort on March 27 and 28 where they can override the governor’s vetoes. Any legislation passed on those two days can be vetoed without fear of a legislative override.
Tichenor filed a similar bill during the last legislative session that passed out of the Senate but it was never given a committee assignment in the House.
An ongoing challenge is that there continues to be widespread misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine, a messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) vaccine that has been proven to be both safe and effective.
Both traditional and mRNA vaccines help people develop immunity against a virus, but mRNA technology works faster against new viruses, such as the Covid-19 virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends everyone 6 months and older should get a 2024-2025 Covid-19 vaccine.
mRNA vaccines work differently than regular vaccines, which use dead parts of a virus to help your body fight the virus in the future. Instead, Messenger RNA, or mRNA vaccines, work by instructing a small number of a person’s cells to make specific proteins, which then prompt the body to mount a natural immune response to fight the virus when it shows up.
Even though using mRNA vaccines for Covid-19 is recent, scientists have been studying this technology since the 1990s, initially wanting to use it to fight HIV (human immunodeficiency virus).
Dr. Jamie Sturgill, assistant professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics at the University of Kentucky, told Kentucky Health News that mRNA vaccines have been around since 2011.
“They’ve actually been studied in humans before and have actually been shown to be very safe and effective,” she said.
Since then, research has come a long way, showing promise as a treatment for diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and some rare disorders.
“What also people don’t realize is that this same kind of technology is being applied to other viruses,” she said. “There’s discussion about could we use this to make a universal influenza vaccine so that we don’t have to get a yearly flu shot every year.”
Also of concern, NPR reports that there have been federal cuts to National Institutes of Health research grants for studying vaccine hesitancy and how to improve immunization levels and that there is “mounting concern” among some at NIH that cuts to mRNA research are coming.
Medical experts argue that a balanced approach, which allows for safe testing of mRNA treatment with oversight, is the most beneficial and effective form of usage and patient care.
Sturgill emphasized that effective communication from scientists is key to getting people to trust the science around mRNA vaccines. This, she said, is critical for people to make informed choices.
“I think scientists really need to learn how to communicate their science effectively and to tell like the significance, the true meaning of their work and how it can help human health to anyone,” she said. “From a kindergartner, a middle school or a high schooler, anybody with any kind of educational background – a good scientist should be able to communicate their work across the board.”
Sturgill encouraged people to talk to scientists with expertise in the field if they have concerns about the mRNA vaccine.
“Reach out to the experts in the field. Scientists love to talk about science…the general public should never feel that they can’t reach out and ask somebody a question because you have to be able to talk,” she said. “And that’s the only way that things are going to get better, is just having conversations.”
Khushi Arora is a student at the University of Kentucky College of Public Health and a spring intern for Kentucky Health News, an independent news service of the Institute for Rural Journalism in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Kentucky, with support from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky.