With the anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic growing closer, students at St. Thomas University are excited to see people finally getting the new vaccine.
Hillary Jones, a Bachelor of Social Work student at STU, said she will be getting the vaccine as soon as possible.
“I am hyped for this friggin’ vaccine. But I’m also curious if I even qualify for it because I’m not a resident of New Brunswick,” said the Prince Edward Island student.
Jones works at a recreational youth facility and hopes to become immunized to keep herself, the children and her coworkers safe.
Cally Raven, also a Bachelor of Social Work student at STU, said she won’t be one of the first to receive the vaccine. Not being first in line doesn’t bother her.
“I don’t go anywhere that I would need [the vaccine], really. I would rather the people who actually have to go in person and do stuff get the vaccine before me. All I have to do is stay in my house and go to the grocery store,” she said.
Raven said she will get the vaccine as soon as it is available to her, but won’t be cutting in line to get it.
With the vaccine rolling out quickly, Jones isn’t worried about the Pfizer vaccine being unsafe or what could potentially be in it since it also is the same company that makes Advil.
“I honestly don’t care, the amount of crap I eat like from foods that I barely know what’s in it. When we really think about it, what’s in Coca-Cola?” she said.
Raven said she isn’t nervous about how fast the vaccine came out because it’s “very rare” to be killed by a vaccine in this day and age.
“It was fast because it’s the first time in modern history that the focus of every scientist has been on producing one vaccine so I feel like it came out pretty timely as far as I understand it,” she said.
The vaccine was able to be made quickly because many big organizations and companies were working on it at the same time, according to a CTV article.
Raven said she thinks the provinces have a good distribution plan for the vaccine. She said she believes that good people are working on the distribution plan and that she already knows people who have been vaccinated.
N.B. is planning to vaccinate long-term care residents that are 85 and older, health care workers, members of the Indigenous community and seniors first, according to a CBC article.
“I know that they’re hoping to ramp it up. I mean this is like the first vaccine campaign of this level for a really long time,” she said.
In some parts of the world, batches of the COVID-19 vaccine went bad. But the spoiled vaccines don’t scare Jones because her biology degree gives her insight into how a vaccine works.
In a Global News article, Kyle Anderson, an assistant professor of biochemistry, microbiology and immunology at the University of Saskatchewan, said that having an mRNA-based vaccine, such as the Pzifer one, gives someone’s body the ability to grow antibodies for COVID-19.
“If it does go bad it’s not going to hurt you. It just won’t protect you. Because that mRNA will just unravel, and it will be useless but it’s not going to hurt you,” she said.
The only concern Jones had about the vaccine was people not getting vaccinated at all.
“We need herd immunity or [the vaccine] is not going to matter,” she said.
