Coronavirus: why should I get vaccinated?

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Corona vaccination

Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa

You may have just received this text from someone who likes you and cares about you.

Because

, conspiracy theorists and lateral thinkers who have broken a lot, at whom one can rightly be angry (I was, for example, last week ).

This text is for normal people who are perhaps still unsure whether and why they should get vaccinated.

Maybe you are one of them?

Insecurity is okay, the world is complicated and big. Most people are insecure somewhere. But there is a pandemic that is now fatal for a great many people, and that's why you have to do something about your insecurity at some point. I would like to help you with this because I follow the absolute majority of reputable experts:

when as many people in Germany get vaccinated as in Spain or Portugal.

That is why I am writing here about

. They have been well researched, and maybe your personal reasons are also included as to why you have hesitated so far. Incidentally, I have linked the sources for most of the important statements in this text so that you can understand everything yourself. At the end, I'll explain

. Namely, there is a good chance that confusing and threatening rumors on social media have added to your doubts.

For the credibility of such a text, it is important to clarify who is writing it: My name is Sascha Lobo, I'm not a virologist or a doctor, but a graduate communications specialist and have also studied biotechnology for three years.

Among other things, I work as a columnist for SPIEGEL, but I earn most of my money with lectures on digitization.

Sometimes I do the same for pharmaceutical companies,

.

The simplest thing at the beginning:

Four reasons, all scientifically proven:

• You are

  less likely to get sick.

• You're

  much less likely to get a severe course

  .

• It is much, much less likely

  that you will die from Corona

  -

  namely 32

  times less likely

  .

• You

  protect other people

  , for example

  because you don't need a bed in the hospital when in doubt.

Cancer operations are now being postponed because so many corona patients are in the hospital.

.

Just now.

You

can tell

the benefit of vaccination from the

, i.e. the number of people per 100,000 inhabitants who became infected in the last seven days.

For example in Saxony on November 16, 2021.

The

.

In the unvaccinated, it was 1823

.

That is almost 30 times more.

This autumn, a survey asked over 3000 people in Germany

.

Among the most common answers may be your personal reasons.

In first place:

The vaccine has not been adequately tested.

In second place:

The fear of side effects.

And also pretty far ahead:

The fear of long-term consequences.

Let's take a closer look at that.

• First, is the vaccine insufficiently tested?

around the world

are now

.

There is actually no vaccine that is vaccinated faster and more intensively in more people and is therefore constantly being tested.

It's true, it was all only a few months ago - but many believe that the so-called mRNA vaccines (which include Biontech and Moderna) are completely new. That is not right.

, so for 28 years. They have been injected into animals since the mid-1990s. Since 2002, for almost 20 years, mRNA vaccines have been tested in humans.

.

And it is called »mRNA«, and this abbreviation has to do with the genome - but

.

The claim that vaccination is a "gene experiment" is simply wrong.

You are wondering why the vaccine against corona was there so suspiciously quickly?

- research has been carried out on vaccines ever since.

.

And also because completely new, digital instruments were used in research.

Digitization makes almost everything faster.

• Second: side effects.

Yes, there can be side effects. And unfortunately it is also true that in the past, the side effects of drugs and vaccinations have not always been discussed openly and honestly.

. There is even an app for this from the state Paul Ehrlich Institute with the somewhat silly name »SafeVac«.

In the vast majority of cases

, if they happen at all. The worst side effects of the most widely used vaccines from Biontech and Moderna include myocarditis. But like

these are

. In the USA, two million insured

examined by a health insurance company: for every

. The probability of this is therefore smaller than that of randomly drawing exactly the same card three times in a row from a Skat card game. And most importantly:

.

Even so, myocarditis is a first thing.

But the likelihood of getting myocarditis from Covid disease is significantly higher.

This also applies to other complications: if you add up all the side effects, they are much rarer and much less dangerous than the effects of corona disease.

, at least since the delta variant of the virus has existed, even for young people.

The disease cannot be compared to the flu either, it is more dangerous.

Covid-19 can lead to strokes and cerebral haemorrhages, to months of weakness, to heart disease and of course to death.

.

It always remains a risk-benefit balance, but basically it comes down to exactly one choice that people are now faced with: Either get vaccinated or get infected.

It is just that you cannot estimate how your own corona disease will progress.

Of course, it can be mild - but it can also end badly.

And you may in turn infect others who may become very sick or die.

By the way

, if you are waiting for

a so-called

, you should

again.

It is

and also how well they work against the new variants of the coronavirus.

• There remains the third major concern why so many people hesitate to vaccinate: long-term effects.

Perhaps the biggest misunderstanding is behind this.

"Long-term" is simply misleading as a word.

.

All the effects and side effects of vaccinations show up quite quickly after vaccination.

It may be that those affected end up suffering from some side effects for a long time.

It is also possible that a side effect is only associated with the vaccination at a later date.

But so far there has not been a verified case in any vaccination

You can think of it like a stone being thrown into the water.

Of course there are consequences, the waves.

But it's nonsense to look again after two years to see whether something else might have happened when the stone was thrown into the water.

.

For example, that vaccination makes you impotent or sterile.

This is just wrong, there is no reliable research to confirm it.

On the contrary, an

.

You are now right to ask why there are so many lies about vaccination then.

This is very interesting: there is a common behavior among people called the

" that explains the many falsehoods posted on social media. The longer the pandemic rages, the more embittered anti-vaccination opponents notice how unwise it was not to get vaccinated and to loudly tell the whole world about it. It also gets more and more uncomfortable.

Therefore, they are desperately looking for some reason why their behavior was right after all: "Look, I was right!" In order not to correct themselves and to be ashamed of their mistakes, they desperate to give any reason they can throw at the hair. That's the Sunken-cost trap:

Do not fall for people in, who tell you lies out of selfishness.

Instead, talk to people who have already been vaccinated.

Talk to friends who have suffered from Corona or to

.