COVID 19 Vaccination

By Lila Butterworth

2020 has been a crazy year. Covid-19 has changed our lives in unimaginable ways. We’ve had to close schools, restaurants, movie theaters, libraries and switch to doing everyday activities like school and work from home. Our health system has been put to the test, hospitals are overcrowding and short on staff and the death toll has been rising steadily. We’ve also learned how important and heroic our essential workers are. During this whole pandemic scientists and doctors all across the world have been trying to create a vaccine to end this horrible pandemic and finally we are getting close!

The process of making a vaccine accessible to everyone

There are three phases a vaccine must go through before it can be put into limited and then full use. Phase 1 is when vaccines are being tested to see if they are safe and what the proper dosage is. Phase 2 is when vaccines are in a larger safety trial and Phase 3 is when the vaccines are being tested on how effective they are. Currently there are 43 vaccines in stage 1, 20 in stage 2, and 20 in phase 3. Additionally several vaccines such as the vaccine produced by Pfizer Biontech, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, Kovach, Sputnik VI, and the Astrazeneca are approved by various regulatory agencies around the world and are getting in arms! 

How this could affect our school

Unfortunately, the distribution of these vaccines is taking longer than expected and the first vaccines are obviously going to essential workers, nursing homes, and older people at higher risk. This is completely understandable, Story Donich, a 7th grader at MS447 said, “I understand why it’s [the vaccine distribution] taking slower.” 

There are many reasons why the distribution of these vaccines is taking so long, one being that there is still debate over who should receive the vaccine next and people are playing the blame game about whose fault it is that the vaccine distribution is so slow. Another reason being that the people who have to administer the vaccine are healthcare workers, who already are very busy with covid patients and have limited resources.

“I feel that the vaccination is being distributed way too slowly and they’re wasting a lot of them. When they haven’t used all the vaccines by a certain time period, they throw all the remainder away. I think that instead of doing that, they can set up stands outside of  doctors offices and people who go to those offices, of any age, may receive the vaccine. That will definitely speed it up instead of ending up wasting so many,” said Dean Hevenstone, another student at 447, “I think that after the essential workers and the elderly, it should be people with outlying health risks. After that, I think they should start trying to just give it out to the general population.”   

Also, some people refuse to get vaccinated because they don’t trust that the vaccines are safe. Because of all that it looks like MS447 will be finishing the school year in an hybrid manner, and hopefully students might be able to start next year in school.

Donich added that she thinks students might be back in school by the start of next year and she thinks people with lung problems should be vaccinated next. 

Additionally, Hevenstone also said, “I think that whether we will go back to school by next year will completely depend on whether the vaccine will start being distributed much, much faster. If it keeps going at the same rate as right now I don’t think we’ll be back in September.” He said that he trusts the vaccine to protect people from covid- 19 but he’s worried  if it will protect people from variations of the virus.