Updated: 9:02 AM CDT May 20, 2021
KOCO Staff
KOCO 5 is bringing your questions about the COVID-19 vaccine to local health experts all week long. Here are the questions we featured on Thursday.Liliana asked why some people have severe reactions and others don't.“The severe reactions are very, very rare, but each time we get a medication or vaccine, our body reacts to that and people's bodies react differently. They call it the Goldilocks phenomenon where when we have a reaction, we want it to be just arrived, not too little, so that it doesn't work very well or not too much. We're cause a severe reaction. And again, fortunately, there are very few severe reactions,” said Dr. Alice Mankin, Vice President of Mercy Primary Care Clinic. Melanie asked: "What are the possible long term side effects of the vaccine? Cancer, infertility, sterilization, seizures, blood clots, death, etc."“Most of the side effects associated with the COVID-19 vaccine are short term side effects that you'll see in the first two days to few weeks after getting vaccinated, long term side effects associated with the COVID-19 vaccine are very rare. There's been no associated evidence of cancer, infertility or sterile effects for women. When you look at Johnson and Johnson vaccine they did show a few patients who got blood clots following that vaccine. But after they looked at the numbers, Johnson and Johnson vaccine did go back on the market because those numbers were low in relation to the numbers of people getting vaccines so the risk of long term effects for vaccines in general and especially the COVID-19 vaccine are rare,” said Dr. Angela Hawkins, SSM Health Medical Group.