FLORIDA — While the COVID vaccine is no longer mandated in the U.S., some doctors say people should still get the shot annually, comparing it to a seasonal flu shot.
“I think that’s a very fair comparison. It’s the closest analogy,” Dr. Lisa Lee from Virginia Tech’s Department of Public Health said. “It’s not perfect, but it’s very close in that part of the reason we have annual flu shots is because the flu virus is a little different each year.”
Like the flu virus, coronavirus mutates frequently.
“The virus mutates a lot,” Lee said. “More than any virus we have ever seen, so we have to stay on it. We have to make sure we are doing analysis to see what the genetic makeup looks like and then the idea is we anticipate that and create a new version of the covid vaccine with some slight changes.”
Vaccines have become a polarizing topic among Americans, something Macy Moore weighed five years ago when her family was hit hard during the pandemic.
Moore, her husband Eugene, and their daughter moved to Central Florida in 2020, navigating the new normal. Later that year, Eugene was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. His oncologist recommended him for the COVID vaccine, since he was considered high risk.
However, Moore was hesitant at first.
“It was so new, and I figured if they haven’t tested it on a lot of people already, how many cancer patients have they tested it on?” Moore asked rhetorically. “I was very reluctant and said, ‘Can I take the risk and can you give it to me?’ I am the one that is going to be out and exposed to it and they wouldn’t let me do it.“
As the vaccine was rolled out in phases, Moore said they got on board for the safety of their family.
“The quickest a vaccine had been made in the past was four years. This was less than one year with multiple different vaccines using different technologies that were available in about a year or even less,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins and infectious disease physician, said. “These vaccines were game changing in their ability to prevent severe disease, hospitalization, and death.”
“There’s this idea that if science moves fast, it has to be sloppy. That is not actually true,” Adalja added. Scientists want to get it right. There wasn’t anything nefarious about moving this along fast, other than to save as many lives as possible.
While their daughter wasn’t old enough yet to receive a shot, Moore said she and her husband decided to get vaccinated. But in 2022, both Moore and her daughter tested positive for the virus — a scare that nearly delayed Eugene’s chemotherapy.
“He took a COVID test. It was negative,” Moore said. “He went in for chemo and he tanked. I mean, there was no coming back from that chemo visit.”
A few weeks later, he passed away.
Since then, Moore and her daughter have not received another COVID shot.
Mainly, because it is not something that is stressed as much as it was during the height of the pandemic.
“You know, I’ve gone to plenty of doctor appointments recently for myself. My daughter has her check ups and if I go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription, it’s ‘did you get your flu shot?’” Moore said. “No one mentions the COVID shot, so I didn’t think about it honestly. “
However, Lee and Adalja both say it’s still good for high-risk people to receive the shot annually, claiming there are no long-term effects from the vaccine.