Don’t freak out about ‘weird’ COVID-19 vaccine side effects. They may actually be a good sign – By Joshua Bote (SFGATE) / Mar 15 2021
Dr. Peter Chin-Hong wants people to stop worrying so much about the myriad reports of side effects after getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
Chin-Hong, a professor of medicine at UCSF and the director of the school’s immunocompromised host infectious diseases program, is concerned that people are paying too much attention to the side effects of the shot.
“Everybody’s getting vaccinated now on such an unprecedented level,” he told SFGATE, “so with a large population, you’re going to see different things in different people. And then people are very keyed in to any side effect that occurs, so they’re going to report it. And I think people are tuned in to that.”
The numbers of people affected by adverse side effects are miniscule. An early Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report of the Pfizer vaccine rollout noted that of more than 1.8 million Americans who got the vaccine, only 4,300 total reported adverse effects. (That’s one-fifth of a percent of the people who got doses.)
