No, Dr. Evil did not put microchips in the COVID-19 vaccine. Here are the facts behind 5 other fears. – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Dr. Kevin Izard has heard it all when it comes to theories about why Blacks are hesitant to getvaccinated against COVID-19.

The one that makes him chuckle is the vaccine contains microchips to track people. He said it would easier for Dr. Evilto hack the banking system than to make a chip small enough to be injected into someones bloodstream.

And why would somebody go through all the trouble to track you anyway when they can track you on your cellphone so much easier? asked Izard, chairof family medicine at St. Josephs Hospital and former president of the Cream City Medical Society

Jokes aside,Izard said vaccine hesitancy is understandable, anditcuts across racial and political lines. The main indicator of whether people get the shot is political party and where one lives, he noted.

But in some cases, vaccine hesitancy stems from a distrust in the government. That is true for the Black community, given this country's history with medical research, Izard said.Blacks, he added, already doubt thatgovernment institutionshave their best intentions at heart, a notion amplified by the BlackLives Matter movement.

Whether its the education system, the medical system, the political system, or the legal system or the courts, Black people dont feel that these institutions havebeen set up to be fair to them, Izard said.

But vaccine hesitancyimpedes the push to reach herd immunity a point at which enough of the population is immune to the coronavirus, either fromhaving been vaccinated or recoveredfrom the disease,thatthe viruscan no longer spread. Most experts pegged this number at 80%.

We are trying to get to that point because the number of delta variant cases are increasing, Izard said. The variantsare becoming the dominant strains and tend to be more contagious and more infectious than the previous versions. We're trying torace here to get as many people vaccinated as we can.

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Currently, 47.2%ofWisconsinresidents are fully vaccinated.

In Wisconsin,the percentage of Blacks who are fully vaccinated isbehind other racial groups. Only 27% of Blacks are fully vaccinated, compared with32% of Hispanics, 51% of Asians, 43% of American Indians and 46% of Whites, according to a Journal Sentinel analysis of Wisconsin Department of Health Services data.

Nationally,only 8.8% of Black Americans are fully vaccinated.

There will be some who will not get the vaccine no matter what, while others are hesitant out of caution, Izard said.

Then there aresome who are choosing not to getvaccinated based on erroneous orunsubstantiated information circulating on the web.

Getting the shot is a personal decision, but it has far-reaching implications and can affect those around you, Izard said. But whatever the decision, he added, it must be based on correct information.

Here are five common misconceptions and concerns about the vaccine, and what Izard says people should know about them.

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It's true that the vaccineswere given emergency-use authorization, Izard said.

When Trump announced Operation Warp Speed in May 2020, the aim was to develop a vaccine as quickly as possible. Normally, it takes two or three years, or more, for vaccines or any medicines to go through FDA approvalto ensure safety and effectiveness before comingto market. But the government wanted to do this in a matter of months, sosome things were abridged and combined, he said.

The medications were approved based on the initial studies, Izard said. And the initial studies as reviewed by the CDC and the FDA appeared to [show] the medications were safe and appeared to be very effective. So, it was approved in an emergency fashion.

The groundwork for the COVID-19 vaccine goes back almost two decades when a similar virus emerged in 2003, Izard said. COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 resembles another virus with a similar name SARS-CoV-1. That virus was also a novel virus, meaning humans may not have been exposed to it before.

Concerns that the SARS-CoV-1 could cause a pandemic prompted work to begin on a vaccine in 2003, Izard said. Fortunately, that pandemicdidn't happen, but efforts at a vaccine laid the groundwork for SARS-CoV-2, the current novel coronavirus.

They didnt start from ground zero, Izard said.They actually have been working on this for 18 years or more.

Things did move a lot faster under Operation Warp Speed. Normally, Izard said, time is needed to recruit participants in studies and trials, then to do a study to ensure the vaccine is safe, and then do another study on its effectiveness.

What they did is they combined a bunch of these things, Izard said. They did both the safety and efficacy studies togetherso that it didnt take a whole lot of time to figure out if it was safe and effective.

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In the past, some vaccines used fetal stem cells, but Izard said that is not the case anymore.Because of the advances in DNA technology, living cells are no longer needed

The Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine were developed from a new technology using mRNA, a code which teaches human cells how to make aspecific protein in this case, the"spike protein"found on the coronavirus. That triggers an immune response inside the human body.

With mRNA, basically what they are doing is mixing the ingredients in a test tube," Izard said. "Once they know the genetic code, they dont need to have any kind of living organism attached to it. There are no stem cells or anything involved in [the COVID-19 vaccine].

Side effects are to be expected with any medications or vaccines, Izard said. That's the case with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which has seen rare cases of blood clots.

To help track any side effects, Izard said people who get the shots are urged to report any complications they may have. But ofall the people who are fully vaccinated 153million people so far with either the Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer or Moderna shots,major side effects are too rare to dissuade people from getting the shot.

Ill put it in these terms: You are more likely to be struck by lightning twice than to get that rare blood clot people got from the Johnson vaccine. Its less than 1 in a million, Izard said.

Also, there haven'tbeen any major side effects with the Moderna and Pfizervaccines that use mRNA technology, Izard said. So far, side effects have been mostly associated with Johnson & Johnson'sand AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine, he noted.AstraZeneca is not being used in U.S.

People should weigh the risk of getting COVID-19 versus getting the shot, he said.

"If your risk from complications from COVID-19 infection outweighs your risk for complications from the vaccine, than you should get the vaccine,especially if you are African American or Hispanic, Izard said.

The long-term side effects from COVIDincludeloss of smell or taste and in young people, heart and lung problems.

Conversely, common side effects from the shotare pain, redness and swelling at the injection site. Others could include fatigue, chills, and fever throughout the body, but these tend to go away, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

These are well-documented things that happened at a relatively high rate compared to the extremely rare rate of the side effects of the vaccine," Izard said.

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Peopleoften conflatedthe flu, influenza and COVID, but they couldn't be more different, Izard noted.

"COVID is more contagious and more deadlythan theflu.Soyoucantreally treat themexactly thesame," he said.

During the 2019-2020 flu season, there were 36,175 cases of the flu in Wisconsin and 183 deaths, including three children, according to the Wisconsin department of health services.

To date, there havebeen 7,315 COVID-19 deaths in the stateand nearly 613,000 cases.

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No, Dr. Evil did not put microchips in the COVID-19 vaccine. Here are the facts behind 5 other fears. - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel