 Hello guys, this is Dr. Ahmed Ergen, I'm an endocrinologist and today I am going to answer your questions about COVID-19 vaccine. Alright, let's get started. Okay, let's review the topics that we are going to discuss today. How does COVID-19 vaccine work? Is it safe? What are the side effects? What if the virus mutates? How long the immunity lasts? Do you still have to wear a mask? Let's start with the how the COVID-19 vaccine work. That's important to know because there's a lot of misconceptions out there that people think that oh well that's a genetically engineered vaccine that can get into my body and change my genes. Well that's not true. I'll briefly explain to you and the reason this vaccine was so fast and there's some questions about like this vaccine was created so fast. I'm not sure if it was rushed you know maybe I don't need this you know maybe it's gonna cause problems. I'm gonna tell you why it was so fast why they were able to do it so fast and I'll tell you if it is safe or not and how it works and so forth. So the way it works is it's a unique way of delivering a vaccine. This is very new what they are doing is instead of giving a particle of the virus like a protein of the virus or the weakened virus which was the case in previous vaccines this time what they have done is they are basically instructing your body to make part of the virus so that your body knows next time if the real virus comes in that part of the virus will be captured by the antibodies and neutralized so that is the whole promise. Now they are using especially Pfizer and Moderna are using a system called mRNA. mRNA is a genetic material that is true but what it is is your DNA basically makes RNA to tell your cells to make certain proteins certain functions and then it disappears so that's why we call them messenger so mRNA is messenger RNA telling your body what to do and then disappears so as a result it's not a permanent genetic material so it's not going to fuse into your genetics so as a result that makes it safe now how it was produced so fast normally when you produce a vaccine you make a protein and making a protein is a very complex and long lengthy process now what they have done is they make your body make the protein by creating an mRNA and infusing that to your body and then your body makes that viral protein and then your immune system recognizes that viral protein so the bottom line is the mRNA is produced very fast and effectively that's why they were able to get that vaccine out well a trial lasted long enough actually longer than usual to determine the safety and efficacy of this vaccine so I will talk about more about the side effects later but the way it works again is the mRNA tells your body to make a protein called spike protein spike protein is the protein that your virus use as a key to get into your cell think like a thief that has a key that basically can get into any house so as a result virus can replicate in your body very quickly now knowing that fact the scientists said okay we are going to make an mRNA that is going to make your body yourselves to produce that spike protein and then the spike protein is presented to the immune system and then your immune system now produces antibodies against that spike protein the next time the virus comes in with the spike protein the antibodies are there waiting for that the virus to come in and then basically neutralizes and you don't get sick so that's a whole promise of the vaccine so as I said after your body produces the spike proteins the mRNA is gone the vaccine disappears from your system so in that regard it is totally safe okay the second question is is it safe so as we discussed the mRNA disappears from your system and the study is what they did they followed these people a couple months after the vaccination and they did not see any serious safety signal or chronic long-term problems that can be associated with this vaccine so overall I would say that this vaccine is very safe and effective and I have got mine I'm waiting for my next shot and basically what happened to me is I'll talk to you about the side effects but a little bit of a soreness on my muscle but when it comes to the side effects I'll tell you a little bit more about that all right side effects so let's talk about this side effects basically is the site reactions that tend to happen a lot now if you're having a pain after this vaccine that's a good thing because your immune system is responding to that new spike protein that is made by your muscle cells and presented to the immune system immune system comes and says what's going on here you know there's this little chaos there and then spike proteins are presented to the immune system so this reaction in there the pain you're feeling is that it's a good thing because your immune system is responding to what's going on and then that becomes systemic and next thing you know your immune system is ready to go now some people get you know chills and fever very rare I didn't get that personally I didn't get any muscle pains or anything like that but some people do and that can happen up to 14 days after the vaccination some muscle pains can happen but nothing compared to real severe and COVID symptoms so if anything that a day or two of a little muscle pain can happen but again most of the people who get vaccinated don't report that as much and if it is it's very mild so what if the virus mutates well virus have the freedom to mutate it can mutate the question is where does it mutate right so if it mutates at the spike protein that is currently made by Pfizer and Moderna that may be a problem we don't know if it mutated for that right now and I don't think it is there has been some reports of mutated virus but the virus can mutate at anywhere in the DNA or in their proteins but it doesn't mean that the spike protein will be affected if it is affected then there are a lot of other vaccines trials are going on so probably if that's discovered that the spike protein is affected then these vaccines will be withdrawn because if the vaccine is not going to be effective then it's not going to be used but there are a lot of other vaccines in development right now that are targeting different parts of the virus or targeting a protein of the virus rather than the mRNA then you know then that may be an option as well but as of right now the Pfizer biotech you know Moderna these vaccines are not available not for everybody I hope it will be available to you soon as well but definitely these vaccines are valid even if there are some mutation strains going on right now so the next question is how long does the immunity last so the answer to that question is not very clear so right now we know that the immune system will respond but how long that's going to be valid we don't know we will be able to identify that in the following months or years hopefully you will have a robust immune system for example you get the vaccination for measles when you're very young and it lost the entire lifetime on the other hand the flu vaccine you know only protective for a year so we don't really know but at least for now immunizing using vaccinations in the entire population is going to be important step in order to determine how long the effect of the vaccine will go the last question is do you still have to wear a mask right so it will be really nice if you don't have to wear a mask anymore but the problem is we don't really know if the vaccine is preventing you from getting infected or if the vaccine is actually treating the infection before it becomes too severe so we don't know if you become a carrier or not so maybe vaccine is letting the virus in so your vaccine your you may be still be a carrier and infect others although you may not be sick because you're vaccinated but we don't really know if these people who got vaccinated can still carry the virus to people who are not vaccinated so until we know everybody should continue to wear masks until everyone is vaccinated if you're diabetic definitely you're watching this video more than likely because of that definitely I would highly recommend getting your vaccine as soon as you can as soon as it's available now of course it's not in doctor's hands it's a state regulated the county regulated so you need to get information from the your county from your state not necessarily from your doctor's office because it's going to be a long time before it's going to be readily available in every doctor's office so I hope that answers all the questions if you do have more questions make sure you put on the comment below and make sure you share it is with family and friends have a great day guys