Getting the COVID 19 Vaccine I Stay Safe For My Children, Parents, Grandparents, Community, and Myself!

Image Credit: Martha Montufar.

Image Credit: Martha Montufar.

As a leader in the community and among PPS-SF staff, I know the importance of modeling what we know works best for us and the communities we serve. After much research I decided to get the COVID 19 vaccination.

I was among the hesitant ones, I was skeptical about the speed of the production of the vaccine and its effectiveness. I felt scared and needed to build my trust in order for me and my family to make the decision to be vaccinated. I am grateful for the patience, respect, and reassurance experts, colleagues, friends, and family members consistently offered me. We know it is a personal decision, a choice one must make on their own. I realized that by me getting the vaccine I would help to protect myself, loved ones, my community, my country and the world. The more we all get vaccinated the faster we can overcome the virus and go back to normal.

What help me decided to receive the vaccine was finding out that:

  • All vaccines reduce risk of disease, hospitalization, and death.

  • Real works data shows that the vaccines are effective including against many of the newer virus variants

  • May still see mild disease but NOT sever disease.

  • Rates of infection decreasing rapidly in countries that are achieving vaccination rates over 30%.

Yes, but are they safe? Doctors say:

  • There has been years of research on this type of technology

  • These vaccines have gone through the same regulatory standard as other vaccines

  • There have been trials that involved all ethnicities

  • What are the side effects? Most side effects are relatively minor

Most importantly to me —The vaccine cannot cause COVID 19 because there is no live virus in any of the vaccines.

To learn more about the safety of the vaccine, listen to the Vaccination Virtual Town Hall hosted by San Francisco Department of Public Health - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7_0B3sUSN8 Translation of closed captions can be done by hitting the CC button in the YouTube window at the bottom right, then hit the settings button and choose Auto-translate and pick the language you need.

Guest UserMeet the Staff, COVID-19Comment