Getting safe, effective COVID-19 coronavirus vaccines distributed and administered worldwide is a vital step to end the current pandemic. Currently in Taiwan, we are fortunate to not have experienced much of the devastating impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a vaccinated population is key to maintaining a truly safe and healthy environment for all.

Many misunderstand how vaccines actually work. “Most vaccines in the past relied on viral vectors, or proteins, which is basically injecting a protein of a virus that looks sort of like the virus you want to be immune to, but it’s sort of different because that’s safer,” this past year’s iGEM team leader Wilson Huang (‘21) , said. “But there has been a development of messenger RNA vaccines, which is what Moderna and Pfizer are making.” He explained that the messenger RNA is a molecule that tells the cells to make proteins, and in this case, proteins that look similar to the ones on the virus. The body recognizes these and immunizes in response.

There are countless misconceptions about vaccines in general. One is that you should only get certain vaccines; many of these assumptions stem from the percentage of effectiveness. While the different vaccines can vary in efficacy and methodology, all have extremely similar results. “I’ll get vaccinated with any vaccine,” Mr. Jude Clapper (he/him), the director of science research and an advisor for the iGEM team said. “There are certainly ones I prefer, but I don’t think you always get a choice.”

One critical misconception is that you don’t need to wear masks or follow social distancing guidelines after getting the vaccine. “It’s still important to wear masks because there’s been well-documented cases of all these different strains of COVID-19 that have very different genetic sequences that  compared to the original virus and the vaccine doesn’t necessarily protect against those other variances,” Dr. Jonathan Hsu (he/him), a Synthetic Biology and Honors Biology teacher and iGEM advisor said. “Look at Dr. Fauci and these other people who have gotten the vaccine…they’re still wearing their masks.”

While you may not personally know anyone who believes in conspiracies behind the COVID-19 vaccines, it is still vital to educate yourself and those around you by keeping up to date with reputable sources. “I think there’s always a lot of anti-vaccination sentiments around the world no matter where you are. But I think this could be improved, just by being more open about the process of how vaccines are developed,” Wilson said. 

Even in Taiwan, we should all prioritize getting vaccinated. “Taiwan really needs the vaccine now because the virus could spread so easily since we, as a population, have built up almost no immunity at all,” Mr. Clapper said. Right now, the AstraZeneca vaccine is the only one available in Taiwan, but the Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Pfizer, and Sinovac vaccines are available elsewhere. And while many Taiwanese citizens are skeptical about the AstraZeneca vaccine, the World Health Organization has reaffirmed as of April 19, 2021 that it is “safe and effective at protecting people from the extremely serious risks of COVID-19, including death, hospitalization and severe disease,” and that any complications are “very rare.”

“Believe in science,” Dr. Hsu, Mr. Clapper, and Wilson all said. “It brought you your iPhone,” Mr. Clapper said.