As the old saying goes, “There is no such thing as a free lunch.” There is nothing in medicine that does not involve some risk to the patient. Everything from aspirin to heart surgery carries some risk. This is true of vaccines as well. As with everything else in medicine, the benefits of the treatment must outweigh the risk. The vaccines available today have been tested and found to be of substantial benefit and to possess only a low risk of harm.
We live in a miraculous world in which we have developed vaccines to keep us from getting many of the serious diseases that used to wipe out whole swaths of the population. In some cases, the vaccine prevents us from developing the illness at all. In others, it reduces our chances of getting the illness and makes it less serious, if we do develop it. There are some risks, however.
Vaccines work by stimulating the immune system to produce antibodies that will recognize and attack the virus, if it ever enters the body. Unfortunately, not everyone’s immune system reacts the same way to a stimulus. Some vaccine recipients may experience an immune system overreaction. This is the usual cause of an unfavorable reaction to a vaccine.
Immune system overreactions are not new and are well-known to medicine. For reasons that are not entirely clear, but which are probably related to the environment, we have been experiencing an increase in autoimmune diseases. Autoimmune diseases are the result of an immune system which has gone haywire and which has attacked its host body. For example, my grandson has Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune disorder in which the immune system has attacked his pancreas and destroyed the cells which produce insulin. He must receive outside insulin on a daily basis just to stay alive. Some other autoimmune disorders are rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, Graves’ disease, Crohn’s disease, celiac disease, and ulcerative colitis. Medicine is still working to understand these diseases and to develop treatments.
When someone experiences an unexpected reaction to a vaccine, the consequences can be quite variable. Most of the time, the reaction is mild, such as a sore arm or a low grade fever, and lasts only a short period of time. On the other hand, sometimes the reaction is more severe. Shock and death are the most severe forms of severe immune system reaction and are always an extremely rare form of reaction.
Guillain-Barre syndrome, in which the immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system, is in rare instances associated with vaccination. It is also associated with bacterial or viral infections.
Any severe immune system reaction, no matter how rare, is a tragedy for the person experiencing it. The federal government has recognized the importance of vaccines and the need to protect vaccine makers from suit. For the person experiencing a reaction, it can be challenging to prove that there was something wrong with the vaccine or that it was actually the vaccine that caused the autoimmune reaction since there can be many environmental triggers not related to vaccines. For all of these reasons, Congress has established a National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program.
The program is limited to vaccines that are routinely administered to children but adults who receive the same vaccines can participate as well. The goal of the program is to assure an adequate supply of vaccines, to stabilize vaccine prices, and to establish an efficient forum to compensate people injured by eligible vaccines. Compensation is paid out of a fund created by a small tax on the sale of each dose of an eligible vaccine. The program will compensate all economic losses caused by the vaccine administration and up to $250,000 in non-economic losses. Applicants must provide proof that they received an eligible vaccine and that they suffered an injury as a result. Injuries are divided into “table” injuries (injuries listed in a table and which develop within a specified period of time following the administration of a particular vaccine) and “non-table” injuries for which the applicant must offer traditional proof that the claimed injury was the result of administration of the eligible vaccine. Injuries caused by a Covid-19 vaccine are covered under a different program.
There is a lot of misinformation out in the world about the dangers associated with vaccines. Vaccines are overall a good thing for society and we never want to go back to the bad old days when childhood illnesses took the lives of many children or left them permanently damaged. Get your shots. Protect yourself and those around you.
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