Trash Talking the COVID-19 vaccine.
Metal in the vaccine?
It has been more than 18 months since COVID-19 reared its ugly head. Since that time more than 37 million Americans have contracted the disease and 625,000 Americans have died from COVID (covid.cdc.gov). In an article published by The COVID tracking project, more than 73,000 Black people have died secondary to COVID-19 (available online at https://covidtracking.com/race).
The United States and the world have made gains in preventing COVID-19 infections through use of vaccines and facemasks, yet people are resistant to taking the vaccine. There is a whole other group resistant to wearing the facemask. I wonder “How many of this group has taken the vaccine?” This is a thought for later.
Why are people resistant to take the vaccine? There are many reasons such as fear, mistrust of health care providers, misinformation, and disinformation. Let’s be honest, many people do not like to read or maybe unable to understand medical writings. Many people rely on social media for information. This is not the best source of information as it may be someone’s opinion and may not be backed by evidence.
One bit of misinformation is that the vaccine contains metal and that a magnet can stick to your body. A friend told me about this as one of her reasons for not taking the vaccine. So, I went online to research this piece of misinformation, and this is what I found. The vaccine contains the chemical element aluminum as one of its adjuvants. An adjuvant in medications is an “added substance” that helps the medication to work. If you would go back to your high school chemistry class, one of the subjects was the periodic table. The periodic table consists of all the chemical elements known to man.
One of those chemical elements is aluminum.
One of the adjuvants in the COVID vaccine is aluminum salts, not aluminum fragments. Aluminum salts are used in many vaccines and drugs as aluminum hydroxide, aluminum phosphate and aluminum potassium for more than 70 years. Vaccines that contain aluminum salts include Hepatitis B, Hepatitis A, Diphtheria tetanus & polio, anthrax, and Hemophilus influenza vaccine. For more information about aluminum salts in vaccine click the following link.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/adjuvants.html
Many commonly used medications contain aluminum salts such as antacids like Mylanta and Maalox, Prilosec(omeprazole) and buffered aspirin. Some antiperspirants contain aluminum salts.
The effects of misinformation like this are that people of color do not take the vaccine and are at increased risk of developing covid. Also, when you do not take advantage of a treatment to prevent the occurrence of a disease you begin to operate in a reactive health pattern. A reactive health pattern is one in which you only go to the doctor if you are sick. If you were playing basketball, this would mean that you have no defense. You are allowing the opposing team to get the ball before you react and running behind the opposing team member. There is no way you can stop the opposing team from scoring by running behind them. Also, so people talk trash while playing to interfere with your psyche and undermine your confidence. A good basketball player plays defensively by intercepting the throw of the ball, stealing the ball from the opposing team member, and putting himself or herself between the basketball goal and the opposing team member. Now you have a good chance of preventing the opposing team member from scoring.
This is exactly what you need to be doing in this COVID pandemic/endemic. Play defense by getting your vaccine and wearing a mask to intercept COVID transmission. All this misinformation is trash talking that interfere with your health and psyche. Don’t let that happen. When you stop listening to the trash talk and begin to play defensively against COVID you are operating in a proactive health pattern (defensively) instead of a reactive health pattern.
Play defensively, take the vaccine, and wear your facemask.
