The Intrepid Reporter
Your Discussion should be 3-4 paragraphs in length, detailing your thoughts and position using 2-3 readings references for support. Also be sure to pose 1-2 well thought out questions from which your colleagues can formulate a response or generate further discussion.
Scenario: You are a reporter working in a year in the past and writing an article about a new vaccine. Your article will take place in the year the vaccine was invented (or approved for use on the general public) and should be written as if it were a current event. It is your job to deliver information about the new vaccine and create public awareness.
- Choose one vaccine and list the date and person(s) or company responsible for creating it. Describe the disease the vaccine was developed to prevent including the microorganism that causes it. Provide a short background about the severity and effects of the disease at the “current” time period.
- Describe the way the vaccine was invented or discovered. Relay to your readers the exact way the vaccine works to create a protective result against the microorganism.
- Communicate the risks, benefits, the method of vaccination, and contraindications of the vaccine. Your readers trust you to give them objective information. At the same time, the vaccine is likely to benefit the general public and your readers may need some gentle persuasion to follow through with immunization.
In your replies to this discussion, describe how you would react to other students’ news articles if you were one of the readers at the indicated time period. What would be your opinion about receiving the vaccine? How would you perceive risks and benefits? Would you be happy? Would you be fearful?
Note: It is important that reputable sources show the public where the information is coming from, so make sure that your assignment is cited using APA formatting for its reference list and in-text citations.
Resources to get you started
The History of Vaccines
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/timeline/all
1. Choose one vaccine and list the date and person(s) or company responsible for creating it. Describe the disease the vaccine was developed to prevent including the microorganism that causes it. Provide a short background about the severity and effects of the disease at the “current” time period.
I chose the COVID-19 vaccine, "Novavax Nuvaxovid ® COVID-19 Vaccine," which was developed by Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Limited (Novavax Inc) and got public approval in Japan on April 19, 2022 (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, n.d.). COVID-19 is caused by a novel coronavirus related to SARS-CoV, which is classified as a "betacoronavirus belonging to the subgenus Sarbecovirus" (Ciotti et al., 2020). The main symptoms are fever, sore throat and cough, fatigue, headache, loss of taste or smell, or difficulty breathing, etc. Most people experience only symptoms similar to a cold or the flu, but a certain number of patients develop severe pneumonia and need to be put on a ventilator. About 6.53 million people have died worldwide since the pandemic began in 2019. Many were patients or older people with some underlying diseases (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, etc.). The SARS-CoV-2 virus is contagious through contact transmission, airborne infection, and through inhaling aerosols, microscopic particles of their bodily fluids containing the virus. In addition, the time lag from infection to the onset of symptoms (Incubation period) is up to 14 days and is more prolonged than in other infectious diseases, which is why patients are unaware that they are infected and spread the infection to people around them (Providence, 2022). Therefore, COVID-19 is a disease that requires strict management with vaccination and isolation of infected persons.
2. Describe the way the vaccine was invented or discovered. Relay to your readers the exact way the vaccine works to create a protective result against the microorganism.
Nuvaxovid is a recombinant protein vaccine that differs from mRNA vaccines such as Pfizer's or Moderrna's. Recombinant protein vaccines are a type of inactivated vaccine and are also used in other vaccines, such as the hepatitis B virus vaccine. Nuvaxovid is a nanoparticle preparation of a recombinant protein based on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein gene, and when taken up into cells, it can prevent SARS-CoV-2 infections by inducing the production of neutralizing antibodies against the spike protein and the induction of cell-mediated immune responses (The European Medicines Agency, n.d.).
3. Communicate the risks, benefits, the method of vaccination, and contraindications of the vaccine. Your readers trust you to give them objective information. At the same time, the vaccine is likely to benefit the general public and your readers may need some gentle persuasion to follow through with immunization.
In Japan, 0.5 mL of the vaccine is injected intramuscularly at 3-week intervals, and a booster dose is administered twice or three times. "One dose contains five micrograms of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (original strain) with 50 micrograms of Matrix-M adjuvant" (Government of Canada, 2022, para.3).
And the contraindications for the Nuvaxovid are hypersensitivity to the active substance or any of the excipients as below.
Picture (The European Medicines Agency, n.d., p.14 & 15)
Some clinical trials demonstrated that one week after the second dose of the Nuvaxovid vaccine, 90% of study participants aged 18 and older were protected from COVID-19 (Government of Canada, 2022). The main side effects include headache, joint and muscle pain, pain at the injection site, fatigue, chills, and fever. In addition, shock and anaphylaxis are rare and have severe side effects. However, in Japan, it is known that the incidence of side reactions is lower than that of mRNA vaccines commonly administered against COVID-19.
Question
・Have you ever received the COVID-19 vaccine?
・What is the most common COVID-19 vaccine in your community? Also, please tell me the type. (e.g., mRNA vaccine)
References
Ciotti, M., Ciccozzi, M., Terrinoni, A., Jiang, W. C., Wang, C. B., & Bernardini, S. (2020). The COVID-19 pandemic. Critical reviews in clinical laboratory sciences, 57(6), 365-388. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10408363.2020.1783198
Government of Canada. (2022). Novavax Nuvaxovid COVID-19 vaccine. Retrieved from https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/covid19-industry/drugs-vaccines-treatments/vaccines/novavax.html
Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. (n.d.). Covid-19 vaccines. Retrieved from https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/covid-19/vaccine.html
Providence. (2022). Covid-19 incubation timeline: When am I contagious? Your Hub For Coronavirus Resources. Retrieved from https://coronavirus.providence.org/blog/uf/669939767?streamId=7436536
The European Medicines Agency. (n.d.). Nuvaxovid, INN-COVID-19 Vaccine (recombinant, adjuvanted). Retrieved from https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/nuvaxovid-epar-product-information_en.pdf
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