By Dr. Michael Polsinelli, DC

As of Thursday (Jan 28), more than 22 million Americans have been vaccinated against the Covid-19 virus. Of those, 2 million people reported side effects to the CDC’s V-safe After Vaccination Health Checker App ^[1]. Within these 2 million reports, more than 70% had pain (at the site of injection), 33% had fatigue, 30% had headaches, 23% had muscle pain and about 11% had chills, fever, swelling or joint pain. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System ^[2] (VAERS) has reported more than 1,000 cases that had serious side effects that required hospitalization and 196 deaths after COVID-19 vaccination ^[3]. The majority of these deaths were from people in nursing and assisted care facilities. Ninety percent of the serious allergic reactions presented in the first 30 minutes after being administered the vaccine. 

Two reports of younger people that have died following vaccination have been in the news. One is a 56-year old medical doctor that died two weeks after vaccinations ^[4]. The other is 60-year old X-ray technologist ^[5] who had an allergic reaction and needed to be hospitalized after receiving the second Pfiser vaccination. He passed away a few days later ^[6].

To put this in perspective, of the 26 Million cases of Covid-19 in the United States, there have been 436,000 deaths ^[7]. More than 2 people are dying here from Covid-19 ^[8] every minute. 

The protocol for vaccinations is to have patients wait 15 minutes after administration to see if there are any adverse reactions. Epi-pens are on site ^[9] in case a patient has a severe allergic reaction. If you have a history of major allergies and are concerned with having an adverse reaction, you may want to wait for an additional 15 minutes outside of the vaccination clinic to make sure that you are OK. 

Mild symptoms are common, but if your breathing or swallowing is affected, or if you develop a strange rash, don’t hesitate to get checked out.

This has been added to my original post on Covid-19 Vaccine safety ^[10].