This article is part of a series explaining the COVID-19 pandemic. Please consider starting at Part 1: What is a virus or check out the whole series by clicking the button below.

The different COVID-19 vaccines available in the world represent a tremendous success by science. These vaccines were developed, tested, and proven safe very quickly, saving millions of lives around the world.

These vaccines were so successful, in fact, that some people questioned their safety or are/were hesitant to take the vaccine because they thought that it may have been rushed.

The truth is, scientists from all over the world worked on finding vaccines for COVID-19. The seemingly rapid development of the vaccines was not due to corner-cutting or shortcuts but was due to the immense worldwide funding, focus, and collaboration as a result of the severity of the pandemic.

All of the vaccines which have been approved around the world are safe and effective against preventing serious hospitalization and death from COVID-19. In all cases, the small risk of side effects from the vaccines far outweighs the potential risks of contracting COVID-19.

The best vaccine for you is the one that has been approved and which you have access to.

Vaccines that have been approved in different countries around the world include:

Sinovac-CoronaVac - developed by Beijing-based Sinovac. CoronaVac uses inactivated virus toexpose the bodies immune system to the virus without risking serious disease. (https://www.who.int/news/item/01-06-2021-who-validates-sinovac-covid-19-vaccine-for-emergency-use-and-issues-interim-policy-recommendations)

Sputnik V - Developed in Russia, the Sputnik V COVID-19 Vaccine uses a recombinant adenovirus approach. Each of the two doses uses a different adenovirus as vectors (AD26 and Ad5) as vectors to overcome any pre-existing adenovirus immunity in the population. (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00191-4/fulltext)

Pfizer/BioNTech (Comirnaty) - This is an mRNA vaccine. This vaccine uses mRNA to teach our body how to create a protein that triggers an immune response inside our bodies. Our bodies produce the protein, and also produces the antibodies that protect us from those antibodies. mRNA vaccines do not change our DNA and the cells which produce the protein break down once the protein is complete. (https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/covid19-industry/drugs-vaccines-treatments/vaccines/pfizer-biontech.html)

Moderna (Spikevax) - Like the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, this is also an mRNA vaccine. mRNA vaccines teach our cells how to make a protein that will trigger an immune response without using the live virus that causes COVID-19. Once triggered, our body then makes antibodies. These antibodies help us fight the infection if the real virus does enter our body in the future. (https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/covid19-industry/drugs-vaccines-treatments/vaccines/moderna.html)

Astra-Zeneca/COVISHIELD (Vaxzevria) - Sometimes known as the Oxford Vaccine, this vaccine uses a harmless virus (the adenovirus) as a delivery system. This adenovirus is not the virus that causes COVID-19; you can not get COVID-19 from this vaccine. There are many different types of adenoviruses, including some that cause colds in humans and that infect other species. Scientists have been using these viruses for decades to deliver the instructions for proteins. (https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/covid19-industry/drugs-vaccines-treatments/vaccines/astrazeneca.html)

Johnson & Johnson (Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine) - The active ingredient of COVID-19 Vaccine Janssen, also known as Ad26.COV2-S (recombinant), is a recombinant adenoviral vector that contains the sequence that encodes the spike protein (S) of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This vaccine was approved with a single dose with no booster required. (https://www.who.int/news/item/12-03-2021-who-adds-janssen-vaccine-to-list-of-safe-and-effective-emergency-tools-against-covid-19)

Click Here For A List Of All Vaccines Approved For Use In Canada

Failed Vaccines

With the large number of successful vaccines which have been deployed around the world and the speed with which they were deployed, some people may have felt that developing a vaccine was easy. This isn’t true; these vaccines were developed quickly due to the billions of dollars of research money, time, collaboration, and effort that was put into developing the vaccines. Hearing about the successful vaccines is an example of Survivorship Bias - a type of cognitive bias that makes us forget about the base rate of failures and instead focus on the relatively small number of successes (https://fs.blog/2019/12/survivorship-bias/).

In fact, some of the world’s largest and most well-known vaccine makers were unable to develop or chose not to develop COVID-19 vaccines, including GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and Sanofi (https://www.ft.com/content/657b123a-78ba-4fba-b18e-23c07e313331). Australia had been working on their own COVID-19 vaccine at the University of Queensland using a ‘molecular clamp’ approach. The development of this vaccine, which showed promise in early testing, was also halted (https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/12/development-unique-australian-covid-19-vaccine-halted).

The bottom line: you can feel safe knowing that when a vaccine is approved for use that it has been thoroughly tested and is safe.

COVID-19 Vaccine Conspiracy Theories

It’s not hard to discover conspiracy theories about almost anything on the internet, COVID-19 vaccines included. From microchips to infertility, misinformation about these life-saving vaccines abounds on the internet.

Sometimes conspiracy theories begin as a joke, other times there is a motive - because the originator wants to make a name or money for themselves or a movement, for example.

Why do people come to believe in conspiracy theories? There are many reasons, but they often stem from a need to explain, accept, or rationalize a discrepancy between what one believes and what one experiences. They can make one feel safe when overwhelmed in the world - like you have it all figured out.

In the case of COVID-19 vaccines, those conspiracy theories can cost lives - the lives of the people who believe in them, and the people around them. It is important to think critically and rely on the advice of established health organizations such as the World Health Organization, Health Canada, and the US Center for Disease Control.