adults under 65 are hesitant to get the remarkably effective COVID vaccines, even though the nation has rigorous standards for ensuring safe vaccines and public health agencies are carefully monitoring the shots to ensure they're safe over time (that's why the FDA temporarily paused the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). .

Indeed, some folks may never choose to get vaccinated for COVID.

Yet for those still on the fence about vaccination, infectious disease experts address and debunk myths and misinformation about the FDA-authorized vaccines below. .

New @CDCMMWR has good news: mRNA COVID-19 vaccines (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) reduced the risk of #COVID19-related hospitalization by 94% among fully vaccinated people 65+.

"Historically, adverse reactions from vaccines almost always come in the first two months," said Dr?

The known long-term health consequences from COVID, which we're still learning about, are certainly a much bigger future risk than a hypothetical long-term vaccine side effect that hasn't yet been identified, emphasized Russo.

COVID," said Dr.

Yes, an extreme minority of vaccinated people can still be infected with the coronavirus and get COVID, and a much smaller minority have died.

According to the CDC, as of April 26, over 95 million Americans had been fully vaccinated, with 9,245 reported "breakthrough infections," or 0.0000097 percent of those infected (though there are certainly some unreported breakthrough infections).

The risks of Covid infection are clear—when you get infected, the virus replicates all over your body and could cause long-term health problems, even for people not sick enough to be hospitalized.

This myth is particularly egregious: "It's just theater of the absurd," said Dr.

The tiny proteins produced by the vaccine to trigger an immune response (none of the FDA-authorized vaccines contain the coronavirus) can't somehow "shed" outside of one's body, miraculously remain intact and stable, and then somehow negatively affect other people.

"It's biologically impossible," said Dr.

"It's unpredictable, in terms of what can happen, if you get infected," said Dr

It's too infectious, it's too efficient, and it's spread by asymptomatic people."

What's more, COVID inevitably makes some people severely ill

"The longer we drag this out, the more likely it is that variants will be resistant to what we have as vaccines," said Dr

For those that choose not to get vaccinated, it's likely the coronavirus, specifically a mutated, dominant, more contagious COVID variant like B.1.1.7, eventually finds you

"If you don’t get vaccinated you’ll get COVID unless you're some sort of hermit north of the Arctic circle

It's too infectious, it's too efficient, and it's spread by asymptomatic people