The Coronavirus has been affecting not only the United States, but the entire world, for over a year now. Travel bans have been put into place since March of 2020: grandparents are not able to visit with their grandchildren and families have lost loved ones due to this horrible, infectious disease.

As the Pfizer, Maderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines began to roll out to the public mid-march, some were hesitant to get the vaccine. This caused, and is still causing, an uproar within the country as anti-vaxxers and their ideology are becoming more prevalent.

This has sparked one main question, echoing throughout the political and social lives of many Americans: Is getting the COVID-19 vaccine necessary? 

Health Matters explained that, “You need both doses of the two-dose vaccines to achieve immunity.” If you only were to get the first portion of the vaccine, you would still be susceptible to contracting, spreading, and potentially dying from the disease. 

Isabella Zavala, a senior at Cam High, said, “I was hesitant at first for getting the vaccine. Now that I am fully vaccinated I am thankful that I got it because it gives me a sense of closure.”

Dr. Kristen Marks, an infectious disease specialist from the NewYork-Presbyterian, explained that, “There appears to be some protection 14 days after a person’s first dose, that initial protection may wane over time,” and, “both the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were found to be 95% effective in the early months after the vaccine.”

This goes to show that getting both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine allow for someone to essentially become immune to the disease. It also shows that if they were to contract the Coronavirus, then they would be considered asymptomatic, and could not spread the virus to anyone else, according to NBC Boston. 

If people continue to refuse to get the Coronavirus vaccine, then America will potentially never reach herd immunity. Herd immunity is when the majority of a population becomes immune to a certain virus, meaning that life would result in going back to normal. The COVID-19 vaccine is the answer to all of our current problems and debates about reopening our world. With this vaccine, life has the ability to return back to normal, allowing holidays to be the same, hospitals to run efficiently, travel to open up without restrictions, and mask wearing/social distancing to come to a much-awaited end.