Dr. Jerry Williams of Urgent Care 24/7 discusses a hot topic COVID-19 vaccinations.

Dr. Williams has had a lot of people come to him, friends, family patients, asking me about "Should I get a COVID-19 vaccine?" He understands this is a very politically charged topic. But he's going to tell you, as a physician, and as a physician who has a national urgent care company, so we've been on the frontlines of fighting this disease since the beginning here in the US.

His opinion, an educated opinion, but it's his, and he wanted you to know that he respects everyone's freedom of choice and thinks it's a decision that each individual has to make. But he's actually here to encourage you to take the vaccine. We're dealing with a virus that is very unpredictable in the severity of infections.

Some folks who have co-morbid conditions or the elderly, that we know put them at increased risk. But he's actually seen relatively young, very healthy people who have gotten the infection and done poorly. So that lack of predictability is quite frightening when it comes to COVID-19 infections.

If you look at the safety of these, of these vaccines that have been given literally to 10s of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people worldwide at this point. It's it fortunately, overall, these are very safe vaccinations, and amazingly effective.

Dr. Williams was vaccinated very early on in this process, and actually led my company as the first to be vaccinated because he was asked to do so he was asked to lead. Rather than follow, he was actually going to go last. He was asked to please go first to show our over 300 employees that he was stepping up to the plate to get vaccinated very early on.

Dr. Williams tells his friends, family and patients, he'd rather take his chances with an overall very safe vaccine that is very effective and take my chances against a very unpredictable virus that can kill.

What's the most common and it's not anything to be afraid of the most common problems are injection site reactions where you get pain, swelling, and tenderness at the injection site. And then a flu like syndrome with fever, body aches, malaise, headache, and just feeling badly usually for a day or so. The first full day after your infection is a day or two. Those can be managed quite easily with Tylenol or Acetaminophen, rest, pushing fluids and getting plenty of sleep. And typically those pass those symptoms passed pretty quickly.

So faced with say a day or so of post injection malaise and not feeling quite so great versus going through a COVID infection that could be anywhere from minimally altering your lifestyle to even life threatening. Dr. Williams chose his personal choice to take the vaccine and he encouraged my friends, family and patients to do the same.

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