North Country Community College Associate Professor of Health Sciences Sarah Shoemaker sits on a bench by Berkeley Green in Saranac Lake on Thursday. (Enterprise photo — Elizabeth Izzo)

SARANAC LAKE — In Saranac Lake, scientific expertise is never far away. One local professor proved that on Thursday.

Bright sunlight shone over Berkeley Green Thursday afternoon, and a light wind brushed the landscape with relief from the heat. A few people walked around the park, some wearing masks, others not. On a bench a few steps away from the park, North Country Community College Associate Professor of Health Sciences Sarah Shoemaker sat beside a sign that read, “COVID Qs? I’m a scientist!”

Shoemaker spends her days teaching college students about microbiology and answering their questions. She decided to offer her knowledge on the coronavirus and about COVID-19 vaccines to anyone who might walk by, because to her, education is a passion.

“I’m not a very political person. The political side of things I’m not really interested in and I don’t really follow,” she said. “From the science side of things, vaccines are just … really, they’ve just been revolutionary. In the last century, we’ve completely eradicated smallpox from planet Earth. We’re really close to eradicating polio. It’s the best medicine humans have ever designed, and it’s different from every other kind of medicine because virtually all medicine that we give to people is something that inhibits. It inhibits some natural process. Vaccines do the opposite. They stimulate something. They stimulate a natural process that would happen if you were exposed to that pathogen, but just in a safer, more controlled way.

“(Vaccines are) something that I’m knowledgeable about and I’m practiced at explaining because of my job,” she added, noting that she’s posted on Facebook about them and received a positive response from people she knows. “I thought, well, how else can I help to spread the word and educate people? I’m not teaching in person; I’m still teaching online. It’s a nice day, so I thought, I’ll just park myself in the park, and people who don’t know me can ask me questions in real life.”

Though the number of people who have chosen to get vaccinated in the Tri-Lakes is high, vaccine hesitancy does exist here. Shoemaker said when having a conversation with someone who remains hesitant, it’s important to remember that their hesitancy should be respected.

“Shots are scary things. Something that you don’t understand is very scary,” she said. “A lot of times people are scared about the newness factor of it. I think the worst thing that we can do is pressure people to do something that they don’t want to do. The best thing we can do is be understanding about their hesitancy but also continue to answer their questions.

“We need to have more conversations and fewer debates,” she added.

Shoemaker addressed a few of the common reasons why people are hesitant: Some people are concerned that the vaccine may affect their DNA, affect fertility, or they’re concerned that the vaccines may have some long-term effects.

COVID-19 vaccines such as the ones manufactured by Pfizer and Moderna are what’s called mRNA vaccines, which essentially teach the body how to make part of the coronavirus. Once cells in the body produce that part of the virus, the immune system recognizes that it shouldn’t be there, reacts and creates antibodies, just as it would if a person was really infected with the coronavirus and developed COVID-19.

“RNA is really unstable and degrades really quickly,” Shoemaker said. “We don’t actually even have the protein that can turn RNA into DNA. There’s no way to even do that. There’s no possible way for an mRNA vaccine to have any permanent effect on your DNA or on your cells, even.”

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a DNA-based vaccine, but Shoemaker said “Even then, there’s no way for the DNA to get into the nucleus and get into your DNA.”

“Viruses infect our cells all the time. They come in with DNA, and we don’t keep that DNA,” she said. “It doesn’t change our cells.”

Scientists can’t promise that there aren’t any long-term effects, but the possibility of that is “very, very small,” according to Shoemaker. The process used to develop the COVID-19 vaccines has been used to develop other vaccines in the past.

There are some extremely rare side effects to some vaccines, such as anaphylaxis or blood clots, but Shoemaker said those side effects have been looked into and practitioners are aware of it. Anaphylaxis, for example, is an immediate reaction that’s treatable. Shoemaker said she has a lot of confidence in the transparency of the scientific process and that if there were some dangerous side effects, we would know.

On the fertility issue, Shoemaker said studies in animals and evidence so far culled from women who have gotten vaccinated show that there haven’t been any impacts on fertility. Many of the millions of people who have been vaccinated are women who were either pregnant when they got vaccinated or got pregnant afterward, and no major issues have been found, she said.

“One thing that has been reported as a side effect of some of these vaccines is changes in menstrual cycles. Some women experience a loss of period or extra heavy flow, and so I think that’s another thing people cling to thinking, ‘Oh well, it might affect fertility,'” Shoemaker said. “It’s much more likely to be due to that heightened immune response. Changes in body temperature and changes in hormone levels can all affect the menstrual cycle, and those are all temporary.”

Thursday was the first day that Shoemaker offered her expertise to passersby in Saranac Lake, just a few steps away from a Franklin County Public Health COVID-19 vaccine clinic at the Saranac Lake Free Library. She hopes to make herself available to answer questions in a similar way in the future. She encouraged anyone with a question to find her on Facebook and encouraged others to get involved, too.

“There’s so much distrust that what we really need is a grassroots movement,” she said. “We need everyone to help with vaccine uptake because it benefits everyone. I think people are most likely to trust their neighbors or their doctor.

“If you can help one person to make a healthy decision for themselves and their community, then that can spread. I guess that’s what I’m trying to do. I’m just trying to work within my community of people,” she added. “For each person that gets vaccinated, that’s better for everyone. One person at a time. It’s not about getting the millions. If you can change your neighbor’s mind or your mom’s mind, that’s huge for your world, but also the world.”