Here’s why you shouldn’t fear an mRNA vaccine:

Although these are the first FDA approved vaccines using mRNA technology, this type of vaccine technology has been studied for over a decade.
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Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work by introducing a single sequence of mRNA into cells to code for the production of a protein, the COVID surface spike protein, which allows the virus to infect human cells.
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This newly manufactured foreign spike protein then primes your immune system to recognize and attack that protein should it ever encounter it again, for example in the case of a COVID infection.
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Now, you may be wondering, “why not just inject the surface spike protein itself instead of the mRNA sequence which codes for that protein?”
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The simple answer is that it would take too long to manufacture and purify, and with a deadly disease like COVID, obviously speed is important.
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Compare this to what COVID does when it infects cells. It inserts *29* distinct RNA sequences coding for 29 different proteins and commands your cells to make thousands of copies of these 29 proteins thus manufacturing more virus to infect more cells and then...
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repeats this process over and over again, inciting a huge immune response and making you very sick.

So the vaccine doesn’t alter your DNA or harm your cells, but the virus certainly does.
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This technology is going to reshape how we make vaccines and greatly speed up vaccine development for novel viruses in the future. This has science nerds like me all over the globe very excited.

Please consider getting the vaccine. It’ll stop this killer and save lives.
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Also one more point, as this has been expressed as a concern...

Since the vaccine is mRNA, it cannot enter the nucleus of the cell, where your DNA resides, and therefore cannot affect or alter your DNA.