COVID vaccines aren't 'gene therapy'

In a "Wise Tradition" podcast, made by the Weston A. Price Foundation, Dr. David Martin calls the new mRNA COVID-19 vaccines gene therapy, and disputes that they are actual vaccines. 

Gene therapy implies The use of DNA which stays in the body and can incorporate into chromosomes. RNA doesn’t do that. The RNA in the vaccines wouldn’t be converted into DNA because the enzymes capable of doing that aren’t present. Moreover, the RNA is not stable enough to hang around and is rapidly degraded.

Martin also says, "This [the mRNA vaccine] is not going to stop you from getting Coronavirus. It’s not going to stop you from getting sick. In fact, on the contrary, it will make you sick far more often than the virus itself." To read the complete transcript, go here. 

The vaccine does stop you from getting sick from SARS-COV-2. The argument that the symptoms people are getting from the vaccine amount to getting COVID-19 is spurious. For one thing, symptoms from COVID-19 are often very different than those from the vaccine (for instance, loss of taste and smell). Also, the vaccines prevent severe infections, where symptoms are very different from those attributable to the vaccine. His argument is akin to saying you get COVID-19 from the flu vaccine or the shingrix vaccine, or lots of other vaccines because some of the side effects are similar to COVID-19 symptoms.