Does Any Vaccine Stay in the Arm? No.

An estimated 8.5 percent to 10 percent of Americans have Type 2 diabetes mellitus.  This brings much of the entire U.S. population into acquaintance with one or more diabetic people, and we may even be related to a diabetic or may even live in the same household.

With such high prevalence, most adults, and all health care professionals, are aware of diabetics’ need to check their blood sugar frequently. Although there is now an electronic blood sugar monitor that has been helpful for checking blood sugar without a needle poke, the glucometer with needle is still the most common method. The image below shows a glucometer.

To make it work, a very small needle, called a lancet, is used to elicit a drop of blood, which is then applied to the end of a test strip. The test strip is then inserted promptly into one end of the glucometer, which starts a chemical reaction between the person’s blood sugar (glucose) and of enzymes on the test strip.

The glucometer then displays a number resulting from that chemical reaction. The number is the interpretation from that reaction as the amount of glucose in the person’s blood. But those details are merely an introduction to glucometers—not important to my argument.

Here is the needle that is used in the glucometer (pictured in the photo below). It is 30 gauge, which is 0.312 millimeters thick, and three millimeters long.

A zoomed-in lancet:

Now if you ask any diabetic, no matter where they poke themselves, even on the fingertips, which are some of the most distant extremities from the heart, they never fail to produce a drop of blood when they are poked with this item. (Unless years of manual labor made thick, tough callouses, and then the needle poke is done on an uncalloused side of a finger.)

Now let’s compare this with the needle used for Pfizer vaccine administration. It is 22 to 25 gauge, which is wider than the glucometer lancet. The Pfizer needle is one to 1.5 inches in length. Let’s say it is on the smaller side, 22 gauge, and one inch long.

So the glucometer needle is three millimeters long and 30 gauge thick, which is 0.312 millimeters thick in outer diameter. (Millimeter thickness from gauge may be seen here.) And the Pfizer vaccine needle is one inch = 25.4 mm long and 22 gauge, which is 0.718 mm thick in outer diameter.

Below is a zoomed-in size comparison:

So even a tiny needle, such as a glucometer lancet will not fail to elicit a drop of blood.  You don’t even have to map out where the blood vessels run under the skin. Just pick any spot, and be confident that you will strike a leak, no matter where you poke.

You don’t have to repeatedly stab yourself with the tiny needle above, in order to find a rare blood vessel. No matter where you use the glucometer lancet, unless calloused or pathologically coagulated or dehydrated, a drop of blood will travel outward, the entire length of the lancet, and then appear on the skin’s surface.

Why can we be so sure that eliciting a drop of blood is as easy as throwing a dart at the side of a barn? Because the capillaries are only 100 micrometers = 0.1 millimeters apart, which is a third of the thickness of even the glucometer lancet, and one-seventh the thickness of the Pfizer vaccine needle. And for every tenth of a millimeter that needle advances through flesh, three to seven more capillaries are blown.

It means that multiple blood vessels have been pierced, and are now leaking, no matter where you poke.

So any needle pierce of skin, even as shallow as three millimeters, will allow penetration of the one-millimeter thick epidermis—which does not have blood vessels—and will plunge the needle all the way to the hub, through the three-millimeter thick dermis, which does have blood vessels, and then through that to the subcutaneous layer, or hypodermis, which has larger blood vessels. Cleveland Clinic illustrates the layers here, with their respective blood vessels:

And, we know from the diabetics’ experience of not having to repeatedly stab themselves to try to find a drop of blood, that blood vessels are disrupted every single time, even by the tiny, thin, and short needle above, and to such a great extent, that a drop of blood oozes all the way out past the lancet’s length, and onto the surface of the skin.

So then we see that if the Pfizer vaccine needle is over eight times as long and over twice as wide as the lancet, then all the more blood vessels, including some of the larger and deeper ones in the subcutaneous layer are accessed. (For larger needle use, a Z-track technique is often used, in part to minimize such blood spillage on the surface.) The larger and deeper vessels are farther apart and are less likely to be accessed in any single needle poke.

However, it is often forgotten that the ubiquitous and densely distributed capillaries are there also, which is necessary for all of the body’s cells, both superficial and deep, to be nourished by the blood. Otherwise, they would die. So any needle access to both superficial (by glucometer lancet) and deep (by vaccine needle) will assuredly disrupt capillaries and very possibly some venules as well.

Is it any wonder then that any injection of any liquid at all can access the whole body?  Except for the non-mixing of oil and water, do you know of any other adjacent liquids that will NOT mix together?