Taking OTC pain relief medicines after a vaccine is not that unusual, either for pain or fever. Ask any parent who has gone through a vaccine series with their kid.

And I can remember getting my tetanus booster in secondary school and when I rolled over in my sleep waking up because my shoulder was so swollen and painful.

I'm not dismissing the fact that the vaccines might cause serious side effects. In fact, it's expected that some very small percentage will. But for the vast majority of patients, the Pfizer vaccine has a similar safety profile to other approved vaccines.

I was talking about AstraZeneca that would be the first vaccine using a modified adenovirus. It looks to have somewhat more side effects than the Pfitzer vaccine.

I got a tetanus shot about two months ago. I used pain medication (just normal-ass ibuprofen) because the injection site gets very sore after a few days. There's a lot of valid reasons to be concerned about being in the early run of a brand new vaccination, but injection site having a bit of pain is hardly one of them.

Is that not a common side effect of all vaccines? I can't think of a time when I haven't had to take Advil for a couple days after getting the flu shot due to body aches.

I don't think pain serious enough to warrant medication is common at all. I used to administer flu vaccines in a former life, and I've never heard of anyone having such a strong reaction. Most people have some very mild soreness in their arm at most.

> Fortunately I don't need to though, because soon we'll probably have 2 great vaccines to choose from.

Indeed! And I'll be going with the adenoviral route which has been used for more than fifty years, rather than the brand new, first time ever mRNA product.

>Indeed! And I'll be going with the adenoviral route which has been used for more than fifty years, rather than the brand new, first time ever mRNA product.

Interesting, I feel the exact opposite. I can't wait to take a mRNA vaccine, but the adenovirus ones seem sketchy given that Sinovac, J&J, and AstraZeneca have all seen serious adverse events in their trials, while Pfizer and Moderna have seen none, along with much higher efficacy.

I wasn't aware there were any adenoviral vaccinations approved for human use? What are you referring to?

Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG): https://medlineplus.gov/druginfo/meds/a682809.html

Isn't it using a bacterium?

I think Zabdeno (Ad26.ZEBOV) and Mvabea (MVA-BN-Filo) for ebola vaccination is the most recent example. Also from Janssen (J&J).

What are your main concerns with the mRNA product? Are you afraid of long term side effects? We already know that it has less short term side effects than the adenoviral vaccine. Actually I'd like to see deeper thinking about it from professionals.

I'm not a medical doctor, but I do work in pharma and I have tried to inform myself. Still, I could be quite wrong.

Yes, I do have some concerns regarding long term effects of mRNA based vaccines. As you said, I would also like to see some deeper thinking about this. I feel that other delivery vectors may be better known and have an existing track record.

I also understand that mRNA treatments have had some excellent outcomes in cancer patients. However, these treatments have been highly personalised, based on the patient's own DNA. Therefore, I also wonder about the general medium and longer term effectiveness of mRNA for coronavirus vaccination.

I'm in no way an anti-vaxer. I'm completely vaccinated for all the common things (MMR etc). As is my child. No problems with something that's been around for a long time and is well known.

I would just like to make my own choice regarding which brand new, accelerated testing regime, vaccine I decide to inject.

> I also understand that mRNA treatments have had some excellent outcomes in cancer patients

One interesting thing is that I was quite worried that in April/May all these experimental treatments have been stopped, because all the most interesting companies were forced to redirect their focus to COVID (the only reason you could use a lab). I'm relieved, that at least we got something in return: derisking mRNA as a delivery method, and showing that it's far superior to older ones. You're right that we don't have medium / long term data yet, but this article is quite relevant:

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/could-an-mrna-vaccine-b...

Linial explained that “mRNA is a very fragile molecule, meaning it can be destroyed very easily... If you put mRNA on the table, for example, in a minute there will not be any mRNA leftover. This is as opposed to DNA, which is as stable as you get.” She said that this fragility is true of the mRNA of any living thing, whether it belongs to a plant, bacteria, virus or human. As such, she said the worry should not be that the mRNA won’t get into the cells and instead will stay outside, floating in the body and causing some kind of reaction. Rather the concern should be that if it doesn’t enter the cells, it will disintegrate and therefore be ineffective.

Maybe this is a good place to tag on a question that someone reading this might be able to answer - while I know it hasn't bee tried yet so we don't 'know' yet, are there any theories on what would happen if you take multiple vaccines? Would that provide extra protection, could they react to each other negatively, or would it have (theoretically) no effect?

I think it's better not to experiment with it. It would take too much effort, especially as the Moderna vaccine has much better stability profile (it looks like the clear winner for hot climates / places where refrigerating is hard)