I was very sick for a week after each shot. I'm 30, I work from home, I work out, I'm lean and only go out when running in the forest and buy food.
I can't possibly know what would happen if I caught covid, but I wish the vaccination (I'm already vaxxed, but I mean the boosters) was my choice. With my reaction to the vaccines, it's two weeks a year guaranteed sickness vs a very low chance of getting covid with an even lower chance of getting very sick from it.
The pros and cons just don't make vaccination every six months an obvious choice for me.
I am working on getting my mother in law to be on call to stay with us for a 10-14 day period, if need be, so that I can get the booster. It's quite ridiculous.
All of that having been said, I know that I need it.
I didn't think I would get a large benefit from the vax, since I had covid, but did it mainly because of pressure (family, employment, government). But I think I draw the line here; I'm not going to take any boosters. Getting horribly sick for several days, running a high fever... that can damage you. It's not as bad as Covid, but my threat from Covid is also greatly diminished already.
> Don’t assume you will react the same with the booster as you did the first dose.
Works both ways unfortunately.
i understand things are very politicized now, so to be clear, genuine interest. i thought there was some relation just based on how regular vaccines operate.
Honestly, I don't know, but it's interesting that when I say I had very bad side effects to the vaccine, some people are convinced that it is because I would also react to covid similarly.
Will those people say to a 70 years old obese smoker who didn't get any reaction after the vaccine? I know many like that. Should I tell them "oh you didn't get a severe reaction to the vaccine, so I guess that's how you would react to covid, too"? Of course not, it's nonsense.
Regarding correlations between the two, it's a bit difficult to tell. After all, you can't really get a correlation between the intensity of vaccine reaction and actual virus exposure for... obvious reasons.
However, (I'm a bit rusty on my allergy and autoimmunity, so if someone catches a mistake, please call me out on it) allergic reactions and the viral reactions tend to present themselves differently. The common image of swelling and inability to breathe are almost completely associated with allergy, while the fever, tiredness and so on tend to be more standard.
There are studies showing the vaccine isn't even effective at 3 months. There's no way I'm dealing with that shot every 3-6 months.
Yes people get reinfected but how many die from it or run into serious conditions? Vaccines don’t block the virus from entering your body, but they help with you not dying or using up ICU beds, even after those 3 months.
Please do your part of the swarm and get vaccinated. If you know you’ll have a odd reaction you can prepare in advance. Also Germany has sick-leave from work everywhere.
I don't want advice from Germany. You'd think after what your country did they'd be less inclined to go down the authoritarian route....
What I can say is the Corona I had between the 2nd and booster lasted 1 day, the fastest cold I've ever had. That I had a light infection being due to my vaccination, is backed up by the data.
I didn't say it was data for anything. I said personally I won't be taking a booster for those reasons. Data for what it does on average to everyone else is not data for what it does to my system.
The rest is my personal choice to not take a booster.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abm0620 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34706170/ https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2114114?query=fe...
It looks like it possibly starts waning at 2 months. So if we're requiring everyone needs to be fully vaccinated with mandates then boosters start at 2 months to be safe. By that measure large portions of our population are not fully vaccinated at this point. No thanks...
I'm not in a high risk group. I do not need to worry about COVID. Until like a few weeks ago there was no one telling me I needed a booster no data backing up anyone taking it in a low risk group.
Sorry to hear it gets so bad for you though. I understand that makes it a much harder decision.
It started in my head and progressed it's way down to my legs. The day after the shot, it started with headaches and eye strain with a tremendous amount of head pressure, not dissimilar from an ocular migraine. That developed into a full blown head cold of congestion, coughing, stuffy, runny nose, and continued headache. The headache went away and it began to feel like strep throat, the coughing fits, while not excessive, were pretty rough and were burning my throat. From there it went into my chest and I felt like I had bronchitis. This was the worst phase of it. That burning sensation in your chest cavity when you have bronchitis? It felt exactly like that except I was also extremely, extremely tired. I slept for almost 2 days straight while this was going on. I took time off of work during the throat and chest phase of this. After that, I had stomach cramps and diarrhea. Then, after all of that wacky bullshit ended and I started to feel like a human again, I was left with cramps in my legs.
I was also extremely tired the entire time. Just the simple act of walking both hurt and made me more tired. It was fatigue like I've never experienced before. I'm a veteran and I've gone through some sleep deprivation training and that was nothing like the fatigue that I experienced from my reaction.
My wife was 5 months pregnant while all of this was going on and our twins were about 22 months old. It was, honestly, complete fucking bullshit. Being sick coupled with the fact that I had so many people reliant on me really stressed me out. I was able to get my mother-in-law to lend a hand but we went from thriving to surviving until I was on the tail end of the thing.
But what bothered me the most was that I couldn't even report the fact that I was having a reaction. I called up the UC medical system where I received the shot and they told me to follow up with my GP, except that at the time I didn't have one. I called them back a couple of days later and I could basically hear the person shrugging their shoulders.
The only difference is that the vaccine will not multiply out of control in your body the way the live virus would.
So it’s crazy to think that you’ll have “an even lower chance of getting sick from” live COVID. You already got sick from it, and that was only the limited version.
This is like complaining that a punch from a 5 year old hurts, and you’d rather risk getting punched by a heavyweight prize fighter.
I’m not trying to put a label on you, I’m try to explain how things work. Having such a strong reaction to a vaccine is a warning that you could risk more serious complications from an infection by the live virus.
Whoa, hold on there buddy.
You might want to look up the difference between mRNA vaccines and traditional ones.
The big difference is that the copies cannot make copies of themselves (they are only partial copies) so the viral load does not grow geometrically within your body.
Again: if the small viral load of a vaccine makes a person sick for a week, that person likely has a higher risk for severe illness from the (much larger) live viral load from a full infection.
Science does not yet understand why some people have more severe COVID illness than others, but it is an observed fact that some do. In some cases, even if they are otherwise fit and healthy.
That you are used as the factory for the protein with mRNA doesn't make a big difference IMHO.
I'd beg to differ, or at least make a slight distinction. The mRNA vaccine targets the spike protein specifically, which is the important target in the virus, at least now, but not the only one. The actual virus is more complex than that, and it can mutate. From this POV natural immunity is better. But natural infection obviously comes with the downside of added risks (depending on your immune system) and it's tough to guess how you'll react the first time (although you can make educated guesses) you get infected. Later infections will be milder though. And a clear upside being not having to run for jabs a couple of times per year.
Twice-vaccinated people will have to get a booster shot and there are discussions about a six month expiry date if you don’t get the booster shot.
What happens beyond that we do not know right now since can’t look into the future. We do not know how effective the booster will be in terms of long-term protection.
All of that is not surprising. A bit annoying but not surprising.
Other vaccinations are also given three times (second dose after a short interval, third dose after a longer interval), so it might well be that this vaccine turns out to be one of those, we just do not know. That’s the point.
This is the most stupid thing about vaccination plans. It's one thing to get vaccinated once, it's another thing entirely to need frequent boosters.
I expect a lot of confusion and operational carnage when people who don't get a booster become "unvaccinated".
There is no obligation (or force) to get a booster shot. It is available and recommended but not forced. Some groups like older age and immune-compromised people are highly recommended.
Now, everyone wants to get a booster and many old people I know need to wait until December or January to get a booster.
It’s the worst case that could have happened, because politicians didn’t do their job
You could say this about any law that enforces some uncomfortable behavior change. Anyone who remembers when seat belt laws became real, sees history repeating itself, down to the exact same arguments about effectiveness and rhetoric about choice and tyranny and government overreach.
COVID has been a challenge for the same reason Climate Change is challenging: They both require collective cooperative action from people, and you can't rely on everyone having a natural desire to do the right thing. Laws can't make people want to do the right thing--they can only provide incentives or disincentives for specific actions or behaviors.
No, it's challenging because people know they're being manipulated and taken advantage of.
As with COVID, as with climate change. Mayor of SF enacting mask mandates while dining/partying unmasked. Elites flying private to Davos to discuss climate change.
Resistance exists because politicians refuse to implement obviously sensible, effective and, most importantly, fair policies - no lockdowns (Sweden style) & care/protection targeting the vulnerable for COVID, and revenue neutral carbon tax for Climate Change.
Uncontrolled flying bodies pose additional risks when there are multiple people in the vehicle. There's also the risk of driving to begin with, for people both in and outside the vehicle.
The risks of harm to you _and_ others from crashing a car are probably higher at this point than that of a vaxxed person getting seriously ill from covid.
But anyway the point I was making was to refute GP's statement that seat belt laws and the pushback around them are the same as for the vax mandates. They are not, because the vax is permanent, and the consequences for non-compliance much higher. The fact that you can't "take the vax off" is part of these stakes that are not the same.
Every time someone is unbuckled in a car crash, there is a high risk they will hurt others. Someone in the back seat could fly forward and hit the driver, for example.
I'm Czech and we wish here we would be as prepared and forward thinking as your representatives are. If it was not for one of the highest rate of ICU beds per capita in the world and all the high quality nurses and doctors we export to Germany, our health care would have already crumbled.
[1] https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...
I can't think of a better alternative given the current situation if the end goal is to get people to reduce contact and get vaccinated, short of a full lockdown for everyone (which I think is a lot less preferable). Whether this form of lockdown will have any effect remains to be seen.
Unvaccinated people will just meet privately at home and get infected. It’s just the wrong move at the worst possible time.
they are anyways
What's so special about shopping that it prevents transmission of a relatively communicable disease?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=covid+fluvoxamine
Results are still somewhat preliminary and it isn't formally approved for that use but I know that many physicians are prescribing it off label and report positive results. The safety profile is good as a temporary acute treatment so there's little reason not to use it.
In the part of Germany where I live, 7-day incidence among the unvaccinated is 1726, which is much worse than last winter, and it's 112 among the vaccinated. Hospitalisation tells a similar story: The unvaccinated are suffering.
If that 1726 would rise as it did last winter, a lot of unvaccinated fools would die. A hundred thousand dead in three months, perhaps.
Many western countries messed up big time by not investing enough into their health care systems or into properly educating their population. So now they're out of options.
That is the alternative.
You said it was your ‘genuine question’. So I’m not sure why you need to see the argument. It’s an answer to your question, not an argument.
And if applied as here, I doubt many would argue that "forcing people to vaccinate" is a weaker measure than "impose some restrictions on unvaccinated" (although the former is of course going to be a strong form of the latter)
> We lack a basic strategy how to cope with Covid.
Getting everyone vaccinated is the only strategy, everything else is either worthless or swaps COVID deaths with mental health an economic casualties.
> And now they try to fix this by dividing the country in two.
It was already divided, it's just that the government stopped caring about the side that doesn't care and fails to listen to the actual professionals.
> This will have no effect whatsoever on the infections
Look at literally any statistics or read any paper made by any credible person.
> it will just continue to drive a divide that is already existing and will make anti-vaxxers even more convinced that this is a big conspiracy.
They'll cave eventually and accept that their stubbornness is not above other people's well being.
This is not just a stupid debate about which politicians each camp likes, anti-vaxxers make everybody's life miserable and even kill people for exactly no benefit, they have no arguments other than Facebook conspiracy theories and other fake news.
Your politicians HAVE prepared the country. There is a VERY BASIC strategy: get your bloody shot!
And then add to this that we have reduced capacities in hospitals compared to last year...
The idea is: if you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully; if not, please don't comment until you do.
Our politicians have failed to prepare the country for the Winter (who could have known...). We lack a basic strategy how to cope with Covid.
And now they try to fix this by dividing the country in two. This will have no effect whatsoever on the infections, it will just continue to drive a divide that is already existing and will make anti-vaxxers even more convinced that this is a big conspiracy.