Being sick for 2 days. I'm not signing up to be sick 2 days every 2.5 months. Pounding headache, fatigue, nausea, heart pain.

I agree with you that the risk/reward matrix varies greatly per individual; there are many like you who have had similar reactions.

I was just wondering what data your "3 is important" statement was based on.

Why the first booster but not the rest, or why the first booster at all?

I'm the exact same as parent comment. For me, I was a bit pressured into getting the booster. I also thought it was 3 and done, it wasn't clear that it could potentially be recurring. I also thought maybe the reaction wouldn't be as bad as after the 2nd shot, but it was. Also, I've read more about myocarditis and don't really want to keep exposing myself to that risk.

Is having your heart hurt a normal side effect? A lot of anecdotes mention it as a symptom. How many of them actually go to get diagnosed?

I think the length between 1 and 2 was too short. I think 3 gives more overall robust immunity. I'll keep an eye on the research coming out though.

3 is probably just the amount of downtime OP was willing to put up with before throwing in the towel.

I actually believed we'd be able to go back to having normal mask free existence with 3. As of now that's not proven to be the case so I'll continue to wear an N95 as I have family to protect. Hope it will burn itself out and my under 5 child and older family can have a better idea of the risks in time.

My favorite part is where the referenced document doesn't say that. It literally shows that a third shot of Pfizer-Biontech is still 90+% effective against the Delta variant after 10+ weeks. And close to 50% against Omicron after 10+ weeks. The only significance of 10 weeks is that was where their data ended, because boosters haven't been generally available that long.

I'd definitely consider 50% efficacy against the most prevalent variant (by far) after 10 weeks to be "waning".

That might change if we ever get a booster targeted toward Omicron specifically, but we don't have one, and by the time we do, I'm sure there will be other variants around.

From the linked article, the vaccine effectiveness of 10 weeks factoid you mentioned is a bit incomplete. It only talks about effectiveness against symptomatic infections. The effectiveness is dropped to about 40% around 10 weeks for people with AstraZeneca and then Pfizer or Moderna booster, or Pfizer and then Pfizer booster, and to about 70% around 9 weeks for people with Pfizer and then Moderna booster.

There was insufficient data to estimate the effectiveness against severe disease.