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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I gotta say that the dose really is a pain in the arm. We ended up on the list at work and the first dose hurt for a good four days. Others had a similar outcome. My father got the first Pfizer and he reported no issues with his arm hurting. I doubt he was not telling the truth on that one.

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This could be because of the manufacturer, or it could be because your father is older than you. There's a small amount of actual data (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/info-by-product/pfizer..., which just talks about injection site pain) and anecdata/implied wisdom (https://www.aarp.org/health/conditions-treatments/info-2020/...) that says that older recipients are dealing with fewer side effects than younger recipients.

Well, I'm the youngest of our group that got it and I'm 50. The older folks all had arm pain for days. We had a lot of grumpy folks on a video call three days later.

Nocebo effect is proven for vaccines. Even if we inject salted water: many will develop fevers, arm pain, headaches, nausea, ... (because they expect such symptoms). In some cases, as many as 90% of observed side effects are nocebo. i.e. if 100 people get the real vaccine and 100 people get salted water, 10 will get side effects on the first group, 9 will get the same side effects on the control group.

Got Pfizer. Zero arm pain. Same for my wife.

Moderna is well known to have more injection site pain and greater immune response for the second dose but it's showing vastly greater efficacy percentages than all other manufacturers

More than Pfizer?

It hurt a bit for two days, then subsided. No other side-effects aside from better 5G reception /jk .

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