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.
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.
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...
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....
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.
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.
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 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.
> Don’t assume you will react the same with the booster as you did the first dose.
Works both ways unfortunately.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sorry to hear it gets so bad for you though. I understand that makes it a much harder decision.
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