Everyone should get a Covid booster this fall, CDC says | Hacker News Reader

Everyone should get a Covid booster this fall, CDC says

arstechnica.com

24 pointsisaacfrond54 comments

The CDC says it’s safe and effective and that side effects are rare. I can’t find what their definition of rare is though, can anyone help me?

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/sa....

https://www.google.com/search?q=rare+side+effects+meaning

I honestly can't find the CDC's definition of what "rare" means here even with your assistance.

Wouldn't a Google search for the word "vaccine" have returned different results over time?

Yes, their page describing adverse events after vaccination has statistics on the rarity of events: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/safety/ad...

For example:

> Anaphylaxis after COVID-19 vaccination is rare. It has occurred at a rate of approximately 5 cases per one million vaccine doses administered.

> Myocarditis and pericarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are rare... Data from VSD and from VAERS indicate that rates of myocarditis after COVID-19 vaccination are highest among males in their late teens and early 20s, usually following the second dose of the vaccine.

> Thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) has been rarely observed after J&J/Janssen COVID-19 vaccination and has occurred in approximately 4 cases per one million doses administered.

In my experience I always get sick before the next vaccine rollout.

They are always too late.

The community jabbing also adds homogenized selective pressure so we get second wind infections in late winter. Kind of annoying.

I got a peripheral neuropathy and a left leg DVT from the first two Pfizer shots. There is no way I am taking a booster.

Not trying to start an argument, but I see this headline and think: "sure, I'll get another booster."

I'm confused seeing all the people in the comments saying they won't get another booster. Should I be considering not getting a booster? I don't feel like I'm familiar with any reason not to get one.

It seems to me at the bottom of it is faith. You either trust the science and numbers, believing they've been accurately compiled and that there's no unseen aspects (like "no long term effects", what if our current methods can't see everything?); or you're skeptical - Is it reasonable to be skeptical without grounds? But you can read all the anti-vax blogs and find out about botched vaccinations (not COVID).

And when you start with a basis, you end up with evidence bias, ignoring things that disprove your beliefs ("I bet you they botched that study!"), and accepting (with delight and little scrutiny) things that prove your position to be right.

Of course there are morons who said e.g. "all the vaxed will drop dead ny April 2022".. I wonder if the passage of time have humbled them.. some may even thing somebody's hiding all the dead bodies (which isn't that baseless because as far as I know China did that)

Don’t conflate these organizations(CDC, Pfizer, etc) with “science”. These are political and economical organizations foremost.

Although I agree with your general point.

I was very much in the pro-vaccine/booster camp. Annoyed at people who were spreading disinfo about it. Didn't think twice about getting my second pfizer dose. I read a variety of studies on MRNA delivery mechanisms and their safety to reassure one of my parents.

The morning after, I woke up to scary sharp chest pains that reverberated for a minute or so. This happened about 3-5 more times over the following days. It definitely wasn't psychosomatic as A. I wasn't worried in the first place and B. They hit while I was sleeping. I don't get chest pains normally and am in solid health with regular jogging. When I caught covid ~12 mo. later, it was a really bad flu, but it didn't cause any chest pains.

Based on everything I've read, I ought to get one. But after the chest pain, I just can't do it. I'm afraid of it. It's a dilemma because my social set & family are very pro-vaccine and includes a few doctors & scientists. I don't know what I'll say to them. Obviously I can't really talk to other people online about similar experiences.

I started feeling heart flutters days after getting the vaccine. It's like the heart is strongly vibrating, trembling, jerking (nothing like a heartbeat) an lasts from a moment to ~5s. at the time. Happens frequently everyday for 1.5 years now. It's more likely to happen when I exercise (or do something that raises the heart rate), bend down, lie on the left side. Sometimes it happens when I am about to fall asleep, and repeats over and over and over again so I am left without any sleep for a few days. I got tested and was diagnosed with third degree heart block, so I need a pacemaker. I am 26 years old, not overweight nor have any bad habits / addictions, exercise(-d) regularly. It's dreadful.

> I got tested and was diagnosed with third degree heart block

Did you tell the doctors your symptoms started after the vaccine? What did they say?

I did mention it once, but they didn't say anything at all, as if they hadn't heard me. I suppose there's no shortage of patients, mistakenly or not, connecting their ailments with the vaccine, and I didn't seem to be any different, regardless of the circumstances. After that, I stopped bringing that up. It does not matter now, anyway...

> It's a dilemma because my social set & family are very pro-vaccine and includes a few doctors & scientists. I don't know what I'll say to them.

We are Bayesian inference machines. We assess risk intuitively. You have different priors than them.

We do this when we eat something and get sick: If you say "I'm going to pass on the banana ice cream, but you guys go ahead. I'm in no way against banana ice cream, I just got sick from eating bananas once, and now my body rejects the thought." -- this presumably wouldn't ostracize you.

If you were run down by a car once, you're more hesitant when you cross a street. That doesn't make you "anti-street-crossing", and there is no one correct pace or condition under which to cross a street. We just accept people behave differently. People will generally accept, "Oh yeah, he just had a different experience in life."

Somehow not taking a vaccine is categorically seen as being "against vaccines". This is too one-dimensional.

I had two shots and one booster. I'm not getting more flu shots. I'm too healthy, a flu won't kill me.

If a more dangerous strand comes along, I'll reconsider.

In my nation (Indonesia) the concept of "yearly flu shot" is basically non existent. So perpetual periodic booster is going to be a hard sell. Especially when the public basically declares to forget that this pandemic ever existed already.

Because IIRC the last data I looked at suggested the booster doesn't confer lasting benefits (i.e. beyond the initial 90 or however many days) if you already have the bivalent shot. So absent the new booster being different in this respect, or a significant increase of catching COVID in the next few months, I'd rather not go through the vaccine sides (which have been more than just mild 3/3 times).

"Everyone" is always too many people.

I think it's well established by now that, much like the crackpot theories surrounding 5G, all the conspiracy theories surrounding Covid shots have been thoroughly debunked.

With this in mind, why is a basic public health policy still a controversial subject?

Is it though? While we are just making sweeping statements without much in the way of references, I heard a doctor on NPR this morning saying that it won't have much benefit for people who are healthy and have immunity from previous infections and immunizations.

So NPR and their guests are on the crackpot anti-vaxx bandwagon now?

> it won't have much benefit for people who are healthy and have immunity from previous

This doesn't mean it's harmful does it?

That said I wonder what the public health officials are trying to achieve here. Are they trying to encourage the largest number of people to be vaccinated, in the hole of slowing down the transmission? Or are they trying to just use a non-nuanced language ("everyone") in order to convey authority and avoid accidentally seeding doubt? Because if it's the latter, I don't think that works with the present generation. The more you push things the less people trust you. I guess things were different 80 years ago or so, but today people have lost trust in buricracy and totally trust the first lunatic they can find online. Is it hopeless?

> This doesn't mean it's harmful does it?

Do you actually have any concrete evidence suggesting any specific vaccine is harmful?

We're a few years in the covid pandemic. There should be real-world data by now that supports your claims. Where is it?

Just for clarity I didn't say it's harmful. Quite the contrary.

I was replying to a claim where a doctor said that it didn't benefit _much_ to people who are healthy and had already had COVID in the past.

I think that quote was taken to imply that the doctor said these people should not be vaccinated. I said that that one doctor didn't actually say that the vaccine was harmful.

There is no effect without side effect in meds. If you don't need a med you should not take it because if it is not beneficial for you, only potential harm remains.

So as usual advising everyone to take a med is just plain stupid or even worse.

And doubting officials doesn't make you a lunatic. There are plenty examples where the official standing was just plain bullshit to put it mildly.

is not beneficial =/= need

I think you got the meaning of what I was saying. No point in pedantry about words. To be clear: here not needing means that it won't be beneficial in a meaningful way.

I think it's also important to understand to whom it is beneficial.

If it doesn't harm, perhaps it's worth still participating in something for the collective good. I know you Americans don't often reason that way.

That said, one could question whether vaccinating healthy people will indeed lower the transmission speed qnd thus be q collective good.

But I often hear people just considering what's good for them as individuals as if that was all what matters

If the difference is getting sick or getting a little less sick, I would say I could benefit slightly but don’t need it.

perhaps if you get a bit less sick, you may be less likely to infect other people who are not as blessed as you are with perfect health.

EDIT: just to make clear, I'm not advocating for compulsory vaccinating people who don't want to; just trying to offer a different POV so people can choose to behave in a selfish way while fully understanding that they are indeed acting in a selfish way, benefiting from a functioning society and choosing to not give back even if it doesn't cost much

What show/doctor?

Dr. John Moore on All Things Considered.

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/09/11/1198719...

By this point everyone who got the covid shots were supposed to be dead I thought. It’s weird that it didn’t pan out that way, usually the tin foil hats are reliable.

By this point everyone who did NOT get the covid shots were supposed to be dead. It's weird that it didn't pan out that way.

> By this point everyone who did NOT get the covid shots were supposed to be dead.

I have to call bullshit on your revisionism.

From the very first day, covid vaccines were presented as a way to give your immune system a workout so that the risk of subsequent covid infections being serious or fatal would be far lower.

Covid itself, without a vaccine, was already expected to have an absolute fatality rate of around 3%, which was weighted heavily by vulnerable cohorts like those over 40 and with preexisting conditions.

Those who took the vaccine and were subsequently infected would either experience no COVID symptom at all or only experience mild cases, which contrasts with the huge surge of COVID cases that clogged intensive care units of basically all public healthcare systems in the world.

It's high time that antivaxxers and COVID denialists go through a moment of reflection and introspection to look at all the bullshit they've been peddling. If you feel the need to lie and misrepresent and take the revisionist approach to the COVID pandemic, that already tells you that you have a hard time facing reality.

Your bullshit detector is broken from being overloaded with your lies. The clogged ERs were from people being lied to about how dangerous COVID was. Simple cold, gotta get to the hospital.

It's high time fear mongers go through a moment of reflection and introspection to look at all the bullshit they've been peddling.

Get help, bud. Your world view is an illusions you bought into.

well, a greater rate of death from COVID among the unvaccinated vs vaccinated is observed

"COVID-19 Incidence and Death Rates Among Unvaccinated and Fully Vaccinated Adults with and Without Booster Doses During Periods of Delta and Omicron Variant Emergence — 25 U.S. Jurisdictions, April 4–December 25, 2021"

What is already known about this topic?

Although COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness decreased with emergence of the Delta variant and waning of vaccine-induced immunity, protection against hospitalization and death has remained high.

What is added by this report?

In 25 U.S. jurisdictions, decreases in case incidence rate ratios for unvaccinated versus fully vaccinated persons with and without booster vaccine doses were observed when the Omicron variant emerged in December 2021. Protection against infection and death during the Delta-predominant period and against infection during Omicron emergence were higher among booster vaccine dose recipients, especially among persons aged 50–64 and ≥65 years.

What are the implications for public health practice?

COVID-19 vaccination protected against SARS-CoV-2 infection, even as the Omicron variant became predominant. All eligible persons should stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccination.

...

Rates of COVID-19 cases were lowest among fully vaccinated persons with a booster dose, compared with fully vaccinated persons without a booster dose, and much lower than rates among unvaccinated persons during October–November (25.0, 87.7, and 347.8 per 100,000 population, respectively) and December 2021 (148.6, 254.8, and 725.6 per 100,000 population, respectively) (Table 2). Similar trends were noted for differences in the mortality rates among these three groups (0.1, 0.6, and 7.8 per 100,000 population, respectively) during October–November. Age-standardized case IRRs among unvaccinated persons compared with fully vaccinated persons with a booster dose declined from 13.9 during October–November to 4.9 during December, representing potential decreases in crude VE for infection from 93% to 80%, respectively. Comparing unvaccinated persons with fully vaccinated persons without a booster dose, age-standardized case IRRs during October–November and December were 4.0 and 2.8 respectively, representing decreases in VE from 75% to 64%. During October–November, age-standardized IRRs for deaths among unvaccinated persons were 53.2 compared with those in fully vaccinated persons with a booster dose and 12.7 compared with persons without a booster dose; these results represented crude VE against death of 98% and 92%, respectively. Protection improved among persons who received a booster dose compared with not receiving a booster, regardless of primary series vaccine product type. Booster doses provided the largest gains in protection among persons aged ≥65 years followed by persons aged 50–64 years when compared with those aged 18–49 years.

<https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7104e2.htm>

Your specific claims are of course complete bullshit.

~2% of those infected were predicted to not survive COVID infection. It's weird that it did pan out that way.

For German speaking guys:

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/gesundheit-oekologie/harte-c...

As a staunch vaxxer: no thanks. had last covid in May, partner had it in August, both very fine and boosted for a while. I’ll get my usual flu shot tho, as that has proven multiple times to be as bad as it gets for me in November/December if I get the real influenza strain.

> no thanks. Good faith: why? What is your reasoning?

i'm not the person you asked, but i developed a rare blood disorder called TTP (thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura) that very nearly killed me after the vaccine. the hemotology consultant was very interested in my covid vaccination history when they figured out what was killing me. later found out that what i had was the clotting thing that was going around in the news that was supposed to be nothing to worry about.

you know what didn't almost kill me? the 3 times i caught covid.

Which brand of the vaccine?

i had the pfizer one

Thanks for sharing. I would have guessed Johnson.

i'm not sure if we had that one here in the uk, but i heard the astrazeneca one was the worst one for it, no idea if that's true though

Simple: I don't like the idea of "believing" in science as if it was a faith. This approach has been reflected too often in policy decisions, during and after the pandemic, that are not objective but highly political.

Politically I am absolutely on the side of vaccines, but in my opinion this indiscriminate call to vaccinate against an endemic virus reinforces the anti-vaxxer fringes, because it's fundamentally unjustified by data in individuals outside of specific risk groups.

The science behind the Covid vaccines is all but settled, albeit solid. What's definitely settled is that the companies producing the vaccine have vast interests and lobbying power to steer these policy decisions without any actual risk justifying this large-scale post-pandemic deployment.

I wanna be free to get back to calling out the greed of big pharma without being immediately grouped with the anti-vaxxer idiots.

That said, I have previous experience with seasonal flu and it's always been highly debilitating for me, unlike Covid. That is why I will certainly get a seasonal flu vaccine, whose action and science is way more settled and tested than the Covid ones.

I developed heart arrhythmia some blood clotting issues (it's thicker than normal, despite how much water I drink) days after my Covid vaccination in 2021. I am not taking any more "boosters" and it's least of my problems now, anyway. While I am not saying that the intention's aren't good, I wish that the statement "safe and effective" actually meant something.

> I developed heart arrhythmia days after my Covid vaccination in 2021. So much for safe and effective.

Covid shots are proven to be safe and effective, in spite of rare side-effects.

Taken from here: https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/heart-matters-maga...

> Is there a risk of cardiac arrest from the Covid vaccine?

> No. There is no evidence that people are at an increased risk of cardiac arrest in the days or weeks following the Covid-19 vaccine.

> (...)

> Do other vaccines carry a risk of myocarditis?

> Research published in The Lancet medical journal in April 2022 shows that there is no greater risk of developing heart inflammation after a Covid-19 vaccine than after other common vaccines, including the flu jab.

> No. There is no evidence that people are at an increased risk of cardiac arrest in the days or weeks following the Covid-19 vaccine.

Plenty of people online say otherwise. Including right here on this story. Numerous young and previously healthy people with heart problems post vaccine. Personal accounts abound.

When they bring it up to the experts who are suppose to be tracking this stuff, instead of listening to them and being concerned they are ignored, or gaslit.

Apparently you don't have to enter it into evidence and tell people about it if you just ignore it.

Confidence in medical science: extremely low.

> Plenty of people online say otherwise. Including right here on this story. Numerous young and previously healthy people with heart problems post vaccine. Personal accounts abound.

You can also find plenty people online saying vaccines include 5G microchips, the british royal family are lizard people, the world is flat, and that fossils are a ruse to shift the world's attention away from the existence of falling angels.

> When they bring it up to the experts who are suppose to be tracking this stuff, instead of listening to them and being concerned they are ignored, or gaslit.

I wonder why loonies expressing crackpot theories are ignored by the world.

> Apparently you don't have to enter it into evidence and tell people about it if you just ignore it.

It's quite amusing that you talk about evidence, as these loonies reiterating crackpot theories outright reject any evidence but somehow expect the world to blindly accept their baseless claims as indisputable facts.

> You can also find plenty people online saying vaccines include 5G microchips, the british royal family are lizard people, the world is flat, and that fossils are a ruse to shift the world's attention away from the existence of falling angels.

Straw man...

So you can't find any truth online because someone has told a bad fish tale somewhere?

So you can just lump anything you don't like into a crap bucket and stop thinking. Nuance, evidences, reason and logic are all just irrelevant because, well, there is this giant crap bucket!!

Back on topic...

Go to any front line medical personnel. Nurses, doctors, doesn't matter. Tell them you know someone who claims to have been vaccine injured by the COVID vaccines and is worried about the booster and ask them what they think.

How many encourage the person to report their condition and get it investigated?

How many dismiss the concern because vaccines are safe?

If they were interested in truth and safety, potential side effects would be treated with concern and care. To at least look at it, acknowledge the possibility. You know, get answers to questions that every researcher or scientist should want.

Or... If they are more interested in the narrative, it will look more like the later dismissal. No questions allowed.

It's an exercise anyone can do. And it will tell you quite plainly if we are getting honest reporting on potential issues from the vaccines.

Because... You can't find what you filter out of your data set.

Out of curiosity, how are you measuring blood thickness?

Your username seems fairly anonymous -- would you be willing to share what dysthymia you experienced, and whether it resolved or is ongoing?

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