Not sure what to say without being labeled an anti vaxxer...
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.
My story is very similar to yours. As a result, I am also reluctant to get the booster because I do not have a support system whereby I can have another severe reaction that causes me to be incapable of helping the people who depend on me every single day.
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'm in the same boat, except I had Covid in the spring. Got my second shot a month ago.
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.
I was also very sick after my first dose. Completely fine with the booster. Don’t assume you will react the same with the booster as you did the first dose.
you experience isn't the same as 99.999% of the population though. I'm old and fat and the vaccine didn't do much more than make arm sore any of the 3 times I was injected. However I took the shingles vaccine and felt like crap for several days, not once did I complain about it. I consider it part of my duty in sharing the ups and downs of living in a society.
If you took Moderna or J&J, it's possible the initial high dosage (100mg for Moderna) is the main cause. Their booster is now 50mg and Pfizer's is 30mg. If you did take the lower dosage, there's still hope that newer ones from Novavax or Inovio coming out later which is very different from MRNA vaccines won't produce so much side effects on you.
Well, thank you for the encouraging words (though I didn't have the vaccines you mentioned)... I will get back to this comment and try to convince myself that you are 100% right, when the German government makes me an outlaw / outcast when they decide to go with the vaccine mandates, and I can't go shopping, to the gym, to restaurant...
I think the key issue is hospitals being swamped. Once that happens, death rates will skyrocket even among people not at-risk. Until that point however young and healthy people don't really benefit themselves from the vaccination. It's essentially a tragedy of the commons situation.
The vaccine is not the virus? If you are under 60 without serious health issues COVID is indeed no worse than a bad flu for the vast majority of people. Certainly not a guaranteed death sentence, let alone guaranteed hospitalization. Especially if treated as soon as detected instead of letting people sit around and get worse until they have to be hospitalized.
okay, i get that mRNA vaccines are not introducing weakened versions of the actual virus like a conventional vaccine, but what explains the sometimes severe side effects people receive? those symptoms aren't related to covid at all, and there's zero relation between how one reacts to the vaccine and how one would react to covid?
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.
While I don't know the connection between the two, we also need to be realistic and not expect everyone to read 50 papers and be a disease and vaccination expert.
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.
One of the more common causes of vaccine related injury is allergic reaction to one or more of the adjuvant or carriers, rather than to the antigenic load.
i see. some people get really severe reactions though, like the people here talking about a week long; does that explain those cases? is there no relation b/w vaccine reaction and reaction to the actual virus?
Well, I personally had a >2 week long reaction, and after the second shot, was informed that yes, it probably was some sort of allergic reaction. What was it? We still don't know
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.
I am still not back to normal after my second shot. I have shortness of breath and horrible headaches I didn't have before.
I can't imagine getting another shot especially when access to doctors is very limited currently and they have been generally useless for my problems.
Something like this being mandatory is crossing the line for me. I would take measures to never take it, even if it means fleeing the country or finding other ways if the borders were shut.
Yes I had a horrible reaction to the 2nd dose. So did everyone I know. Yes it's possible the real thing might be worse for me but I'm going to take my chances. I will not be taking a booster. I'm healthy, exercise regularly and I'm not in the age group that's high-risk.
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.
This is the same argument my Germany friends made (and used to get fake vaccination certificates). The studies say it’s not effective after 3 months!! People that are vaccinated get infected again!! I’m young and healthy!!
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'm already vaccinated. I'm not getting the booster. My age group has like a .0007% chance of dying from COVID. A booster isn't necessary. Stop with this anti-science cultish behavior. It's weird. COVID is not going away, getting boosters indefinitely is not a sound plan. I'll take my chances and get the natural immunity which is better and longer lasting.
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 had no reaction to the first 2 or boosters, nor my friends. The plural of anecdote is not data.
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.
Your anecdote is also not data. It's entirely possible you would've experienced the same light symptoms even without the shots. After all, plenty of people who have contracted covid were completely asymptomatic.
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.
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.
It's so strange how that differs so much. I'm not as healthy as you and the vaccine didn't bother me at all. Ok the second time it felt a bit like I had bumped my arm a bit.
Sorry to hear it gets so bad for you though. I understand that makes it a much harder decision.
Not the GP, but I also had a severe reaction to my second Moderna shot. All in all, I felt ill for 8-9 days. It was the most unusual illness I have ever felt, though I should say that I do not get sick very often.
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.
Goodness! I'm so sorry to hear that. I also had a terrible, week-long illness after the same second shot, which is why I'm extremely apprehensive about our governor mandating boosters for myself and others working in this particular industry. They've become extremely draconian about not allowing exemptions, and in your case at least, I hope you'd be eligible for an exemption for a following shot. But the way things are going, the powers that be want to force everyone to get a new shot every 6 months. I want to opt out of that system entirely.
When you get a COVID vaccine you are getting COVID. That’s literally all a vaccine is: a copy of the disease you want protection against, so that your immune system can gear up to fight it.
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.
> When you get a COVID vaccine you are getting COVID. That’s literally all a vaccine is: a copy of the disease you want protection against, so that your immune system can gear up to fight it.
Whoa, hold on there buddy.
You might want to look up the difference between mRNA vaccines and traditional ones.
mRNA COVID vaccines use the organelles in your cells to make partial copies of the novel coronavirus, which is exactly how the live novel coronavirus grows in your body.
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.
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.