Sigh! What are your feelings about the COVID vaccine?

I got the vaccine as soon as I was eligible. I had 24 hours of feeling terrible after shot 2 but then was fine. I was already flaring when I got the shots and actually had an improvement in symptoms for a week or two after both shots.

I have a good friend who got very sick with COVID early in the pandemic in March 2020 and is one of those plagued with long COVID. She’s still having terrible side effects — heart, lung, nerve and eyesight. I do NOT want that to happen to me. Also, one of my mother’s best friends and the boyfriend of a coworker died of COVID, among the hundreds of thousands of others. So for me, COVID is a serious and known evil. Potential vaccine side effects are a less certain maybe. I think we’re more likely to have bad side effects from COVID than the vaccine.

Some people may flare after the vaccine. Some won’t. Some people get through having COVID just fine. Others die or end up with long-term health problems. For me, even though I was a bit nervous about the vaccine, I found and still find the prospect of getting COVID far scarier and more likely to have a bad outcome. Banking on not getting COVID or not having a bad case of it seems like playing Russian roulette to me.

There’s also the societal good that comes from more people being vaccinated, meaning it can help protect cancer patients and other immune compromised people whose bodies don’t produce antibodies from the vaccine, or older people who have less of an antibody response. The more people who are vaccinated, the less chance for scary variants to develop. The longer COVID is circulating, the more chance there is for the variants to get worse and worse.

I just don’t think we are going to really get past this until way more people are vaccinated. I hate how politicized it became. I think we are all less safe because of that.[img]

YI have NOT followed the crowd and got my shots. Still on the fence….read too much online about the side effects and those with our “issues” how our health can be impacted.

What's the rush? Most of the side effects from vaccines that I have read deal with experimental mRNA technology made available only thru “Emergency Use Authorization”. But soon there might be more conventional vaccines available.

The Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine might be available after this July. It is already proven safe and effective for another infectious lung disease, tuberculosis. But we will know more after we see the results of a large-group placebo vs inoculum study now taking place in Canada with a report due after July..

Even more promising is using adult stem cell therapy to create a vaccine against Covid-19. Aivita Biomedical, has successfully used stem cells for spinal cord injuries and is currently finishing up clinical trials for its cancer therapy.

Phase 1 Covid-19 vaccine trials have just finished in Indonesia and phase 2 trials are about to begin. So far this vaccine has shown very few, if any, side effects and its efficacy rate against Covid-19 is about 100 percent.

In the meantime there are some therapeutics that are very effective. The Lancet and The New England Journal of Medicine had to retract bogus studies they published that Hydroxychloroquine is dangerous or isn't effective. Actually it is very effective.

Ivermectin and Budesonide are also proven to be very effective against Covid-19. For example check out this doctor begging Congress to review the effectiveness of Ivermectin:

https://vimeo.com/490351508

Post Edited (IamCurious) : 7/10/2021 6:30:00 AM (GMT-6)

I had both Moderna shots. I got sick 11 hours after the 2nd shot, low grade fever, chills & body aches. This lasted 24 hours & disappeared with no lingering effects. My drs all suggested I get the vaccine, beats getting the virus & ending up in the hospital with other covid patients.

I had two shots of Astra Zeneca and felt the effects after the second dose. Much happier to have the vaccine. I watched a great video with some of the experts in UC in this country (GB), who all stressed the importance of taking the vaccine. Looking forward to a booster in the autumn. Cx

Well for me it’s a no! Not getting the vaccine. Everyone has to do what they feel is right. Let me tell you nobody better come to my door and tell me otherwise. Getting a no trespassing sign for my door. The thought they are even suggesting this makes me ill.

Post Edited (Faithmac) : 7/10/2021 5:00:41 AM (GMT-6)

Faithmac -- no one is going to force you to take the vaccine. The people on Earth2 seem to believe in crazy conspiracy theories please don't fall for that crap, stop listening to cable news, talk radio and Facebook. The idea of offering the vaccine by going door to door is being planned to reach people who, for whatever reason, are unable to get to a vaccine site. You won't be forced to take it.

It's your choice whether to get the vaccine or not. It won't be your choice to get Covid if that virus decides it wants to use you as a host. If that happens it's a roll of the dice on how sick you get and how many other people you could infect including people you love.

I am so grateful I grew up without all the over abundance of "information" we have now. I remember as a kid lining up at the high school cafeteria with my parents and siblings to get vaccines for diseases that have now been nearly eliminated from this country/world -- polio, small pox. There's no way this country could pull that off now because there are so many competing voices that vie for our attention -- and not all those voices give a darn about anyone other than themselves.

Glad I have grown used to being a hermit ;)

Forgot also to say I wasn’t so keen on taking a biologic for the UC. A lot of consideration went into that before I took that jab. Thrown out of one GI’s office for refusing to take one. Took some time before deciding it was what I needed. So I’m not jumping into anything. Something better might come in the near future. I’ve know of someone in there 50’s with no medial history that is in the hospital very ill from taking the vaccine. So it goes both ways. I don’t think there is enough publicized about people becoming ill from taking it.

Like CC & Flowers Gal, I remember the latter-1950s community efforts to mass-vaccinate the U.S. public against polio. For the majority of us it was a "no-brainer" situation: my parents' generation remembered that WW II President F.D. Roosevelt had his legs totally paralyzed in adulthood by an unexpected attack of polio, and my age cohort knew that swimming pools + amusement parks shut down many times during summers back then due to regional polio outbreaks. We saw newspaper photos of polio victims struggling to walk in heavy metal leg braces or barely surviving in iron-lung machines that encased their prone bodies neck-to-toes. SO-- I immediately believed that COVID-19 was extremely serious and universally threatening when the media 1st reported it. Plus the urban medical center where my longtime gastro practices had recently been on extended alert to prevent Ebola virus transmission from Africa. *** I understood that we needed to similarly avoid contagion from COVID-19. My various readings & medical/dental contacts convinced me that I should aim for Pfizer shots, which were extremely hard to schedule in my area until April. When I finally got them, like Quincy wrote above, I felt grateful. Post-shot #1 I got a quick reaction similar to pneumococcus 23 vaccine: flashing hotspots in torso lasting about an hour. Following shot #2 my reaction occurred 6 hours afterward when my tongue & salivary glands started feeling irritated, which stopped within 2-3 hours. *** Most local reports I heard from the vaccinated involved unpleasant longer reactions to the 2nd Moderna shot. I'm very glad that my state & city officials have followed the science of withstanding COVID-19 since April 2020, which has kept the vast part of our population masked for over a yr & safe from infection to-date. / Old Hat (40+ yrs with left-sided UC; in remission taking Colazal)

I took both Pfizer vaccines....and didn't have any type of reaction to either...then when tested they found I was a nonresponder because of Remicade and Methotrexate. So very grateful that I did get my shots tho and am desperately trying to get in for a booster. All my doctors think that a booster or taking another brand/type might help. They have also indicated that there aren't any studies indicating how much of a response is enough to help individuals with covid, nor are there alot of studies on B cells or other cells that might be helped by the vaccine and that might help your body fight covid.

I watched my brother in laws parents and a healthy 30 year old male die from this horrible virus. There is nothing that can erase the sound of them trying to breath or begging for more oxygen while we helplessly watched thru an iPad.

My fear of Covid is greater than my fear of the vaccine. I understand some people do not want to take the vaccine because we do not have any long term data. I can respect that. I don't believe that anyone should be forced to take a vaccine. I also don't want anyone knocking on my door. My health records are supposed to be protected by HIPPA. No one has the right to ask me those questions. I also know that I prefer to stay away from unvaccinated and vaccinated people at this time. (3 of my doctors have indicated that they believe that even vaccinated people can be asymptomatic and spread covid-not as much as an unvaccinated person though.) I can't control others but I can control myself. I vaccinate, mask, isolate/social distance and germx anything that gets close to me.

Stay safe and healthy!

Post Edited (clo2014) : 7/10/2021 7:43:45 PM (GMT-6)

Faithmac, please be careful. You said you live in Florida and the number of new cases has been increasing steadily the past few weeks. Florida is reporting their numbers once a week now (guess they thought Covid was over). 3 weeks ago they had roughly 11,000 new cases/wk, 2 weeks ago it was 15,000, this past week it was 23,000 for the week -- more than double what it was 3 weeks ago. Divided into daily numbers it was around 1500/day 3 weeks ago to over 3200/day this past week. Hospitals could start feeling the effects soon.

I have been tracking covid numbers nearly since the beginning. I don't track all states, but Florida is one I do track.

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

Covid isn't over.

I took it as soon as I could get it. I feel freed. No mask and no fear. Good to have my life back. I’m part of of a large family and no one in my family has had any severe reactions.

CCinPA said...
with the way the numbers of cases are rising the hospitals will be getting more Covid patients very soon...
What do you get out of downplaying Covid?

I don't consider mentioning that soon more conventional vaccines will be available besides the experimental mRNA vaccines is “downplaying covid”.

I seriously doubt that hospitals will soon get more Covid patients. As I posted earlier, cases determined by the unreliable PCR test have not translated to fatalities but I am open minded and willing to accept where the data takes us. We'll see.

One reason for my skepticism is that this reminds me so much of last year's model from the Imperial College London that produced sensational Covid estimates of 510,000 deaths in Britain and up to 2.2 million deaths here in the U.S., and was taken very seriously at the time.