I had COVID in October, so I am skipping the booster. And if I get it, I will time it for a period when I need to be out and about.

Mr. Sphinx got his third Pfizer in Early November, and he is still sick. He can barely get out of bed due to fatigue. He spends large parts of the day working from bed.

I’m vaxed, I have natural immunity, my only risk factor is my age. As this article explains, there are some very good reasons to wait.


https://www.washingtonpost.com...s-universal-opinion/

You are still within the 90 days of being worry free. Your husband's extreme reaction to the booster is atypical. Most of the positive cases I interview were fully vaccinated but failed to get the booster. They are in all age groups. Some have been hospitalized. So based on my limited experience as a contact tracer dealing with people in real life, I think this article is both wrong and irresponsible. I think it's pretty clear that covid vaccination is a three-shot series or it isn't complete. That's also what Fauci says.

How is the article (it's actually an op-ed) wrong and irresponsible?

quote:

Originally posted by wtg:
How is the article (it's actually an op-ed) wrong and irresponsible?

It discourages people from getting the booster.

That assumes that getting a booster is the best public health decision. These scientists are questioning that assumption. And they are presenting data and hypotheses to support their challenge. It's how science is supposed to work.

But it does make managing public health more complicated because it gives the public the (accurate) impression that the science isn't settled.

Right. The science isn't settled. In the meantime, people of all ages who didn't get the booster are getting sick--some of them seriously sick, some of them hospitalized. I don't have time for the science to be settled. There's enough science to show that the series isn't complete without the booster. And that it is as safe as can be reasonably expected, given that no vaccine is guaranteed 100% safe. To me this is a no-brainer. Get the booster.

I remain open to listening to all opinions; thanks for taking the time to share yours.

I get my health care from a coordinated care network (not quite an HMO).

I had surgery a month ago and my surgeon suggested waiting at least two weeks to get the booster because if I did have an adverse reaction, it could interfere with my recovery.

A week ago, I went to their web page on vaccines. They have you call a number and get in a queue for a callback. I just got a text message saying that due to overwhelming demand, my callback will be at least a week away. Then, who knows how long it will be before I can actually get the shot.

Fauci wants us all to get a booster. But the nation's capacity is still nowhere near able to meet the need.

And the majority of the world still hasn't gotten a first shot.

This is not good.

Pretty good overview of the various aspects of the booster situation in light of omicron:

https://news.yahoo.com/omicron...sters-190548961.html

Just for the record, I finally got my booster a few weeks ago. Apart from the usual achiness equal to an ordinary flu shot, my (I guess, atypical) reaction was massive ITCHINESS.

I still feel it a bit, after all this time.

Pique, I decided to get the shot and feel like I made the right decision. But I don’t think we’re doing ourselves any favors by suggesting the science is more settled about the vaccine and boosters than it is.

The fact is that no one knows the long term effects of these vaccines because they’ve only existed for about a year.

And we know almost nothing about the long term effects of boosters. I know several people who reacted much more severely to the booster than the first series, and I know folks who had the opposite experience. Why? No one knows.

But credibility suffers when you have a normal 62 year old man who was fine, got a booster, and has now been sick for a month and finds it hard to work, yet people dismiss it like a one-off.

And we know the scientific community is divided about the necessity of boosters. I mean, we really are in uncharted waters. Most vaccines are given once or twice, and then you are set for decades, with a ton of science about risks. Even the flu vaccine — which I think is such a poor vaccine that I don’t bother — has been studied quite a lot. And now we’re supposed to believe it is safe to keep injecting these vaccines every few months?

quote:

Originally posted by piqué:
Right. The science isn't settled. In the meantime, people of all ages who didn't get the booster are getting sick--some of them seriously sick, some of them hospitalized. I don't have time for the science to be settled. There's enough science to show that the series isn't complete without the booster. And that it is as safe as can be reasonably expected, given that no vaccine is guaranteed 100% safe. To me this is a no-brainer. Get the booster.

So, how long will the protection from shot 3 last? Do you worry at all about getting a shot every six months?

I mean, it was not so long ago that we were told that vaccination wasn’t complete unless you had both shots, and I believed it.

I will be hesitant if the guidance becomes "a booster every six months".

The other idea that I read in the last day or so was that the vaccine needs to be updated regularly for the new variants that are coming out. That process will take months for each variant. We'll always be behind the curve.


I got a text message from my health care network last night saying I had reached the front of the queue for a booster. The scheduling process was convoluted: request a link which is sent back by text message, then use the link to go to their web site and pick a location and a date and time. Doing the web site on my phone where I got the message was not gonna happen, so I had to copy it and e-mail it to myself to bring it up on a real comptuer.

Fortunately, it asked if you need additional links for other members of your household. I got two additional links for Mrs pj and DD, even though they use a different healthcare network.

There were no locations on this side of the lake. The earliest I could get an appointment at any of the nearby locations was at the end of December. But if I drive about 20 miles, I can get one next week. We managed to get three appointments in the same hour.

So, we're all three getting boosted next Wednesday. And there is a decent Mexican restaurant a mile from the site -- one I haven't been to in 15 years because I almost never end up in that part of town.

quote:

Originally posted by Cindysphinx:
I had COVID in October, so I am skipping the booster. And if I get it, I will time it for a period when I need to be out and about.

Mr. Sphinx got his third Pfizer in Early November, and he is still sick. He can barely get out of bed due to fatigue. He spends large parts of the day working from bed.

I’m vaxed, I have natural immunity, my only risk factor is my age. As this article explains, there are some very good reasons to wait.


https://www.washingtonpost.com...s-universal-opinion/

Cindy, is there any possibility that Mr. Sphinx got actual Covid from the tail end of your illness, rather than from the booster? Imagining a 14 day incubation period? (probably not, but just thinking…)

I wondered the same thing, AM. But the delta incubation period is like 4 days, not 14.

Also, Cindy, sounds like you have minimal exposure to other people (your comments about working from home, being unmasked only around your tennis buddies). Wondering if you know where you picked it up when you got it?