asap, providing two doses are available.

IIRC, I read there are now 35 million cases. Omg.

I dunno.

They don’t know how long the protection lasts or what these new variants mean. And we have almost no information about long term side effects.

And a lot of health care workers have chosen to wait, so why should I take it now?

And most importantly, why stress about a decision that is pretty meaningless now? There is no vaccine for me, so why spend any mental energy on the decision?

quote:

And we have almost no information about long term side effects.

Do you know what the long term effects of Covid are?

The variants have me concerned.

Many medical decisions involve weighing risk vs potential benefits. It's a new virus and a new vaccine. We're still learning about both.

Things I'm taking into consideration as I make my decision about the vaccine.

1) Getting the virus is a nothingburger for some people and an awful experience for others. Many people who have the bad cases who didn't take the necessary precautions (masking, social distancing) wish they could go back and change their behavior. The experience changes their assessment of the situation.

2) The IFR is pretty bad overall, and we know the risk of death increases with patient age.

3) We're starting to get indications that the virus has significant and serious long term effects even after people get over the active infection.

4) As bad as it already is, it could get worse. The longer it takes to get the spread under control, the more time the virus has to mutate. Looks like the new variants that are already in circulation are easier to catch; we're still figuring out if they are more deadly.

5) A more transmissable strain of the virus, with the resulting increased number of cases, will put a health care system under stress over the top. See California.

You make the best decision you can with the information you have.

Covid-19 deaths=415000
Covid-19 vaccine deaths=0

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:

quote:

And we have almost no information about long term side effects.

Do you know what the long term effects of Covid are?

Actually, I'm giving this matter serious consideration. So yes.

Based on what I have read on the CDC web site, here's what I have learned.

They know little about the long-term effectiveness of the vaccine. Does it work well for 3 months? 6 months? A year? This matters to me, because I assume you cannot (or perhaps even should not) get vaccinated multiple times in a year due to availability. I would like to know more about this before I get vaccinated in January and then find I am not safe to travel and be out in the world when I would most like to (this summer or fall or Christmas).

They know little about how the real world effectiveness of the vaccine. In other words, the clinical trials showed high response (95%), but apparently this is not realistic once it is used in the real world. I would like to know more about this before deciding where and when to take the vaccine.

I do not believe they know for sure what happens if you mix the vaccines. Say your first dose is Pfizer, but there is no Pfizer available when you want your second dose. Then what? I would like to know more about this before I commit to one vaccine or the other, and I would like to know if one vaccine is better than the other or has different risk/benefit.

Frankly, I think it is kind of unethical of me to try to crash the line when I am healthy and have no risk factors. So the discussion is kind of academic for me. Obviously, the analysis is very different for others who do have risk factors.

Me, I'm gonna hold off until I have the information I need. I am lucky that I can work from home and control my risk quite well. I'll take my chances that the basic measures I am taking are enough. So far, they have been. If I'm wrong, oh well.