Last Friday, I followed a new tradition that I’ve had for the past few autumns. I went to my local pharmacy, rolled up my sleeves, and got a flu shot in one arm and COVID booster in the other.
Getting vaccinated again doesn’t mean that I’m afraid of COVID-19, although all other things being equal, I’d rather not get sick. That wasn’t always true. In the early days of the pandemic, I knew several people who died of the disease and quite a few others with serious cases that turned out not to be fatal. That fear died with the introduction of the vaccines.
I haven’t worn a mask in a long time now with the exception of visits to hospitals and doctor offices where their use is encouraged. If asked, I don’t mind wearing a mask to protect others, but I’m not in the habit of wearing one on a normal basis and haven’t been for years.
I’m also not afraid of vaccines, COVID or otherwise. At this point, I know lots of people who have been vaccinated multiple times, but I don’t know a single person who has any complications beyond a temporary fever and lethargy. After multiple COVID vaccinations, I haven’t developed zombie-ism, a third eye, or the ability to pick up radio stations without a radio.
I am often very critical of Donald Trump, but I also like to give him credit when he does something right. One thing that he did right was to clear the way for rapid development and approval of the COVID vaccines through Operation Warp Speed. Operation Warp Speed may be Trump’s most important and beneficial legacy, but he seldom gets credit for it from either side. The conspiracy right wants to forget Trump’s role in vaccine development, and the left wants to forget anything positive about Trump.
My anecdotal experience is backed up by data, despite the conspiracy theories advanced by the same people who are telling you that the government can control hurricanes. The CDC notes two possible complications from COVID vaccinations: Anaphylaxis, an allergic reaction that is possible after any vaccine, and inflammation of the heart (myocarditis or pericarditis). In both cases, the problems tend to be both rare and temporary.
The possibility of vaccine-induced death is remote. Per the CDC, “People receiving COVID-19 vaccines are less likely to die from COVID-19 and its complications and are at no greater risk of death [emphasis in the original] from non-COVID causes, than unvaccinated people.”
With billions of doses administered, the results are now in and the COVID vaccines have been verified to be very safe. The conspiracist claims have been disproven and the statistics incontrovertibly show that COVID vaccines are effective at preventing premature death and serious illness from COVID -19.
The new generation of COVID vaccines is very effective indeed. The fact that the virus mutates more slowly without the massive rates of transmission from the pandemic is paired with more refined technology to once again make the vaccines even more potent against the virus. Yale Medicine estimates the effectiveness of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines at about 95 percent and the new Novomax, which does not use mRNA, at 90 percent. The CDC reported that people who got an updated COVID vaccine were 54 percent less likely to contract COVID.
I got the Novovax this time since I already had the trifecta of Johnson & Johnson (which is no longer available), Pfizer, and Moderna. I wanted to collect the whole set.
I haven’t known anyone to die from COVID since the introduction of the vaccines into widespread use. I have known a few people to get seriously ill recently. My pastor contracted COVID over the summer and had what he described as a “rough time.” Not long ago, he told me that he was still struggling with lingering effects such as loss of stamina. But he didn’t have to go to the hospital and he was never on a ventilator.
My wife and daughter both had COVID in early September. They felt like crap for a few days and my wife lost her sense of smell and taste again, but it wasn’t nearly as problematic or worrisome as it might have been in 2020. A few days later, they were back to normal (or what passes for normal in my family).
I finally got my first case of COVID last February. It was a mild case that only lasted a few days. I almost didn’t know I had it. I felt feverish one night and took a test, which came back positive, a few days later when my wife developed more severe symptoms (after skipping the booster last year).
But Dave, you may say, didn’t you have prostate cancer after you got vaccinated?
Yes, and thank you for asking. I’ll note that every single (and married) person who confuses correlation and causation ends up dying (hat tip to a recent cartoon I saw on the internet).
The fact is that there is no evidence that COVID vaccines cause cancer and at least one study found “spontaneous regression” of a cancerous tumor after vaccination. In other words, the patient’s cancer shrank. Further, it’s true that cancer rates are increasing (even as cancer deaths decrease), but this trend was observed long before the COVID vaccines came on the scene and can be explained by a variety of lifestyle factors.
I can be certain that my cancer was not related to any vaccine. In my case, I have a family history of prostate cancer and my profession also has a higher than normal incidence of certain cancers, including prostate. The chances that the thousands of hours that I’ve spent in the upper altitudes allowed cosmic radiation to mutate my cells are infinitely greater than that vaccines are responsible. If that weren’t enough, prostate cancer moves so slowly that I probably had it before I was ever vaccinated.
As we get older, vaccinations are more important, especially for those with existing medical conditions. I used to not worry about getting a flu vaccine, but just before the onset of the pandemic, I had a friend who spent time in the hospital with a severe case of the flu.
For my part, I started getting flu shots again when my daughter got sick about 10 years ago. I took her to the doctor and she tested positive for the flu. The doctor said, you’ve been exposed, do you want to go ahead and get a flu shot?
I decided to get “the jab” that year, and believe it or not, I never really got sick. I fully expected a full blown case of the flu, but it was more like a cold. I felt bad but not as bad as I expected.
And I also didn’t feel too bad after the COVID and flu shots last week. The only time I’ve had a bad reaction to the COVID vaccine was last year when I added a shingles vaccine to the mix. I felt bad for 24 hours or so and slept a lot. This year, I went to bed early and felt fine the next day. The flu shot hurt more than the COVID jab.
At this point, it’s apparent that COVID-19 is going to be with us for the rest of our lives. We need to learn to live with it, and part of living with it is protecting ourselves. A big part of protecting ourselves is eschewing the conspiracy fearmongers and defending ourselves against COVID just as we would from the flu and other diseases.
Novavax is where it’s at.
The first Novavax shot I got was effortless. I might have felt a little run down the next day but it was the same as if I had a poor night’s sleep.
This year’s Novavax was in one arm and the flu shot was in the other and the next day was awful. I felt like I got a Moderna. That was either this year’s flu shot or the result of mixing the two.
Next year, I’ll mix them up.Report
I’m scheduled for the COVID/flu combo this week (it’ll be Pfizer). I’m one of the lucky many who never experience side effects other than a sore arm from vaccines, and may that trend continue.Report
Got mine Thursday. Thursday night I was pretty run down, had a few chills and used more blankets to sleep than usual. Friday I was dehydrated (probably from sweating a lot in the night from all those blankets) but otherwise right as rain.
This is a far sight from 2020, when people were dying everywhere. Operation Warp Speed was really a good thing. I think Trump doesn’t get a lot of credit for it for the reasons the OP says, but also because those of us who think about “credit” for governmental actions realize that President Clinton would have done nearly the exact same thing, or if she had been impeached out of office by then, President Kaine would have also.
The interesting counter-factual to me is not what a Democratic President would have done in that circumstance, but rather if President Trump had succumbed to COVID when he got it, and President Pence had launched Operation Warp Speed (or called it something like Operation Swift Angel; Pence is famously a very religious man) and done it in memoriam for the fallen President. That would have been the only — but a big — achievement of his short Presidency as he stood for election; my imagination suggests that in this counterfactual, President Pence would have been elected to a term in his own right and a forever WHACK against the liberal trope that religious conservatives are anti-science. You may imagine further political, legal, international, and cultural implications from there (SCOTUS, Ukraine, Israel, pandemic recovery, etc.).Report
I am apparently in the very elite category of never having had COVID(*). I’m also among my acquaintances in the very elite category of getting the booster the first week it is available.
I was randomly assigned Pfizer for my first vaccine, and stuck to it except for one Moderna shot after I read that the mix-and-match of vaccines gave added protection. Again, my poll of acquaintances points out that the effects of Moderna tends to be worse than with Pfizer.
In six or seven vaccinations I’ve never had any secondary effects, except on my second dose, which coincided with a big work milestone that got celebrated with significantly more booze (including three whiskies) than my baseline. I had a headache the next day (and a very dreadful flight from San Francisco to Houston) that lasted until 6 pm. It totally was a reaction to the vaccine.
(*) My doctor believes I have some sort of genetic natural immunity to COVID. He says at this time people that have not caught COVID, no matter how many vaccines, are as rare as black swans. Just like I have genetically very high cholesterol, and only massive doses of statins are probably keeping me alive.Report
Maribou and I, somehow, have never gotten it.
Maribou insisted that every time we got a cough or a sniffle that we use one of our many, many tests and every single time, they came up negative. It’s not like we got sick and failed to test.
I have no idea how that happened.
If we got it, it was the asymptomatic kind.
(My theory is that we did get it, back in January 2020 when a friend came back from visiting Singapore. Everybody in the office got “the crud” and took 3-4 days off due to it and we made jokes about how we were already hit with the “novel coronavirus” by the time February rolled around.)Report
It’s not that surprising to me that working age adults could dodge it indefinitely. It’s gone through my house 3 times, with each instance coming from the children.
Before I had kids I never got sick. Thought I must have this great immune system. Now my wife and I are constantly fighting off something or another. Turns out the real reason for the lack of colds and viruses was that adults are not in your face and physical space the way children are. I don’t care how many times I see one of those charts that shows just how far stuff travels in a cubicle farm from a cough or a sneeze. It isnt the same.Report
I’ve never tested positive for Covid. So far as I know, I’ve never had the flu either, whether I got a vaccination or not. My understanding is that for pretty much any given virus, 2% or so of the human population is naturally immune. This got a lot more attention when researchers realized that about 2% of the population doesn’t get infected by HIV no matter how or how often they’re exposed.Report
Before I go on, I have to make clear that what follows is a serious, honest question. I ask it not to advance a political agenda, but because I do not know the answer and would like to.
We all know that President Trump announced “Operation Warp Speed” as an initiative to hurry the development of a covid vaccine. And indeed, the vaccines were developed remarkably quickly. What did the President, or any member of his administration, actually do to make it happen, other than announce it?Report
“Get out of the way and let the engineers engineer” is a trick that a handful of managers at my job know to use very sparingly, lest it make the other teams look bad.Report
My understanding is that the distinction between operation warp speed and the drive in the EU was that the government spent the money (via CARES Act) on multiple vaccine development initiatives simultaneously, with the understanding some would inevitably fail. Sort of a lowering of normal standards of proof required for funding in the hope it would increase speed. You can of course find people that dispute how successful that was but that is the concept and we did end up with widespread vaccine availability more quickly.Report
The FDA also took the COVID vaccines to the front of the line procedurally, and basically swept everything else aside for the approval process. This was made easier by the fact that the mRNA frameworks for two of the three were well known from cancer vaccine research for almost 2 decades by that point.Report
“What did the President, or any member of his administration, actually do to make it happen, other than announce it?”
See, we can provide answers, but will they get a response of “yes, I see” or a response of “well actually here’s why that doesn’t apply”?
Because you could Google just as well as the rest of us, if you wanted to learn things.Report
I had both in September before traveling to an ocean technology conference in Canada. I made the mistake of having both in the same (Left) arm, which hurt badly for several days. But otherwise no side effects. Not unlike every other time I had the shot.
I have had 3 confirmed cases so far – one during the height of the pandemic, and two much milder cases after the vaccines were introduced. We have never been sure of the vector – though my wife’s last case came from a meeting in Alaska where nearly everyone tested positive after.Report