COVID-19 vaccines: medical concerns and recommendations

[Baldanders]

Post shot 2 report- unlike the first one, no real side effects other than a mildly sore arm.

Good to hear!

[Crow Hunter]

It's really interesting how different people get differing reactions. I've heard so many people say the same as you. For me and my sister it was sort of backwards between #1 & #2.

For my sister she had such issues with #1 that she wasn't going to get #2. I was able to convince her since our mother is just through cancer treatments and my son-in-law who had COVID lasting about a month before he recovered found out that he's going to have to get a kidney transplant due to the COVID. She also has only one kidney, having to have one removed when she was only 6 weeks old. She went ahead and didn't have near the problems with #2 as #1 and she's now glad she went ahead with it. She's also been exposed several times, once just last week and so far, so good.

Completely anecdotal but my wife caught Covid in Sept'ish of last year, I quarantined in the house with her and she sneezed on everything, every few minutes. I got bored with counting at 35 times on the first day. We shared a bathroom and she cooked quite a few meals that we ate together. I never had any Covid symptoms, so I never bothered getting tested since I was going to be quarantined anyway. She was pretty miserable, mostly body aches, sneezing, diarrhea, and feeling really run down. No coughing or breathing problems.

She got the Moderna vaccine a couple of weeks before I did and she was miserable after both shots, especially the 2nd one but felt better within 24 hours. She said it was like she had caught it again with a much faster recovery.

I got the Pfizer, other than feeling like someone "frogged" my arm, I felt fine.

She was discussing with her doctor and they were commiserating on how bad it was and she mentioned me, he said that I must have "a good immune system". I don't know if I believe him.

[Hemiram]

FWIW the odds of anaphylaxis are extremely low, substantially lower than the complications associated with COVID-19 infection



My new, recent favorite phenomenon are the young hippie/progressive women from Boulder with pre existing mood disorder & comorbid personality pathology who come down with unsubtle pseudoseizures (engaging in tremulous but obviously volitional movement) after the vaxx and then post it all over social media as a warning about the dangers of the vax.

I can't deny it, there does seem to be a high association of anti-vaxx borderlines developing conversion disorder after inoculation. My MS3 A/P is d/c with referral to outpatient psych

I have a friend who totally bought the faked "seizures" videos. I spent some time with him Monday, and I just sat there and tried to keep from laughing at his endless claims of what the vaccine supposedly did to him, and why he totally regrets getting it, etc. His gullibility when a claim is made about a lot of stuff makes me wonder how much his bypass surgery in early spring messed up his head. He's always been sort of an easy sell on kookery, but now, he's like my dog when a woman wore too much perfume, he's totally sold on it.

[pangloss]

Yesterday I stopped by the lab that runs the RT-PCR tests for our institution. Last January they got up to ~2,500 tests per day, and this week they are running ~1,000 tests per day. The test is declared positive when the signal generated by the amplified DNA sequence crosses a certain threshold, which is called the cycle threshold, "CT" for short. Each cycle of the test roughly doubles the signal because you are making a copy of the target DNA with each cycle. A CT of 28 cycles is a reasonably strong positive. A CT above 35 could be questionable. I think some places run the test all the way to 40 cycles. In any case, as I said, each cycle doubles the signal, so a positive sample that had a CT of 28 has about 2x as much starting target material as a positive sample that had a cycle threshold of 29. Last January there were a lot of positive samples with CT values in the 20s and low 30s. Currently lots of positive samples have CT values in the teens. To put this in perspective, a positive sample with a CT value of 18 has ~2,000x as much viral sequence as a sample with a CT value of 28. Anyway, my point is that the news reports that the delta variant makes 1000x as much virus as the older strains are likely not an exaggeration. I'm also hearing more reports of fully vaccinated people who had symptomatic illness. Be careful and don't take unnecessary risks. The virus circulating now looks to be much more capable than the one from last year and early this year. I hope any of us that haven't been vaccinated yet will carefully reconsider.

[YVK]

I hope any of us that haven't been vaccinated yet will carefully reconsider.

Those who haven't taken the shot had all the time in the world to do it. Horse and water kind of deal. I am more interested in when we get a decent science and hopefully timely guidelines about boosters for those who do want protection.

[0ddl0t]

I'm also hearing more reports of fully vaccinated people who had symptomatic illness.

The CDC released a report today making headlines: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/...cid=mm7031e2_w


Cliff notes:

69% of the Massachusetts population was vaccinated when a series of summer events occurred in 1 county.
74% of these COVID infections happened to the fully vaccinated. (346 out of 469 cases)
79% of these "breakthrough infections" were symptomatic (274 out of 346)
80% of those hospitalized were vaccinated (4 out of 5 - roughly 1% of vaccinated & unvaccinated)
Of those vaccinated infections: 46% had pfizer, 38% Moderna, & 16% J&J (vs Massachusetts vaccination base rates of 56% pfizer, 38% Moderna, & 7% J&J).
89% of these infections were confirmed Delta variant, 10% could not be determined
87% of infections were male, median age was 42
PCR CT counts were essentially the same for vaccinated (22.77) and unvaccinated (21.54) which is why the CDC now recommends the vaccinated wear masks

[MickAK]

I'll preface this by saying I think the only concern with the various Covid vaccines is they may not work as good as people hope and distributing them this widely could be a bad idea.

The CDC released a report today making headlines: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/...cid=mm7031e2_w


Cliff notes:

69% of the Massachusetts population was vaccinated when a series of summer events occurred in 1 county.
74% of these COVID infections happened to the fully vaccinated. (346 out of 469 cases)
79% of these "breakthrough infections" were symptomatic (274 out of 346)
80% of those hospitalized were vaccinated (4 out of 5 - roughly 1% of vaccinated & unvaccinated)
Of those vaccinated infections: 46% had pfizer, 38% Moderna, & 16% J&J (vs Massachusetts vaccination base rates of 56% pfizer, 38% Moderna, & 7% J&J).
89% of these infections were confirmed Delta variant, 10% could not be determined
87% of infections were male, median age was 42
PCR CT counts were essentially the same for vaccinated (22.77) and unvaccinated (21.54) which is why the CDC now recommends the vaccinated wear masks

Huh

[Bio]

I've got a couple extended family members who were both vaccinated and recently both got symptomatic cases. Nothing terrible, thankfully, because they tick a few risk group boxes.

[Nephrology]

I have a friend who totally bought the faked "seizures" videos. I spent some time with him Monday, and I just sat there and tried to keep from laughing at his endless claims of what the vaccine supposedly did to him, and why he totally regrets getting it, etc. His gullibility when a claim is made about a lot of stuff makes me wonder how much his bypass surgery in early spring messed up his head. He's always been sort of an easy sell on kookery, but now, he's like my dog when a woman wore too much perfume, he's totally sold on it.

If you ever have this conversation again you can always show him what a real generalized tonic clonic (GTC) seizure looks like.

They are very unmistakable and hard to accurately fake. They are characterized by rhythmic non-purposeful non-coordinated motor activity that starts in one motor region of the brain and generalizes to the rest of the brain. For this reason many people who have a GTC will stop breathing effectively or entirely and will often be pale/cyanotic/etc until the seizure breaks. Sometimes GTC seizures can be so powerful that you can dislocate joints.

In the video below, the teen's seizure starts in the face/upper extremities with rapid blinking, forceful gaze deviation, flexion at the R. shoulder elbow and wrist before spreading (generalizing) to the rest of his bodys motor circuits. Definitionally if you have a GTC you will lose consciousness and experience a "post ictal" period of confusion and stupor afterwards that lasts at least 15-30 minutes or longer.

Video may be a little disturbing to some as it is hard to watch but it is work safe.

[Borderland]

With regards to general information about covid, I think this forum does a pretty good job of posting valid information from credentialed health care professionals to the members. I haven't seen my doc in about 6 months and I'm not going to schedule an appointment to ask him a bunch of questions I can get answered someplace else. There are websites on the internet that can provide general information if you just look for it. Obviously I'm not going to use this forum to replace my PCP but the information here can be just one more source to help a person formulate an opinion about a certain issue.

I use my doctors staff via an online account I have with my health care provider to answer most of my questions. Sometimes it takes a few days to get a reply when my doc does the one on one communication.

I don't see any harm in posting medical advice on a gun forum. Everyone has to sift through so much BS on a daily basis anyway it's just something else to consider. If you want to avoid the covid discussions there's an easy way to do that. I think it's clearly defined in the thread title.