Up until now, I’ve only gotten the Pfizer vaccines. And while I’ve reacted to them, it was never particularly bad. Light muscle aches and some fatigue were basically it. Worst was the second one - I could feel my hair follicles and eyelids with that one.
But the Moderna one seems to be quite the beast.
When I found out I could get the new Moderna, I was excited, since I’ve heard that mix-and-match is probably the strongest immunity you can get. And I figured it wasn’t going to be that bad when after several hours, I only had some light fatigue.
But today has been awful. Consistent fever around 102.3, chills, headache, nausea, whole-body aches, and ludicrous levels of exhaustion. I’ve been utterly useless.
Is this what Moderna vaccines have been like all along? I’ll take it over contracting COVID-19, definitely… but ouch. It’s hurting me plenty.
Next morning update: Chills are gone, fever seems to be gone, muscle aches aren’t entirely gone, but they’re fading. All in all, 10/10 would feel like shit for a day again to help stop the spread of a dangerous disease.
You know what? You’re right, getting vaccinated doesn’t make it impossible to catch and spread a disease. What it does is reduce the possibility, and reduce the severity and duration if you do catch it. What you’re doing is applying your personal experience - an anecdote - to everyone.
No vaccine ever has been 100% effective. Not even the smallpox vaccine. 100% effectiveness isn’t possible. You happened to catch it from a vaccinated person. It happens. Doesn’t mean being vaccinated didn’t reduce the severity of your step-father’s illness or the duration of his contagiousness. It almost certainly did both.
People I know who have been vaccinated and then caught Covid have had it worse than me and are in the same age group.
They all say “glad I got vaccinated, otherwise it would have been worse”. Based on what, exactly? Hope?
Based on the science, not on anecdotes.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/24/health/covid-antibody-response-vaccines/index.html
Stop mistaking your personal experience for everyone’s personal experience.
It’s a common mistake to believe that our personal experiences are typical. It even has a name, the Availability Heuristic. Some use the term anecdote.
But when making decisions about things like whether to vaccinate or not vaccinate, it’s important to look at probabilities. And to do that we have to look at what happens to large groups of people. Thankfully, this has been done. Various studies have been conducted which looked at large groups of people, literally millions in some cases and their conclusions have remained consistent.
They are that the vaccine has some risks, but they generally are mild. But more importantly, the risks of the vaccine are lower than the risks from getting Covid.
That doesn’t mean that everyone who gets vaccinated won’t have a side effect, or that everyone who isn’t vaccinated will suffer be injured by Covid, but it does mean that, on average, you are far better to be vaccinated than unvaccinated.
I can link to some of the studies if you like.
If you’re in an at-risk group, yes. But you don’t need to be vaccinated if you’re under-60 and healthy, because the vaccines only protect you, not anyone else as you can still pass it on. So the whole period with vaccine passports and other nonsense was stupid, harmed the cause of getting people vaccinated and led to increased scepticism of vaccines in general.
What you seem to be saying here is that if you are under 60 vaccines aren’t worth the risk to you personally, and that they don’t stop transmission thereby failing to remove a risk to others over 60. Tell me if I got that wrong.
Assuming that I didn’t, let’s unpick that:
It is correct that the risks of Covid to younger people are less than older people, but they are not zero. Your statement implies that it is only older people who are at risk, which is not correct. Vaccines still reduce the risk for younger people too:
“Among hospitalized adolescent patients, two doses of the BNT162b2 vaccine were highly effective against Covid-19–related hospitalization and ICU admission or the receipt of life support.” https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2117995
In fact, while younger people are less likely to suffer severe adverse symptoms from Covid, vaccination actually has a GREATER protective effect for young people against potential severe consequences . i.e. the consequences are mitigated more for young people than older people.
“We found a substantial effect of age on the results. Many HRs in younger individuals (<60 years-old) were in general lower (i.e. favouring vaccination even more) for outcomes significantly associated with vaccination” https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889159122001118
The r value for vaccinated people is lower than for unvaccinated people. That is, a vaccinated person with Covid will expose less people to Covid than an unvaccinated person will, which is safer for everyone else.
So in conclusion, vaccination does reduce the risks of Covid injury in people under 60 (as well as those over 60), and does reduce the rate of transmission.
When it comes to complex issues like this, the only sources of information that should be considered can best be found on Google Scholar.