Seriously thoughtful The NEW Covid Vaccination Poll

[issybird]

The last poll closed some time ago and people’s status has changed. So where are you now? Please stay on topic and eschew the contentious not directly relataed to the disease or the vaccination.

[WT Sharpe]

Now that it's been over two weeks that my wife and I received the Pfizer vaccine, here comes the bad news: The Pfizer vaccine may not offer complete protection against the new African strain.

I'm not discouraged, though. With all the mutations arising, I never expected two shots to be the end of it. I don't doubt more boosters are coming.

[dwig]

Fully vaccinated over two weeks ago. This applies to my whole "pod"; me, my wife, and my brother-in-law.

[DiapDealer]

I'm about 28 days past my one-dose Janssen vaccination. Most of my extended family are fully vaccinated now.

[haertig]

My first shot of Moderna was a non-event, with zero side effects. My second shot was uneventful the first day. On the second day I felt tired after getting up in the morning. Not really bad, but just kind of a general malaise. Nothing specific I could put a finger on (no headache, no fever, no chills, no arm pain) - just blah. So I went back to bed. I didn't take Tylenol or Advil or anything else, just went back to bed. It was a LONG nap, as I didn't get up until 4 or so in the afternoon. But I felt fine after getting up and shaking off the grogginess after having slept for so long.

Most of my friends have reported similar experiences, to both Moderna and Pfizer. But one or two have now reported feeling worse than I did, more like a mini-flu, for a longer period (two days). I do not know if those two with worse reactions were Moderna or Pfizer.

My wife and coworkers all had Pfizer and had arranged plans to stagger their shots over days/weeks so they could still staff the hospital even if several of them got sick afterwards. Their staggering plan was ultimately not necessary since none of them got sick (we are talking maybe 50 people in this group). I don't know the details if any of them had minor side effects, but there was nothing major. Nobody missed any work. My wife personally had no side effects at all, not even minor ones.

I do not know anybody personally (that I can remember at the moment) who has had the Johnson&Johnson shot. Moderna, Pfizer and J&J are the only shots currently used where I live (USA).

It seems difficult to predict if any one person will have side effects to vaccination. Just as it is difficult to predict that any one person will be severely affected by covid infection or not.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

here comes the bad news: The Pfizer vaccine may not offer complete protection against the new African strain.

They look to have good evidence that some people may still be able to be infected with this African strain after vaccination. I am hoping that they will soon be able to answer:

You can get infected, but do you get sick?

If infected this way, can you spread it to anyone else?

These were questions about the original strain and vaccines as well, and recent studies look like the answer is "no" to both questions. Let's hope that is the same for this new African strain. And I hope they will be able to answer these questions sooner rather than later, to hopefully avoid more lockdowns and masks due to uncertainty.

[issybird]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I'm not discouraged, though. With all the mutations arising, I never expected two shots to be the end of it. I don't doubt more boosters are coming.

I’m confident there will be boosters, but I wonder about the data base and notification. Here, I ended up signing up over the phone and all it took was my name and DOB. I’ve got my card, of course, but how will they handle pushing out the boosters? And to what extent will they lose people for whom it’s one trip too many, especially if they have to be proactive about it?

[Almamida]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Now that it's been over two weeks that my wife and I received the Pfizer vaccine, here comes the bad news: The Pfizer vaccine may not offer complete protection against the new African strain.

I'm not discouraged, though. With all the mutations arising, I never expected two shots to be the end of it. I don't doubt more boosters are coming.

I haven't been able to find really detailed information about this "breaking through".
The title seems to me overwrought / frantic.

The study contains only 150 people fully vaccinated. They state the variant was found 8 more times in the vaccinated. There could be 1 in the non vaccinated, 8 in the vaccinated and we don't know if the cases were severe, or just mild or asymptomatic.

To quote them :

"Since we found a very small number of vaccinees infected with B.1.351, it is statistically meaningless to report disease outcomes," he said.

They even admit the numbers are too low to conclude anything.

[Almamida]

Originally Posted by haertig

They look to have good evidence that some people may still be able to be infected with this African strain after vaccination. I am hoping that they will soon be able to answer:

You can get infected, but do you get sick?

If infected this way, can you spread it to anyone else?

These were questions about the original strain and vaccines as well, and recent studies look like the answer is "no" to both questions. Let's hope that is the same for this new African strain. And I hope they will be able to answer these questions sooner rather than later, to hopefully avoid more lockdowns and masks due to uncertainty.

Not that I want to doubt your statement or seem rude, but if you have any link of a study that concludes that people vaccinated and infected cannot spread the virus / contaminate others, I will take them.

So far I've only found articles stating that vaccinated people don't spread as long as they are not infected.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by issybird

but I wonder about the data base and notification

An excellent point. I got my shots from my normal health provider organization (Kaiser Permanente) and my records are stored in their normal patient database (I would assume!) which is well established. But I have friends that also got their shots at Kaiser, but they are not normal Kaiser patients. They described quite a bit of rigmarole to get them registered as on-the-fly Kaiser patients so they could be databased. Time will tell if the Kaiser I.T. department got that rush job of database expansion, and training of employees to use it, completed successfully.

In the meantime, it would probably be wise to scan your vaccination card into your computer and securely store that digital version of it in a couple of places. It would be a real mess to have to sort through booster vaccinations, should those become necessary, using just people's personally retained records. But at least having an easily retrievable personal record is better than no record.

[meeera]

Originally Posted by Almamida

Not that I want to doubt your statement or seem rude, but if you have any link of a study that concludes that people vaccinated and infected cannot spread the virus / contaminate others, I will take them.

So far I've only found articles stating that vaccinated people don't spread as long as they are not infected.

More data's going to come, but there is this for a start, in the very early post-vaccination period:

" In this analysis of a real-world dataset of positive severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) test results after inoculation with the BNT162b2 messenger RNA vaccine, we found that the viral load was substantially reduced for infections occurring 12–37 d after the first dose of vaccine. These reduced viral loads hint at a potentially lower infectiousness, further contributing to vaccine effect on virus spread."

[Gardenman]

Got my second shot of Moderna on the 6th.

[haertig]

Originally Posted by Almamida

Not that I want to doubt your statement or seem rude, but if you have any link of a study that concludes that people vaccinated and infected cannot spread the virus / contaminate others, I will take them.

I read some highlights from study somewhere (not the actual study itself), but did not preserve a link to it. However, the CDC guidelines (directly available on their website at the link below) seem to acknowledge that vaccinated people are not spreaders. They don't come right out and say those exact words, but when they give recommendations like "You can hang out with unvaccinated people, no masks and no social distancing, and not bother with quarantine or testing" (paraphrased) that pretty much implies that you are not considered a spreader.

Here's the website:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...-guidance.html

And a quote from it that I am referring to:

Fully vaccinated people can:

Visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing

Visit with unvaccinated people from a single household who are at low risk for severe COVID-19 disease indoors without wearing masks or physical distancing

Refrain from quarantine and testing following a known exposure if asymptomatic

Resume domestic travel and refrain from testing before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel.

Refrain from testing before leaving the United States for international travel (unless required by the destination) and refrain from self-quarantine after arriving back in the United States.

And this other page from the CDC website says the same thing. Why they have two different webpages, I don't know. Seems like an opportunity for them to get out of sync as recommendations change and they might forget to update one of the pages. And being out of sync would cause confusion.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...accinated.html

[meeera]

Originally Posted by haertig

I read some highlights from study somewhere (not the actual study itself), but did not preserve a link to it. However, the CDC guidelines (directly available on their website at the link below) seem to acknowledge that vaccinated people are not spreaders. They don't come right out and say those exact words, but when they give recommendations like "You can hang out with unvaccinated people, no masks and no social distancing, and not bother with quarantine or testing" (paraphrased) that pretty much implies that you are not considered a spreader.

The CDC guidance is based on the Levine-Tiefenbrun viral load study that I cited above.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019...ed-people.html

[Deskisamess]

Hubby and I have both had the first shot...his was Moderna, mine was Pfizer. He gets his second the last week of April, I get mine 5-1. He got his thru our doctor's office, I got mine thru the local Health Dept. after I used them via the ArmorVax app for my 90 year old mom. She gets her second also the last week of April.

We had no reactions from the first shot that were noticeable. I was tired for a couple of days but don't know if that was from the shot. The Health Dept. location was very organized, and I was in and out in 20 minutes, which included the 15 minute wait afterward. They've done a great job with scheduling, 18 stations, and lots of volunteers, all doing one thing efficiently. EMT's were on hand as well.

Our daughter lives in another state, and got her first shot, Pfizer, yesterday. She feels terrible today and said her arm hurts a lot. She also had a vagal response after the shot, something she is somewhat prone to. Her spouse is scheduled next week I think, she isn't 30 yet so had a longer wait. Daughter works in the grocery industry so was able to get hers before other in their 30's, she is 34. Kentucky rollout has been slower than Ohio.

We went with the science.