Coronavax experiences?

[Matt Smith]

I had my second jab this morning. Feeling fine so far unlike last time, not even a sore arm!

It seemed busy but the nurse said it was still slow for them so what do I know?

[Stephen Furley]

I had the Phizer vaccine, first dose in February and the second two weeks ago yesterday. Somebody else I know had theirs at the same place a couple of weeks before me and they ha d the AZ. After the first dose I had a mild headache for a while later in the day, but I have no way of knowing if this was actually related. After the second dose I had a period of nausea later in the day, but again I don’t know if this was related. I’m on a lot of other medication now, and I don’t know if any of these could make a difference.

no other side effects. There’s a risk of course, everything in life carries some degree of risk, and a very small number of people have even died, but compare£ with the number of deaths from the virus the risk is small, and I think we’ll worth taking. I have a real dread of needles, and have never taken up the offer of flu vaccine which is made each year.

i did ask whether they choose different vaccines for different people depending on some factor, such as age, or whether it is just lunk which you get. They said it is just luck. I would have taken up the offer whichever vaccine had been available to me.

[Leo Enticknap]

The ankle, knee, and hip pain has subsided, but not totally gone away, since my second shot on April 30. It's backed off to a minor annoyance, that usually shows itself after a day involving significant physical exertion (e.g. during a day the week before last on which I had to carry around 500lb of amplifiers and UPS units up a flight of around 40 steps in multiple trips). I didn't experience this before shot #2, at all. I wonder if there is some immune system weirdness going on, especially given that I have had Guillain-Barré Syndrome in the past (1993-4), which is an acknowledged counterindication for some vaccines.

[Bobby Henderson]

I'm beginning to wonder if my altered sense of smell might be permanent. People suffer permanent hearing damage progressively throughout their lives, losing the ability to hear more and more frequencies. Eyesight degrades. The sense of smell in humans is already fairly limited compared to many other animals. It would only seem logical that the sense of smell could degrade via certain kinds of traumas or infections.

My cousin Tommy had COVID-19 during the Summer of 2020. Thankfully he wasn't hospitalized, but he said it was worse than any flu he had ever experienced. He can barely smell or taste anything to this day. My cousin Jennifer has a similar experience to mine, a relatively minor bout of COVID-19, but odd and lasting effects to the sense of smell. Certain things don't smell the same anymore.

There’s a risk of course, everything in life carries some degree of risk, and a very small number of people have even died, but compare£ with the number of deaths from the virus the risk is small, and I think we’ll worth taking. I have a real dread of needles, and have never taken up the offer of flu vaccine which is made each year.

Certain people in the 24 hour cable "news" business and quite a lot of people on the Internet have been throwing out a lot of misinformation and outright lies regarding deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines. A bunch of it is just sheer bullshit. My brother finally got around to getting his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine earlier this week. One of his coworkers said he was going to keep some distance from my brother, post-vaccine, because he believes he might catch something from a vaccinated person. Fucking idiot.

The AstraZeneca vaccine clearly had the worst documented problems out the COVID-19 vaccines available in Europe and the United States. Some people have died from severe blood clotting issues. Of course the percentage of adverse reactions of that vaccine were very low, much lower than the average mortality rate of people getting infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus and developing COVID-19 disease. The Johnson and Johnson vaccine has had some highly publicized issues of blood clotting. Both the AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines were put back into service despite the low yet very hyped risks.

Here in the US various people on TV or online have been trying to malign the two-shot mRNA vaccines (Pfizer/Bio-N-Tech and Moderna) by claiming thousands of people have been killed by these vaccines. Some people are even trying to go so far as to say the death rate for COVID-19 is actually higher for fully vaccinated people. Basically these people are toying around with bits of data from the VAERS database in extremely dishonest ways. First of all, that database is suspect since anybody can post info to it. Then there is the very simple matter that an average number of Americans die everyday from natural causes. Huge numbers of elderly people were among the first of over 100 million fully vaccinated Americans to receive COVID-19 vaccines. Some of these people were very advanced in age. When 3000 or so people die after being fully vaccinated that doesn't prove a vaccine caused those deaths. VAERS reports are typically unverified and they do not show causation. Those people died because they were very old and/or had other terminal health issues.

As far as I can tell there are not any fully proven, documented deaths directly caused by Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines. Those vaccines are not 100% risk-free. Most clinics ask people to stick around for at least 15 minutes after the injection to guard against a severe allergic reaction. I'm not seeing a lot of news about severe Anaphylaxis reactions from the mRNA vaccines. Even though those vaccines are under emergency approval they do appear to be remarkably safe.

[Steve Guttag]

I had a cold/flu a few years ago where I lost my total sense of smell. It was gone for at least a month but then it slowly came back. Without smell, there was no taste either. It has only happened to me that one time. No issues with the vaccine however beyond what I reported weeks ago (some headache after the second shot and the sore arm for about 50% more time...Pfizer).

[Leo Enticknap]

Certain people in the 24 hour cable "news" business and quite a lot of people on the Internet have been throwing out a lot of misinformation and outright lies regarding deaths related to COVID-19 vaccines. A bunch of it is just sheer bullshit. My brother finally got around to getting his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine earlier this week.

The bullshit gains traction and credibility that it otherwise wouldn't, because the political and medical establishments smear all skepticism and questioning of vaccine technology as bullshit. Most of us are intelligent enough to figure out that it's a numbers game: some vaccines do provoke undesirable immune system responses, and in a very small number of cases, severe ones. But these vastly outnumber the number of people who are protected from a similarly catastrophic outcome from the disease itself. If anyone were to suggest that automobiles are bad and were to advocate never driving or riding in one because of the possibility of being injured or killed in an accident, very few would take them seriously. That is because no-one tries to deny that road accidents are a problem, and that things should be done to reduce their frequency and severity. But at the same time, the economic and social benefits of the mobility enabled by car use vastly outweigh the negatives, and this is also understood. If only those in power and influence would acknowledge that vaccines are not a risk-free technology, acknowledge that they are a risk-reducing technology, and stop trying to characterize anyone who points this out as an Andrew Wakefield-style wack job, the end result would be a lot less vaccine resistance and skepticism than we now appear to be facing.

[Bobby Henderson]

The bullshit gains traction and credibility that it otherwise wouldn't, because the political and medical establishments smear all skepticism and questioning of vaccine technology as bullshit.

In the case of the medical establishment they've had to dance around playing everything as conservatively safe as possible to cover their backsides. Hence all the back and forth on things like mask mandates.

The real reason why the bullshit gains traction is Americans are both biased and gullible as hell. The instant they see something that patronizes their "world-view" they immediately accept the story as fact without any question. The cable "news" business knows this and they capitalize on it. The same goes for various outlets on the Internet. They don't report news objectively and in detail because viewers find that boring. They oversimplify every news story and emotionally amplify it to stoke fear and anger. Even all the Chyron ticker trash cluttering the bottom of the screen is designed to yank the chains the viewers. Viewers seek out the version of "news" that preaches to their political bias.

The stuff is like a form of pornography. The people pushing this version of "news" are basically whores. But the American public deserves zero cover for this problem. They're the ones willfully consuming this crap, rooting for their political team and growing more hateful to anyone not on their side. If America's political system collapses, transforming into a totalitarian police state, and people are looking for someone to blame they'll need to look no farther than the reflection in the mirror.

I'm under the impression the cable "news" business thinks its viewers are all idiots that are unable to understand any sense of nuance or complexity of any given political or social issue. If coverage of the pandemic had been more objective and detailed the US might have weathered it better.

[Mike Blakesley]

You do have to consider (and wonder why) so many recent happenings just aren't adding up.

1. Depending on what outlet you refer to, less than half of the country is fully vaxxed. In our county, only about 30% are fully vaxxed as of today.
2. There is a huge danger of another outbreak (and there has been for quite a while now).
3. Yet the numbers keep persistently going down, despite all the dire warnings from "experts" about how this isn't over by a long shot.
4. And states keep opening things up faster and faster, and trusing the non-vaccinated to keep their distance. Like that's going to happen.
5. And the "promised" huge outbreak doesn't happen, despite plenty of potential "super spreader" events happening.

For example, in Montana we are still supposed to be maintaining social distancing -- masking not required unless a business requires it. So... last weekend Miles City had their annual Bucking Horse Sale which is a gigantic cowboy party with plenty of drinking, yelling, dancing and other fun. They had near-sellout crowds of 4000 people in their fairgrounds grandstand on two separate days, plus street dances on Friday and Saturday nights that were also packed.

And tonight (May 22) there is a Toby Keith concert in Billings, which is sold out at about 9,000 people with no distancing whatsoever between the seats. Plus the same arena (Metrapark) has a full schedule of concerts coming over the summer, and their website has absolutely no mention of any Covid precautions or procedures whatsoever.

So I figure if next weekend rolls around and there isn't a huge outbreak in the Miles City area, and the week after that rolls around and there isn't a huge outbreak around Billings, I'm declaring the pandemic is over and Covid has been reduced to just another disease that hangs around from time to time, and if you or I get it and die from it, well, it was our time to go.

Let the battle for the booster shots begin!

[Harold Hallikainen]

Based on that, let's see if we see a spike in deaths in July. The highest spike so far was the week ending January 2.

https://mai.hallikainen.org/cv/

Harold

[Bobby Henderson]

If anyone were to suggest that automobiles are bad and were to advocate never driving or riding in one because of the possibility of being injured or killed in an accident, very few would take them seriously. That is because no-one tries to deny that road accidents are a problem, and that things should be done to reduce their frequency and severity. But at the same time, the economic and social benefits of the mobility enabled by car use vastly outweigh the negatives, and this is also understood.

I meant to respond to this point earlier. I think people accept the risks that come with driving vehicles because there are various practices they can adopt to lower the risk. They have the illusion of control. Shit does still happen. I've been in a few car accidents over the years. I was hurt the most when a young lady rear ended the station wagon my high school classmate was driving on US-1 in Woodbridge, VA. My neck and back was jangled for months after that one. My mom's older sister was put in a coma for nearly 20 years before finally dying all thanks to a drunk driver.

Many people get into car accidents out of negligence, be it driving drunk, not paying attention to the road, etc. They worsen their chances by not wearing seatbelts, driving at very high rates of speed or other negative factors. The tragic thing is when one of these reckless drivers hits another vehicle, bicyclist or pedestrian and causes other deaths or injuries in addition to their own.

Both the design of vehicles and highways have been improved to enhance safety and survivability in the event of a car accident. We have fewer highway deaths per capita than in decades past.

A contagious virus is different. We can't see it. Prior to the vaccines there was only so much we could do to prevent getting infected. I obviously failed in my efforts around last Thanksgiving.

You do have to consider (and wonder why) so many recent happenings just aren't adding up.

The thing that seems to be escaping so many people is SARS-CoV-2 is a novel virus and this pandemic has been going through 100% uncharted territory. No one truly knows what will happen next. The medical and science community is still learning about the virus. They cannot give a definitive answer on how long SARS-CoV-2 antibodies last, either from natural exposure or via vaccines. It's going to be awhile before we really know when this pandemic is finished.

A bunch of Americans pretty much expected the experts to have the entire encyclopedia written on the virus the moment it was discovered. So when the experts shifted their view that the virus was mainly transmitted by airborne particles rather than contaminated surfaces Americans just assumed the experts had been lying to them. It's all a sinister conspiracy. Lawmakers and media people played along with the ignorance.

Here in Lawton our active known COVID-19 case numbers are now under 100 for the first time since July of last year. This is a military town with a diverse population which includes a lot of retired military. Odds are many of those people chose to get vaccinated. We really don't have good numbers on how many people were infected with SARS-CoV-2. Most people getting tested were doing so voluntarily because they had symptoms. No one has conducted random sero survey testing to get accurate numbers of people with minor illness or no COVID-19 symptoms at all.

In all likelihood our local case numbers are dropping because we're now reaching a level where enough people have been naturally exposed to SARS-CoV-2 or vaccinated against it that the virus is having an increasingly harder time trying to find new hosts. It's not herd immunity. But it is a steadily improving situation.

I've ditched wearing the masks in public places, but I keep one handy just in case I encounter a business or home where people want them to be worn. I won't get my panties in a twist over it (unlike some people). I donate platelets and plasma at Oklahoma Blood Institute once a month, so it will be easy for me to see if I still have the antibodies or not. If my immunity wanes I'll start taking more precautions. That might include getting a booster shot.

[Steve Guttag]

The medical community does have to share some of the blame in the confusion over this virus too. They continue to list movie theatres as one of the more dangerous activities despite billions of data points showing that it has not spread within movie theatres. Why? Why do they continue to put forth a hypothesis while willfully ignoring data? I understood when this whole thing started that you go with the hypothesis of the experts because that is all we had to go on. But once data comes in that contradicts the hypothesis, you go with the data. For contact versus airborne, they have moved their position. But even the latest safety chart still puts cinemas in the more risky activities. There hasn't been a single reported tracing to a cinema anywhere in the world.

That is, obviously, an area I've been following as it affects my industry. Where else are they ignoring the data (science) and putting out out-dated information?

Yes, I agree that they are continuing to learn about it (and its mutations) as it goes. They say things like heat an humidity are things that it has a hard time with so the summer months should see a decrease in cases. Then why is India getting hit so hard with it? They have heat and humidity (perhaps a bit less humidity than we have in the middle-atlantic region but their temps are higher).

Then you have both the medical community and the media putting forth disingenuous numbers for deaths or even cases. It isn't that they are factually inaccurate but they are essentially inflated.

The CDC tracks excess deaths (a bit morbid, I know) so there is no denying (by sane, realistic people) that C19 has had a terrible effect on our overall death rate for the last year.

Screen Shot 2021-05-23 at 6.20.17 AM.png
That chart, above, takes into account all deaths from all reasons, be it C19, Flu, heart attack...etc. The bits on the end will come up in the next few weeks as the data comes in but not likely to cross the excess deaths line. In any event, the amount above the orange line are the ones that we can really attribute to C19 more so than just C19 by itself as a statistic. That is, we normally have a sizable (about 50K/year) group of people that die each year from the flu. They didn't die this past year from the flu. In fact, it was down to 22K for 2019-2020, partly, at least because we went into lockdowns and masking. So, of the 600K deaths attributed to C19 in the US, some of those would have died of other causes with 25K being the flu, as an example (it is not a 1:1 swap as a person that would have died of the flu may not be the same person that died of C19). One could go down the least of leading causes of death and see where these people would have died of other things, including old-age but because of the presence of C19, were attributed to C19 and not take away from other causes (car accidents were down, for instance too). People die of old-age or other typical things as they get older. We don't have a set expiration time but again, if C19 was present, it was given as THE cause even if that person would have or could likely have expired in 2020 without C19. Again, C19 was bad, very bad. The excess deaths chart above is undeniable. That chart does take into account the overall shift from some other form of causing someone to die to C19. It does show how people's natural immune systems dealt with C19 (not well). Likely, without the various precautions (distancing/masking), the numbers would have been much worse.

It is just more sensational to put up this BIG number as if it was in addition to our "normal" deaths. For a percentage of those attributed to C19, they would have been attributed to some other form of death. As I said, what was presented was accurate but disingenuous.

Another one is when our death toll was constantly compared to other countries without ever normalizing it to the size of the population. Numbers without reference are just numbers. They should have been presented as deaths/million people. Our numbers still are not great but a more fair comparison. At present, it is 1,815/million. It is below Brazil, Italy, UK...etc.

At the moment, I'm seeing that people that are vaccinated when, due to their profession, may get tested and may come up positive. Well, the vaccination doesn't stop you from breathing in the virus and it will be in your nasal cavity. If it can't attach itself and infect you, why are we overly concerned and tracking it and quarantining from it? Because people are choosing to not get vaccinated? You might breathe it out onto them? The tools to move on with life have arrive with vaccines, it is time to move on.

But, as bad as the 600K deaths attributed to C19 are, we seem to be "okay" with 659K deaths/year attributed to heart disease. Many/most of those could be prevented with lifestyle changes. Most of those are self-inflicted (diet). I, and others, suspect that if that portion of American life were changed, our C19 outcome would have been significantly better too. It isn't that you drop the percentage of physically fit people who died from C19 to zero (or no heart disease) but you severely reduce it.

But no, the news shows the 600K deaths, they show the case-number-of-the-day and they say cinemas remain risky despite never having been shown to be risky in the first place.

[Bobby Henderson]

The medical community does have to share some of the blame in the confusion over this virus too. They continue to list movie theatres as one of the more dangerous activities despite billions of data points showing that it has not spread within movie theatres. Why? Why do they continue to put forth a hypothesis while willfully ignoring data? I understood when this whole thing started that you go with the hypothesis of the experts because that is all we had to go on. But once data comes in that contradicts the hypothesis, you go with the data. For contact versus airborne, they have moved their position. But even the latest safety chart still puts cinemas in the more risky activities. There hasn't been a single reported tracing to a cinema anywhere in the world.

The claim that there has been zero cases of SARS-CoV-2 spread in movie theaters or that it is somehow impossible to get infected in a theater is not a scientifically provable statement. Any level of accurate contact tracing went kaput once the spread of SARS-CoV-2 turned into an epidemic and then global pandemic. The number of variables hit an overwhelming level. Most people who developed COVID-19 do not know where they got infected or who infected them.

Compound that with how commercial movie theaters were among the first businesses shut down by the pandemic. They still haven't gone back to normal business. Most have very limited show times. The movie studios are still not releasing their best product to cinemas; a bunch of movies finished in 2019 and 2020 are still on the shelf waiting to get released. Attendance numbers are far from normal. I haven't been in a theater since early 2020. It's not that I don't want to go. There just hasn't been any movies playing in theaters that I wanted to see in a theater yet. Overall there has been very little opportunity for SARS-CoV-2 to spread in a theater.

I personally have no accurate idea where I got infected with SARS-CoV-2. I only know it had to be sometime around the Thanksgiving holiday. For all I know I could have been exposed multiple times in multiple places before getting enough viral load to develop any COVID-19 symptoms. And then I thought I had a sinus infection; the sudden loss of taste and smell senses was the only clue I had COVID-19 and needed to get tested. My big worry is how many people I might have infected and if any developed severe COVID-19 illness.

The CDC tracks excess deaths (a bit morbid, I know) so there is no denying (by sane, realistic people) that C19 has had a terrible effect on our overall death rate for the last year.

Since the beginning of the pandemic COVID-19 has been the 3rd biggest cause of death in the US after heart disease and cancer. During peak phases COVID-19 has been the leading cause of death for some months. Excess deaths overall have been very terrible. In addition to the effect of COVID-19 the US had a record number of drug overdose deaths. Suicide rates had been down for a couple years then shot back up in 2020. Death rates for other illnesses like heart disease and cancer are likely to rise due to lack of routine health care access caused by the pandemic.

Then you have both the medical community and the media putting forth disingenuous numbers for deaths or even cases. It isn't that they are factually inaccurate but they are essentially inflated.

I don't agree the numbers are inflated. Overall case numbers of those infected is very likely much higher. As to COVID-19 deaths, yeah some of the people killed by the virus were suffering from other terminal illnesses or very advanced in age and probably near death anyway. Nevertheless, COVID-19 killed them before the other conditions could do so. If some guy with terminal bone cancer gets into a fatal car accident they count it as a car accident death, not cancer. It's funny how some people in the media are complaining about "inflated" COVID-19 death numbers because these people were going to die soon anyway. Yet they're using VAERS numbers to claim vaccinated people were killed by the vaccines even though those people either very old or suffering from other terminal illnesses.

But, as bad as the 600K deaths attributed to C19 are, we seem to be "okay" with 659K deaths/year attributed to heart disease.

Most deaths from heart disease and cancer are via personal lifestyle choices. The medical community is not okay with those numbers of deaths. They routinely lecture patients to eat right, get more exercise, etc. It is the American general public who is just fine with 600K+ deaths every year from heart disease. Currently it's almost a form of patriotic pride to eat and drink irresponsibly and not exercise. Some people even take offense at others who do things like eat a vegetarian diet, as if the person is some communist pansy for doing so.

[Steve Guttag]

Bobby,

The zero cases traced to cinemas is a world-wide situation, not just the USA...there are countries that performed proper contact tracing, still zero cases traced to any cinema. There are countries where movies never really shut down (mostly Asian countries), still zero contact tracing to any cinema. You have over 1-billion cinema admissions in 2020 and still nothing traced to a cinema. You'd think, with that many people going to the movies as a world-wide statement (yes, way down from norms but still a lot of data points), you'd get a hit, somewhere...particularly if one is going to label it a dangerous activity but zero, nothing. We've had our clients open, essentially since Labor Day...nothing, no employees nothing has come back to being traced to a cinema and none of them really have a masking requirement once you get into the theatre itself. Technically, you need to mask when you aren't eating/drinking but that quickly turns into nobody in the theatre is masking...just in the lobby/bathrooms.

If you or anyone has data that shows cinemas as being particularly risky venues, produce it or back off any claims that cinemas are particularly risky.

I don't agree the numbers are inflated. Overall case numbers of those infected is very likely much higher.

You can disagree all you want but the numbers tell a different story. And, my words were not "inflated" my words were "accurate but disingenuous." That is, they mislead people to thinking that all of the people that died in 2020 due to C19 would not have died in 2020. That simply is not the case. If you add up the excess deaths and compare against the leading causes of death, you'll find that the real number is about 10% less.

Your bold last statement

It is the American general public who is just fine with 600K+ deaths every year from heart disease.

seems to do nothing more than reaffirm what I stated "...we seem to be "okay" with 659K deaths/year attributed to heart disease." I never said that doctors were okay with it...I said "we." As in "we the people."

[Don Furr]

I'm one of the lucky ones. First Moderna on 1-14 second shot on 2-17. A little sore arm after the first dose but not after the second shot. Zero side effects from either shot. It was a walk in the park for me.

[Steve Guttag]

My wife got the Moderna vaccine and didn't report any significant side-effects. in fact, she didn't mention any side-effects at all.