Coronavax experiences?

[Leo Enticknap]

Most of Europe, the UK, and now ourselves, have now stopped inbound air travel from most of Southern Africa. As passenger air travel is now known to be the quickest vector for worldwide spread, I guess this "shoot first and answer the questions later" approach is the only sensible one; but I feel for the economic damage it will cause in Africa (especially Botswana and Namibia, the economies of which depend heavily on safari-type tourism) and to the airline industry.

On a more selfish note, I have relatives booked to come and visit over Christmas from the UK, and so am crossing fingers that this doesn't spread into another near complete ban on intercontinental passenger travel. The last one did carry an exemption for the parents, children, and siblings of US Citizens, but using that would still have required my family members to do a 14-day hotel quarantine on arrival back home.

[Bobby Henderson]

And now there is a yet another new variant, one called B.1.1.529. It was identified in South Africa. Early word is this variant shows the most mutation out of SARS-CoV-2 variants so far. Compared to the Delta variant this new bug may have enhanced transmissibility and a greater ability to evade immunity in people who have been previously vaccinated and/or beat COVID-19 infection.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I got the third shot Aug. 16th and didn't even have a sore arm like I did with the first two shots. I feel lucky!

The booster is a very small dose. Even the vial is micro minature...

[Don Furr]

I got the third shot Aug. 16th and didn't even have a sore arm like I did with the first two shots. I feel lucky!

[Martin McCaffery]

Got Pfizer #3 a week ago Friday. The injection spot hurt for two days, more than I remember the first two hurting, and that was it. Boarding an airplane and visiting DC for Christmas, so glad to be boosted.

[Bobby Henderson]

I think my arm was more sore with the first Pfizer shot than it was after the second jab. The next morning after shot #1 I was a bit nauseous, feeling like I had a slight hangover. The symptom disappeared by mid-day. With shot #2 I went to bed an hour or so earlier than usual that evening and I had a noticeable (but not serious) headache the next day. I'm not sure what to expect with shot #3.

Either you can't do math, or, the more likely cause, you mistyped the month and meant to say "May."

No, I just didn't do the math right. I don't know what the hell I was thinking at the time, but somehow I got it in my head that I would need the booster in November. And that's on top of having a birthday in May and previously knowing November was the halfway mark between birthdays. Not that it really makes much difference, the gub'ment only opened booster eligibility for everyone over age 18 just a few days ago.

[Leo Enticknap]

How did you do with the initial two Pfizer jabs? Was the booster even worse?

Nothing whatsoever after #1, but two days of nausea, joint pains, fatigue, and hot/cold spells after #2, with the joint pains taking around a week to go away completely. The booster was a slightly less severe version of #2: everything except the joint pain was gone within 24-36 hours, but there is still a bit of residual soreness in my ankles, knees, shoulders, and elbows, three days later. Nothing more than a minor annoyance, though.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Got my first two shots in March. Only the second one affected me slightly. Got the third one two weeks ago, no effects at all from that one.

[Steve Guttag]

Bobby,

March 26, so I'm 3 days shy of the 6 month mark

Either you can't do math, or, the more likely cause, you mistyped the month and meant to say "May."

[Frank Cox]

My wife and I both got Moderna. The first shot was nothing; it didn't bother either of us at all. The second shot didn't bother my wife at all (again) but I had a really bad night with joint pains and chills starting just about exactly 12 hours after I got the shot, and I was really run down and tired all of the following day.

But it was well worth it.

As soon as we're eligible for boosters (probably sometime around Christmas) we'll be right there to get those too.

We both are fully vaccinated and now everyone 12-and-up who comes to the show has to show their proof of vaccination at the door. If it wasn't for those two things, I don't think I would have my theatre operating at this time. But as it is, I feel pretty confident that everyone (customers and us) is safe here.

[Bobby Henderson]

I got my second Pfizer shot on March 26, so I'm 3 days shy of the 6 month mark. I'll probably go to my neighborhood Walgreens store for the booster shot and probably not have to wait any time at all to get it. We still have a lot of unvaccinated people in my county after all. I think the ones who haven't had at least one shot by now aren't going to get vaccinated at all.

I'm still leaning toward getting Pfizer booster, although I've heard mixing vaccine types (such as 2 Pfizer shots followed by a Moderna booster) can yield even more effective results. The problem is everyone I know who had the Moderna vaccine experienced medium to fairly bad flu-like symptoms. I may get a flu shot at the same time just for good measure.

Had a booster (Pfizer again) on Sunday. Felt abysmal yesterday - really bad joint pain in my ankles, knees, elbows and shoulders, hot and cold spells, and a slight headache and nausea. A lot better this morning, but the joint pain is still there.

How did you do with the initial two Pfizer jabs? Was the booster even worse?

I timed my first two Pfizer shots on Fridays to have the weekend for recovery if needed. This coming Friday a couple people are going to install five new windows in my house. So I'll have to get the booster either during the weekend or wait until December 3.

[Steve Guttag]

Hmmm, my 3rd shot was also Pfizer and it was a repeat of shot 2. Sore arm for a couple-three days. I got the flu shot at the same time. The C19 was the dominate sore arm but after about day-2...as C19 soreness went down, the Flu shot soreness didn't increase but it became the slightly more dominant feeling. Fortunately, I didn't have any of the other symptoms that Leo just described.

However, this past week, I did get a cold!

[Leo Enticknap]

Had a booster (Pfizer again) on Sunday. Felt abysmal yesterday - really bad joint pain in my ankles, knees, elbows and shoulders, hot and cold spells, and a slight headache and nausea. A lot better this morning, but the joint pain is still there.

[Bobby Henderson]

The whole story that the Chinese government would willingly release a potentially deadly virus to their own public, a virus they themselves cannot control, in order to infect the world and wreak havoc on the world just doesn't pass muster. It's actually so absurd, it's laughable people are willing to subscribe to those ideas.

Logic, or even plausibility, is not a prerequisite for conspiracy theories in the US. They only need to patronize some kind of bias for people to consume them and then parrot them to other willing ears. Numerous talking heads on TV make a lot of money by passing such bullshit along to viewers. They're making a lot of money because there are LOTS of such viewers.

It's a failure decades in the making... If you raise decades and decades of ignorant people, this is exactly what you get. Let this be a lesson for all those other "Western Democracies" that think you can simply throw your educational system out of the window... The U.S. seems to be a few years ahead in about everything, but the gap is closing fast and stupidity and incompetence isn't an U.S. exclusivity, it's truly international...

Historically there is a lot of "American" innovations that came from the minds of foreigners who emigrated to this country. Currently this nation is growing ever more dependent on foreign-born talent, not only for innovative purposes in science and technology, but increasingly for more of the "grunt level" work with engineering, medical work, etc. Shit, if it weren't for foreign-born students a bunch of American universities would end up in deep financial trouble.

I can say with authority America's public school sector has a lot of deep, structural problems. I grew up as a Marine Corps brat and via that experience I attended 10 different public schools from elementary level through high school. The best quality schools I attended were DOD-operated schools on Marine Corps bases (in Iwakuni, Japan and Quantico, VA). The rest were varying degrees between good and shitty. None of these schools were on the same page in terms of standards, curriculum and quality.

During 10th grade I attended 3 high schools that year. We moved from the New Orleans area to Quantico, but had to stay one quarter out in New Mexico with my Mom's relatives while my Dad attended Warrant Officer School. When I got to Quantico High I found myself well behind other students there. Thank you to local school district autonomy.

Here in Oklahoma we have 520 different school districts. I don't understand why we need that many. But that's 520 varying levels of inequity. If a kid is lucky enough to be born in an affluent district with a lot of big homes he'll probably attend schools that have great teachers and lots of resources. And that's assuming his parents allow him to attend public school rather than a private school. In another not-so-rich zip code the same kid might be totally screwed. Oh, but we have "charter schools" popping up now. Here's even more lack of standards coming into the picture, sold under the banner of "school choice." A bunch of these operations are fly by night scam outfits, designed to suck up tax dollars and/or tuition fees until the scheme falls apart. We've already had a number of charter school operations in Oklahoma close, often closing without warning, leaving students adrift in the middle of the school year. Normally a student gets to repeat a grade for goofing off, not because his school suddenly went out of business.

Then we have our higher education sector. For all the bitching I hear of how politically biased colleges can be, I think the far louder problem is how over-priced they have become. The price inflation is just about as insane as America's health care sector. For the sheer cost of many of these degrees students will be hard pressed to get a good return on the investment. A lot of high school kids would be far better off attending a vocational-technology school and learning a good trade. My brother is a diesel mechanic. He never went to college. But he makes more money than me.

The United States is currently doing a LOT of things to set up a very grim future. Parenthood is quickly becoming an unaffordable luxury to many young adults, never mind the travesties going on with the education sector. Under the current and worsening population trends in another 10-20 years this nation will have a hard time staffing many industries and staffing its military. Our population will be increasingly elderly. And we won't have the economy or tax base to support that situation.

[Marcel Birgelen]

If this pandemic was really some sinister anti-American plot by the Chinese government, the anti-vax, anti-mask crowd is really doing a bang-up job of playing right into Chinese government hands. They're doing that by making themselves available hosts to the virus and giving the virus the opportunity to evolve into something even more dangerous. Consider the demographic COVID-19 is killing more and more -a lot of older, politically conservative white people who don't like China. The angle of eating the horse paste just adds a nice level of comic relief to an otherwise very depressing and frustrating saga.

The whole story that the Chinese government would willingly release a potentially deadly virus to their own public, a virus they themselves cannot control, in order to infect the world and wreak havoc on the world just doesn't pass muster. It's actually so absurd, it's laughable people are willing to subscribe to those ideas.

Would they try to cover-up any accidental release or mishandling of such an outbreak? Sure, that's exactly what they did and we knew they would be doing it.

But that entire discussion doesn't make the virus go away and constantly blaming it on them by calling it the Chinese virus also won't make it go away and won't make them feel guilty about a thing. If anything you play into the hands of their quasi-dictatorial government, as they'll use this kind of material as evidence for derogatory practices performed by "the West", namely the USA...

My point is that the situation we now find ourselves in - around a third of the population refusing to be vaccinated, and governments resorting to sanctions and coercion in response - is fundamentally a political failure.

It's a failure decades in the making... If you raise decades and decades of ignorant people, this is exactly what you get. Let this be a lesson for all those other "Western Democracies" that think you can simply throw your educational system out of the window... The U.S. seems to be a few years ahead in about everything, but the gap is closing fast and stupidity and incompetence isn't an U.S. exclusivity, it's truly international...

But hey, that's why people start voting for reality-star presidents with a sub-zero IQ on visible display, selling snake oil medicine to the masses and causing news media all over the country to start panicking and post warnings that drinking bleach might not be the greatest idea...

The very fact that we're talking about thousands of people eating horse medicine as an alternative for a vaccine... this is more than just a single presidential term worth of damage we're seeing here, caused by political parties of BOTH colors...