The COVID Vaccination Thread (1 Viewer)

[cineMANIAC]

Buddy of mine from the UK will be waiting 12 weeks for his second jab. Apparently that's how their vaccine, AstraZeneca, works. Every region is different but 4 months seems excessive.

 

[Carlo_M]

Buddy of mine from the UK will be waiting 12 weeks for his second jab. Apparently that's how their vaccine, AstraZeneca, works. Every region is different but 4 months seems excessive.

As I noted earlier, some countries made tough choices due to lack of enough vaccine. Their choices were to vaccinate a smaller number of people fully, while others had to wait to even get one shot. Or to double the amount of people they could vaccinate, to provide partial protection, but it meant exhausting their available supply and delaying when people could get their second dose (hence the 4 month wait). Robert mentioned Tony is in Canada. It is well established they have a vaccine shortage.

It was a Sophie's Choice type of thing: protect less people fully, or more people partially. There were good arguments for either path.

 

[PMF]

When my mom received the first Pfizer shot they told her to move her arm around - at least once an hour !

Get her a baseball, get yourself a catcher's mitt and wind yourselves up for spring training.

 

[Tony Bensley]

I plan to take some ibuprofen after my second dose in a little over 4 months. After my first dose two weeks ago, all I had was a single regular strength Advil tablet that I ended up saving for bedtime. I'm glad that I did, as there was no way I was getting to sleep otherwise, but it would have been nice to have had more at the time!

CHEERS!

You have to wait 4 months between doses?

I don’t know in which country Tony resides, but some made the decision to get as many people their first dose as possible to provide partial protection, which meant a delay in getting their second doses due to constrained supplies.

Tony is in Canada.

Yes, and at 16 weeks, Canada unfortunately has the longest mandated gap between COVID vaccine doses, in the world. The 12 week interval in the UK is the next longest that I'm aware of.

It is what it is. I'm hoping at some point, this might get reduced somewhat, especially with the other variants that are taking hold.

CHEERS!

 

[Tony Bensley]

As I noted earlier, some countries made tough choices due to lack of enough vaccine. Their choices were to vaccinate a smaller number of people fully, while others had to wait to even get one shot. Or to double the amount of people they could vaccinate, to provide partial protection, but it meant exhausting their available supply and delaying when people could get their second dose (hence the 4 month wait). Robert mentioned Tony is in Canada. It is well established they have a vaccine shortage.

It was a Sophie's Choice type of thing: protect less people fully, or more people partially. There were good arguments for either path.

That Canada is also wholly dependent on procuring supply from other countries that manufacture their own vaccine, is also a significant factor. Any surplus on your end is always good news to us in that it means at least some much needed additional vaccine units for Canada! I did hear this morning that we are expecting large shipments to arrive next week.

CHEERS!

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The silver lining is the data so far is indicating that the first dose still offers very good protection, particularly against the worst outcomes. If you were to catch it sometime after the first dose had time to take effect (2-3 weeks) but before the second dose, the most likely outcome is that you’d have a mild case that was less transmissible due to its mildness resulting a lesser viral load. Which makes the whole thing a lot less scary. If the consequence is you get a cold, that’s a lot better than needing a ventilator.

 

[JohnRice]

The silver lining is the data so far is indicating that the first dose still offers very good protection, particularly against the worst outcomes. If you were to catch it sometime after the first dose had time to take effect (2-3 weeks) but before the second dose, the most likely outcome is that you’d have a mild case that was less transmissible due to its mildness resulting a lesser viral load. Which makes the whole thing a lot less scary. If the consequence is you get a cold, that’s a lot better than needing a ventilator.

Yes, one study indicated 80% effectiveness and no serious illness two weeks after the first shot. Honestly, that's better than almost any other vaccine, so delaying the second shot in order to vaccinate more people was the best solution

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m still amazed we have vaccines. A year ago, the facts on the ground were that no successful vaccine had ever been made in less than five years, and no one had ever before been successful at creating a vaccine against any kind of coronavirus. To go from that to shots in arms in such a short time is an impressive feat. I genuinely believed we’d be stuck at square one for another four years.

 

[cineMANIAC]

I’m still amazed we have vaccines. A year ago, the facts on the ground were that no successful vaccine had ever been made in less than five years, and no one had ever before been successful at creating a vaccine against any kind of coronavirus. To go from that to shots in arms in such a short time is an impressive feat. I genuinely believed we’d be stuck at square one for another four years.

Scientists had been working on this type of vaccine for at least a decade so the groundwork had already been laid. Still an impressive feat that they were able to create such an effective vaccine for Covid so quickly.

 

[Malcolm R]

They'd been studying the mRNA vaccine option for years, so it wasn't complete magic. I believe they thought about using it for SARS and MERS in the past, but neither of those became a major worldwide pandemic so interest and money dried up quickly. Once COVID became a worldwide problem, they had the resources needed to quickly bring them into use.

Part of what's driving vaccine hesitancy is that many do think this was some completely "out of thin air" vaccine. That's just not the case.

Edit: Yeah, what Luis said.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It’s one thing to know that as an intellectual thing that you read about in the background (which I had over the years), but it’s even more remarkable to see it play out in real time!

 

[JohnRice]

It’s one thing to know that as an intellectual thing that you read about in the background (which I had over the years), but it’s even more remarkable to see it play out in real time!

It's the same logic that says it's not worth the risk to take a vaccine that had one death in 7 million doses (which was probably due to improper treatment) when for every 7 million people who get COVID, about 110,000 die and as many as a million are at risk of long term problems from the disease.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m not sure I agree or maybe missing your point. I was simply saying that it’s incredible to actually see the new vaccine technology that’s been in development for so long being put to use to create something on a scale and on a timetable that’s never been done for the general public in human history. It’s a remarkable achievement.

 

[jayembee]

I’m still amazed we have vaccines. A year ago, the facts on the ground were that no successful vaccine had ever been made in less than five years, and no one had ever before been successful at creating a vaccine against any kind of coronavirus. To go from that to shots in arms in such a short time is an impressive feat. I genuinely believed we’d be stuck at square one for another four years.

Unforuntately, it is exactly this that creates hesitancy in getting the vaccine for too many people. Just tonight on our local news, they gave the results of a poll. Somewhere circa 22% of people here in the Hamster Shire claim that they don't want to get the vaccine. The largest group of those people said it was because they didn't think the vaccine was safe. The other reasons were somewhat evenly divided between people who didn't believe the vaccine was effective, and those who believed that Covid wasn't enough of a threat to them.

 

[JohnRice]

It's the same logic that says it's not worth the risk to take a vaccine that had one death in 7 million doses (which was probably due to improper treatment) when for every 7 million people who get COVID, about 110,000 die and as many as a million are at risk of long term problems from the disease.

I was agreeing with you, if doing it badly.

EDIT: Somehow I quoted myself when I intended to quote Josh. So no, I wasn't responding to myself.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

That’s a shame and I don’t get it. We love new technology when it comes to pretty much everything - cars, computers, home delivery, air travel, etc, etc. I guess it’s a weird human quirk but we’re seeing marvels happen before our eyes and I think it’s something to celebrate and embrace.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

That’s a shame and I don’t get it. We love new technology when it comes to pretty much everything - cars, computers, home delivery, air travel, etc, etc. I guess it’s a weird human quirk but we’re seeing marvels happen before our eyes and I think it’s something to celebrate and embrace.

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[Malcolm R]

The largest group of those people said it was because they didn't think the vaccine was safe.

And of course these are all people with full MD or scientific degrees and training, and have a full understanding of vaccine research and development procedures, forwards and backwards.

Had my second shot of Pfizer today. So far, just a bit of an ache in my arm. We'll see what it's like tomorrow.

 

[JohnRice]

That’s a shame and I don’t get it. We love new technology when it comes to pretty much everything - cars, computers, home delivery, air travel, etc, etc. I guess it’s a weird human quirk but we’re seeing marvels happen before our eyes and I think it’s something to celebrate and embrace.

Unfortunately, this treads the line of HTF rules, but when someone who has 30 Million nightly viewers innocently states "Maybe the vaccines don't work and they're just not telling us" there's going to be a lot of hesitancy.

 

[Bert Greene]

Well, it's been exactly two months since I got my 2nd Pfizer dosage (Feb. 23rd), and I think I'd be remiss if I didn't go ahead and offer my voice to this discussion, for what it's worth. Earlier, I'd mentioned after my 2nd shot, I did have a pretty rotten 24 hours... muscle-aches, headache, and a ringing in my ears. All of this resolved itself rather quickly, except for the ear-ringing (tinnitus it's called), which has lingered on all this time, and gotten extremely annoying. I've never had this problem in my entire life, but now, day-and-night, continuously, I've had what sounds like a (high-frequency) field of crickets in my ears. Sometimes the frequency seems to lower a little to approximate more of a bell-sound. But it hasn't gone away for a single minute these past two months.

I can somewhat ignore it when I watch discs, or listen to music, as it seems rendered more of a background hiss. But in the quiet of the night, when I usually like to read a book, or later on, go to bed, that ringing seems all the louder, and I really, really have to concentrate my mind to mentally ignore it. Like I said, it's been two months of this now, and I'm growing quite weary of it. So even though I still appreciate the 'liberation' the vaccine provided, I'm becoming a less-happy camper each new morning I wake up to that ringing. If there's some 3rd 'booster' shot coming down the pike later in the year, to cover some new mutated form of Covid, I'm going to take a pass on it. I really believe I'd like to gamble getting Covid (I'm in healthy shape, with no chronic problems) and overcoming it, rather than take my chances with what could perhaps turn into a lifetime of unending tinnitus. In fact, even as things stand now, I have no idea if this is ever going to go away. I tend to think surely it will. But there's no guarantee of even that.