Getting vaccinated

[Econoline]

Interestingly/appropriately this ad showed up (for me, anyway) in the middle of that Daily Mail article:

ad.png (53.21 KiB) Viewed 1103 times

[Econoline]

Hmm... How about a law saying that anyone can sue anyone who is not vaccinated for $10,000 in any civil court? Conservatives would think that's a really clever work-around, right? And the Supreme Court wouldn't even want to stop it from going into effect!

[TPFKA@W]

Well, amid all the positivity here concerning the vaccination I want to post something negative. I worked with a woman named Laura. Laura is an LPN who was serving as a unit manager where I was previously employed. She is about 55 years old if I were to guess. She appeared to me to be healthy and carries no extra weight, I am unsure of her smoking status. Laura took care of her mother on a daily basis in tandem with her sister, all in an effort to keep her mother out of a nursing facility. Laura has a fiance and a 24 year old daughter. Laura was a good little soldier and got the vaccine, twice as recommended. Soon after getting the vaccine Laura started having symptoms of a neurological nature. She started falling down for no reason and having what she described as pseudo-seizures, she was awake and aware through them. this went on for weeks and she was no longer able to work or drive because of the symptoms. As time passed she changed. She began to behave like someone who had a traumatic brain injury. She was in and out of the hospital. The Mayo clinic and Johns Hopkins were consulted. Diagnosis after diagnosis were considered and rejected. The best doctors in the country have no idea what is wrong with Laura. Day before yesterday I learned that Laura went into cardiac arrest and is on a vent.

I believe that the vaccine is the cause of this. It is just too close to the time she started having issues that she had the second dose.

It is a real thing that happens to some people who get vaccines. Vaccines are not a perfect solution and outcomes can be very negative.

Knowing what I know and watching Laura I would still throw the dice and take the vaccine and hope for a positive outcome because it is still the best option.

[Burning Petard]

Why do you believe the vaccine is the cause of this neurological problem? " Vaccines are not a perfect solution and outcomes can be very negative."

I absolutely agree. But not getting the vaccine has produced more than 600,000 deaths here in the USofA. Many of those younger (under 65) who were hospitalized with Covid19 are now long haulers with many debilitating conditions, including mental/neurological problems, cardiac difficulties, as well as blood-oxygenating problems.

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

I hope Laura improves especially, as you say, because she has folk depending on her and she appears to have done everything right. As you say: " . . . watching Laura I would still throw the dice and take the vaccine and hope for a positive outcome because it is still the best option." I absolutely agree.

Having said that, the CDC investigation of severe side effects (fever > 40C; hospitalization etc.) after Pfizer vaccination showed no statistically significant difference between those injected and placebo groups:

Serious adverse events were defined as any untoward medical occurrence that resulted in death, was life-threatening, required inpatient hospitalization or prolongation of existing hospitalization, or resulted in persistent disability/incapacity. The proportions of participants who reported at least 1 serious adverse event were 0.6% in the vaccine group and 0.5% in the placebo group. The most common serious adverse events in the vaccine group which were numerically higher than in the placebo group were appendicitis (7 in vaccine vs 2 in placebo), acute myocardial infarction (3 vs 0), and cerebrovascular accident (3 vs 1). Cardiovascular serious adverse events were balanced between vaccine and placebo groups. Two serious adverse events were considered by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as possibly related to vaccine: shoulder injury possibly related to vaccine administration or to the vaccine itself, and lymphadenopathy involving the axilla contralateral to the vaccine injection site. Otherwise, occurrence of severe adverse events involving system organ classes and specific preferred terms were balanced between vaccine and placebo groups

.

[BoSoxGal]

[BoSoxGal]

[Guinevere]

Well, amid all the positivity here concerning the vaccination I want to post something negative. I worked with a woman named Laura. Laura is an LPN who was serving as a unit manager where I was previously employed. She is about 55 years old if I were to guess. She appeared to me to be healthy and carries no extra weight, I am unsure of her smoking status. Laura took care of her mother on a daily basis in tandem with her sister, all in an effort to keep her mother out of a nursing facility. Laura has a fiance and a 24 year old daughter. Laura was a good little soldier and got the vaccine, twice as recommended. Soon after getting the vaccine Laura started having symptoms of a neurological nature. She started falling down for no reason and having what she described as pseudo-seizures, she was awake and aware through them. this went on for weeks and she was no longer able to work or drive because of the symptoms. As time passed she changed. She began to behave like someone who had a traumatic brain injury. She was in and out of the hospital. The Mayo clinic and Johns Hopkins were consulted. Diagnosis after diagnosis were considered and rejected. The best doctors in the country have no idea what is wrong with Laura. Day before yesterday I learned that Laura went into cardiac arrest and is on a vent.

I believe that the vaccine is the cause of this. It is just too close to the time she started having issues that she had the second dose.

It is a real thing that happens to some people who get vaccines. Vaccines are not a perfect solution and outcomes can be very negative.

Knowing what I know and watching Laura I would still throw the dice and take the vaccine and hope for a positive outcome because it is still the best option.

I'm sorry about Laura, but agree, that's not a reason to skip getting vaccinated, or getting the soon to be available boosters.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I suppose if the Ohio patient is at death's door and has tried the approved/accepted treatments (generally dexamethazone and remdesivir or variants thereof) then there is no harm clutching at the straw of an unproven drug. I hope it works for him.

That was posted after there was a report that an Ohio judge had ordered a hospital to administer ivermectin to a patient on a ventilator.

The hospital refused based on the fact that the drug was a waste of time unproven. Apparently another Ohio judge has reversed that order.

[Econoline]

American exceptionalism:

[BoSoxGal]

Today I got my seasonal flu shot and my first dose of Shingrix. That was around 1pm EST and I’m just starting to feel a little bit lousy now.

Pharmacist asked if I wanted both in one arm or one in each, I chose the latter. This way I know that the Shingrix vaccine hurts about 4x as much as the flu shot - not while getting it, but the soreness after.

[Scooter]

Shingrix is a bitch. I've never had to take pain reliever for arm soreness from any other shot, but couldn't sleep without it after this one. Then 24 hours of pretty high fever and general icky feeling after both doses.

[MajGenl.Meade]

Meanwhile, in a country where only 16% have been vaccinated and concern is growing:

A study published in August showed that while vaccine acceptance stood at 72% among South African adults, uptake was some way off that figure.

Among population categories, younger people were less likely to accept vaccines than older people. While the acceptance rate for those aged 55+ stood at 85%, for the 18-24 group, it was only 55%.

The data also shows a difference in South Africa’s different community groups, with the Indian and Asian South Africans most willing to be vaccinated (71%), followed by black South Africans (64%), white South Africans (53%), and coloured South Africans the least willing (45%).

Some hesitancy is attributed to mistrust of the government (among coloured people especially) altho' this survey does not appear to show that. It may not be unconnected to the successive roll-out and then halt on both AstraZeneca and J&J back in March/April - the shipping of a million or more shots OUT of South AFRICA and destruction of many more because of those halts - and the long drawn out government failure to get the available doses distributed.

We are a long way from herd immunity here.

[ex-khobar Andy]

BSG I'm surprised your pharmacist offered to do the two injections in the same arm: CDC guidance is that if administered on the same day (which is safe, given the nature of the vaccines) they should be at different anatomical sites - e.g., different arms.

I had the Shingrix jab last year - no soreness.

PS - Meade - I did not know that RSA still used the apartheid era 'coloured' racial classification. I had assumed that that died a death along with apartheid itself.

[MajGenl.Meade]

ex-kA, well it's rather like Asian-American or African-American or Irish-American, etc. Those were at one time or another the basis for discrimination against the group. In theory, that's no longer the case. We know how well theory works.

So the four groups here are largely OK with self-identification because there is no longer any official discrimination on the basis of classification. Government steals from all South Africans without regard to race, creed, color or conscience. The legacy of apartheid lives on of course. Average income levels are white/Indian-Asian/colored/black in order of decreasing magnitude - and unemployment is of course black/colored/Indian-Asian/white in order, high to low. For some reason, educational achievement mirrors the average income numbers.

The vaccine survey is a bit of a surprise because the accustomed order is scrambled. Not a function of material standing, employment, or general education. An affinity of responses among white (Afrikaners) and colored is possibly to do with a cultural scepticism about truth and government*. Since both groups speak Afrikaans to each other and amongst themselves, there is a certain common identity (though both may deny it). Perhaps because the colored group has plenty of Afrikaner blood and vice versa.

*I often wonder whether some Afrikaners and English-speaking whites lost faith in the government of 1988 because it lied to them too and/or because it "caved" - and then began 1994 with an automatic distrust of government by non-swimmers. For blacks, the 1988 and prior version was an outright enemy and in recent years the sheer ineptitude and dishonesty of the post-Mandela/Mbeke governments, both national and local, have soured them on the ANC. Though that won't stop the reflex vote for "us".

[BoSoxGal]

Shingrix is a bitch. I've never had to take pain reliever for arm soreness from any other shot, but couldn't sleep without it after this one. Then 24 hours of pretty high fever and general icky feeling after both doses.

My arm was killing me by 1am, had to take a couple of ibuprofen to take the edge off for sleeping. This morning I feel like I ran into a brick wall lol. Basically all the symptoms except fever and shivering - body aches fatigue headache upset tummy. Still nothing compared to shingles!

[Scooter]

Everyone else I have spoken to says the second shot is easier than the first. That wasn't true for me, but hopefully you'll stay with the norm.

[TPFKA@W]

Everyone else I have spoken to says the second shot is easier than the first. That wasn't true for me, but hopefully you'll stay with the norm.

Is your HIV status a factor in making it suckier than the norm?

[Scooter]

I don't know. Some of those I spoke to are also HIV+.

[BoSoxGal]

This is funny - especially because tattoo ink isn’t regulated by the FDA or any government body and ingredients in the ink are not usually disclosed to the recipient. So much for objecting to unknown substances lol.