Thoughts on Covid 19

[timm525]

On 2/11/2021 at 2:07 PM, Christine said:

On February 19th I will receive  my first dose of Covid vaccine. I'm ciúrious to see how I take it.

I’d recommend in the shoulder. 

[timm525]

On 2/11/2021 at 5:43 PM, miamijimf said:

Had my second shot of the Maderna vaccine yesterday.  Today I had chills and low grade fever for about 8 hrs but feel fine now.  Ref vaccines.  I read that they only prevent you from getting sick from the virus not from contracting or spreading it.  Also it supposedly takes two to three weeks after your last vaccination before you can build up enough antibodies to be useful in case of infection.  You hear so much virus stuff these days but I think this is good info.  What do you think?  Christine?  Thanks in advance.

Jim, my hospital told us it takes about two weeks after the second shot to get up to 95%ish effectiveness. You can also get the virus, become a carrier and pass it on without ever getting sick yourself. Typhoid Mary or in this case, Covid Jim 

[pahonu]

3 hours ago, miamijimf said:

Thanks guys, very informative.  What about the two to three weeks after your second shot to build up enough antibodies to keep you from getting sick?  Is this still speculative and really unknown because a lot about this virus is still unknown?  Not that I'm worried about it, I plan to continue to observe all anti-covid etiquette probably for a long long time. 

Hey Jim, a two to three week period to build up immunity is very typical of any vaccine.  This amount of time has far more to do with our own immune system response than it does with the particulars of the pathogen.  Stay safe.  

[jpaul1]

12 hours ago, miamijimf said:

Thanks guys, very informative.  What about the two to three weeks after your second shot to build up enough antibodies to keep you from getting sick?  Is this still speculative and really unknown because a lot about this virus is still unknown?  Not that I'm worried about it, I plan to continue to observe all anti-covid etiquette probably for a long long time. 

i agree lot of new information recently, that i have to confess is making me a bit thinkful. i was keen to get vaccinated, and i still am. but you open up TV, and you see actual vaccines are very poor against new variants, new variants are more dangerous, a dude that got old variant got refinfected 6 months later with new variant, and in a more severe way. so i'm too thinking a bit right now . i'm ok to get vaccinated. but what's the point of getting vaccinated if 1/ you can get reinfected 6 months later, 2/ you still can infect others

[timm525]

Well I suspect, and this is my own thinking (very dangerous), that this will end up being similar to the flu with many different strains out there. When you get the flu shot the shot contains what they believe to be the most prevalent strains for that season. It doesn’t make you flu proof, only that it protects you from the strains that were in the shot at that time or at least to some extent. Different strains can still get you.

I’m betting Covid will mutate similar to this. I’m foreseeing annual booster shots with different strains contained in them going forward. 

[Ferrariman]

2 hours ago, timm525 said:

I’m betting Covid will mutate similar to this. I’m foreseeing annual booster shots with different strains contained in them going forward. 

I could be wrong Tim but I remember  Dr. Fauci talking about people being afraid of getting sick from the vaccine.  He stated that unlike other vaccines, the covid vaccine does NOT contain any of the virus itself.

[miamijimf]

3 hours ago, timm525 said:

Well I suspect, and this is my own thinking (very dangerous), that this will end up being similar to the flu with many different strains out there. When you get the flu shot the shot contains what they believe to be the most prevalent strains for that season. It doesn’t make you flu proof, only that it protects you from the strains that were in the shot at that time or at least to some extent. Different strains can still get you.

I’m betting Covid will mutate similar to this. I’m foreseeing annual booster shots with different strains contained in them going forward. 

That makes sense, it is a flu-like illness, bet you're right.  Shots every year.  I've heard that more people die of the flu every year than covid-19, so far.  The flu doesn't go away because many people don't get the flu shot.  Many will not get the covid-19 vaccine, despite all the publicity, so unfortunately we can expect covid-19 to linger also.

jpaul1 made an interesting point, "i'm ok to get vaccinated. but what's the point of getting vaccinated if 1/ you can get reinfected 6 months later, 2/ you still can infect others"  If you are in a young age group with a very high survivability rate, why get vaccinated if you can still get infected and pass on the disease after vaccination?  Unless of course a new strain is more deadly to your group.

Edited February 13, 2021 by miamijimf

[jpaul1]

50 minutes ago, Ferrariman said:

I could be wrong Tim but I remember  Dr. Fauci talking about people being afraid of getting sick from the vaccine.  He stated that unlike other vaccines, the covid vaccine does NOT contain any of the virus itself.

there are sickness cases. i conceed they are very rare (according to the medias). but there were people who felt badly ill. as far as yesterday i heard a case of a guy, that felt so bad after the first astra zeneca shot, that he's considering not taking the 2nd shot

@jim: the flu is not deadly so it's not IMO reasonable to ask non aged people to take the shot every year. there's no risk with the flu of hospitals being overwhelmed

Edited February 13, 2021 by jpaul1

[Christine]

vor 17 Stunden schrieb timm525:

I’d recommend in the shoulder. 

Sorry, I think it was a translation mistake. Of course I'm only curious about how I can tolerate the vaccination. Be lenient with me. Always keep in mind that the forum is the only place I write English.

[Christine]

vor 5 Stunden schrieb jpaul1:

i agree lot of new information recently, that i have to confess is making me a bit thinkful. i was keen to get vaccinated, and i still am. but you open up TV, and you see actual vaccines are very poor against new variants, new variants are more dangerous, a dude that got old variant got refinfected 6 months later with new variant, and in a more severe way. so i'm too thinking a bit right now . i'm ok to get vaccinated. but what's the point of getting vaccinated if 1/ you can get reinfected 6 months later, 2/ you still can infect others

This is how they explained it to us: There are three ways a vaccine can work:
1. When the virus enters the body, it recognizes it immediately and fights it before it can enter the cells
2. The virus is fought as soon as it tries to enter the cells with a "key"
3. The virus penetrates the cells, but is prevented by the immune system from multiplying and thus making the host sick
The present vaccine takes effect if option number 3 is available. This means that you have the virus in your body and can pass it on to others, but you cannot get sick yourself. I think that's where researchers need to look for a better solution. Until this is found, we have to be content with what is available.

[Christine]

vor 1 Stunde schrieb Ferrariman:

I could be wrong Tim but I remember  Dr. Fauci talking about people being afraid of getting sick from the vaccine.  He stated that unlike other vaccines, the covid vaccine does NOT contain any of the virus itself.

Some time ago, the daughter of a patient spoke to a man who had worked for Biontec in Mainz for six years. There he translated the doctoral theses and other important documents and thus gained insight into many things that are used today to manufacture the vaccine. He said it was about a specific building block of protein that is used to act on the virus. With other vaccinations, for example polio, weakened viruses are used, with Covid this is not the case.

[miamijimf]

21 minutes ago, Christine said:

Sorry, I think it was a translation mistake. Of course I'm only curious about how I can tolerate the vaccination. Be lenient with me. Always keep in mind that the forum is the only place I write English.

Your English is fine.   Better than my German.

[Christine]

Gerade eben schrieb miamijimf:

Your English is fine.   Better than my German.

I've got a great friend who helps me. His name is Google Translator.

[Ferrariman]

4 hours ago, Christine said:

 Always keep in mind that the forum is the only place I write English.

I never would have guessed!  

[timm525]

4 hours ago, Christine said:

Sorry, I think it was a translation mistake. Of course I'm only curious about how I can tolerate the vaccination. Be lenient with me. Always keep in mind that the forum is the only place I write English.

I know, I was only teasing you. It was the way the translation came out that made me comment. I knew what you meant, I was just being silly. 

Your English is very good. 

[pahonu]

7 hours ago, miamijimf said:

That makes sense, it is a flu-like illness, bet you're right.  Shots every year.  I've heard that more people die of the flu every year than covid-19, so far.  The flu doesn't go away because many people don't get the flu shot.  Many will not get the covid-19 vaccine, despite all the publicity, so unfortunately we can expect covid-19 to linger also.

jpaul1 made an interesting point, "i'm ok to get vaccinated. but what's the point of getting vaccinated if 1/ you can get reinfected 6 months later, 2/ you still can infect others"  If you are in a young age group with a very high survivability rate, why get vaccinated if you can still get infected and pass on the disease after vaccination?  Unless of course a new strain is more deadly to your group.

In the US over the last decade or so, the number of yearly flu deaths ranged from a high of about 61,000 to a low of 12,000.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/past-seasons.html
 

COVID-19 deaths in the US have surpassed 480,000 in a little less than a year.  They are not comparable.  
 

Many people try to argue that the CDC has inflated the number of cases.  The CDC uses the same methodology to collect data on all mortalities in the US.  When these individuals ignore the evidence of covid and try to equate it to typical flu deaths, they are choosing to believe CDC flu data but disbelieve CDC covid data.  It makes no logical sense.

Something of interest I have been reading about recently is the dramatic reduction in flu cases this season because of people hand washing, social distancing, and wearing masks to avoid covid.  The number of flu cases and flu deaths will be unbelievably low because the same measures slow the spread of flu.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/4127197001

 

 

[pahonu]

10 hours ago, timm525 said:

Well I suspect, and this is my own thinking (very dangerous), that this will end up being similar to the flu with many different strains out there. When you get the flu shot the shot contains what they believe to be the most prevalent strains for that season. It doesn’t make you flu proof, only that it protects you from the strains that were in the shot at that time or at least to some extent. Different strains can still get you.

I’m betting Covid will mutate similar to this. I’m foreseeing annual booster shots with different strains contained in them going forward. 

Epidemiologists are already learning that yearly booster shots may indeed be necessary. 

[vicegirl85]

2 hours ago, pahonu said:

(snipped)

Something of interest I have been reading about recently is the dramatic reduction in flu cases this season because of people hand washing, social distancing, and wearing masks to avoid covid.  The number of flu cases and flu deaths will be unbelievably low because the same measures slow the spread of flu.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/4127197001

Flu cases dropped dramatically in 2020 once COVID-19 took off (although for the US this was in March and flu season typically starts winding down toward the end of March anyway).  The incidence of flu has been really low this flu season as well (since October, when the US flu season "officially" is considered to start).  I think it's very true that the masking, social distancing, and increased hand washing have slowed flu transmission, but I was also listening to a talk by an infectious disease specialist earlier in the week, and he said that a dominant virus (which obviously COVID is) can actually inhibit community incidence of other viruses, such as flu--separately from being inhibited by the public health measures we are using to prevent COVID transmission.  I thought this was very interesting.

[IA-SteveB]

I had my second dose January 21 but I haven't really changed my lifestyle that much.  I am still limiting my exposure to risk and being safe.  The first dose gave me the feeling of a deeply bruised arm for 4 days but I had no other side effects. The second dose produced no arm pain, but I did run a slight temp and had a headache with both starting about 12 hours after the injection.  After 12 more hours of feeling odd, it was like someone hit a button and I was perfectly fine.

Edited February 16, 2021 by IA-SteveB

[Eillio Martin Imbasciati]

Just now, IA-SteveB said:

I had my second dose January 21 but I haven't really changed my lifestyle that much.  I am still limiting my exposure to risk and being safe.  The first dose gave me the feeling of a deeply bruised arm for 4 days but I had no other side effects. The second dose produced no arm pain, but I did run a slight temp and had a headache for about 12 hours.  After the 12 hour mark it was like someone hit a button and I was perfectly fine.

Yeah, it looks like things are slowly headed in the right direction, but we aren't buckled for safety quite yet. I hear summertime is around the time when things are stabilized at a higher level.

[IA-SteveB]

Hopefully we are headed the right way, but some people thought last summer we would be back to normal. I feel safer with the vaccine and I trust the science.  It's other people who don't take this seriously and have no regard for the safety of others that I worry for ... and about.  If anyone is wondering, I work in healthcare so I qualified for a first phase vaccination.

Edited February 16, 2021 by IA-SteveB

[Christine]

Some of my collegues had their first dose of Astra Zenica within the last days and they all felt very ill for about two or three days.  I heard that in the German town Braunschweig they had stop to give this vaccination to nursing staff because of too many sick employees. I will get Astra Zenica too on Thursday and I'm not sure what to think about it after all these bad messages. Of course I will have to take the vaccine. I don't have a choice because I don't know what will happen if I deny the vaccination and get ill because of Corona.

[Eillio Martin Imbasciati]

1 minute ago, IA-SteveB said:

Hopefully we are headed the right way, but some people thought last summer we would be back to normal. I feel safer with the vaccine and I trust the science.  It's other people who don't take this seriously and have no regard for the safety of others that I worry for ... and about.

I agree, I always felt that this matter needed to be taken seriously. I know we all make mistakes and fill ourselves with "What if we did that instead?" or "If I only would've...?". But in this case, there's no pressure to make a snap decision, there's safeguards in place that we have to follow regardless, and being in denial about our current environment (that it's a worldwide conspiracy by "the man" to keep us down and take away our freedom(s)) won't make things better. So I say when things are back to regular, great! But until then, we'll just have to stay vigilant and take it one day at a time.

[IA-SteveB]

On 2/13/2021 at 6:14 AM, jpaul1 said:

i agree lot of new information recently, that i have to confess is making me a bit thinkful. i was keen to get vaccinated, and i still am. but you open up TV, and you see actual vaccines are very poor against new variants, new variants are more dangerous, a dude that got old variant got refinfected 6 months later with new variant, and in a more severe way. so i'm too thinking a bit right now . i'm ok to get vaccinated. but what's the point of getting vaccinated if 1/ you can get reinfected 6 months later, 2/ you still can infect others

You make a good point, but consider this. The vaccination is mRNA, so our bodies learn how to combat the virus based on a fingerprint, much like a computer virus.  There are now and will be future variants, but a common school of thought is that the body will be able to deal with them appropriately because there is enough there to identify it quickly and make antibodies.  If you do get infected by a variant, in theory its strength should be greatly diminished.  

Your last point is the exact reason why the vaccine isn't a free pass to go back to life as normal.  There is a new normal that will likely never change.  Unfortunately, society as a whole will not grasp that so we are in for a long run here.  The vaccine is lessening your exposure to risk but not entirely mitigating it.  People can get re-infected, but the severity has so many variables attached to it, most notably underlying conditions.  I really think some people's genetics make them more or less susceptible to the disease.  There have been an alarming number of otherwise healthy people (athletes, bodybuilders, etc) dying with no known conditions so there is more to it than just being in a high risk group.  Someday, science will have an answer for that mystery.

Edited February 16, 2021 by IA-SteveB

[Christine]

I think one day the time will come when normal life is possible. Think about all the deseases humans had to fight agianst within the last one or two hundred years. It was always horrible, but there was always a way to cope with and to get back to normal. We live in a time of scientic and we can make things possibel that were impossible about one hundred years ago.Therefore I'm sure that the time will come when we don't have to wear masks, can hug our family and friends and travel to other countries again.