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Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of August 29
This thread is posted weekly, and is intended as a place for more-casual discussion of the coronavirus and questions/updates that may not warrant their own dedicated topics. Tell us about what the situation is like where you live!
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/08/31/1120241293/fda-authorizes-first-revamp-of-covid-vaccines-to-target-omicron
Great news.
I’m coming up on a full year out from my last booster and have been waiting — both patiently and anxiously — to see if I’d finally be approved for a second one. I know I could technically just get it by lying, but I’m more comfortable following the guidelines.
Now that I’m back in school and exposed likely on the daily, I’ll be getting this as soon as it’s available. I know most people are treating COVID like it’s a distant memory at this point, but I know several people who have gotten it recently (including my own parents, who are not yet over it completely).
Also, each winter has seen a huge spike in my area, so if I can go into that maximally protected, I’ll feel a lot better.
EDIT: Is there any information out there about which booster to select for J&J recipients? I got J&J for my first vaccine with Moderna for my first booster. If anybody has any pointers, let me know. I’m also going to reach out to my doctor.
Agreed about a lot of people treating it like it's over, but I'm going to continue getting boosters for the same reason I got flu shots before the pandemic even started. Because I want to live to be 100.
I had the same sequence, J&J and then a Moderna booster. I figure I'll get a Pfizer for my next one, just to try and take advantage of all the differences?
Looking forward to getting it. I've already had either BA.4 or BA.5 and don't want to get the other.
I'm curious about how others are treating this odd liminal state we seem to be in: Covid still raging but all restrictions lifted and guidance being ignored.
My own experience/take: My partner and I have been pretty cautious during covid, only stepping our toes out of masks in indoor settings when the infection rate is under 20 people per 100k in our county. We have incredibly different levels of risk tolerance (I have quite a high threshold while she is very risk adverse) so negotiating Covid has caused some friction for us and we have largely deferred to her level of caution. I finally caught Covid (likely BA.4 or BA.5) at a wedding back in July and my partner has still managed to avoid it. We're still behaving as though it's September 2020, no longer washing our groceries but still avoiding crowds/indoor functions as much as possible, limiting travel, and masking up when all else is not possible. But when we go anywhere, masks have effectively vanished. We may see one or two at grocery store, none at any of the more social locations (i.e. breweries or climbing gyms), and it's starting to wear on me. From my perspective, we are as vaccinated as we can be, perfectly healthy, have no one in our circle with high risk health issues we might impact, and honestly, I'm starting to find the end of my patience with everything. I'm sick of having to explain why I'm wearing a mask to friends, co-workers, waiters... freaking anyone. Or why I can't participate in a friends birthday because they are hosting at a restaurant and everyone will be eating inside. I can't tell if our risk calculus is way off or if everyone else has just thrown in the towel. I know as a society we're not at the point of Covid being endemic yet. I know that Covid is on a freaking run at the moment and has been for months. I know these things and yet I really want to join everyone just living. I don't think that will be possible with my partner's comfort level but it would be awesome to get some personal insights from Tildes (i.e. a group of folks who seems to be pretty thoughtful, empathetic, and measured when deciding how to interact with the world).
Once the Omicron wave was over I dropped any effort to prevent myself from getting covid. They way I see it, this could be the reality for the rest of my life. I'm comfortable getting the vaccines (planning to get the new one ASAP) and ended up fine after getting one of the hot new variants this summer. If anything I'm far more out-and-about than I was pre Covid. It's currently killing people at a rate that is around 3x what a bad flu season is like. I think if Covid started as 3x the flu instead of a complete unknown - maybe 20x worse than the flu - we would have never had the response we had in 2020.
To be fair I'm young and healthy, no risk factors, fully vaccinated with a booster and now have some extra natural immunity. I feel like there's such a minuscule risk of serious harm to me at this point it's below my concern of car-related injury. Individuals are free as they always were to live an intensely risk-adverse life. And now it's easier with the popularity of remote work and grocery delivery. But most people have ran the math on life missed vs. loss of health and picked normalcy.
Edit:
I think what I keep seeing where people say stuff like "Did I miss the memo? We're still in a pandemic" is a result of a slow decline in risk. There was not and may never be a "it's finally over" moment. The last 6 months have been notable for the lack of relationship between infection rates and death rates (at least in the US). Deaths are flat, even when infections rise by 100s of %s. Hospitals understand now how to treat Covid and we have anti-virals with a mostly vaccinated population. This is not 2020. We're worse off than before but I think it's fair to drop the effort from a combination of fatigue and lowered risk.
My wife and I are in the same boat as you are safetywise, though fortunately we're in an area where we've gotten zero pushback on our boundaries. It makes everything a good bit easier. I did have to push back recently with friends, where they planned for us to grab dinner without talking about indoor/outdoor dining but picked a restaurant with zero outdoor options, but when I said I wouldn't be able to come we were all able to get it to go and have a great time in their back yard.
I recently heard co-workers talk about how the covid vaccine gave them long covid symptoms. I don't believe them and think there is a reasonable explanation - they got covid right before/after the vaccine. Has anyone ran the numbers on the % of people claiming more than mild covid symptoms after the vaccine vs. the % of people that would have had covid by chance right around vaccination? We know the vaccines are not completely effective, and not effective at all right away. The must be some large group of people, but a small proportion, that could draw a timeline showing a false cause and effect between the vaccine and severe symptoms.
This article claims long covid is possible with vaccination, but extremely rare. Taking that risk into account--it is still better to get the vaccine to reduce the severity of covid taking a sledgehammer to an unprepared immune system. Highly unlikely regarding your co-workers, but not impossible.
Consider that 100s of thousands of people work for this company and this was on an internal message board.
Like I said - I'm thinking they were not actually vaccinated. If you get covid right after vaccination you are not prepared for the virus.
If you get covid right after vaccination--you are somewhat prepared for the virus. The effectiveness varies depending on what vaccine you get, but you're far above 0% in that two week period. Efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine was initially 52% effective, and that percentage would climb over two weeks. Moderna started off around 80%. Those percentages have probably changed, but what you're suggesting is not accurate.
Edit: I'm pulling from 2021 numbers that I had bookmarked. Two of my family members died as a direct result of vaccine misinformation so I'm a bit prickly about it.