Weekly coronavirus-related chat, questions, and minor updates - week of May 17

Some aren’t ready to give up masks despite new CDC guidance

I’m in the camp of mask wearing. I’ll continue to wear a mask even when we get through this. Not all the time, but through flu season or if I have the sniffles etc. I also enjoy wearing my mask, it’s another way to hide.

Throughout the pandemic I’ve had nightmares that I’m in a movie theater (I used to go to the theater often) and I’m sitting there enjoying the movie. And then I realize “oh shit I don’t have a mask” and then I look around me and I realize no one else has a mask. So then I start having a panic attack like “oh my god I’m gonna die now.”

I had a similar dream a few days ago, but instead of panicking I went “oh I don’t have a mask, but it’s okay because I don’t need a mask anymore since I’m vaccinated.” It was very odd to me how that entered my subconscious.

There’s a lot of stuff I want to do again, like go the movie theater now that they’re open where I live, but there’s still a fear there. I feel like I’m still gonna die or something. I also want to eat at a restaurant again, and go clubbing for the first time. But I can’t see myself doing that because I’m still shocked when I see someone without a mask. And whenever I’m watching a movie with a party I go “well that’s not safe.” It’s gonna be a weird transition for me.

Just got my first dose of Pfizer this morning!

I was relatively impressed by the clinic overall - people sat in spaced-out chairs, and a nurse with a cart and her own wheeled chair was assigned to each row and she would just go down the line. I feel like it would have been pretty quick, but the poor man who got his shot immediately before me fainted. He was a big guy and he sounded like he hit the ground pretty hard, although thankfully I don't think he hit his head... the nurse who was mid-questionnaire with me obviously bailed to go help him, and he kept trying to stand up while three or four nurses swarmed him to keep him down and helped him out on the floor.

So, um, other than that it was pretty good. I speculated in a thread a couple weeks ago that I might get weepy about it, and I almost did beforehand, but I got knocked out of sentimentality real fast. Poor guy.

Second shot was last week. Both shots made me tired for a day, the second also had a mild on-again off-again headache. By the second day after the second shot I felt great.

I did finally get my answer if I had covid last Jan. The doctor who was giving me my second shot was a local and he had it just after the new year - confirmed with tests. There was a covid wave here about three months before that word started showing up on the news and we all went into quarantine.

So, far as I can tell, I had the real thing before it was newsworthy and now I've had two Pfizer shots. I'll line up for a booster in a couple years, or anything that might offer immunity to new strains as they pop up. Having it is not an experience I'd care to repeat, week long fever dreams aren't my idea of a good time.

Mix-and-match COVID vaccines trigger potent immune response

Vaccinating people with both the Oxford–AstraZeneca and Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines produces a potent immune response against the virus SARS-CoV-2, researchers conducting a study in Spain have found.

Preliminary results from the trial of more than 600 people — announced in an online presentation on 18 May — are the first to show the benefits of combining different coronavirus vaccines. A UK trial of a similar strategy reported safety data last week, and is expected to deliver further findings on immune responses soon.

She’s Leading the Fight Against Mandatory Vaccines in Texas. She Also Happens to Be a Nurse.

Bridges has threatened to sue Houston Methodist, going as far as launching a GoFundMe campaign to raise legal fees. In three weeks, it has brought in about $17,000 of a goal of $500,000. If Bridges does file suit, Valerie Gutmann Koch, codirector of the Health Law & Policy Institute at the University of Houston’s Law Center, said she doesn’t expect courts to embrace the argument that vaccine mandates infringe upon personal liberty. There are several legal precedents, Koch noted, that have allowed employers to mandate vaccines, especially in health-care settings. In addition to that precedent, Bridges, as an at-will employee of a private institution with medical and religious exemptions in place, is not being forced to receive the vaccine, Koch said.

Bridges’s newfound celebrity spawned by her pugnaciousness is worrying to health experts who say the information she’s peddling is dangerous. James T. McDeavitt, a doctor and dean of clinical affairs at the Baylor College of Medicine, called the idea of vaccines unleashing severe side effects and the medical establishment suppressing reports of the reactions “categorically untrue.” He pointed to the CDC’s recommendation last month that states temporarily suspend the use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine after six individuals developed a rare blood-clotting disorder. Considering that more than 264 million coronavirus vaccine doses have been administered throughout the United States, he said, they have proved “extraordinarily safe.” “When you do something to two hundred million people and then look back at the data, inevitably you’re going to find that bad things have happened among a population of that size, whether it’s heart attacks or strokes,” he added. “But that doesn’t mean that the vaccine caused those bad things to happen any more than we’d attribute a good thing happening, like winning the lottery, to the vaccine.”

Biden Pledges to Export Millions of FDA-Authorized Vaccines

Biden said Monday he’ll export 20 million doses of vaccines from Pfizer Inc., Moderna Inc. or Johnson & Johnson, on top of 60 million AstraZeneca Plc doses he had already planned to give to other countries.

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Biden said he would work with international agencies to decide which countries receive U.S. doses, and that he wouldn’t use the shots for diplomatic leverage, accusing China and Russia of doing so.