Booster Shots: When will you get a booster (3rd) shot of the vaccine?

I got the new Pfizer booster on Monday. Tuesday I had nausea, fever, muscle pain, and fatigue. I didn’t get nausea with the initial doses or the first booster.

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I’m getting mine on Sept. 26th at 10:45 am.

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yes. it was O1/2 since in Jan. I have seen the reinfection studies and they’re concerning in that it’s not like flu where the effects seem cumulative :frowning: I hope you’re right about selection bias there or people who had the “stronger” delta or Wuhan 1st

It’s best not to get Covid at all, much less be reinfected.

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"“We’re seeing brain problems in previously healthy individuals and those who have had mild infections,” Al-Aly said. “It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, female or male, or what your race is. It doesn’t matter if you smoked or not, or if you had other unhealthy habits or conditions.”

Few people in the study were vaccinated for COVID-19 because the vaccines were not yet widely available during the time span of the study, from March 2020 through early January 2021. The data also predates delta, omicron and other COVID variants.

A previous study in Nature Medicine led by Al-Aly found that vaccines slightly reduce—by about 20%—the risk of long-term brain problems.

“It is definitely important to get vaccinated but also important to understand that they do not offer complete protection against these long-term neurologic disorders,” Al-Aly said.“”

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I suspect that many in the “not infected” group actually had been infected at some point and just didnt realize it. It is virtually impossible to have a reliable control group when it comes to never being infected.

It would make sense that many with a predisposition to symptomatic infection would also have at predisposition to future brain conditions. Especially when the “higher risk” was all of 7% higher.

Brain and other neurological disorders occurred in 7% more of those who had been infected with COVID compared with a similar group of veterans who had never been infected.

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I’m curious how many truly have not had C19 it as %. That ship has sailed for most of the country. Reinfections are another matter.

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My wife and I have both double dipped. She had the original when it first started, and again last fall, I think, after she had received the perfectly safe and effective vaccine. I don’t know when I was first infected, but got the second one in the fall, after my vaccinated wife brought it home. And I never let her forget it. :smile:

There are certainly neurological complications post-covid and these were some of the ones most concerning to me as someone who wasn’t obviously at high risk for immediate health issues. But the study they cite is a very early one pre-vax in a veterans group and it’s hard to extrapolate that to the general and largely vaccinated population. Veterans have a lot of mental issues generally, and covid could well trigger more of those in ways due to stress, etc, that might not be true in typical people.

More broadly, cognitive issues around covid is one of the reasons I found those horse paste loving extremists interesting because they were recommending several (generic!) early treatment medicines that were designed to prevent micro clots during covid (micro strokes suspected as a possible mechanism for some mental issues) as well as brain anti-inflammatory drugs that seem to inhibit spike related neurological complications (if/when it gets into your brain, the body’s immune response to that inflammation can damage the brain tissue in the process).

their recommendations were relatively safe on a side effect profile and so offered IMO a good risk/reward compared to doing nothing and hoping you get lucky. I’m in the business of making my own luck, both on the health and financial fronts after all.

That’s only true if you judge infection status by asking them. A simple blood test for the N protein instead of the S (spike) would differentiate between actual viral exposure and vaccination.

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Especially when the “higher risk” was all of 7% higher.

Brain and other neurological disorders occurred in 7% more of those who had been infected with COVID compared with a similar group of veterans who had never been infected.

I suspect the article is misstating something, somewhere, related to what these percentages reflect in terms of absolute risk, since a later paragraph says:

Overall, compared to the uninfected, people who had COVID-19 were 80% more likely to suffer from epilepsy or seizures, 43% more likely to develop mental health disorders such as anxiety or depression, 35% more likely to experience mild to severe headaches, and 42% more likely to encounter movement disorders. The latter includes involuntary muscle contractions, tremors and other Parkinson’s-like symptoms.

A doctor with cancer (lymphoma) has a rapid sudden progression of his cancer after getting a covid booster. He has a scan of the cancer before the booster, and got the booster before beginning treatment since the chemo would weaken his immune system and make him less likely to benefit from the booster and more at risk to covid. The next scan shortly after the shot showed things had gotten much worse.

Since his immune system T cells were the source of the cancer, he speculates that the vaccine ingredients intended to stimulate stronger T cell reactions to the spike protein also caused those cancerous ones to grow and spread more rapidly.

[the vaccines] rev up those [T] cells with extra oomph. Now Michel began to wonder whether that oomph could, in ultrarare cases, turn out to be a liability. Perhaps the shots gave such a jolt to his helper T cells that they went berserk. If they were prone to forming tumors, or if they were already cancerous, then overstimulation could have made the problem even worse.

as a longtime immunologist and medical innovator, he’s still considering the question of whether a vaccine that is saving tens of millions of lives each year might have put his own in jeopardy. He remains adamant that COVID-19 vaccines are necessary and useful for the vast majority of people. But he wants the discussion about vaccines to be transparent.

Around the time of his February follow-up, Michel received a message from a doctor who had read his self-referential case report. The doctor’s mother had been diagnosed with the same subtype of lymphoma that Michel has following a COVID booster shot. More recently, he got an email from a woman whose sister had been vaccinated and received that diagnosis the following month. Again, these could be coincidences. Or maybe they are the second and third data points in a growing set.

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More coverage on the limited human data behind the new bivalent boosters.

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Any update on novavax, Coming soon to a pharmacy near you?

Huh? How can they still be alive? Oh, I get it. They’re all wearing masks. :smile:

Not clear these O+Wuhan bivalent boosters are any better than the old Wuhan ones.

Boosting with a new bivalent mRNA vaccine targeting both BA.4/BA.5 and an ancestral SARS-CoV-2 strain did not elicit a discernibly superior virus-neutralizing antibody responses compared to boosting with an original monovalent vaccine. These findings may be indicative of immunological imprinting5, although follow-up studies are needed

The new boosters do cost 4x as much, though

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/pfizer-expects-price-covid-vaccine-110-130-per-dose-2022-10-20/

so they’re a win for PFE who is discontinuing the old ones. I’m sure if necessary, the friendly administration will pass something requiring these shots to be “covered” by your insurance, ie billed to you via premiums whether you want it or not.

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media picked up the non-exciting booster results:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-25/new-boosters-from-moderna-and-pfizer-aren-t-better-than-old-ones-study-shows

  • Antibodies 4-5 Wks After New Booster Similar to Original Shots
  • Study Shows Bivalent Boosters Offer No Short-Term Superiority

Admin commentary not exactly “following the Science”

  • Biden Receives COVID Booster Shot, Speaks to Reporters
  • Biden Says Not Enough People Are Getting COVID Vaccines
  • WHITE HOUSE COVID COORDINATOR JHA SAYS CHALLENGES AHEAD WITH COVID, SINGLE BIGGEST TOOL IS UPDATED COVID VACCINE
  • WHITE HOUSE’S JHA SAYS LARGE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS SHOULD GET COVID VACCINE AS ANNUAL SHOT

young kids authorized for the new bivalent boosters.

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Parent’s got it right away ,we’re still debating for us (in our 40’s), Not doing it for kids (lowest risk).

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Ha! I saw an ad for the “current” booster tonight. It’s the first I’ve seen in a while. It was a good premise, but looked like it was done by PBS.

I guess if you can print money, you can throw as much as necessary to achieve your sales goals. (snark off)

MRNA cancer shot had good results and Stock is up 20% today. I think this tech has promise and I’d take that shot (cancer) but not C19 knowing what I know now.

Risk reward is off for young, healthy folks

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