I think the best course of action for those of us who worry about taking all these shots and really do not like needles (like me) is to just stay away from being physically around people. I never understood why that's an issue for people we do live in an age where we can communicate remotely with anyone and everyone. I've noticed that when I stay away from other people (especially during the winter!) I never get sick-- except for my allergies of course.Yeah, that seems to be the case. Then we'll need to see if and how often additional J&J shots are recommended after that. Hopefully not less than 6 months.
First shot was pretty mild, second shot basically did the same to me as to you.
This time I had both the booster and the flu shot, which I had been procrastinating making an appointment for so now I just went ahead and did both. Surprise -- it now feels like I have both COVID and flu symptoms. Chills, nausea, full body aches. Normally I have almost no reaction to the flu vaccine, but apparently the combination of the two makes it hit very differently. So just taking it easy for today.
and could you imagine having to take the J&J one every two months? I wonder if we will have biomedical trackers soon which will remotely scan and detect who hasn't been vaccinated in 6+ months and then we will have the pleasure of being hauled off to a hospital to get our semiyearly injections.Hm. If it's going to be like that every six months, count me soon out. The only sick day I've had in years, was the one due to the Moderna vaccine. I got a flu shot a few weeks ago. Nothing. I also found the vaccine roll-out poorly organised here. Most people at my age got appointments during the summer holiday, and if the appointment was when you were away, you were expected to cancel your holiday to get the shot. And if the appointment was the day before you were to do something important and really needed to perform, your problem.
I chose to get them both in the same arm. Not sure what I was thinking. That night my arm felt like it had been hit by a truck. About 36 hours post shots now, and feeling loads better. Just some very mild soreness remaining.
I was working at my computer and eventually I could not do anything useful. So I thought why not watch some TV which I rarely get to do. I endured half an hour or so before concluding that I should simply go to bed, which I did, feeling cooked and shivering at the same time. It felt like a flu. But it was not a big deal, knowing that it would probably pass in a day based on what I'd heard from others, unlike a flu. But I'm not sure it really is better to be ill in bed for a day for sure rather than having a 10% chance that I get ill in bed for a week instead. Especially if the 10% figure only gets moderately reduced. It's kind of a mediocre insurance deal. It was the same thing with the swine flu, except that then the vaccine made me feel tired like some illness was brewing for two weeks. Sure better than the swine flu instead, but most likely I would have dodged it.
This just makes my head hurt. How can they not understand how COVID primarily spreads after all this time?Nobody wants to go back to restrictions, but as an example of what politicians are doing is that here in Oslo they decided that all doors on the underground should open automatically at the stations. Sure. A good idea. But guess why. Because they think covid spreads by many people touching the same button. Sigh.
It's how things works in politics. So they can say "Yes, this is a problem and we're taking this very seriously. Look, we're doing, uhm, things". So many pointless actions. If the actions actually work, the chances that it's for other reasons are high.
But we don't really know yet whether this Omicron actually is a bigger threat yet, do we? New variations are inevitable. And this is also how a pandemic like this could end. The virus could eventually mutate into a dead-end. Some variant which spreads and is pretty harmless or can only mutate into something harmless.
More unknowns than knowns so far. What we do know, and the reason it was declared a variant of concern, is that it has some kind of competitive advantage over the other variants, because it is making up a growing proportion of sequences over time. But whether that's because it's more infectious, or sufficiently mutated so that the immune system is less good at recognizing it after prior infection or vaccination, or some combination of both, remains to be seen. The expectation is that there will likely be some drop in vaccine and antibody treatment efficacy, because the spike protein has so many mutations. Pfizer is currently testing its mRNA vaccine against it, and we can expect some answers in the next few weeks. If the drop in efficacy is severe enough, then the mRNA vaccines may be updated accordingly, and that could then be ready after a few months (but global distribution could take longer.)
Possible, but not the most likely. Or, about as likely as a variant that is more transmissible or evasive and causes more severe illness. The reason is that there is not a strong selective pressure for a variant to cause either milder or more severe illness. The nature of a virus is that it is good at transmitting before it kills, if it does. SARS-CoV-2 is especially good at that. It is very good at spreading before the host even shows signs of illness, even if the illness does become fatal. It also doesn't feel a strong pressure to become milder for the elderly, because it spreads very easily across all ages.
Wat, why can't we come up with some kind of biomimicry vaccine that actually mutates along with the virus? So basically as the virus mutates so would the vaccine to match this? Is this possible-- it would have so many applications if we could do this rather than having to create a new vaccine after the fact (this would also be great for the flu, for which we need a new vaccine every year.)More unknowns than knowns so far. What we do know, and the reason it was declared a variant of concern, is that it has some kind of competitive advantage over the other variants, because it is making up a growing proportion of sequences over time. But whether that's because it's more infectious, or sufficiently mutated so that the immune system is less good at recognizing it after prior infection or vaccination, or some combination of both, remains to be seen. The expectation is that there will likely be some drop in vaccine and antibody treatment efficacy, because the spike protein has so many mutations. Pfizer is currently testing its mRNA vaccine against it, and we can expect some answers in the next few weeks. If the drop in efficacy is severe enough, then the mRNA vaccines may be updated accordingly, and that could then be ready after a few months (but global distribution could take longer.)
There are thousands if not millions of variants around the world, but most never show up often enough in sequences to get names (not even a letter and number like B.1.1.529). Most variants that do still lack a sufficiently strong evolutionary advantage to compete with others, and don't get the Greek letter names.
Possible, but not the most likely. Or, about as likely as a variant that is more transmissible or evasive and causes more severe illness. The reason is that there is not a strong selective pressure for a variant to cause either milder or more severe illness. The nature of a virus is that it is good at transmitting before it kills, if it does. SARS-CoV-2 is especially good at that. It is very good at spreading before the host even shows signs of illness, even if the illness does become fatal. It also doesn't feel a strong pressure to become milder for the elderly, because it spreads very easily across all ages.
What there is a strong selective pressure for are variants that spread more easily and are sufficiently different from prior variants that the immune system doesn't recognize them. Delta totally had the transmissibility factor down, and over time what we expect are more variants that are good at causing reinfection and evading older vaccine and antibody treatments. Much like the flu.
It's a misconception that viruses tend to evolve to cause less severe illness. What happens more is that the population is increasingly exposed and recovered, and our immune systems deal with them better. Those viruses are usually still quite dangerous to populations that were never exposed before.
Vaccines don't mutate, since they don't reproduce and change their information as they do. If they did, that would invite all sorts of problems and concerns.
I know but why isn't it possible to invent a type of vaccine that can change to respond to mutations of the virus it's supposed to treat. I read that research was being done to develop a universal flu vaccine, it has to have some capacity to respond to all the different variants to be able to do this. There's also a universal covid vaccine in the works.Vaccines don't mutate, since they don't reproduce and change their information as they do. If they did, that would invite all sorts of problems and concerns.
I think you're misunderstanding what it means for the vaccine to "respond" to different variants. The vaccine does not stay in the body and change according to how viruses change (that would be an extremely bad idea.) Rather, the vaccine is designed to trigger an immune system response that is more broadly sensitive to a particular type of virus. So even as the virus mutates, the immune system doesn't care, because it recognizes something about the virus that does not change. It would be like training a program to recognize the word recognize, even if it's in a different color and italicized.I know but why isn't it possible to invent a type of vaccine that can change to respond to mutations of the virus it's supposed to treat. I read that research was being done to develop a universal flu vaccine, it has to have some capacity to respond to all the different variants to be able to do this.