Getting my vaccine

[macardoso]

Funny story...

Wife and I got our Pfizer shots at the Cleveland National Guard mass vaccination site a while back. First shot went normal with arm and lymph node soreness. Maybe more sore than average. Wife didn't get it nearly as much.

Went in for my second shot and the NG nurse asked me if I had any symptoms and I reported some soreness. She mentioned I might be quite sore again following the second shot.

The use auto-retracting safety syringes to deliver the vaccine. She starts to give me the vaccine and I feel something wet on my arm. After questioning her, she comments that the syringe failed, retracted early, and dumped whatever vaccine didn't go into my arm.. Something about manufacturing tolerances and how extremely rare it is. Said she has heard of it happening but never once seen it (they do 8000 vaccines a day there). So she calls the line nurse over and they discuss for a while and they decide to give me another dose since they got most, but not all, of the first one in me. Starts the second injection (in my other arm) and what do you know, it happens again.

This time they call the NG doctor over. Big hawaiian dude, looked like a linebacker. He comments on me having "elephant skin", shrugs and says "stick him again". After running off to find a normal needle, they give me a 3rd shot and make me wait 90 minutes for monitoring. After the doc leaves, the original nurse walks back and looks me square in the face and says "you're going to hurt tomorrow". Made me chuckle. Meanwhile the poor guy behind me has been sweating it out for the last 30 minutes seeing me get multiple shots.

Next day admittedly sucked. Bad flu symptoms, aches, pains, fever, sweats, that kind of stuff. Day after I was back to 95%. Arms were fine within a few days to go rock climbing.

And that's the story of how I got 4 doses of the vaccine.

 

[Peyton Price 17]

one day I got 4 shots. 1 in each arm and leg! I was 5 or 6 and it was awful. I got a lollipop though. this one was worse than the tetanus booster.

 

[macardoso]

one day I got 4 shots. 1 in each arm and leg! I was 5 or 6 and it was awful. I got a lollipop though. this one was worse than the tetanus booster.

The Tetanus shot remains my worst shot ever.

I think you're supposed to keep that one up to date every 10 years. In college I went out whitewater kayaking was hiking out of a river and stepped on a hay baling staple buried in the wet leaves on the ground. Went clean through my shoe, dry suit, entire foot, and back out the top of my dry suit and shoe. Rusty as could be and in the middle of farm country West Virginia (farms + rusty stuff = bad news). Ripped it out and cleaned best I could, still had 3 hours to paddle to the end plus a mile and a half hike. Went to a clinic and was asked for my tetanus booster date. It was 12 years earlier so I needed the "full" tetanus shot. Laid me out for 3 days with a horrible fever. We were all camping and I couldn't move from my tent at all. Could barely get to the bathroom. Ended up fine and I will never let my booster go out of date again. Vaccines are a miracle of modern medicine, we are all so lucky to live in a place and time where we have the privilege to get them.

 

[EricB]

My Dr. told me the tetanus shot is only good for 5 years if you work with rusty metal. Ten years if you don't.

Eric

 

[addertooth]

I will throw in a bit of "medical stuff" on my feelings about Moderna and Pfizer shots. They were developed using CRISPR technology, the same techniques used for Gene Therapy. These vaccines use Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to place RNA genetic material into your body. They introduce into T-Cells an RNA sequence which facilitates an enhanced production of Antibodies. These shots use a mechanism NEVER seen before in a vaccine. This is part of the reason why their stated effectiveness is much higher than other vaccines which you have taken in the past. Keep in mind, the technique used by this vaccine is NEW and Novel. There is no long-term study for this type of vaccine.

The Johnson and Johnson (Jansen) vaccine is like all the vaccines which you have taken throughout your life. You already know how well (long term), how your body tolerates and accepts it. It is slightly LESS effective than the mRNA vaccines, but uses a proven technology. It's effectiveness is on par with the Polio vaccine that most people took as a child. Even at this lower level of effectiveness, Polio was eradicated in the USA.

I ended up getting the latter vaccine, as the unknown factors of the mRNA vaccines were concerning. As of today, there is no liability for the makers, for outcomes with any of the vaccines. This led me to choose the vaccine which had the lowest probability of something new and novel happening to my body.

 

[Peyton Price 17]

I will throw in a bit of "medical stuff" on my feelings about Moderna and Pfizer shots. They were developed using CRISPR technology, the same techniques used for Gene Therapy. They introduce into T-Cells an RNA sequence which facilitates an enhanced production of Antibodies. These shots use a mechanism NEVER seen before in a vaccine. This is part of the reason why their stated effectiveness is much higher than other vaccines which you have taken in the past. Keep in mind, the technique used by this vaccine is NEW and Novel. There is no long-term study for this type of vaccine.

my mom used to work at Pfizer doing clinical trials and now she has 23 years of experience in clinical trials and she completely trusts it. now she is working on gene therapy, so I trust it, sure beats getting it.

 

[addertooth]

my mom used to work at Pfizer doing clinical trials and now she has 23 years of experience in clinical trials and she completely trusts it. now she is working on gene therapy, so I trust it, sure beats getting it.

Every day we are bombarded with commercials from lawyers which say "did you take medicine X? If you did, you may be owed compensation". The only real way to determine if a medicine is SAFE and effective, is time. Often medicines will pass the FDA tests, only to learn they cause cancer and other very undesirable conditions long-term. Don't get me wrong, I have a high respect for people who create new medicines, but, they don't have a crystal ball. Often bad outcomes are not learned until YEARS after a medicine has been accepted and approved.

 

[macardoso]

I will throw in a bit of "medical stuff" on my feelings about Moderna and Pfizer shots. They were developed using CRISPR technology, the same techniques used for Gene Therapy. These vaccines use Messenger RNA (mRNA) technology to place RNA genetic material into your body. They introduce into T-Cells an RNA sequence which facilitates an enhanced production of Antibodies. These shots use a mechanism NEVER seen before in a vaccine. This is part of the reason why their stated effectiveness is much higher than other vaccines which you have taken in the past. Keep in mind, the technique used by this vaccine is NEW and Novel. There is no long-term study for this type of vaccine.

The Johnson and Johnson (Jansen) vaccine is like all the vaccines which you have taken throughout your life. You already know how well (long term), how your body tolerates and accepts it. It is slightly LESS effective than the mRNA vaccines, but uses a proven technology. It's effectiveness is on par with the Polio vaccine that most people took as a child. Even at this lower level of effectiveness, Polio was eradicated in the USA.

I ended up getting the latter vaccine, as the unknown factors of the mRNA vaccines was concerning. As of today, there is no liability for the makers, for outcomes with any of the vaccines. This led me to choose the vaccine which had the lowest probability of something new and novel happening to my body.

I'm a bit of a nerd and got the Pfizer specifically because I wanted the cool new stuff

Seriously though, modern medicine is amazing.

 

[vtcnc]

Every day we are bombarded with commercials from lawyers which say "did you take medicine X? If you did, you may be owed compensation". The only real way to determine if a medicine is SAFE and effective, is time. Often medicines will pass the FDA tests, only to learn they cause cancer and other very undesirable conditions long-term. Don't get me wrong, I have a high respect for people who create new medicines, but, they don't have a crystal ball. Often bad outcomes are not learned until YEARS after a medicine has been accepted and approved.

Everything comes with risk or is found on some continuum - as far as we currently know. The good news is that the numbers are in the favor of the sweeping vast majority of people who are getting the vaccine. It is sad and unfortunate for those who are on the losing end of this. It is difficult to fathom the ethical and morale nature of these social problems, but the solution by its very nature cannot be a 100% or 0% solve. It has to be something in between and that equals some acceptable risk.

 

[mksj]

Maybe need to put this all in perspective, I have been conducting clinical trials for 35+ years and still do medical consulting in the pharmaceutical industry, one of my clients is Moderna. I primarily did Cancer and HIV clinical trials and later on multiple other therapeutic areas, from first in human all the way through what is known as bridging studies where we compare the a drug in different ethnic groups, and also served as medical safety officer, etc. All drugs carry a risk, but one is always balancing the benefit to risk ratio. The newer mRNA vaccines have been in clinical trials for other indications for several years, in in a manor of speaking are much cleaner and quicker technology to provide a more focused approach to treatments as opposed to the shot gun approach that has been used for decades. We are also much better these days at determining potential mutagenic, carcinogenic and teratogenic effects of drugs in different assay and animal testing, there are also post surveillance studies to look at ongoing risk and the association with drugs. The cancer issue say with smoking asbestos or with alcohol has been long known has been long known yet people still smoke and drink. The chance of them developing head and neck cancer over 20-30 years is magnitudes higher, let alone all the chemicals we use in our day to day life. Almost all cancer drugs are known cause DNA damage and secondary cancers, so we treat one only to have another develop down the line. In CA just about everything you buy or eat carries a cancer risk label, stupid.

Everything you eat, breath and touch has a risk. If you want to wait 20-30 years for a drug to prove that it doesn't cause cancer, you need to also look at the number of lives saved and the improvement in quality of life. Historically drugs used the sledge hammer approach and had much more side effects, clinical development is evolving to a more surgical and specific approach. The issue is that a living organism is a complex biological system, and there a numerous collateral pathways. When fighting infections the organisms mutate at a high rate and selective pressure quickly causes resistance to develop. We learned from covid that we do not have years to develop treatments but more like months. That we have an effective treatment with a 95+% with minimal side effects in 9 months, has never been achieved in medical history. The alternative would have been millions more dead. Pick which every vaccine you choose, but get vaccinated. This is just the beginning, it has long been expected that these types of infectious would and will continue to occur. Had Ebola outbreak in 2014-16 not been quickly contained the world would have been ravaged, a vaccine became available in 2019 using recombinant technology.

FYI, you can't sue companies for most vaccines, it is not only specific to covid.

42 U.S. Code § 300aa–22 - Standards of responsibility

www.law.cornell.edu