This is the latest v-safe data I have found so far. It's mid-February, but includes millions of people. And I actually think side effects are likely to be slightly over reprented in v-safe, because people with side effects are more likely to participate. Even so, it looks better than your sample has faired (but seems pretty true to what I've seen--seems to me it's been about half and half with people I know having more than sore arm or not, and only about 25% having fever after the second dose (much less after 1st). I want to see the info about how long it lasts for most people though. Somewhere I saw that. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-02/28-03-01/05-covid-Shimabukuro.pdf

I really think you've had an unlucky sample. I have to go back to the trial data and what they have from v-safe so far, but that doesn't match what I recall at all. Actually, now that I think of it, I can say before even going back to the data, that one of my parents was having side effects on day 3 (but it only started that day, so lasted only 36 hours), everything I was finding said that someone should call their doctor if they had a reaction that lasted more than two days. I'll go find the side effect break down though.

Do you have a link for that? The 45-55 group is still relatively risky for Covid, and the number of people who have more than 1 (possibly 2) days of vaccine side effects is tiny. So, I’d be interested to see that. There was actually TONS of discussion about this article from virologists and epidemiologists when it came out, and I read it then. They were super frustrated with Slate (and even more so The Atlantic which also published it, since The Atlantic usually has a much higher standard than Slate ) for having published it, because it’s not accurate in so many ways and the person who wrote it was really not qualified to speak to those issues. I could tell you some of the specific issues with the article, if you are interested. I saw you said you haven’t been around here in a long time and haven’t read these threads, so you probably missed that there are a lot of people here who are reading a whole lot on this and are quite educated on the facts about what is known about Covid at this point. I don’t see much issue of an echo chamber regarding Covid here, as I believe most of us get our primary information from sources outside TWTM I don’t consider something posted here as being truth without verifying it, including checking the reliability of the source. There are a few posters who cite their posts really well, which makes the information they post more trustworthy for me, because I have been able to vet their data and sources.

I think that’s super smart in the long run. They’re less likely to have closures due to sick employees now and I’m certain I’m not the only one that would preference patronizing a restaurant that had done that.

Only the state level data came from Facebook. I wouldn’t want a FB survey used for collecting medical research, but I certainly don’t think it’s useless for collecting sociological data like this. There will be some selection bias, but I don’t see a reason to wave away the whole thing as irrelevant just because some of it was collected from people who responded via Facebook (and that’s coming from a FB hater). I think it’s useful for what it is.

The wording of the question was, “When do you plan to get vaccinated” so that it was collecting people’s intentions, rather than actions. The full report is available without a paywall and with much more detail here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f7671d12c27e40b67ce4400/t/60a3d7b3301db14adb211911/1621350327260/FINAL+for+posting_Facebook+Survey+Summary+Document+for+Website.docx.pdf

I saw this today that shows the percentage of vaccine hesitant people falling into four categories (according to reason for hesitancy rather than demographics) and thought it was pretty interesting. You can look at the results by state: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/05/18/opinion/covid-19-vaccine-hesitancy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage I just saw this and thought of this thread 😂

Which is super interesting and important to study, but as the first paragraph of that article says: Now, a major new study shows that the virus spike proteins (which behave very differently than those safely encoded by vaccines) also play a key role in the disease itself.

Do they allow both at the same time? Just curious. My oldest had the menactra a few years ago. We were thinking they need the meningitis B this Summer, but we’re not sure what can be given at the same time. They haven’t had the HPV one yet and are going to start that as well.

This has been looked at extensively, and the vaccines were developed specifically to avoid this, and have been very successful at doing so. There are lots of articles about this. https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/91648 An excerpt: Scientists designed animal studies to look for ADE. They looked for it in human trials, and they've been looking for it in the real-world data for COVID-19 vaccines with emergency use authorization. So far, they haven't seen signs of it. In fact, the opposite is happening, Lowe noted. "[W]hat seems to be beyond doubt is that the vaccinated subjects, over and over, show up with no severe coronavirus cases and no hospitalizations. That is the opposite of what you would expect if ADE were happening," he wrote. Furthermore, ADE is an acute problem, and it can be very dramatic. If it was an issue with these vaccines, we would have spotted it by now, said Brian Lichty, PhD, an associate professor in pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University in Toronto. "It'll kill you quickly. In all the places I'm aware of ADE happening, it is an acute, mostly cytokine-driven event," ____________ apparently there’s a whole cell Chinese vaccine that has the potential to be an exception, though it hasn’t been seen so far. * as mentioned above, Pen has told me that she has me on ignore, so she won’t see this

Oh, sorry. I think I interpreted the “called the school nurse” as meaning he was in school. At least it does sound really unlikely to be Covid.

Hearing it hit so fast would make me a little more concerned. Colds tend to be slower to come on, and I don’t think sinus infections typically start without first having congestion. Given your vaccination status, still seems unlikely to be Covid. I think their exposure has increased since getting vaccinated. I don’t know in what ways, but it sounds like at least one kid is at school, and that kid has some mild symptoms as well. I’m thinking even if it’s a cold, you don’t want to put other people in the same exercise by passing it onto them. Hearing that colds are running rampant right now makes me nervous, as we are supposed to finally have a get together with family members we haven’t seen in a year, and if any of us gets a cold before then, that will be canceled, and everyone will be devastated. Some are elderly, and we can’t take any risk of it being Covid.

We’d need data to prove either way, but I’d be surprised if number one is true, probability wise. Even a kid who had systemic side effects (and seems the majority don’t) is very unlikely to have them for more than a day, whereas I expect that more than half of kids with Covid have symptoms for more than a day.

This doesn't seem true to me. While there are a lot of asymptomatic kids with covid, there are also a lot that are at least as sick as with a bad cold or a flu (and obviously some much worse). I would call a bad cold or flu worse to deal with than what even people who have a day of crummy systemic vaccine side effects go through (I did have a day of fever and aches after my second dose--still way better than a cold or flu that would have me down longer). Really? I know a lot of them. Most did have some arm soreness, but unless it's severe, that's the one side effect I don't really count. None of my kids have even had enough arm soreness to say more than, "yeah, my arm is kind of sore" It has been definitely less than half of the people I know who had enough side effects to be in bed after the second shot, and even those, none of them for more than one day. And none of the young adults or teens had anything that prevented their normal activities (one did have joint soreness, but that was the only one that had anything other than arm soreness).

Right. I agree with you that’s best.

Yep, and I think we should feel a responsibility to do what we can to protect them, rather than a “every person for themself” attitude. Thanks for providing the stat and link. Unfortunately, I’ve long thought this particular fact is part of what has led a portion of the population to blow off Covid as no big deal. They see it affects “them” badly, but not a worry for “us” 😢.

I’m confused at the way this thread went as well, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to publicly call people out on changed screen names. We know there are a lot of reasons people sometimes need to do that, from jobs stalking them to ex spouses stalking them. As much as one might disagree with someone else, I don’t think it’s right to cross that line when someone may be trying to protect themself.

I may be wrong, and someone please correct me if I am, but my understanding in the studies showing the vaccine preventing transmission has been that asymptomatic infection has been based on testing positive on a PCR test. The original vaccine studies were not doing testing on asymptomatic individuals, which is why they couldn’t initially make any claims about how will they did or didn’t do in preventing asymptomatic infection. Subsequent studies have been done with frequent testing to determine the degree of asymptomatic infection in vaccinated individuals, and that’s how they’ve been able to determine the vaccines are largely preventing transmission.

I agree this would be important for those wanting to prep as well as possible. For people who have reasons to not put a lot of emphasis on test prep (my oldest fell in this category—she had a lot of other life anxiety going on, and adding to it with test prep would have been counterproductive), it can be perfectly okay to not do a test under standard conditions. I don’t think most people are in that category, but I wanted to put it out there for anyone stressing about the whole test prep thing. No regrets about the way we did it. I expect my next high schooler will do more prep.

I actually have seen a number of doctors and virus scientist types concerned about it, particularly as regards children. I’ll have to pay attention next time I see that and share here. I do overall see them saying that the variants aren’t as scary at this point as we are being made to think by the media, but that there are some concerns and the biggest concern is that with so much virus out there right now, a truly scary variant could still happen. I did see one article once by a scientist explaining why he was optimistic this particular virus was unlikely to be able to mutate to that degree, but I don’t recall the exact explanation. I liked that one though 😁. Much nicer to read than the scary ones.

Pen has me on ignore, so if someone else was going to reply to this part, it would still be good to do so, but for others reading along, this is untrue. We have many studies now showing that in most cases, the vaccines are actually preventing infection at all. That wasn’t shown in the initial trials, because that wasn’t the end point they were looking at. The vast majority of vaccinated people will not get Covid at all. The virus can’t mutate in any of those vaccinated people it won’t infect. Worrying about being close to vaccinated people for fear of the virus, but not about being near unvaccinated people makes absolutely no logical sense whatsoever.

Just to expand on the random mutations. While the mutations happen randomly, those mutations that lead to more spread, whether by being more virulent or evading the vaccine or whatever it is, will be the mutations that are successful and multiply and spread more. So while the mutations arise randomly, it’s not random that the mutations that allow it to increase transmission will be the ones selected for.

Lol. I’m sorry Bill, but it literally made me lol to read this coming from you. 😂

I think that’s qualifies as lying as well, but I think there’s a behavioral difference in how many people would be willing to lie by just not wearing a mask when they are supposed to, versus those who are willing to actually verbally tell a lie, like if they were out right asked at the door if they were vaccinated. I think there are a lot more people in the former group than the latter.

It seems like the time pressure is higher on the ACT. I think the questions are comparable, but the ACT requires faster reading ability.