[The Vaccine Thread]

10 minutes ago, Pen said:

And it certainly was not to compare health and life outcomes for vaccinated compared to unvaccinated groups which is what I personally find most important.  Especially long term health and life outcomes

I feel like you’re getting way out in the weeds and losing the forest for the trees in answering the above question about health and life outcomes. People who are vaccinated have a very low chance of severe illness or death from Covid. Not dying early is the biggest long term health and life outcome I know of. Whether you want to quote relative or absolute risks, the fact remains that Covid is one of the leading causes of death right now, with it moving higher on the list the older someone is, and the vaccines can all but eliminate it from that list for each person who take it. People aren’t “pro-Covid” for thinking the vaccine works to drastically reduce Covid illness and death. It just very clearly does. Someone has to specifically not want the vaccine to work in order to come up with mental and verbal gymnastics to try to make it sound like the vaccine isn’t doing what it was made to do. 
 

I know you personally are against the Covid vaccine, and I get that, and have no intention or goal of trying to get you to get vaccinated anyway. I do however find it immoral during this pandemic for people to set out to actively try to dissuade others from being vaccinated. I’m not saying you are immoral as a person, Pen, this is more of a “love the sinner, hate the sin” kind of thing. The vaccines are already saving so many lives, and have the potential to prevent hundreds of thousands more, if not millions more deaths on a global level. I think it’s awful for some people to be actively trying to prevent all those lives being saved. When I see it coming from Christians, I can’t help but wonder what happened to loving your neighbor and putting others before yourself. I don’t know why all these lives suddenly no longer matter because they are believed to not meet the standard of health that makes them worthwhile (even though there are thousands of completely healthy younger people who have died as well). I just honestly can’t understand the thought process that seeks to stop people from protecting themselves and others and ending this pandemic. 

[Updated: Scholarship hoops as a homeschooler (She got it!)]

Congratulations! Awesome accomplishment for you both! Extra kudos for your perseverance.

[Personal SARS-COV-2 vaccination experiences]

14 minutes ago, DoraBora said:

Thank you.  I prefer not taking anything, but after the first one I felt so poorly I couldn't sleep, which wasn't helpful. 

I took the shot six hours ago now, and I had hoped to head off to bed feeling okay, but the headache and body aches have already begun.

I'm irritated with myself for not questioning him about where he got this info.

 

The only data I’ve seen showed that after 4 hours, there was no notable decrease in immune response. 

[Personal SARS-COV-2 vaccination experiences]

12 minutes ago, DoraBora said:

Dh and I had our second Pfizer shots today and the guy at the pharmacy said we should wait twelve hours(!) before taking any Advil or Tylenol.  I wish I had asked him where he heard that.

Has anyone here heard that?  Is this based on new info (that I can't find anywhere)?

I've only seen 4 hours (to prevent suppressing the immune response). I made it a goal to hold out to the 24 hour mark, unless I was miserable, but I was starting to feel a bit better by then, and didn't end up using any at all.

[12-15 year olds vaccine experiences]

50 minutes ago, JennyD said:

I must say, as enthusiastic as i am about these mRNA vaccines, normally i would not be first in line to get my kids a brand-new vaccine

This would usually be me as well. The calculus is completely different with this one though. It’s one thing to hold off on HPV or something, that doesn’t pose an immediate threat and isn’t spreading in pandemic fashion. This is completely different though, and there are a lot more diseases with long term effects than there are vaccines, so assuming the safety profile is as good or better than it is in adults, this is a clear choice for is. My kid in this age group was so excited to hear this news. Will make a HUGE difference for Summer and Fall. 
eta:  rereading, this comes off like I’m responding to or trying to convince you, Jenny D. I didn’t mean it that way, your post was just a jumping off point for me, as I feel the same way.

36 minutes ago, BaseballandHockey said:

So, this is obviously great for our country, and for the world if it brings numbers down and maybe means less variants.

But on a personal level, this timing is huge for us.  My SIL's baby is due in 8 weeks.  My 13 year old is so excited about that baby.  He loves baby, but also he just wants something to happen that is all good.  My SIL has been saying that those of us who are vaccinated can probably hold the baby but she needs to "wait and see" about people who are unvaccinated, and it's made him so sad.  

But now, if he gets it right away?  3 weeks plus 2, he could be fully vaccinated when the baby arrives!!!!

So, if you needed another reason to smile, just imagine my sweet boy, and that sweet baby. 

Fortunately, my 10 year old is really not that excited about holding babies.  So, we shouldn't have too much jealousy.  

This post made me tear up. I’m so happy for your ds13 🥰. 

[Apples & Pears spelling]

I have all the levels, but I just want to put in a plug for anyone with a dyslexic or struggling speller, that this is a great way to go. I would have snatched these up if I didn’t already have them. 

[The Vaccine Thread]

29 minutes ago, Pen said:

 

Normally Someone sick (and often only if sick enough to seek medical care) then would be tested . It is fairly unprecedented to test large groups of people who have no evidence of sickness

This isn’t normal times. We’re in the middle of a pandemic with an illness that spreads even from people that have no symptoms. So far more than 3.2 million people have died of Covid-19 since this started a little over a year ago, and that is most surely an under count. Catching all the cases we can is one of the ways to reduce the spread to keep that number from growing more than it has to, thus, the more cases caught early, the better. We’ve seen what happens when this disease is allowed to spread without mitigation. We have scores of people in the world dying now because there’s not enough oxygen at the hospitals.
 

I know some people like to brush off those who die because they believe they’re too fat or don’t eat right or don’t have enough vitamin D or are brown or poor or any other reason that makes it seem like a “them” problem and not a “me” problem, but fortunately our public health systems don’t operate under that morality. Catching cases to quarantine them is one of the best tools we have. Even better one is vaccination. We could literally end this pandemic in the US and get everything back to normal this year, if everyone who was medically safe to be vaccinated would do so. As it is, it is being acknowledged that it doesn’t look like there’s any way we’re going to reach that milestone, due to too many people declining the vaccine, so we are going to be stuck in this situation for who knows how long, due to people being unwilling to care for their neighbor as themself, and do what is needed to stop this from spreading freely. 

[Personal SARS-COV-2 vaccination experiences]

1 hour ago, Seasider too said:

Noon - slightly more headache, fatigue, arm pain starting to recede, little bit of cough

 

1pm - same as above but no cough

I had similar experience with the brief cough after my second last week. I’ve seen everything say cough isn’t a side effect from the vaccine, and when others have reported it, I’ve wondered if they actually had Covid at the time they got their shot, but I know I didn’t, yet still I had 1-2 hour of a slight cough. Then gone. Such a weird thing. I can’t even think what the mechanism would be. 

[Writing options for early middle schooler]

I used WWS with my older kids when they were starting middle school, but I can't see it with my current rising 6th grader. She's a decent natural writer, but I'd like to start introducing a bit more structure to her writing. Something like IEW would not be a good fit; it's too rule-based. WriteShop Junior has so many pieces and parts, which never fits our style. What else is out there right now that might be worth me looking at? I'm looking for materials for us to use at home, not online classes.

[The Vaccine Thread]

13 minutes ago, Laura Corin said:

The UK has delayed second jabs, so there are limited data on that.

Right. I knew that was why it was like that, but thought it might be helpful to point that out for anyone skimming. It’s good to see that strategy has been very successful there. 

[The Vaccine Thread]

8 hours ago, Laura Corin said:

Good round up by expert statisticians of recent studies on transmission after vaccination 

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/commentisfree/2021/may/02/vaccinated-people-less-likely-to-pass-covid-on?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

It looks like the study only addressed transmission after one jab, right? Which is very good news to see so much reduction after a single shot. Someone else shared a link yesterday about the significant increase in benefit provided by the second dose, which improves transmission reduction even more. 

[Vaccine hesitancy and side effects]

1 hour ago, Bootsie said:

It would be better if I wait until August to be vaccinated--so that I am within the three month window when I return to campus in the fall"  Of course, the guidance may change by then.  But, these students are seeing a disadvantage if they get vaccinated now and then return in the fall and are exposed--then they will have to quarantine if the guidance hasn't changed.  

That’s unfortunate. Hopefully the university will update that to 6 months, with more recent trial data showing that immunity is still holding strong at 6 months. 

25 minutes ago, Halftime Hope said:

There are a number of early therapies that "show promising potential".  

Fluvoxamine, budesonide, ivermectin, bromhexine, HCQ, and so on. 

AIIMS just published an updated guideline for treating adult COVID patients, and it included some of the above: they may be used off label, even though they were labeled "low level of certainty".  

Lancet Respiratory just published a study using budesonide. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(21)00160-0/fulltex NNT = 8  I suspect there will be additional studies coming, because the epidemiological data confirms the prophylactic benefit of inhaled glucocorticoids. 

 

 

I should have used different words than “promising potential”. I meant something stronger. I didn’t know of any others with evidence as strong as Regeneron. The budesonide study was interesting. Hopefully they will repeat on larger populations and get similar results. An interesting statistic near the end of the study that seems relevant to this discussion of risk: “our population reflects the general global population, in whom we found a one in seven risk of harm from COVID-19” 

[wuhan - coronavirus]

So much this:

😥

[Vaccine hesitancy and side effects]

15 minutes ago, Catwoman said:

That’s how I’ve been reading it, too!

And then I keep hearing Doris Day in my head, singing “Que Sera Sera.” 

I’m getting REALLY sick of that song! 😉 

Oops! Sorry, I didn't anticipate that undesirably side effect 😂.

8 minutes ago, Reefgazer said:

I'm enthusiastically fully vaccinated.  I will not get a booster if the mask mandates and mandatory shutdowns continue, however.  I want something in return besides risk for my willingness to stick out my arm, and death/hospitalization has been mitigated with these first 2 doses.  Many people I talk to have expressed the same, although many others will happily go for the 3rd jab regardless.  So hesitancy may be a matter of "why bother", rather than an unwillingness to deal with side effects.

We will get there, but the fastest way to get there really is for everyone who is able to be vaccinated to do so. The reason not many measures have been able to be lifted yet, is because not enough people have been vaccinated. It's the reluctance to vaccinate that is holding everyone else back from normality. I think the first benefit the vaccinated will see, besides not being hospitalized or dying, will be being able to attend vaccine or exempt only venues that don't require mitigation measures. Like, my dd will be able to return to her college campus and live in a dorm and eat in the dining hall and have in person classes and meet with others to study in the library and all those other good college student things, because everyone will need to be vaccinated to be on campus, thus they will be able to enjoy the benefits of being in a population with local herd immunity.

[Vaccine hesitancy and side effects]

21 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

Oooh. Why is that? I don't think I've read that. 

I need to find where I read about it initially. I read about it back when Regeneron was getting a lot of press after its use during the White House outbreak. It is given as a potential effect at the end of the Regeneron patient info sheet, though:

https://www.regeneron.com/downloads/treatment-covid19-eua-fact-sheet-for-patient.pdf

I was going to give my best guess for a mechanism, but my thought on that doesn't necessarily hold up the more I think about it, so I'm going to keep thinking on it and looking for info.

On the bright side, though, I did come across this on trials of an injected version of Regeneron, which would vastly improve the logisitcal issues, allowing it to be administered by quick injection. On the other hand, it's still costing $1000 per injection, and there is not nearly enough of it to be given to everyone with Covid. Again though, this hasn't been tested even as long as the vaccine has, so for people hesitating for reasons of concerns about testing, the vaccines have better data (and have the benefit of also contributing to ending this pandemic).

https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/monoclonal-antibodies-coronavirus-regeneron-phase3-data/

 

ETA: Also finding some really promising data about the Regeneron injection preventing infection in household contacts. If only it was easier and cheaper to produce, that would be so good. It doesn't have FDA approval for that use yet.https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/phase-3-prevention-trial-showed-81-reduced-risk-symptomatic-sars

[Vaccine hesitancy and side effects]

6 hours ago, Pen said:

At which point it may be too late for some potential therapies like Regeneron to work. 
 

Regeneron is the only early therapy that so far shows promising potential, but it has proven difficult to implement for a number of reasons, because it has to be given by infusion in a medical setting. That introduces all sorts of logistical challenges, such as needing to have a separate area for Covid posiitve patients to be receiving infusions away from non-Covid patients receiving infusions (like Cancer patients), separate staff, etc. This is doable in an area with low covid rates, but as soon as an area has burdened hospitals, it becomes almost impossible. If the anti-viral pill being worked on by Pfizer is effective, that would be a game changer. Right now, the US has three very effective pharmaceutials to prevent people from being hospitalized with Covid, and those are the three vaccines have been approved. There is nothing else even close to them for preventing serious Covid illness.

As an aside, there's also no more long term data for Regeneron than there is for Covid vaccines. In a way there is more for the Covid vaccine, because we know there is no vaccine that has been used before that has had side effects that don't appear until more than several months after vaccination, and the Covid vaccine has been in use much longer than that at this point. All that said, I would accept Regeneron for myself or my husband if we got Covid (but not my kids, since they are lower risk). The biggest downside is that once you've taken Regeneron, your ability to fight off a future Covid infection may be lowered, and your body may not mount a strong immune response to vaccination. So, that would be a bummer. I'd much rather have immunity via vaccination and not take that risk.

[Should I go to college out-of-state?]

On 4/29/2021 at 7:02 PM, fourisenough said:

Troll?

I gather it's more what wilrunner is getting at in her final paragraph--I pick up that this is a teen mad at her parents' decisions about when to start kindergarten. I'm wondering if the motivation is that this student really wants to go to college out of state, but her parents don't support that, and she's looking for a reason to back up why it's so important to go out of state. Otherwise, I would expect she would just apply out of state and go. We can't afford out of state for our kids, so unless they get scholarships, they have to choose between any of the public instate schools. Fortunately, there are many good choices. I can imagine many other parents have the same stipulation. I could be guessing totally wrong on that, but that's how it's reading to me.

[Tankless hot water heater]

A lot of systems have the option for a recirculating line that keeps the hot water circulating through the pipes so it’s always ready and hot. We didn’t do that, because using propane to keep water always hot is more of a concern for us than running water while we wait for it to warm. Ours doesn’t take any longer than it did to wait for the hot water to get to the tap from the hot water heater, though. 

[Personal SARS-COV-2 vaccination experiences]

3 hours ago, Kassia said:

 

Last update - I think he's over the worst of it.  He's perked up a lot.  🙂  

The nausea eased up a bit and then the worst part was the really bad chills.  He had a work emergency (of course) and was shivering so much he couldn't control his computer mouse.  Tylenol took the edge off a bit and he was able to function well enough.  I am relieved that he's doing so much better.  He ate dinner and hasn't had Tylenol now in 6 hours.  

 

How many hours total did his symptoms last? I'm trying to count the hours backward from your post, but am not doing very well with that. Was his shot yesterday morning, or the day before?

[Which vaccine should I get?]

I had a slight preference for Pfizer, but was going to be relieved and grateful if I could get Moderna or Pfizer. JJ was a very distant 3rd for me, but I would have taken it if that was going to be my only option. By the time I was eligible in my area, vaccines were still hard to get, and Pfizer was especially scarce. So, I got Moderna, and am glad to have had it. My only reason for preference was the possibility that Moderna has a little bit higher rate of side effects after the second dose. Plenty of people have those after Pfizer though, and plenty of others have nothing after Moderna. I ended up feverish and achy after the second Moderna, but my young adult dd had no side effects at all. Unpleasant, but worth it for the protection.

[Does my child really need to focus on rhyming?]

One of mine didn't get rhyming by the expected age, but did become a great reader. She is a (stealth) dyslexic and her spelling is one of the main areas affected by it. She can spell well enough now for it not to be appalling, but it was pretty bad until she was in her mid teens. All my other kids, none of whom are dyslexic, learned to rhyme by 3 or 4. Late rhyming is frequently given as a potential sign of dyslexia.

[Tankless hot water heater]

We love ours. We bought one that has a really high throughput, so we don’t have trouble with multiple showers at the same time. We do get a temporary drop in water pressure if we’re running a laundry load on the extra hot sanitary mode in our washer at the same time. Which is annoying, but not enough to ruin a shower. Previously, our tank water heater couldn’t handle two showers at the same time or back to back without running out of water. Now people can just shower whenever without clearing their plan with everyone else. Ours is a Navian. 

[Vaccine hesitancy and side effects]

11 minutes ago, Not_a_Number said:

I disagree with you there. I think it's possible to have productive conversations about this stuff. And I don't even start out assuming people are wrong -- I'm genuinely interested in the calculations people are doing. 

I agree it's possible to have productive conversations, and I find those very interesting as well, but some people don't and I think trying to force someone into a productive conversation who doesn't want to have one is probably counter-productive.

4 minutes ago, Loowit said:

Yes, it is a hormone thing, but do they know what is causing breakthrough bleeding?  I would guess it would have something to do with hormone changes, but may or may not effect ovulation or whatnot.  I haven't really looked into it much since we aren't trying to have any more children.

I saw something that suggested a mechanism which seemed plausible. It had to do with the endometrium actually being part of the immune system, as it has to deal with a wound monthly, in addition to at birth, so it makes sense from that perspective that the endometrium could be affected during the vaccine immune response, and cause spotting or an odd period. I can't think of a mechanism that would make it continue to have an effect after the immune response to the vaccine died down, though. I expect it won't take long to see if people who have period-related side effects have their cycles go right back to normal after. I would expect they likely will, since nothing showed up as affecting fertility in any of the trials, but it will be good to have that info. If I were still planning to have more kids, I would want to get the vaccine done and recovered from, so that I wouldn't risk getting Covid while pregnant. The latest data on that is very concerning, with greatly elevated mortality and morbidity for the mother, and worse outcomes for the baby.

[Vaccine hesitancy and side effects]

9 minutes ago, Frances said:

I’m also very concerned about vaccine hesitancy and ever reaching herd immunity. Up until recently, my state was one of the best in the country on almost any covid measure, now things have changed, and one of the variants is spreading rapidly. And despite vaccines now open to everyone, half of all appointments at the large, local county vaccine site are going unfilled. My husband used to love doing extra shifts there because it was such a rewarding experience. Now it depresses him because his hospital (the largest in the state ) is filling up with covid patients and not nearly enough people are getting vaccinated.

Yeah, I get worried that there will be too many people in "wait and see mode" to keep us from having another crisis level surge somewhere, and suddenly everyone will want to be vaccinated, and it will be too late at that point for vaccination to turn a surge like that around. It seems many people use current low rates where they live as a reason vaccination doesn't feel worth it, but this week that reasoning makes me think of India, who was doing so well also, until they weren't. Now it's too late to prevent what has happened. In addition to that, is the very real concern that because lack of herd immunity will allow the virus to continue to transmit, we're going to increase the risk of having a variant emerge that escapes the vaccine entirely (and is possibly more dangerous), and we're going to be right back at the beginning of this thing. I desperately want us to get this behind us, so that thought is so frustrating/discouraging.

[What else do you use leeks in?]

We most often put them in mashed potatoes. They go in with the potatoes in the last ten minutes of boiling, and then get mashed in with the potatoes. I also put them in a frittata along with some kind of greens with some frequency.