The Virus - Are You Affected?

[Rhea]

So layman sees that and people who had more “side effects” is because they already have antibodies for the virus?

I got the first shot and very vague and slight soreness at the shot location. Absolutely nothing else. Second shot in a month.

Or that they would have had a more severe case of COVID, possibly, right?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So layman sees that and people who had more “side effects” is because they already have antibodies for the virus?

I got the first shot and very vague and slight soreness at the shot location. Absolutely nothing else. Second shot in a month.

Or that they would have had a more severe case of COVID, possibly, right?

Honestly, I have no idea. I usually go to the really smart doctor / Father-in-law for these questions (or my Bio PhD aunt). There is science stuff occurring. That much I know.

 

[bilby]

So layman sees that and people who had more “side effects” is because they already have antibodies for the virus?

I got the first shot and very vague and slight soreness at the shot location. Absolutely nothing else. Second shot in a month.

Or that they would have had a more severe case of COVID, possibly, right?

Honestly, I have no idea. I usually go to the really smart doctor / Father-in-law for these questions (or my Bio PhD aunt). There is science stuff occurring. That much I know.

There is a very simple scientific explanation for the variation in side effect severity from one patient to another, and between the two doses of the same vaccine in the same patient.

It's astonishing to me that there are so many hokey ideas being bandied about, when the scientific evidence provides such an unequivocal and clear explanation:

Show

Biological systems are really, really complex.

 

[TomC]

Honestly, I have no idea. I usually go to the really smart doctor / Father-in-law for these questions (or my Bio PhD aunt). There is science stuff occurring. That much I know.

There is a very simple scientific explanation for the variation in side effect severity from one patient to another, and between the two doses of the same vaccine in the same patient.

It's astonishing to me that there are so many hokey ideas being bandied about, when the scientific evidence provides such an unequivocal and clear explanation:

Show

Biological systems are really, really complex.

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

 

[Loren Pechtel]

So layman sees that and people who had more “side effects” is because they already have antibodies for the virus?

I got the first shot and very vague and slight soreness at the shot location. Absolutely nothing else. Second shot in a month.

I snagged a waste shot this morning, I was a bit sore at first but I'm pretty sure that was the nurse wasn't skilled enough (knowing how to do a shot safely doesn't take a lot of teaching. Making it close to painless takes long practice--you want to get shots from people who do them all the time!) and not the vaccine at all. It's been about 4 1/2 hours, no other reaction so far.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

They say in theory second shot should have stronger reaction. Don't really understand why.

I think Immunity which develops after the first shot should render second shot more inert more quickly.

First shot allows the body to develop an immune response. It allows the body to be able to recognize the foreign entity.

Second shot and the body recognizes the foreign entity and goes to war.

This creates fever and fatigue and other symptoms.

But when the body goes to war it can more easily go to war a second time.

I like to describe it as the first shot is training the soldiers, the second is a wargame using that training.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

Vaccines, however, are a special case. Most of what's going to happen in the body is already well understood. Only the mRNA vaccines are at all novel and even then they're basically a variation on live-virus vaccines without the downsides of live-virus vaccines. They simply don't need the kind of testing that most drugs need, and variations on the theme (your annual flu shots) need even less.

And note that some of the Covid vaccines have been around 14 months now, not just a few months. They had gotten far enough along with their research on a vaccine against SARS that they repurposed it against Covid. It was two days from when China first released the genetic code to synthesize the first vaccine.

The hard part about vaccines is whether they hit the target or not. Against a rapidly-mutating disease this is very difficult--but note that a miss does no harm. The only vaccine I'm aware of with substantial downsides is the one against dengue fever--but note that dengue fever itself has the same issue. If you catch dengue fever a second time it's generally a lot worse than the first round and the vaccine has the same effect. Thus the vaccine is only used in those who have already had dengue fever.

The mRNA vaccines are probably going to be a major breakthrough in disease fighting--in the past all you could do is give the body bits of the bad guys (either by killing them, or by using something related that doesn't cause much illness) and the body's defenses would target some part of that. The mRNA vaccines, however, allow including only a reasonably stable part of the disease and thus making the aim much better and mutations much less of a factor.

I've even seen talk of using it against cancer. Extract cancer cells from the patient, find something on them that isn't on their regular cells and make an mRNA vaccine against that specific pattern--thus teaching the body's immune system to go after the cancer.

 

[Keith&Co.]

They say in theory second shot should have stronger reaction. Don't really understand why.

I think Immunity which develops after the first shot should render second shot more inert more quickly.

First shot allows the body to develop an immune response. It allows the body to be able to recognize the foreign entity.

Second shot and the body recognizes the foreign entity and goes to war.

This creates fever and fatigue and other symptoms.

But when the body goes to war it can more easily go to war a second time.

I like to describe it as the first shot is training the soldiers, the second is a wargame using that training.

Have you seen xkcd's take?

https://m.xkcd.com/2425/

 

[Jokodo]

Honestly, I have no idea. I usually go to the really smart doctor / Father-in-law for these questions (or my Bio PhD aunt). There is science stuff occurring. That much I know.

There is a very simple scientific explanation for the variation in side effect severity from one patient to another, and between the two doses of the same vaccine in the same patient.

It's astonishing to me that there are so many hokey ideas being bandied about, when the scientific evidence provides such an unequivocal and clear explanation:

Show

Biological systems are really, really complex.

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

The only* reason it usually takes years is that it usually takes years before sufficiently many people in the control group randomly got infected to be able to show significant rate differences and thus clear evidence of effectiveness. A raging pandemic solves that problem very nicely: you get the required 100s or 1000s of infected individuals fast and essentially for free.

* slight hyperbole, it is the main one though

 

[TomC]

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

The only* reason it usually takes years is that it usually takes years before sufficiently many people in the control group randomly got infected to be able to show significant rate differences and thus clear evidence of effectiveness. A raging pandemic solves that problem very nicely: you get the required 100s or 1000s of infected individuals fast and essentially for free.

* slight hyperbole, it is the main one though

That's a great deal of hyperbole.

Nevertheless, C19 is an international disaster. Desperate times require desperate measures.

Tom

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

The only* reason it usually takes years is that it usually takes years before sufficiently many people in the control group randomly got infected to be able to show significant rate differences and thus clear evidence of effectiveness. A raging pandemic solves that problem very nicely: you get the required 100s or 1000s of infected individuals fast and essentially for free.

* slight hyperbole, it is the main one though

That's a great deal of hyperbole.

Nevertheless, C19 is an international disaster. Desperate times require desperate measures.

Tom

The vaccines were developed with multiple levels of testing, including large (though not as large as usual) groups in the tens of thousands. It isn't like they slapped something together from absolute scratch and started immunizing the entire nation a week after they started.

We are talking about large pharmaceutical companies that knew big checks were on the other side of the development of the vaccines, so there was little risk, so they could push extremely hard for a vaccine for a coronavirus, something that isn't entirely foreign to us.

This wasn't desperate measures by a long shot.

 

[bilby]

Honestly, I have no idea. I usually go to the really smart doctor / Father-in-law for these questions (or my Bio PhD aunt). There is science stuff occurring. That much I know.

There is a very simple scientific explanation for the variation in side effect severity from one patient to another, and between the two doses of the same vaccine in the same patient.

It's astonishing to me that there are so many hokey ideas being bandied about, when the scientific evidence provides such an unequivocal and clear explanation:

Show

Biological systems are really, really complex.

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

Nah, the actual testing doesn't take that long. The red tape does, but in an emergency, stuff gets prioritised.

If every official, reveiwer, tester, lab assistant, etc., etc., is told that as soon as the Covid stuff arrives they must drop everything else and deal with that, testing that usually takes years can be reduced to around a single year - maybe less.

No corners need be cut; Just eliminating queues.

 

[untermensche]

They say in theory second shot should have stronger reaction. Don't really understand why.

I think Immunity which develops after the first shot should render second shot more inert more quickly.

First shot allows the body to develop an immune response. It allows the body to be able to recognize the foreign entity.

Second shot and the body recognizes the foreign entity and goes to war.

This creates fever and fatigue and other symptoms.

But when the body goes to war it can more easily go to war a second time.

I like to describe it as the first shot is training the soldiers, the second is a wargame using that training.

The first shot informs the troops what the enemy looks like.

Foreign entities generally only stay in the body a short time.

The vaccine is in the body a short time.

The effect is on the immune system.

And there is a long history of humans artificially enhancing the immune system. It is not something experimental. This is just a more targeted enhancement.

 

[Jarhyn]

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

Nah, the actual testing doesn't take that long. The red tape does, but in an emergency, stuff gets prioritised.

If every official, reveiwer, tester, lab assistant, etc., etc., is told that as soon as the Covid stuff arrives they must drop everything else and deal with that, testing that usually takes years can be reduced to around a single year - maybe less.

No corners need be cut; Just eliminating queues.

Not to mention that for the Covid vaccines, most of the work had already been done for safety and side effects; the vaccines were generalized Coronavirus vaccines, that were just tweaked with the coronavirus spike MRNA specifically. The only remaining pieces of work were efficacy.

 

[untermensche]

This is why such treatments normally require years of clinical tests, performed under carefully controlled conditions.

Which clearly didn't happen with the C19 vaccine. It's simply impossible to have years of testing on a medication that has only existed for a few months.
Tom

Nah, the actual testing doesn't take that long. The red tape does, but in an emergency, stuff gets prioritised.

If every official, reveiwer, tester, lab assistant, etc., etc., is told that as soon as the Covid stuff arrives they must drop everything else and deal with that, testing that usually takes years can be reduced to around a single year - maybe less.

No corners need be cut; Just eliminating queues.

Not to mention that for the Covid vaccines, most of the work had already been done for safety and side effects; the vaccines were generalized Coronavirus vaccines, that were just tweaked with the coronavirus spike MRNA specifically. The only remaining pieces of work were efficacy.

For drugs people take chronically for years you have to do long term studies. These are called Phase 4 studies and they are done after the drug is approved.

But a vaccine is taken once. In the body for a short time. Then gone forever.

You have to look at short term side effects for safety.

Enhancing the immune system is good. Studying it long term will show benefit.

 

[SimpleDon]

I had one of the first cases of COVID-19 in February of 2020.

Three weeks ago l got my second injection of the Moderna vaccine.

I had a reaction to this injection that can best be described as a case of COVID-19 in miniature. A small replica version of the course of the disease. I lost my sense of smell and taste, which I had only regained in November nine months after the first bout with the disease. I had the same fatigue and pain in my lungs resulting in the same difficulty breathing from the congestion in my lungs. But the difficulty breathing, and the pain in my lungs only lasted one day not the three weeks of the first bout. The fatigue only three days, not three months. I have already started getting my sense of smell and taste back.

Has anyone else had these experiences?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I like to describe it as the first shot is training the soldiers, the second is a wargame using that training.

Have you seen xkcd's take?

https://m.xkcd.com/2425/

I hadn't seen it but it's amazing how many of his things are so on target.

 

[lpetrich]

I recently got my second dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and I didn't notice any side effects from it. So I should now have very low risk of that virus.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I'm scheduled for the vaccine in July

Oh, joy.

 

[Ruth Harris]

I'm scheduled for the vaccine in July

Oh, joy.

I don't know if they offer a similar thing in Denmark, but my son's girlfriend got her vaccine this month by registering on a waiting list for available short notice doses. She was able to be vaccinated due to no-shows for scheduled people.

Ruth