Just to add since everybody reporting here seems to be reporting minimal side effects. Don’t be surprised if the vaccine knocks you on your rear (figuratively) for a day or so, particularly after the second shot. This reaction may be more common in younger people. I say this not to frighten people but somewhat as a warning that it might not be wise to be vaccinated right before some important event and to reassure that if you don’t feel so great the day after getting vaccinated, it’s a normal reaction and an indication that the vaccine is doing a good job of activating one’s immune system.
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I’d second that thought as far as any reaction means that the vaccine is working. Seventeen hours after my 2nd shot, though, I haven’t had any reaction of consequence. The arm is a little sorer at the site of injection and I might have had a very mild case of the chills for a few hours, which the MD wife says can be associated with the body making a strong immune reaction (but since our house is at 60 deg F and I’ve been sitting around a lot, maybe I’m just too inactive?!). It’s hard enough to get vaccinated, so I’d say if some organization offers you the opportunity, grab it and follow their schedule rather than make folks herd cats by coordinating vaccinations around Johnny’s wedding and Sue’s college graduation (since the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine is ~85% effective in the short term, you might actually live for those events rather than being the rare young person who dies or infects someone else by dint of passing up the first opportunity to stop catching the virus or passing it on).
After you get vaccinated, if you’re in the U.S. and have a cell phone, you can register with the CDC v-safe program and they’ll text you on a daily basis so you can text back any side effects you experience and you can opt out any time. They did not anticipate my 2nd shot, though, and I had to visit their site again to register to record my 2nd shot experience.
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Regarding events. I was just passing on advice I got regarding Shingles vaccine (if I’m remembering correctly, the second shot did knock me on my rear!) I don’t think many events in the traditional sense are being held due to COVID.
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I’m going to be generous here and say you probably don’t understand enough about either the spike protein modification or the RNA splicing to make the assertion you’re making. They are ‘proper’ vaccines. Specifically they allow the body to create antibodies to combat the virus before you get exposed to the full version if the virus. You therefore get the vaccination benefit in the full traditional sense.
The fact that one approach modifies the viral RNA to achieve the effect isn’t any reason to introduce doubts to the wider public. In fact if you are claiming to be a medical professional, you ought to be reported to your professional body, because you’re in danger of disseminating false information and endangering lives.
Please consider deleting all of what you’ve posted above. There are no long term side-effects that have been recorded in relation to hearing from the meta studies of vaccination. Should you need to educate yourself in this respect, you should read the studies from Israel to see how effectively a population can be successfully vaccinated.
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Seems like apples and oranges. The CDC does advertise that the side effects of the Shingrix shingles vaccine in the worst sort of side reaction scenario " may affect your ability to do daily activities, but they should go away on their own in a few days." I haven’t heard anything like that for the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines for the great majority of folks.
Fact sheet: What You Can Expect After Getting Shingrix | Herpes Zoster | CDC
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Just a couple of examples. Again, not saying to scare people. Just for awareness. And if people want to delay the shot, I certainly have no objections. There is way too much demand to try to shame people into getting vaccinated.
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I wouldn’t want to shame anyone. I’d just plan at a certain point to switch from “Masks required” to “Vaccination required” to participate in society, unless you’re tamper-proof card/cell phone/smartwatch app/smartcard says you have a medical reason to be exempted from vaccination. The Pacific Northwest has proven what happens in society where people try to have their kids skip out on measles vaccinations. Public health is not a matter of “when I feel like it, I’ll consider it, MAYBE…”
BTW, that’s a significant advantage of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. They are safe for immuno-compromised individuals so there should be very few reasons for anyone not to get vaccinated to meet public health requirements as advisable, as it obviously now is, unless with 500,000 already dead (at least), we instead want to shoot for making COVID-19 absolutely the leading cause of death in the U.S. over the past year. We can still aim for that if we count ~March 15th as when the pandemic really got going.
Another approach to encourage folks to get vaccinated would be if you decline the opportunity to get vaccinated “x” number of times and you later get COVID and have to undergo medical treatment, your insurance would not cover your medical expenses (or only with a MUCH higher co-pay) as you declined the opportunity to greatly reduce those expenses repeatedly by not getting vaccinated. A simple economic inducement. No shaming involved. If you get vaccinated but still get COVID, you’re still fully covered.
I’m two weeks beyond my second Pfizer vaccine. No impact on hearing. In fact, neither my partner nor I had any reactions to either of the shots–except for a little soreness at the injection site.
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I think of much greater concern is known ototoxicity affects on hearing from antibiotics and NSAIDs if you get sick. Don’t get sick, take the vaccine.
(I don’t know what therapies hospitals are using to treat COVID, but we should all be careful with drugs that can “cause” hearing loss.)
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@MDB @jim_lewis the shingrix vaccine is a live vaccine, and that would be why it knocked you for six.
To the best of my knowledge Pfizer/BioNTech,
University of Oxford/AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Moderna are all attenuated vaccines. So these vaccines don’t pack as much punch as the Shingrix vaccine does.
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I don’t think the strength of the immune reaction is dependent on whether it’s live vaccine or not. The first shot “primes” the immune system and depending on one’s immune system and likely a host of other factors, some people get enough of a reaction to lay them low for a few hours to a day. I’ve heard this from friends specifically with COVID vaccine and the articles I cited above report similar reactions. It’s quite possible one will have no or little reaction, but it is possible to have a fairly strong one. I’ve seen some people suggest premedicating, but I don’t think that’s a great idea.
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I had both doses of the Moderna vaccine, and it did not affect my hearing at all.
Side effects:
1st dose. Almost none. Slight discomfort in the arm near the injection site, not enough to call pain, but enough to notice if I moved my arm higher than horizontal. Removing the band-aid was the worst part of that.
2nd dose. The next day I had the heebie-jeebies for a few hours so I took a nap until they went away.
A small price to pay for the protection the vaccine offers.
WORST CASE if you get the vaccine, you are sick the next day
WORST CASE if you DON’T get the vaccine, you might die a horrible death, fighting for every breath in an isolation ward and not even being able to say good-bye to your loved ones.
Don’t believe the politicians, pundits, preachers, propagandists and the person on your social media account if they disagree with the scientific experts who spend their entire lives learning about communicable diseases and how to control them.
For those able to get the vaccine, it’s a no-brainer.
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No. Worst case if you get the vaccine is to have an anaphylactic reaction and die. It’s extremely unlikely, but it will likely happen to some people. I still think people should get the vaccine, but I am somewhat 
obsessive about the truth.
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Deaf_piper, I’ve had the first Pfizer shot. No noticeable hearing issues. However, just as a precaution you might want to ask your doctor for a prescription for Prednisone or something like it. Fill the prescription before you get the shot.
Then if you DO experience any hearing loss you can start taking the Prednisone immediately and it might reverse the loss. But you have to start taking it very quickly after the hearing loss starts.
This will almost certainly be unnecessary, but Prednisone is so inexpensive that it’s worth buying some to have on hand just in case, IMHO.
MDB, perhaps. That’s a good point.
The anaphylactic reaction is very rare. They advise you to hang around for 15 minutes, which is long enough to know if you are going to have one. They are prepared to give you a shot of epinephrine which should take care of the problem.
So it’s still better than the worst case if you don’t get vaccinated.
One of my relatives caught COVID-19. She was in the isolation ward, fighting for every breath, not having human contact as the doctors were so hazmat suited up she couldn’t see their faces, thinking she was going to die and not even be able to say good-bye to her husband and children. Fortunately she pulled through, but they are thinking she might have permanent brain and lung damage which will probably shorten her compromised life.
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Deaf_piper, of course ask your doctor or your ENT if there might be a bad reaction to taking Prednisone right after having received the vaccination.
As Jack Nicholson said to Tom Cruise…
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The study, published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on Feb. 12, analyzed reports of reactions to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) between Dec. 14 and Jan. 18.
During that time period, nearly 10 million Pfizer mRNA vaccines and 7.6 million Moderna shots were administered across the United States. CDC researchers identified 47 reports of anaphylaxis following the Pfizer vaccine, and 19 following the Moderna vaccine.
Among the Pfizer vaccine anaphylactic reactions, 94 percent were in women, as were 100 percent of the Moderna vaccine anaphylaxis cases. Anaphylaxis is a severe allergic reaction that can occur soon after vaccination, often starting within 30 minutes.
Three-quarters of the 66 who experienced anaphylaxis to the mRNA vaccines had a history of allergies of allergic reactions. About 32 percent of them (21 people) had a history of anaphylaxis. Individuals reported prior anaphylaxis to a wide range of triggers including: other vaccines (rabies and flu), medication (sulfa drugs and penicillin), foods like nuts, as well as latex, jellyfish stings and to contrast media used during medical imaging scans.
The CDC does advise people with a history of severe food, drug, pet, venom or latex allergies to get the mRNA vaccines. The exception is for individuals who have an allergy polyethylene glycol (PEG) or polysorbate, since those are contained in the shots. The CDC also recommends people who’ve had an allergic reaction to another vaccine or injectable medication to discuss vaccination with their allergist first.
It’s basically not as if you’re going to be caught by surprise. 3/4 of the adverse reactions with an allergic response occurred in people with a known history of allergic reactions. Given the 66 documented severe allergic reactions in 17.6 million doses given, you’re probably far more likely to die in an auto accident in the coming year than experience an adverse allergic reaction to COVID-19 vaccination.*** Better give up driving anywhere just to assure your longevity if you’re so worried about advising people on the possible severe dangers of COVID-19 vaccination. Almost ranks with the dangers of “gene therapy” from COVID-19 mRNA vaccines… Note the link provided here is from a site dedicated to providing advice to people with allergies … Few Severe Reactions to COVID-19 Vaccines, But Women Most Affected (allergicliving.com)
For a relative perspective, consider your risk of dying while under general anesthesia, factoring in one’s age and health condition. One had better stay out of hospitals and surgery if one is an older patient with a serious medical condition(s): is anesthesia safe (anesthesiaweb.org)
In general, the larger the operation, the greater the risk of dying, and the unhealthier the person undergoing the operation, the greater the risk of dying. The health of a person undergoing an operation is usually expressed in terms of the ASA-score (American Society of Anesthesiologists score) (Keats 1978).
- ASA-1: A completely healthy patient.
- ASA-2: A patient with mild systemic disease.
- ASA-3: A patient with severe systemic disease that is not incapacitating.
- ASA-4: A patient with incapacitating disease that is a constant threat to life.
- ASA-5: A moribund patient who is not expected to live 24 hours with or without surgery.
- E: Emergency case suffix. (always a higher risk category)
This is a simple scoring system, which is why there is some variation in how different anesthesiologists score the same patient (Owens 1978). In general, the higher the score, the greater the chance of dying as a result of anesthesia and surgery. This is clearly shown in the table below. The reader should realize that these figures are statistics for large numbers of patients who underwent all manner of operations ranging from trivial to major. Accordingly, they should not in any way be misconstrued as applying to any specific individual, or to any specific combination of anesthesia and surgery. What these figures do show, is that unhealthy individuals are more likely to die as a result of anesthesia and surgery than healthy individuals.
ASA-Score Mortality (%)
(Wolters-1996) (McNicol-2007)
ASA Score All Ages ≥ 70 Mortality(%)
1-2 0.1-0.7% 1%
3 3.5% 5%
4 18.3% 14%
5 >18.3% 23%
Here’s a review of the different ways of making vaccines and how they’re used to make COVID-19 vaccines. None of the ones you cite are “attenuated virus” vaccines. Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are mRNA vaccines (nucleic acid vaccines), the Novavax vaccine is a protein subunit vaccine, and the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a “viral” vaccine but it uses the “harmless” adenovirus to express the COVID spike protein in the human body.
A brief overview of all the Covid-19 vaccines in the pipeline — Quartz (qz.com)
What is the Novavax vaccine, and how does it work? (msn.com)
How the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Works - The New York Times (nytimes.com)
or, not behind a pay wall with limited free views:
COVID-19: How does the Oxford-AstraZeneca viral vector vaccine work? (medicalnewstoday.com)
*** The odds of dying from a motor - vehicle crash in 2018 were 1 in 8,303. The lifetime odds of dying in a motor-vehicle crash for a person born in 2018 were 1 in 106. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/all-injuries/preventable-death-overview/odds-of-dying/data-details/
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Jim_Lewis - AMEN! I have had both doses or Pfizer and confirm what has been written earlier - no pain nor strain - nothing more than a little tenderness at the injection site. I have severe to profound loss so I’d probably notice any loss whatsoever. c!
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