When will this shit end?

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

11 minutes ago, Mark E. Spliff said:

Other than being a horrific read (and I take my hat off to you for being able to cope with all that) your post is relevant to something I've been wondering about Covid vaccination.  Some people get the vaccine and suffer nothing more than a slightly sore arm, whereas others are confined to their beds for a couple of weeks.  I've been wondering whether the same determinants of whether you get seriously ill, or die, from Covid also apply to how you'll react to the vaccine.  What your Doctor told you seems to be a small piece of evidence to support that hypothesis.

Like most people, I'd like to think that I've got a rock-hard immune system and that Covid wouldn't touch me, but also like most people, I don't want to play that particular game of Russian Roulette to find out.  However, if your reaction to the vaccine indicates how you'd have fared with the real thing, that's a consequence-free way of finding out.  @Toilet Duck - any ideas?

I had the exact same conversation with my mum the other day after she found out she gets her vaccine tomorrow. She's interested to see how her and my dad react to the vaccine as in the very early days they both displayed varying levels of symptoms. 

Back in the early days of Covid they had seen some friends for a walk and then had a pub lunch. Few days later the friends are wiped out with all the classic Covid symptoms plus some of these they are now talking about. One of their friends works for the NHS in a mental health role and was tested for antibodies, she had them. She's since been vaccinated and that wiped her out again. 

Shortly after meeting their friends my mum developed some Covid like symptoms and isolated within the house as that was the guidance by this point but it wasn't confirmed. My dad had a few symptoms in so much as he was just shattered other than that he was loving his few few weeks of retirement at home without my mum giving him jobs to do. 

So yeah - my parents are conducting their own 'scientific' experiment on this exact subject in the next few days.

[zahidf]

Ha yes!

 

[st dan]

12 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

I would be interested to know about this too @Toilet Duck. I would have thought that if you'd had it before you would have a less bad reaction because your immune system recognises the virus and knows how to fight it, not the reverse. But that seems to be the opposite of what people are saying?

I thought it was because your immune system does recognise it - it essentially reacts and comes out all guns blazing ready to fight and expecting another war with the virus. 
Obviously you can tell I’m not quite as qualified as TD with that response. 

Edited February 19, 2021 by st dan

[RobertProsineckisLighter]

9 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

I would be interested to know about this too @Toilet Duck. I would have thought that if you'd had it before you would have a less bad reaction because your immune system recognises the virus and knows how to fight it, not the reverse. But that seems to be the opposite of what people are saying?

Because it recognises it and knows it's a bastard does it go all in hard?

[Toilet Duck]

6 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

I would be interested to know about this too @Toilet Duck. I would have thought that if you'd had it before you would have a less bad reaction because your immune system recognises the virus and knows how to fight it, not the reverse. But that seems to be the opposite of what people are saying?

 

17 minutes ago, Mark E. Spliff said:

Other than being a horrific read (and I take my hat off to you for being able to cope with all that) your post is relevant to something I've been wondering about Covid vaccination.  Some people get the vaccine and suffer nothing more than a slightly sore arm, whereas others are confined to their beds for a couple of weeks.  I've been wondering whether the same determinants of whether you get seriously ill, or die, from Covid also apply to how you'll react to the vaccine.  What your Doctor told you seems to be a small piece of evidence to support that hypothesis.

Like most people, I'd like to think that I've got a rock-hard immune system and that Covid wouldn't touch me, but also like most people, I don't want to play that particular game of Russian Roulette to find out.  However, if your reaction to the vaccine indicates how you'd have fared with the real thing, that's a consequence-free way of finding out.  @Toilet Duck - any ideas?

To be honest, I’d be speculating!! A lot of the symptoms you get from any infection are your immune system/your body reacting to it. The fever is your body trying to kill the infection with heat (most living things have a narrow temperature window they can survive in), the headaches are your blood vessels widening to allow more blood flow to the infected site, swelling is your blood vessels leaking to let immune cells out of circulation and into the infected site and so on...so, your immune system is primed by prior infection, or the first shot, and the immune response is always stronger on re-exposure (assuming you still have immunological memory). Whether that has any correlation with how you would have fared upon actual infection is another matter. It doesn’t seem to be the strength of the immune response that’s important in individuals that do poorly when they catch the virus (in fact it’s over activity of the inflammatory response that is doing a lot of the damage), but the specificity of it...all the immune action is wasted because the antibodies and t-cells only weakly recognise the virus or virus/infected cells, so it doesn’t clear it very well and you get this chronic inflammation in the lungs. So, still early days in trying to figure all this out! 

[xxialac]

On a side note this is absolutely brilliant news.

The gig economy leaves workers ripe to be exploited and should never have been allowed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668

[fraybentos1]

5 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Ha yes!

 

By the time the good weather comes back people aren't going to care what the rules are (OUTDOORS), I certainly won't be and will be seeing my friends in the park etc asap.

I get the need for it being stricter indoors of course but outside the risk is minimal.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, xxialac said:

On a side note this is absolutely brilliant news.

The gig economy leaves workers ripe to be exploited and should never have been allowed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56123668

Yeah definitely, this is very good news! More protections and right for workers is great!

[Matt42]

Sorry if I’ve missed some news. Can someone explain to me why mainland Europe’s rollout of the vaccine is painfully slow?

Germany I think have only vaccinated 120,000 people so far. We are on 17m.

This will be quite telling I think when it comes to this summer. I can see us having restrictions lifted in the summer but not one can go anywhere (unless they are willing to pay up the near £2,000 quarantine hotel price).

[JoeyT]

Just now, fraybentos1 said:

By the time the good weather comes back people aren't going to care what the rules are (OUTDOORS), I certainly won't be and will be seeing my friends in the park etc asap.

I get the need for it being stricter indoors of course but outside the risk is minimal.

With you on this. As soon as the weather turns it'll be tinnies in the park / garden etc. with family and friends for me.

In reality I'm looking at the Easter weekend and if the weather is decent for that it'll be a BBQ at either ours or one our friends houses. Let the kids play with each other and the adults have a well deserved beer together.

[JoeyT]

 

[zahidf]

8 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

Sorry if I’ve missed some news. Can someone explain to me why mainland Europe’s rollout of the vaccine is painfully slow?

Germany I think have only vaccinated 120,000 people so far. We are on 17m.

This will be quite telling I think when it comes to this summer. I can see us having restrictions lifted in the summer but not one can go anywhere (unless they are willing to pay up the near £2,000 quarantine hotel price).

The German press and Macron have been bashing the Oxford Vaccine, so people are saying no to it and want to wait for Pfizer

[faymondo]

Got my jab next Wednesday. I was on the flu list for this winter for the first time (Age 47) so thought I might get the vaccine early. 

A bit nervous to be honest but it is what it is. Luckily I am self employed and our systems are down next Weds and all weekend so at least if I am feeling a bit rough I would have been off work anyway. Though hoping some rare time off is not ruined.

[zahidf]

For Wales, kids back 15th March for school

 

“Self-contained” holiday accommodation in Wales could reopen in time for the Easter period, first Minister Mark Drakeford has said.

Drakeford told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

I met our tourism taskforce yesterday, we’ll be having some detailed discussions with them now over the next couple of weeks to see if there’s anything that we might be able to do around the Easter period. The most that would be would be the reopening of self-contained accommodation where there aren’t shared facilities and there isn’t social mixing.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Drakeford said on the re-opening details:

I don’t believe it will be a wholesale reopening, we are going to do things in the way that Sage and the WHO recommend - carefully, step-by-step, always assessing the impact of any actions that we take. But if it is possible from 15 March to begin the reopening of some aspects of non-essential retail and personal services such as hairdressing then of course that is what we would want to do.

[st dan]

2 minutes ago, zahidf said:

For Wales, kids back 15th March for school

 

“Self-contained” holiday accommodation in Wales could reopen in time for the Easter period, first Minister Mark Drakeford has said.

Drakeford told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:

I met our tourism taskforce yesterday, we’ll be having some detailed discussions with them now over the next couple of weeks to see if there’s anything that we might be able to do around the Easter period. The most that would be would be the reopening of self-contained accommodation where there aren’t shared facilities and there isn’t social mixing.

Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Drakeford said on the re-opening details:

I don’t believe it will be a wholesale reopening, we are going to do things in the way that Sage and the WHO recommend - carefully, step-by-step, always assessing the impact of any actions that we take. But if it is possible from 15 March to begin the reopening of some aspects of non-essential retail and personal services such as hairdressing then of course that is what we would want to do.

Seems a strange decision for just 2 weeks before the Easter holidays - although do understand it would then be an extra month if they waited until the return. 

[Mr.Tease]

1 hour ago, themuel said:

I’m 35. Had covid last March - health has been very poor since. Various parts of my body just failing, permanent lethargy, bad heart, permanent smell and taste change  etc. 
Got the call on Wednesday, spare vaccine, come down to the surgery quick. AstraZeneca. 
Doctor warned me I might have hard side effects due to having had the virus already. He was right! 
Insane fevers, partner thought I was fitting because I was shaking so much. Hallucinating, seeing dead friends by my bed etc.  Entire body in agony and a banging headache. 
 

36 hours down the line and I have a stuffy head and am sore, but I’m pretty sure that’s down to the ferocity of the shaking during fever. 
 

All 100% worth it to have had my first dose, but oh man it was not a pleasant ride. Hoping round two won’t be so bad. 
 

Sounds like it's been a real struggle for you since March - those after effects from covid sound like torture, especially having to deal with them for such a long time. And then your reaction to the vaccine sounds like a nightmare too! I do really hope your body starts to show signs of healing soon, it must be awful for you. 

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Ireland is full of ZeroCovid virtue signallers so I think they’ll be fine tbh 

I love how yis are all experts on Ireland all of a sudden! 😁

No, the place isn’t full of Zero Covid zealots, there’s no point even trying it unless the UK does too as we share an open border. Seal the common travel area and we can all have summer across the two island wouldn’t be a bad proposition, but I still don’t think it would work. The news this morning wasn’t exactly new, they’d previously said May or June for hospitality. Plan is for this to be the last lockdown, open up more when the vaccination programme is in full swing, summer will help and by Autumn we’re done and ready for Winter, so it’s not a shock, most of it has already been mentioned. Current lockdown is nothing like last year, people are out and about, there’s just nothing open!

[Leyrulion]

On the vaccine side effects-the information you get trained on for Pfizer is

A)80% have pain at the injection site. With swelling and redness also reported, it resolves after a few days and within 7.

B)systemic reactions are less but make up the following- 60% report tiredness, 50% headache, 30% muscle ache, chills 30%, joint pain 20%, raised temperature 10%

 

There's nothing in the official literature about who gets them or an ability to predict who gets severe reactions. So treat anything you see online about that with caution.

 

 

[Fuzzy Afro]

23 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

Sorry if I’ve missed some news. Can someone explain to me why mainland Europe’s rollout of the vaccine is painfully slow?

Germany I think have only vaccinated 120,000 people so far. We are on 17m.

This will be quite telling I think when it comes to this summer. I can see us having restrictions lifted in the summer but not one can go anywhere (unless they are willing to pay up the near £2,000 quarantine hotel price).

The Europeans are more interested in bureaucracy and process and arguing about the process than getting on with the job. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

@Toilet Duck- I’m two weeks post-Pfizer today and my employer’s health insurance is offering us free antibody tests in a couple of weeks. Is it worth taking the test to see if it worked? 

[st dan]

Problem with side effects is that tiredness, headaches and muscle aches may happen regardless due to it being winter, most of us are at home all days starting at screens, lack of exercise and no real social interaction outside our homes. All which probably contribute to a fogginess. I certainly haven’t full shaken off any of these since about November!  

[Hannibal Schmitt]

18 minutes ago, zahidf said:

The German press and Macron have been bashing the Oxford Vaccine, so people are saying no to it and want to wait for Pfizer

That`s not exactly so. Some people in Europe think so, yes. But the majority won`t wait. I know many who would take the AstraZeneca and they are vaccinating care home workers and health personal with that one at the moment,  and governments now realize that people are getting nervous, so they are under pressure to fasten up, also making pressure on the EU and there is a media campaign for the AstraZeneca. I myself wouldn`t hesitate to take the AstraZeneca. Until now things have been rather slow, yes. But they promised that things will fasten up - then from march on it will be 4 times faster as there will also be other vaccines like Moderna and  J&J. Also all governments or at least ours and Germany told everyone who wants one will get a shot by summer. 

[xxialac]

27 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

This will be quite telling I think when it comes to this summer. I can see us having restrictions lifted in the summer but not one can go anywhere (unless they are willing to pay up the near £2,000 quarantine hotel price).

I don't think that's the case at all.

Worse case scenario, wanting to go to e.g. Greece will involve having to take a test and quarantine at home. Quarantine hotels will be largely scrapped and probably scrapped altogether.

More likely those who have been vaccinated will be able to travel freely to low risk countries.

[steviewevie]

23 minutes ago, Matt42 said:

Sorry if I’ve missed some news. Can someone explain to me why mainland Europe’s rollout of the vaccine is painfully slow?

Germany I think have only vaccinated 120,000 people so far. We are on 17m.

This will be quite telling I think when it comes to this summer. I can see us having restrictions lifted in the summer but not one can go anywhere (unless they are willing to pay up the near £2,000 quarantine hotel price).

slower to negotiate, less investment in facilities, and more vaccine hesitancy, stuff like that. Their numbers should also come down in the summer, and they will likely start vaccinating more as supply gets better, and maybe with vaccine passports we can go to certain places, all depends on variants.

[zahidf]