outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

The case for not getting the (widely available, free) omicron booster for people who are already vaccinated is one I don't understand. Like, 40% of adults get their flu shot each year. What's the reasoning for "I'll get my annual flu booster but I won't get the omicron booster"?

What's the reasoning for "I'll get my annual flu booster but I won't get the omicron booster"?

I had a in-person doctor visit on Sept. 22. They asked if I wanted my flu shot. I said yes. I asked if they could give me a covid booster. They said 'we don't have any'. That was my reasoning.

I think they made a strategic mistake restricting (officially) who could get the last booster. Yeah, I know, you could always jump the line or lie or whatever, but I didn't, which meant almost a year between shots, which meant almost a year with I assume reduced protection. I got the bivalent the first day I could, but hadn't really altered my behavior the preceding several months. And I'm one of the very compliant ones. Everyone else, the great unwashed, even those open to vaccines? I wouldn't underestimate the impact of inertia.

My parents finally got their bivalent booster this week, despite resistance, because their doctors told them to. The reason for my mom's resistance? "Walensky said it hadn't been tested on humans."

my dad is biv boosted. yesssssssssss. whole family is DONE.

the whole 'not tested' thing, like....it isn't like they made a whole new vaccine, they took the existing one and tweaked a few things.

this isn't gonna be like the shitty I Am Legend remake

got mine on Thursday, flu and COVID, one in each arm. still feeling a bit achey and sweaty, and awake at 03:30. i just walked in to a chemist 10 minutes away, was no need for an appointment

I got my bivalent booster Monday, no problem at all, besides the sore arm. A minor sniffle Tuesday, that could have been anything else.

Bivalent just becoming available to all adults in my area. Will get sometime. Has the thing been updated yet to the hottest new strains?

and like most other under-65, relatively healthy people here that will be my 4th total. got 3rd (first boost) back in January

It works against the first couple omicron strains.

Seeing the new Pfizer bivalent is more up to date. No idea when I might be able to get that. Get poked with something or other soon.

Get it today.

Splikevax bivalent Original / Omicron
elasomeran / imelasomeran

call it by it's name!

soonest is oct 14, and in Bay Bulls! cmon Alf

they'll open some city clinics soon probably

and 20 weeks later i can get the extra tasty crispy

Ah. I wasn't sure on your chronology based on your posts.

it's all confusing. there might have been a one week window i was eligible for a non bivalent 4th hit

FL's surgeon general actively faking studies to try and indicate mRNA vaccines cause heart problems.

I fucking hate this state

#vaccineswork this is yet another example of write your conclusion and then fashion an article. @DrSusanOliver1 https://t.co/RxTjt8zSs7 . @FLDeptofHealth tried to analyze deaths after COVID vaccination starting from their rollout till June 2022. 🧵(1/9)

— Frank Han MD 🇺🇦Pediatric/ACHD/GUCH Cardiologist (@han_francis) October 8, 2022

Our Department of Health now recommending against people 18-39 not getting mRNA vaccines. Unfucking believable

Well this latest booster (Pfizer omnicron updated one) absolutely put me on my arse.

Went to bed, woke up after 3 in the afternoon and back in bed by 10.

Man I’m sorry Aldo.

Am I an outlier because I never had a bad reaction to the vaccine?

Man I’m sorry Aldo.

Am I an outlier because I never had a bad reaction to the vaccine?

Am I an outlier because I never had a bad reaction to the vaccine?

maybe. i never have, either, beyond my arm being sore for the day because my limbs are sharp rails. from seeing the range of reactions to vaccines on here and irl, it seems like either no reaction is an outlier or every reaction is -- it's across the board, no apparent rhyme or reason

I've been a bit fuzzy round the edges today but that's as likely from oversleeping than the vaxx.

My first three were the same as B,M and I was fine with them all, I don't know whether the omnicron tweaksdid something to me.

i've never met anyone who had a more than three day reaction to the vaccines/booster
i've met a few people who got taken out by a month + by covid

My neighbor told me today that both previous boosters coincided with some serious hearing loss that took weeks to resolve. He knows correlation is not causation, but his doctor nonetheless recommended against the latest vaccine for the time being.

I had a fairly mild reaction to the bivalent booster, but two weeks after that I got a not exactly mild case of Covid. Now I'm wondering if it makes any sense to get a second jab of that booster.

My wife and I got our Pfizer bivalent boosters last week and it took us down for a couple days. Still miles better than actual covid though.

Saw a story the other day saying that research indicates those with (normal) reactions to the vaccine might actually gain better immunity. Then again, I could have sworn I've seen that story multiple times over the past almost three years.

Been reading/hearing/seeing some things that at least so far studies are not showing the latest vaccine much if any more effective than its predecessors, which as far as messaging goes may partly explain the lax embrace of the current vax. They kind of have to overpromise to get/keep people motivated (iirc the bivalent was supposed to be 99.9% effective against omicron), but when they underdeliver it breeds skepticism or complacency. Maybe they should slow down a little, take their time with boosters, and release them when they have better research. If people aren't in a rush to get the boosters, then they should maybe stop rushing them out.

Anecdotally, we barely have heard of anyone around here testing positive these days (knock wood), maybe two or three we've heard about in the past few months, up to date with boosters or no. People are getting more and more used to the perpetual prospect of covid and how to handle it. Even the last public place I know to require a mask (the food pantry where I volunteer) has just gone mask optional.

All the research in the world ain't getting these people jabbed.

Re infections: yeah, it's the quietest it's been all year, maybe a three-month stretch when no one I know has gotten infected.

I never heard or thought the bivalent booster was supposed to be 99.9% effective against omicron (that seems really unrealistic!) nor have I seen anything to suggest that it's less effective than expected (which, speaking roughly, I would say means "about as effective in diminishing chance of transmission as original vax was against original strain.")

As for me, I continue to not try very hard to not get COVID (getting the bivalent booster and wearing an N95 when I'm indoors with people is about as much as I do, and I take it off to eat and drink) and to not, as far as I know, get COVID.

1 in 30 people in the UK has COVID right now

I never heard or thought the bivalent booster was supposed to be 99.9% effective against omicron (that seems really unrealistic!) nor have I seen anything to suggest that it's less effective than expected (which, speaking roughly, I would say means "about as effective in diminishing chance of transmission as original vax was against original strain.")

I recall hearing last month or so Allison Arwady, commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health, really playing up the bivalent vaccine as tailored specifically to omicron and highly, highly effective. Maybe she didn't say 99%, but that's what I remember. As for less effective than expected, this is what I heard yesterday:

https://www.npr.org/2022/10/25/1131449380/two-new-research-papers-cast-doubt-on-the-new-covid-booster

SUMMERS: So these new boosters are the first to target the omicron variant, and they're being promoted as providing better protection than the original shots. So what do these new studies tell us?

STEIN: Yeah, you might remember that these new boosters were authorized without any direct data about how well they work. To save time, the authorizations were based on how well shots aimed at an earlier omicron subvariant stimulated the immune system and on tests on mice. So these new studies provide the first direct data from people. Researchers at Columbia and Harvard compared how the immune systems of volunteers responded to the new bivalent boosters versus the original vaccine. Dr. David Ho at Columbia says the research suggests that the new shots may not be all that much better than the old ones.

DAVID HO: To disappointment, the bivalent vaccine did not show superiority over the original vaccine.

STEIN: About a month after getting the shots, the new boosters did not stimulate significantly higher levels of antibodies that could neutralize the omicron subvariants infecting most people right now.

xxpost I'm not just talking about the great unjabbed. Reportedly only 20 million of the 200 million now eligible for the bivalent have gotten the shot, which means tens of millions of people that *have* been vaccinated are at least holding off. And old people specifically, among those most at risk, have shown a precipitous decline in vaccination. Something like 90% got the first shots, 70% the first booster, 40% the second booster, and as of a couple of days ago just 8% had gotten the bivalent.

From that same article

STEIN: No, no. No, not at all. First of all, some researchers say the jury is still out about how effective the new boosters are. Deepta Bhattacharya at the University of Arizona says the new studies were too small and too short to reach any firm conclusions.

For sure. But by the time the jury is in we'll already be on the next vaccine/strain/virus.

Both studies were 20 people or less over a 3-5 week period and are preprints that haven't been peer reviewed.

People will only notice the headline. Good job again media

Yeah, it doesn't help. But apparently neither has the formal push for people to get the bivalent.

that was hurt by an already deep ambivalence towards more vaccines PLUS publicly known doctors like Celine Gounder who were writing op-eds suggesting maybe we shouldn't have approved this booster, hmm idk just asking questions.

It is interesting that general vaccine resistance/reluctance should reach an inflection point this far down the line. Like, what's different? Why say yes to shots one, two and three or four, but not five? The biggest factor I can see is that so many people vaxxed or not have had direct experience with covid that maybe they feel more confident. Certainly less afraid.

Most if not all the reluctance is from people who didn't get the fourth shot or even the third.

Y’all are ignoring the completely rational (yes i mean that) thought process that goes through many minds, even those of people like my husband who worked in an ER for the first two years of Covid— “these shots knock me on my ass, I am already working too hard and can’t make ends meet, i cannot afford to be knocked on my ass.” it’s not like most companies’ sick policies have changed in regards to getting the vax— hell, many companies are forcing people to return to work while they still have Covid. my husband and others who have had three shots have all expressed variations of this thinking to me, shouldn’t be that hard to understand.

table, I love you, but most of your posts are so damn condescending. Everything you wrote was valid (and correct) without your having to stick that last phrase in. I value your husband's work in medicine; most of us, including you, are not doctors. Shouldn't be that hard to understand.

Yeah I do tend to forget that there are some people who feel sick for a day from the vaccine itself!

I think a lot of people who got breakthrough infections jumped off the booster bandwagon, thinking "the hell are these things actually doing for me?!", forgetting that the primary aim of the boosters is to help minimize, not eliminate, the effects of the virus.

Not five minutes ago a lib colleague who's up to date on boosters (and got bad COVID during the Delta wave) hasn't gotten the fifth yet. No reason. She forgets. With COVID not a daily reality for many people anymore, it's just not a priority (she got her flu shot, though, so go figure).

that's what I mean, I know lots of compliant vaxxed people in no hurry this time. anecdotal for sure.

Maybe they should slow down a little, take their time with boosters, and release them when they have better research. If people aren't in a rush to get the boosters, then they should maybe stop rushing them out.

god, yes, this endless chain of strain-specific booster after strain-specific booster. why have there been so many of them, and been rushed to market so fast, well before the strains they have been designed for have started to subside?

that could neutralize the omicron subvariants infecting most people right now

why don't they just develop a booster that will update itself against variants that don't exist yet. stupid lazy scientists.

We'll just ask the scientists to put in some weekend work and redo all the vaccines, should just take a few hours