Vaccination is not a silver bullet

JEK

Senior Insider
What’s safer to do once I’m vaccinated?

When people are fully vaccinated (a week or two after the second dose), but most others aren’t yet, their lives probably shouldn’t change very much, experts say. It will most likely be safer for them to do things like visit the grocery store or the post office. People who work in places that leave them highly exposed will significantly decrease their risk — which is why frontline workers are among the first to be eligible for the vaccine. But vaccinated people should still wear masks and avoid large groups and indoor gatherings when possible.

That’s important for both their health and the health of others, experts said. Scientists are waiting to learn if vaccinated people can spread the virus to others. (Early data on transmission seems promising, but vaccines are very unlikely to curb contagiousness entirely.)

Also, while early evidence suggests that the first vaccines in the U.S. reduce people’s risk of developing Covid-19 by around 95 percent, that still means a small fraction could get sick — and as long as the virus is as widespread as it is now, even that small share could be a big number.

“Five percent of a really high number is still a high number, and what you want is 5 percent of a relatively medium or low number,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, a physician and the dean of the School of Public Health at Brown.

In an informal survey of 700 epidemiologists by The New York Times, less than a third said they would change their behavior after they were vaccinated; half said they would wait until at least 70 percent of the population was vaccinated.

Kelsey Vandersteen, a trauma I.C.U. nurse at UW Health University Hospital in Madison, Wis., will receive her first injection on Wednesday — probably months ahead of her young daughters and husband, who works from home for a software company.

Even after her second shot, she doesn’t intend to change her behavior, including wearing a mask. She says she hopes this will model good behavior for others. Besides, she said: “I prefer the mask. It protects me from other stuff as well. We’ve been completely healthy — not a sniffle since March.”

What’s safer to do once my friends and family are vaccinated?

If you and the people you want to see are all vaccinated, it should be safer to socialize with them, including indoors, experts said. But being in large groups or traveling, when there’s no way to know if the people around you have been vaccinated, will remain risky, they said.

Eric Lofgren, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Washington State University, said at that point, he would restart in-person board game nights and one-on-one meetings with students, but he wouldn’t fly on vacation or go to a movie theater.

“Immunity is not an on/off switch; it’s a dial,” he said. “If you’re below herd immunity, the virus is still happily circulating in the population and there’s always a chance the vaccine isn’t working for you.”



https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/...ons-experts.html?referringSource=articleShare
 
We know of a person, a medical doctor in her residency, who had quite an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Fever, debilitating headaches and now symptoms of a bad head cold. She was tested, post vaccination and found to be positive with an active infection. She showned no symptoms prior to the vaccination. She is getting better (fever/headache gone), but I'm sure she will be quite the case study.
 
i admire her forthrightness in trying to keep everyone informed of this virus and the vaccines that are to deal with it. Wishing her a full and uneventful recovery.
 
We know of a person, a medical doctor in her residency, who had quite an adverse reaction to the vaccine. Fever, debilitating headaches and now symptoms of a bad head cold. She was tested, post vaccination and found to be positive with an active infection. She showned no symptoms prior to the vaccination. She is getting better (fever/headache gone), but I'm sure she will be quite the case study.

Was this person in the US? I thought I read a while back that one of the vaccines created and being distributed by China uses a dead form of the virus. I think they re-create it in a lab (doing my best to not raise an eyebrow about this part) and then kill it and use it in the vaccine. But as we know none of the US approved vaccines can make a person contract the virus because there is none of it in them.
 
US medical resident and the Pfizer vaccine. Her thinking is she was asymptotically infected when vaccinated.
 
US medical resident and the Pfizer vaccine. Her thinking is she was asymptotically infected when vaccinated.
Do you mean infected by the person giving her the vaccine? Because as Jim A already mentioned, you can't get the virus from the vaccine. The vaccine works with the immune system, not by giving you a dose of dead virus. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong!
 
Do you mean infected by the person giving her the vaccine? Because as Jim A already mentioned, you can't get the virus from the vaccine. The vaccine works with the immune system, not by giving you a dose of dead virus. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong!


She believes she was infected, but showing no symptoms, when vaccinated. This all happened in a hospital setting with everyone in full PPE. The Pfizer vaccine is based on messenger RNA which “reprograms” the way T-cells fight the virus.
 
She believes she was infected, but showing no symptoms, when vaccinated. This all happened in a hospital setting with everyone in full PPE. The Pfizer vaccine is based on messenger RNA which “reprograms” the way T-cells fight the virus.

May be worth considering getting tested in advance of a vaccine appointment, if there is a reason to believe recent potential exposure?
 
She is better today - just tired at this point, but must stay away from the hospital for a period of time.
 
Israel is the worlds guinea pigs.they will vaccinate their population faster than any western country.watch to see when herd immunitty starts.that was my last point.not to compare that we are slower than them.
 
Johnson & Johnson has announced interim phase 3 data for its single-dose vaccine regimen. The request for EUA from the FDA is expected next week. This article from the WaPo summarizes and puts the data in context well.
 
Please understand that there is much extraneous 'noise' in the information disseminated by often politically biased periodicals and news agencies, as well as the anecdotal evidence presented by often well-meaning, but unsophisticated, laymen. What can you take from the J&J vaccine offering? Not completely clear at this point, but perhaps the single-dose vaccine could be the choice for the young and healthy; two dose vaccination for we oldsters? The long term data for single dose Pfizer and Moderna might prove to be similar to single dose J&J. It is tempting to keep masked up for the foreseeable future-think of all the cold and flu cases aborted by masks and quarantine. But a return to normal social interaction, including shaking hands, back-slapping and hugs, should be our stated goal.
 
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