Personal Experience with COVID?

[ikaris]

Really difficult to manage medical professionals who refuse to acknowledge issues caused by the vaccines:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ions-1.6692248

[calgarygeologist]

My mom started to get a weird condition in the knuckles of her hands and I wonder if it has anything to do with the vaccine? For the most part she was healthy and active and this condition onset after a few months post vaccination. She had to quit her job/retire and has seen a number of doctors and specialists over the past few months. They say it isn't arthritis or anything related to that but it is a weird swelling and stiffening of her knuckles/fingers. So far no one has conclusively said what her condition is or what has caused it but she is still undergoing testing and has been doing Cortisone shots recently.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by ikaris

Really difficult to manage medical professionals who refuse to acknowledge issues caused by the vaccines:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ions-1.6692248

Probably because there's no clear or definitive link between their conditions and the vaccine.

Have you seen how many adverse reactions are recorded in the placebo arm of basically every vaccine trial? Something like 40% of the people in the Pfizer trial who received saline injections reported systemic adverse reactions after the vaccination even though nothing they received would have caused that.

And people get new onset conditions all the time. About 1 in 225 people in the placebo arm of the Pfizer trial had severe adverse events (cardiac disorders, cancer, immune system disorders, etc.) in the first couple of months after being vaccinated, which are obviously totally unrelated to the saline they were injected with. Now take that ratio and spread it across tens of millions of people in Canada, and even if we had all been injected with saline we'd still have a significant number of severe events happening that coincide with timing of the doses.

While a temporal link between a vaccine dose and a symptom can definitely mean it might be related, if that's the only evidence of a connection and we're talking about somewhat common ailments (like eczema), it's not really strong evidence. That's why comparing things to regular background rates is the only way you can really determine if something odd is happening.

[Dion]

Originally Posted by Knut

I think it is at the point where if you are under 50 and healthy there should be no stigma around not getting it. I think we will find a higher than acceptable risk profile for the shot BASED completely on the current variants. Keeping in mind the virus can change to change the formula again.

When all of you got the shot (and had the side effects that are bad) the Virus was the delta variant and much much more severe. It is really hard to apply the lens of today's virus to back then.

Personally, I am getting the booster every fall. I have tolerated it well and I deal with high risk patients at work. The Pfizer Bivalent does seem to reduce the risk of transmission by 20-40%. Also, I dont want to get too sick from it.

Dion.... you really should be getting the shot.

I did get the shot, 3 of them so far.

[JohnnyB]

The vaccine absolutely caused issues for me, but covid caused worse issues. I began having neurological issues within 24 hours of my first shot of Pfizer. They began right in the spot where the vaccine had been administered and then spread up and down my arm from that spot over subsequent days, eventually affecting my whole arm as well as my shoulder, chest, and face on that side. They were bad enough for me to go to emergency at one point, but I don't regret getting the shot.

On the advice of my neurologist, I still got the second dose of Pfizer, and the symptoms I'd experienced intensified again. I tried to get another shot at the time as an alternative to Pfizer, but after being run around so many different people who would lack authority to do so and pass me on to another authority, I was eventually told I would basically need a signed letter from Bonny Henry to make it happen. So, I gave in.

Those symptoms were bad, but they pale in comparison to the virus. I'm now 15 months on from first getting covid and still have days of being utterly debilitated by it. Long-covid has been much, much worse and life-changing in a bad way.

Unfortunately, the healthcare system has been virtually useless in offering help. Nearly everything beneficial that I've learned for dealing with it has come via word of mouth or online groups. Now, there is fortunately more research coming out about it, but the actual healthcare system has been unhelpful and a waste of time to deal with.

I don't blame healthcare practitioners, but at a health policy making level and a public communications level, I think there have been and continue to be terrible problems in how the response to the virus has been managed.

Edit: I will add that while some of the post-covid issues I've had are things that were new to me after getting the virus and seem unconnected to the post-vaccine issues I had, the most debilitating symptoms I get are still neurological and still on the same side of my body as where I got the vaccine. I don't know or understand the relationship, but it's there. Again, no help from the healthcare system on this, even in the form of information sharing. Everything I learn comes from following new research myself or from stories of shared experiences in online support groups.

[Snuffleupagus]

Originally Posted by ikaris

Really difficult to manage medical professionals who refuse to acknowledge issues caused by the vaccines:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...ions-1.6692248

Pretty much every vaccine in history has had adverse effects but by the numbers it wouldn't surprise me that the covid mRNA vaccines will go down as the most successful in history when all's said and done.

[JohnnyB]

Originally Posted by Snuffleupagus

Pretty much every vaccine in history has had adverse effects but by the numbers it wouldn't surprise me that the covid mRNA vaccines will go down as the most successful in history when all's said and done.

That report's not about the incident rate or the safety of the vaccine. It's about the stigmatized atmosphere around the vaccines and the lack of support for people who have had adverse reactions.