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Covid vaccine. Anyone not having it?

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Jemima37

Senior Member
Messages
407
Location
UK
I’ve posted before that since having severe CFS and agoraphobia I’m behind on some appointments and now with the covid vaccine I feel under more pressure.

My husband and eldest son(hes 18) are going to have the vaccine. My 2 younger kids are 17 and 15 and can’t have the vaccine as yet in the UK. So obviously with my daughter in school there’s going to be a risk of her catching it until children can have the vaccine. So I’ll be at risk if I don’t have the vaccine.

I had the swine flu vaccine back in 2009 and had a really nasty reaction to it, I was ill for weeks and I developed CFS in 2015, if not before as I had fatigue issues for a while. I’m anxious to have it done incase it makes my situation worse. I don’t go anywhere as I’ve been housebound for a few years so right now going out catching it isn’t an issue but of course the risk concerns me. We’re such a careful family, we stay home, wipe all our groceries and parcels down, my hubby has been amazing. He has asthma so he’s extra careful for him too.

I just don’t feel comfortable having the vaccine and not really able to push myself to get it. Is anyone else not having it? And has other family members that could still bring the virus into the home? My son says I’m stupid and should push myself to the doctors to get the vaccine but having major medical trauma, CFS and agoraphobia the last few years it’s not easy at all. Plus I’m terrified of making the CFS worse from putting myself through that horrendous anxiety it’ll cause and incase the vaccine makes my condition worse.

Hope you’re all safe and well x.
 

Alvin2

The good news is patients don't die the bad news..
Messages
2,995
I do understand why you want to skip it but covid is likely far more dangerous than the vaccine which is supposed to prevent infection. And most of the vaccines targets one protein, the covid spike protein, its not the covid virus in the vaccine.
Since there are several with different technologies to choose from you can pick which one is least likely to cause any issues. You could also wait and allow more types to come onto the market which will be happening.

That said whatever your decision i would personally respect.
 

Jemima37

Senior Member
Messages
407
Location
UK
I do understand why you want to skip it but covid is likely far more dangerous than the vaccine which is supposed to prevent infection. And most of the vaccines targets one protein, the covid spike protein, its not the covid virus in the vaccine.
Since there are several with different technologies to choose from you can pick which one is least likely to cause any issues. You could also wait and allow more types to come onto the market which will be happening.

That said whatever your decision i would personally respect.
Thank you 😊
 

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,384
Location
Austria
Its of course allways a very personal risks/benefits calculation. And therefore always turns out a different decission with different situations and experiences:

Though I life alone, I do work with homeless people in a night-time shelter. Our clients are usually immune-compromized and don't give a shit about protections. None of them untill today got symptomatic covid. Only one highly diabetic with leg-ulcers got possitive, but remained completely unsymptomatic during 10 days of quarantine. None of my co-workers doing nightshifts got it either.

However, in our daytime ambulatory councelling department 5 out of 8 co-workers got mild covid. All with protection like FPP2 masks, but none being able to trace it. Only 1 very overweight was one evening on the brink to go to the hospital. But the next day the fever broke. Now 3 month later her only remaining symptom is loss of smell, and just yesterday she told me she's actually glad because of her past covid and high antibody levels, since she doesn't need to vaccinate anymore.

(Our biggest outbreak in Ischgl last spring was monitored, and still 90% had antibodies by the end of last year. Additionally with about 45% prevalence in that place, no further outbreak occured. Making the scientist speculate that already that low level of immunized population could suffice..)

Now after a year of this epitemic, overall there has been 1 death from it in 3000 people. Dying of heard-disease or cancer is still 2-3 times more likely. CVD I already had and brought into remission with life-style and supplement changes. So overall, by bringing this alone in remission already gave in my particular case multiples times more prodection from dying, than any of the covid-vaccines ever could.

In my case due to pneumonia at birth and very compromised immunity, my docs already then gave me less shots as usual as a toddler. Like none against mumps or measles, which I suffered anyway with about 7 years of age, and am now with life-long immunity against. Tuberculosis shots I did get, but nevertheless suffered already in adolescense.

These days never get the flu, without ever getting a shot. At my last immunisations for a overland Africa-travel the medical officer accitentally gave me a 10-times life virus vaccine against polio! I even survived 7 malaria tropicas and schistosomiasis.

So with my experience with vaccines and deathly diseases, the potential benefit against the practically incalculable risks of an still experimental vaccine (the narcolepsy damage from the pandemix vaccine also only came apparent a year later) is infinite small.

I'll protect my future health as much as possible by not getting vaccinated against, but already do everything possilbe to make my immunity stay on top. Also I do fully respect any other decission due to other preconditions and situation, of course.
 

Jemima37

Senior Member
Messages
407
Location
UK
I should add, everyone around me will get it.
That’s my fear too as I was so poorly after the swine flu vaccine. My husband and eldest child will be vaccinated. Whenever 16/17 year olds can be vaccinated then my other 2 children will be too. I worry about them getting the vaccine but they want it.
 

Pearshaped

Senior Member
Messages
580
Yes here.
Im severe and dont want to mess up my immune system any further.

But of course it depends on your ilness-history and the things that have been detected in your specific situation.

I strongly believe that a Covid vaccine
is a bad idea for at least some pwME.
 
Messages
30
My view is that you should trust your instinct and resist any pressure to go against it. After suffering with ME/CFS, we have all developed a map of reality as to what we can handle.
Unless someone has had our illness or its like, they do not understand fully. Flu vaccines cause a two-day crash for me.
In my case, I am waiting. I want to see the effects on the early adopters as well as truthful data as to its effectiveness.
As someone who received the totally needless Anthrax vaccine because it was compulsory in the military ... I am wildly unenthusiastic about the COVID vaccine which may or may not be of help against variants of the virus.
 

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,384
Location
Austria
Ill prob have to get it but dont want to.

i am severe, got cfs from covid and have had covid twice.

Twice symptomatic covid tested positive by PCR? Still no tested antibodies?

If you didn't get antibodies from twice the disease itself, what makes you believe the vaccine would produce any at all? How could you even survive without your body having producied antibodies?
 

Judee

Psalm 46:1-3
Messages
4,461
Location
Great Lakes
No positive test or antibodies first time.

Have you been checked for IgM deficiency, @bensmith? I have that and some doctors have speculated that my IgM would possibly not show a current infection because of it since IgM is the first immunoglobulin that is suppose to react to a new infection.
 

bensmith

Senior Member
Messages
1,547
@Judee um not sure. I should
Checm though thanks.

i see some igms in my report but related to things like evb. Is there a general igm?
 

Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
I will not be getting the COVID vaccine b/c I have a history of severe autoimmunity and anaphylaxis that is now in remission. The vaccine could end my remission and I am not willing to risk it. I have researched this for weeks on end, read articles, done a complete risk/benefit analysis, and discussed it with my doctor who supports my decision. Each person is different and I am speaking only re: my own specific situation.
 

vision blue

Senior Member
Messages
1,877
I had decided early I wouldn't get it given my body's dramatic reactions to minor stimuli and would just keep laying low and wait for herd immunity - but then two things I have heard has derailed my certainty. So now am in the position of vacillating nearly every day on this literal life or death decision.

Am interested in what @Gingergrrl and others reasoned about these two issues, which i will get to in a moment.

First, I like what many have said on their reasons for not getting a vaccine since I am similar: as gingergrrl with the typo says not willing to risk coming out of remission. I wouldn't describe myself as being in remission, but in this last year my symptoms have been so much more tolerable than they have in the past. I've had some really miserable years and much lower funcitoning years. While my symptoms now i think reflect really bad stuff going on, that's different than level of functionality. I don't want to give that up! I don't want to go back to not being able to walk 2 blocks, or having to lay down in bed all day for 3 days just becauuse I took 12 minutes to clear snow off my windshiled. Don't want to go back to vertigo (shoot me now- seriously!). Don't want to go back to head being dizzy all day every day, don't want to go back to having to spend most of each day lying down, don't want ER visits and atrial tachycardia, and mostrous sleep interruptons. I worked hard, and alot of luck, to have a particular cluster of symptoms I can tolerate better right now, that it's such a bad time to want to voluntarily upset the apple cart

illnesses and injuries send my body into a tailspin that lasts over a year and sometimes where they settle is very different than before the spin.

ok, so the issues that despite this are troubling:
First is that herd immunity, that I was counting on, may not work the way it works for the flu. i.e. it may not work at all. Although people with the vaccine will have less viral particles in their nose, they will still have some. That means they can still spread it to others. If you think, well, at a much lower rate- yes - BUT, that lower rate may well be offset by the equally greater number of people that are now running around with viral particles than before. That number may be vastly higher than before vaccinations (if you're not sick you run around more, i.e. more people to run around with virus, plus less careful around others). so multiply the lower transmission rate with the number of people with virus in nose and may end up with a number that's even higher than before vaccination. If you think that the dropping number of cases is an argument against this, not so. One reason it is not is that the vaccinated who get the virus from these others who are vaccinated will themselves not get noticeably sick -so number drop. From a public health standpoint, that's a successful vaccination program. But from those who are not vaccinated, its a nightmare. Our numbers will go up- but not enough to be a blip on the radar since the vaccinated numbers pull it down- so public health won't mind this small problem. Note that in flu, this does not happen. Flu is hard to catch. So vaccinated folk become firewalls. This likely is not happening with covid. But people still using the term firewalls- i think so the unvaccinated will not have further outcry on inequity- for those who want the vaccine but have not been lucky or privileged enough to have their turn yet.

The second reason is that the new strain is more contagious by alot (the fact it's more deadly possibly doesn't matter match to me- i.e. if i get it I'm toast anyway). That means that I cannot be confidence that all my extreme "laying low" precautions will work in the coming year, just because they worked on the last year (and that's not counting that i can't do this extreme lay low forever - there's a few things that i have to do soon).

(related to first, i also wonder just how caeful medical places are going to be if they are all vaccinated and their own lives not at stake, but that's not the main argument, just some paranoia and bitterness).

Since i signed up in various places for vaccine, just in case i wanted it, I do not know what i will do when my number is called. Based on email i received, I believe that in one week I will be notified I can get a vaccine now. My stress level will be through the roof.

Why do i feel like I should get my affairs in order?

Btw, i've heard from 2 people i know with similar symptoms to me, so far, one personally, the other an email contact I never met, who have had long lasting symtpoms. in one, dizziness/vertigo and headache ever since and other "moderna arm" (besides being deathly ill for 2 days but i'm not even counting that), but note i'm not using anectodtes to reaason really and my 2 issues with not getting vaccine are above. my reasons for hesitance is based on how my own body reacts to things
 

andyguitar

Moderator
Messages
6,595
Location
South east England
Although people with the vaccine will have less viral particles in their nose, they will still have some.
If they do the amount maybe so small that they do not pose a risk of infecting others.
If you think that the dropping number of cases is an argument against this, not so. One reason it is not is that the vaccinated who get the virus from these others who are vaccinated will themselves not get noticeably sick -so number drop
But this assumes that people who get vaccinated will catch covid. They might not. But all that said why not wait for a few weeks to see what the data says about how effective the jab is in stopping transmission? If it say cuts it by a high % then the risk to you will be low so you will be in a better position to make an informed choice.
 

Likaloha

Senior Member
Messages
343
Location
Midwest usa
I am scared because of my immune system disorders, but am more scared of covid! I barely survived West Nile meningoencephalitis and have been advised by my docs to get it.
 

Aerowallah

Senior Member
Messages
131
If one is in a safe bubble and not under imminent threat, isn't it better to wait until the fall for a newer vaccine that better matches new, more lethal mutations? My concern is not whether to take this one or not, but to take as few as possible over time, especially if annual or bi-annual vaccines become pushed as the norm. Doing okay after the current vaccine is one thing, but how many high-intensity boosters can a compromised immune handle?
 
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