The Vaccine

[Bruce]

On Friday I got a 30mg dose of Pfizer as a booster to the two 100mg doses of Moderna that I received in January and February. I also opted to receive an influenza vaccination at the same time.

I experienced adverse effects to the Moderna doses including a fluey feeling of joint and muscle pain with both doses and an hour or so of cold chills with the second dose. I had the same fluey feeling with the Pfizer dose. With all three doses I was able to continue transferring and carrying my 145 pound son. For example in the 48 hours after the third dose I carried my son up the stairs four times and transferred him between chairs, toilets, etc more than thirty times.

I opted for the smaller Pfizer dose to reduce limitations on my ability to help my son while the vaccine was active and to reduce my risk of getting sick where I would not be able to help him. I turned down a Moderna booster earlier last week and if our school had not ended their mask mandate I might not have taken a booster.

 

[NewBoater]

Seeing videos like this it seems more people are having more serious reactions to the booster shot than the original shot?

TikTok - Make Your Day

vm.tiktok.com

 

[tabbibus]

Seeing videos like this it seems more people are having more serious reactions to the booster shot than the original shot?

TikTok - Make Your Day

vm.tiktok.com

I wouldn't use tik tok as a measure for more or less reactions. Just my opinion though.

Also, I wonder what she has going on. She seemed to talk with some dysarthria and staccato speech pattern. I'm most definitely not a neurologist. But my understanding is that this would not be a muscle spasm issue like she says she has. If anything, this would be a central neurological problem (brain, cerebellum)

So far. there is a robust cohort of people who have gotten booster and there seems to be no true signal documented of increased adverse reactions. And in my own practice, the vast majority of my patients are "boosted" and I have not been informed by them of any significant issues.

In all honesty, I'd be very interested to know what is going on with the tik toker in the post.

 

[Julian]

Seeing videos like this it seems more people are having more serious reactions to the booster shot than the original shot?

TikTok - Make Your Day

vm.tiktok.com

Or the power of social media is working well to get people scared? She says "she working on getting her doctor to agree it was the vaccine booster that did this" - with millions getting booster shots, many will have concurrent health issues that happen. Almost sounds like she had a stroke. Every year, about 70,000 Americans under age 45 have strokes. 6.7 million people have been given booster shots (2% of population). So 5833 (70k/12) people under the age of 45 will have a stroke and a vaccine booster in the last month (I'm assuming most people got their boosters in the last month). Correlation doesn't mean causality. And this is only for stroke. Lots of other events could have caused her symptoms.....

Not saying this isn't due to the vaccine either....just that one post on tiktok isn't stopping me one bit from getting my booster. And in fact hundreds of posts like this wouldn't either. I'm signed up for 11/10 for my Moderna booster.

 

[adrianp89]

Or the power of social media is working well to get people scared? She says "she working on getting her doctor to agree it was the vaccine booster that did this" - with millions getting booster shots, many will have concurrent health issues that happen. Almost sounds like she had a stroke. Every year, about 70,000 Americans under age 45 have strokes. 6.7 million people have been given booster shots (2% of population). So 5833 (70k/12) people under the age of 45 will have a stroke and a vaccine booster in the last month (I'm assuming most people got their boosters in the last month). Correlation doesn't mean causality. And this is only for stroke. Lots of other events could have caused her symptoms.....

Not saying this isn't due to the vaccine either....just that one post on tiktok isn't stopping me one bit from getting my booster. And in fact hundreds of posts like this wouldn't either. I'm signed up for 11/10 for my Moderna booster.

So if you have a stroke, would you still recommend it? (Hopefully you don't)

 

[Julian]

So if you have a stroke, would you still recommend it? (Hopefully you don't)

If my doctor said that the stroke was unrelated....of course I would. The challenge we face is with the automatic assumption that correlation=causation. Thousands will die shortly after getting vaccinated. Doesn't mean the vaccine killed them. Same for all sorts of other diseases. I have a neighbor that was diagnosed with arthritis after he got vaccinated. He says it had been building before he was vaccinated.....and got worse this summer. His doc said- unrelated.

VAERS is there to trace this. If all of a sudden we see a spike in the number of people having strokes within hours/days of vaccination, then they investigate. But if the trend is the same....meaning, the same number of people keep having strokes (as expected), and we are also vaccinating people....then not a cause for alarm. If more people start having strokes in close proximity to their vaccination then there is something to investigate.

So 191 people per day under 45 will have strokes. If boosters drives that number up....time to look into it. In the meantime, how many of those 191 people will post on tictok blaming their recent vaccine on their stroke (per day)? And stroke is a perfect example of an adverse medical situation that often is harder to predict and comes out of the blue for some people. Just because we don't have all the answers doesn't mean we to turn to a simple answer. But it also doesn't mean we turn away from the simple answer. You look at the DATA.

But alas - that one tictok post will have CONVINCED many that the booster is EVIL. For all we know that woman eats french fries for every meal, has hypertension, plaque build up in her arteries, and her doc knows she's a ticking time bomb but couldn't get through to her. Like so many of us who are over weight (me included)....I TRY to fix my bad habits....

 

[tabbibus]

Strokes can still happen in completely healthy young people. My wife had one. Healthy eating, exercise daily, no other conditions. 39yo, stroke.

 

[adrianp89]

If my doctor said that the stroke was unrelated....of course I would. The challenge we face is with the automatic assumption that correlation=causation. Thousands will die shortly after getting vaccinated. Doesn't mean the vaccine killed them. Same for all sorts of other diseases. I have a neighbor that was diagnosed with arthritis after he got vaccinated. He says it had been building before he was vaccinated.....and got worse this summer. His doc said- unrelated.

VAERS is there to trace this. If all of a sudden we see a spike in the number of people having strokes within hours/days of vaccination, then they investigate. But if the trend is the same....meaning, the same number of people keep having strokes (as expected), and we are also vaccinating people....then not a cause for alarm. If more people start having strokes in close proximity to their vaccination then there is something to investigate.

So 191 people per day under 45 will have strokes. If boosters drives that number up....time to look into it. In the meantime, how many of those 191 people will post on tictok blaming their recent vaccine on their stroke (per day)? And stroke is a perfect example of an adverse medical situation that often is harder to predict and comes out of the blue for some people. Just because we don't have all the answers doesn't mean we to turn to a simple answer. But it also doesn't mean we turn away from the simple answer. You look at the DATA.

But alas - that one tictok post will have CONVINCED many that the booster is EVIL. For all we know that woman eats french fries for every meal, has hypertension, plaque build up in her arteries, and her doc knows she's a ticking time bomb but couldn't get through to her. Like so many of us who are over weight (me included)....I TRY to fix my bad habits....

I get it.

However if you have a stroke within 48 hours of getting a vaccine (no idea what the TikTok says, don't use that).... it's a hard sell that it is not related. I am not even sure how a doctor could say it is or isn't related with 100% certainty.

 

[Bruce]

So if you have a stroke, would you still recommend it?

As someone who took a mRNA vaccine booster 4 days ago I would.

Strokes happen, somewhat randomly. Fitness, diet and genetics all play a role in making them more common but even in the groups where they are more likely they are quite random.

Viral infections tend to cause clotting which can lead to stroke. SARS-CoV-2 infections have been particularly prone to causing strokes even before showing CoVID-19 symptoms.

http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC7166625&blobtype=pdf

SARS-CoV-2 and Stroke in a New York Healthcare System

Background and Purpose: With the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) during the current worldwide pandemic, there is mounting evidence that patients affected by the illness may develop clin

www.ahajournals.org

In this British study the rate of stroke among SARS-CoV-2 positive patients was 2.94 times higher than the general population while after Pfizer vaccination that rate was 0.12 times higher than the general population. SARS-CoV-2 patients had 24.5 times excess risk of having a stroke compared to those receiving Pfizer vaccines.

Risk of thrombocytopenia and thromboembolism after covid-19 vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 positive testing: self-controlled case series study

Objective To assess the association between covid-19 vaccines and risk of thrombocytopenia and thromboembolic events in England among adults. Design Self-controlled case series study using national data on covid-19 vaccination and hospital admissions. Setting Patient level data were obtained...

www.bmj.com

 

[Bruce]

it's a hard sell that it is not related.

I would suggest it is impossible to determine if there is any relationship beyond similar timing for an individual event.

That leaves a need to evaluate the rate of occurrence after vaccination and in the general public. In the British study linked above the increased rate of risk was 12% for those receiving the Pfizer vaccine. It is a risk but much smaller than the 294% increased risk for those that test positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

That 12% increased risk, which occurred 15 to 21 days after vaccination would be around one extra stroke for each two million people vaccinated based on US annual rates.

There always is risk in life. The mRNA vaccinations reduce that risk during this pandemic.

 

[Julian]

I get it.

However if you have a stroke within 48 hours of getting a vaccine (no idea what the TikTok says, don't use that).... it's a hard sell that it is not related. I am not even sure how a doctor could say it is or isn't related with 100% certainty.

It isn't about it being a hard sell or not. Its all about the numbers. Based on the numbers - 191 people a day under 45 will have a stroke. So with 2% being vaccinated - 4 people will have a stroke the same day they are vaccinated. So if all 4 post on tictok, FB, Instagram etc - it will seem like a natural disaster. When in reality - it was expected.

Of course the first thing anyone is going to say is - well I got vaccinated - that MUST be the cause. Do they want to hear - well you were one of the 4 people we expected would have a stroke today after being vaccinated. Most simply don't "get" that.

 

[scbruet]

Seeing videos like this it seems more people are having more serious reactions to the booster shot than the original shot?

TikTok - Make Your Day

vm.tiktok.com

Yeah.....no way thats real.

 

[tabbibus]

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)

CDC provides credible COVID-19 health information to the U.S.

www.cdc.gov

Interesting stuff. Among it, what we've said before. Vaccination gives more consistent immunity vs immunity gained by sars CoV2 infection

 

[Lurch]

Interesting stuff. Among it, what we've said before. Vaccination gives more consistent immunity vs immunity gained by sars CoV2 infection

Not necessarily...

A Review and Autopsy of Two COVID Immunity Studies ⋆ Brownstone Institute

I have never before seen such a large discrepancy between immunity studies that are supposed to answer the same question.

brownstone.org

 

[Tgen2013]

Well it looks like Virginia won't be having any state enforced vax mandates going forward,...HA !

 

[haknslash]

That’s interesting she mentioned muscle spasms. Remember when I had these super strong and uncontrollable muscle spasms after my shots. To this day it is still fairly easy to begin to trigger them. Sounds like she may have had a stroke but I’m no doctor. Not saying her spasms and mine are linked since we both had Pfizer but can’t dismiss anything just so. Makes me wonder sometimes but is what it is already in me lol.

 

[Bluewater272]

Also on the correlation!=causation link, isn't it interesting that it's always the people with tens of thousands of social media followers that have the side effects? Nice to have that venmo link in her bio, too.

If you listen to one of her earlier videos, she was cycling on and off different psychiatric medications at the time of her booster, and her providers initially thought that was a contributing factor

 

[Sidarousmg]

That’s interesting she mentioned muscle spasms. Remember when I had these super strong and uncontrollable muscle spasms after my shots. To this day it is still fairly easy to begin to trigger them. Sounds like she may have had a stroke but I’m no doctor. Not saying her spasms and mine are linked since we both had Pfizer but can’t dismiss anything just so. Makes me wonder sometimes but is what it is already in me lol.

@haknslash do you take any statins for high cholesterol? muscle pain and spasms could be a side effect.

 

[msavold]

FWIW and going back to the first post on this thread... I'm happy to say I got my J&J boosted yesterday with a bit of Moderna.
I also cut my finger slightly slicing a loaf of bread at lunchtime.
The finger hurts more!

 

[tabbibus]

FWIW and going back to the first post on this thread... I'm happy to say I got my J&J boosted yesterday with a bit of Moderna.
I also cut my finger slightly slicing a loaf of bread at lunchtime.
The finger hurts more!

make a tik tok. claim that the mix of JJ+moderna causes people to slice their fingers

/sarcasm