Thanks for posting because many of us prefer to look at everything out there.
I wish you all the best in recovery and glad to hear it’s going well.
I’m also curious about going forward. I assume you won’t be getting more mRNA vaxxes. Do they recommend the “old” variety like J&J or nothing at all? And have they been cautioning you to be extra wary about getting Covid itself?
Not the same as your issue at all, but medical lad tells me they think those who respond badly to the vaccine (blood clots or similar) would do worse with Covid. Some of these are in a really hard spot going forward.
J&J is not exactly “old” vaccine technology. Attaching the vaccine payload to a different virus is somewhat new. The concept was previous used for Ebola vaccines. “Old” vaccine technology would be inactivated whole virus vaccines like the Sinopharm ones and others not used in the US.
If this did leak from a lab, then knowing there are gaps in the safety protocols is beyond important. If it came because a bat went poo in some open air market…then maybe those protocols need to change. After all, we at least tried contact tracing. Why would we care where someone got it…because it could happen anywhere?
“Going forward” questions are being saved for my final consult with the hematologist once we know I’m truly on the mend, and of course for discussion with my primary care person. Hopefully none of us will need more boosters going forward! A lot depends on the course of the virus and, I suppose, the presence of any other type of therapy or vaccine. I’m very wary about J&J now due to the rare VITT (which I don’t believe can be ruled out for me given my current case) but I would need to discuss with my providers. ETA: it will probably require some research by all involved.
I thought the same as your medical lad. Assuming this is vaccine-induced (and we may never know that for sure) the probabilities have pretty much just been reversed for me! I’ve never once contracted Covid, despite frequent traveling (including by air) during 2020 and 2021 before being fully vaxed, eating out often, and not masking unless required. I used sensible precautions and didn’t put myself in large social crowds, etc. I have not been cautioned at this point about getting Covid but that might also be a “going forward” discussion.
I’ve also never been exposed directly to Covid to my knowledge except for one time in 2020 and I tested negative. Other members of my family have had numerous exposures and have tested accordingly - all negative. So we have all been spared. My birth family - same. Pre-vaccine, my brother even had multiple cases in his own family (wife, several kids, housekeeper) but has never contracted it. It does make me wonder about genetic differences. We know many families around us who took incredible precautions and got vaxed only to end up with Delta anyway, and it got everyone in the household.
On the theory that perhaps my antibodies were plentiful to begin with, perhaps I should have gotten an antibody test prior to the booster? But I’ve never been advised to do that. My providers have always recommended the booster when I was eligible, which I became in late November and boosted in mid December before originally planning to, just to get it out of the way before some preventative tests and also an AFib ablation (now obviously postponed as it requires going on blood thinners!!!) and getting a trip out to see my parents. Also, Omicron - better to be safe than sorry! I am gobsmacked by what has happened.
Wow, you are the second person I know who’s had this happen to them. The first one was an acquaintance and for him it was after his first mRNA shot (I think it was Moderna). It was terrifying but they caught it quickly and he is completely OK now. However, he has expressed disappointment because obviously he can’t complete a full course of vaccination now. We joked with him that he should buy a lottery ticket. I think he was 1 of 10 known cases at the time. I hope you have a speedy recovery!
Hope you feel better soon! I developed a bunch of weird allergies and anaphylactoid symptoms during the first week after my first dose of Pfizer. I have never had allergies before. Now the list is very long. Didn’t really know what was going on for a while. Got second dose of Pfizer and a Moderna booster. By then I was on allergy meds and other than the “cotton wool” head did not have any problems. Allergist thinks it could have been the vaccine, it could have been a COVID infection that I didn’t know about in the early days, it could have been masking and shelter in place, it could have been Jupiter aligning with Venus and Saturn. All he knows is that his clientele with adult onset allergies has tripled since the pandemic started. It’s all so weird and wonderful. Hope your blood looks GREAT in the very near future!
I do hope they continue to look for genetic markers even after the main pandemic has passed. Any chance your blood has been tested to see if you’ve ever had Covid at all?
I would imagine in your future there will be concern about any vaccines. I haven’t personally seen that happen in a human, but I have seen it happen in a horse where one year seemingly out of the blue the horse reacted really badly and the owner was told never to get her vaxxed again. She (horse) was older at the time and had had vaxxes her whole life. Ironically to this conversation, it was the Rabies vax.
I wonder about future vaccines of any kind as well. I have a relative who has provided some input on that, but I plan to check with my providers to get their input as well to better understand my risk profile and how that might vary by specific vaccine. I’ve never had any sort of adverse reaction to a vaccine in my life so this is all new to me. I am indeed not getting any younger and things can always change with age.
I have not had my blood tested for prior Covid - doesn’t that wear off over time? I’m not up on the specialized tests that several discuss here so probably behind the latest findings. Also, never saw a need as I monitor things like my VO2 max and heart rate, particularly during workouts. Haven’t noticed a negative change in lung capacity and I test my Oxy levels regularly. Fortunately, concurrent with my little problem here, I had just gotten a pretty extensive CT scan in preparation for my (now canceled) ablation and lungs and heart looked fine. My primary provider was very happy to see that in my chart because it prevented having to order an echo to check for thrombosis! Not sure if all that also suggests a Covid-free body but it probably provides some evidence as to such.
There is a theory that auto-immune diseases, including and possibly especially, allergies, are caused by under-exercised (for lack of a better term) immune systems. If you keep your environment too sterile the theory goes, the immune system gets out of practice and starts attacking its own body. Those who’ve been especially careful during the past 2 years have not only protected themselves from COVID, but also kept the immune system from having any other pathogens to practice on. Under this theory it makes sense that allergies are on the rise, having nothing to do with the vaccines. Note that I have no idea if this theory is correct, but it does make some sense to me at least in explaining the rise in allergies in children. Could two years raise the rates in adults? Who knows.
If it’s similar to the correlation of kids who grow up on farms and less sterile houses having fewer allergies, one doesn’t have to get sick to keep the body on its toes. Animals and playing in dirt seem helpful too.
Can’t say it’s related, but it would be plausible.
I spent my first ten years of life on a farm. Think “opposite of sterile” and that would describe my interaction with animals. I think I was dewormed alongside the sheepdogs when I was little. It served me well allergy-wise up until a year ago. Like you said, who knows.
All we need to know are the most likely scenarios. We know those, and we should behave as though all of those are the source. SO if we find holes in the safety protocols of labs that study viruses, we should fill them, if we find ways in which dealing with bat guano can result in a virus jumping from bats to humans, we should start making sure that guano workers are protected as well.
Trying to pinpoint one specific source makes this into a blame game, and will lead governments to stop taking any other measures.
If they figure that it was carelessness in a virology lab in China, that will be the focus of all the talk, and nobody in the USA (or Germany, or Russia, or India, etc) will do anything else, because “in OUR country, OUR labs are NEVER careless, it’s all China’s fault”. If it turns out to be bat guano, again, there will be no attempts to prevent other possible ways in which such a pandemic can emerge.
You know that, if there is compelling evidence that it was a breach of safety protocols in China, that will be the entire focus of half the politicians, and there will be absolutely no possibility that the USA will do anything at all to make sure that such an event won’t happen here, or that there will be any attempt to make sure that such a pathogen will emerge from another source.
Politicians in general are really good at spending billions on improving the lock on an empty stable. They are even better at blaming others for lax stable security and not improving the locks on a stable which is still inhabited.
To repeat: trying to find out exactly where this came from is a recipe for making 0 progress towards preventing future outbreaks.
On one hand, we have limited our exposure to pathogens that are being carried by other people. However, on the other hand, people actually were exposed to dirt a lot more. Hiking and gardening are far more common, and, unfortunately, the people who can afford neither were generally not given the opportunity to isolate - “essential workers” and other assorted low-wage employees.
So out immune systems have been working pretty well, but against other pathogens. So while we may have weakened our immunity to human-borne viruses, our immune system has still been pretty active in the COVID months.
When the virus first showed up I thought it reasonable it might’ve been a lab escapee – “tinkered with” is normal science for reasons you want, but yes, there are dangers, and humans are human and sometimes sloppy or careless or ill-trained. In the interim, though, there’ve been no explanations from scientists in that research area about what the virus might’ve been useful for experimentally. When you work in a research area, it’s pretty easy to see and understand other people’s experiments, and see what they’re designed to test. I’ve heard no such discussion about this, not from scientists in any country. I don’t think it was an experimental virus.
I think that’s an entirely reasonable analysis, and don’t understand @dietz’s vomity face rxn. Can we up the maturity level, pls, and leave the vomity faces to the kids who’re still a few years from panicking about college apps?
It’s actually not a reasonable analysis. Knowing where it came from won’t automatically stop other nations from looking at ways to mitigate those same issues in their own countries. Knowing where it came from can absolutely assist in perhaps stopping the next virus outbreak. It’s not unreasonable to want to know the true source. It might be an unpopular answer for many but it would be nice to know. I’d personally rather not just stick my head in the sand about it’s origin.