Has anyone tried it?
I havenât had to and I donât know anyone who has. I purchased for me (and my father) to have in case a virulent variant comes along.
I would imagine they are probably good for a bit, but a word of caution that you can get it more than once. Son and his college girlfriend caught it in late December, early January (so likely Omicron 1). Both then were not required to PCR test for 90 days (because it can still show up even when the active virus is done). Started testing in mid-April after the 90 days and both contracted it a second time about two weeks ago (so likely Omicron 2). Luckily not too sick either time. But you definitely canât party like itâs gone forever. Itâs not.
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Food for thoughtâŠresisting the âbooster followed by booster with potential for another boosterâ might not be a very good way to go.
â Data on influenza vaccines suggests that repeated vaccinations in an individual might ultimately result in a blunted immune response, declines in vaccine effectiveness, and a possibly reduced duration of protection. In multiseason studies, immunogenicity after influenza vaccination and vaccine effectiveness against influenza-associated medical care were both often lower among people vaccinated in the previous and current season compared with those vaccinated in the current season only.
In the few studies that were able to gather vaccine records for 4â6 previous years, immunogenicity and vaccine effectiveness were highest among those with no or few previous vaccinations and lowest among those frequently vaccinated.â
If repeated COVID-19 vaccination leads to blunted vaccine effectiveness or a reduction in protection relative to people who are unvaccinated, findings from new studies comparing different influenza vaccine types and vaccine strategies point to at least four lessons to be learned. First, vaccine effectiveness studies might need to stratify their estimates by those with and without documented previous infection and by the differences in previous vaccination status to disentangle changes in vaccine effectiveness versus changes in population susceptibility over time. This separation has not been feasible in the evaluations of influenza vaccines, but it might be possible in the evaluations of COVID-19 vaccines given widespread virus testing and the improved documentation of infections. Second, the optimal spacing of additional COVID-19 vaccine doses over time deserves much more investigation than it has been given to date. If COVID-19 becomes an endemic virus with seasonal circulation, spacing out COVID-19 vaccine doses at 9-month intervals or 12-month intervals might provide as much protection as more frequent vaccination such as every 6 months. Third, changing the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine antigen will be especially necessary to protect people who are repeatedly vaccinated from new variants, because the focusing of antibody responses toward older strains can be an undesirable consequence of repeated vaccination.
Fourth, introducing alternative vaccine types might improve immunogenicity and vaccine effectiveness compared with the repeated use of the same vaccine technology. In one study, older adults who received either a high dose, adjuvanted, or recombinant protein influenza vaccine had a superior serological and cell-mediated immune response compared with older adults who repeatedly received egg-based inactivated vaccines.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(22)00162-X/fulltext
Research is needed to assess whether systematically alternating COVID-19 vaccine schedules to introduce different vaccine types can improve the effects of the vaccine."
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Iâm glad theyâre studying these things and I hope that doesnât stop if things slow down.
Each time it comes up for a booster I look to see what the current thoughts are for my age, etc, and I donât plan to stop checking.
This last time H, FIL, and I all opted to go for another booster considering cases are rising and our train trip coupled with his age and health issues. Time will tell what we decide next time (whenever that is). Thereâs no way to predict it at this point.
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Weâre viewing every booster recommendation as: more time bought for us and our loved ones, more time for improved COVID treatments to become available. The rate at which treatments and improvements have come to market is really amazing, but I still donât want this illness if I can avoid it a little longer.
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I will follow the recommendations of the Local Epidemiologist. She analyzes data in so much detail that I trust her advice. So far she has said to get the boosters.
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Of course, the US has low vaccine diversity to begin with (three vaccines of two types), and both the general public and the government are all in on one type (mRNA), refusing to consider what little vaccine diversity that does exist.
So far, I have not seen any poster on these forums who initially got a primary series of PP or MM choosing a J booster.
I thought J&J wasnât recommended for women of a certain age due to a couple of known deaths?
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https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/acip/meetings/downloads/slides-2021-12-16/02-COVID-See-508.pdf shows rates of TTS by gender and age.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pds.5419 has some information on the background rate of similar clotting disorders, although the scales are different. The background rates are usually given in per 100,000 person years, while possibly-vaccine-associated rates are given per million persons over about 1/20 of a year.
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I believe both ShawWife and I gained weight during the Pandemic because one of the pleasures we sampled more of was her great cooking. And, I purchased MasterClass and she was doing recipes from Ottolenghi and Thomas Keller.
We did cycle when weather permitting maybe a little more than usual and went for hikes â our town has lots of conservation land so it is easy to get to. For much of the Pandemic, one couldnât even park at the better known spots â all parking was taken. Now, no problem.
We also didnât travel for most of March 2020-March 2022. More time for exercise and for serious cooking.
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In my case and my husbandâs, our boosters we determined by what was in stock. We both had Pfizer to start but both of his boosters were Pfizer while both of mine were Moderna. Thatâs all the thought involved.
My family practice has said that they arenât doing J&J. I was happy to accept the vaccine available and wasnât looking around.
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I read articles about long Covid on a regular basis, but it seems that they rarely show cases of Long Covid in people who were fully vaccinated when the original Covid infection eventually leads to Long Covid. They seem to always choose subjects who catch Covid before vaccines were available or someone who chose not to get vaccinated after vaccines were available as the Long Covid suffers (maybe this is to scare the remaining vaccine holdouts). I know there are people with Long Covid after being fully vaccinated or fully vaccinated and boosted, but I rarely see an article on that demographic which I find weird. But maybe I am just looking in the wrong places?
What I would like to see is a Long Covid article where the Covid survivor has been fully vaccinated and boosted with no comorbidities and to talk about the Long Covid definition in the scientific community, how common Long Covid really is by different age groups, and how common Long Covid really is by health status (based on total comorbidities and how serious the initial issues where pre-Covid), because our medical/scientific apparatus should be able to give more detailed guidance based on an individualâs own risk factors.
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I recall seeing one study that found that long COVID was about 4.5 times less common in breakthrough infections in the vaccinated than in unvaccinated infections (and chance of infection after vaccination is lower, of course). But I agree that there seem to be few studies on the matter and little distinction in most news about long COVID, which leads to more uncertainty about the risk of such for people who have been vaccinated and want to consider the risk appropriately.
The unreliability of information about long COVID may also be affected by the different definitions of long COVID in different studies.
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I just received the product via DHL at my home, 2 days before promised. Everything was in order and the product expires Nov 3, 2022.
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I hear ya!! I do not find almost any of the articles I read or studies I look into to be particularly helpful in determining my own risk (or loved oneâs risks) of developing long covid. Most studies seem to either include things that I personally wouldnât care too, too much about (minor annoying symptoms persisting for as little as 2 months), or include demographics that donât come close to mine (different vaccine status, health/co-morbidities, age, etc), or in some cases the studies may not seem to be well designed with control groups, etc, or rely too much on questionable self-reported information (âyeah, I guess I feel more tired than I used toâ counts as a long-covid case).
Clearly long-covid is real, and some anecdotes I read about in articles are terrifying to me (people who canât barely get out of bed a year after they contracted covid), but I would SO appreciate having some data that is more relevant to me to help me better understand (i.e., I wish they provided data sliced by type of person, so each of us can better assess our risk). And then of course, there canât be any data on what I really want: how much has the risk of long-covid gone down as we switched over to Omicron? I think old information on the original version or even Delta may not be relevant to the current situation. It seems reasonable to assume the risk has dropped, as Omicron is milder and doesnât seem to affect neurological things so much (Iâm not really hearing of loss of smell/taste, etc anymore), but I guess we canât know until we know! My group of friends/family/acquaintances fortunately are not reporting any long covid whatsoever from Omicron, but Iâll be eager to see real data. But I can definitely tell the percentages that are talked about in some articles are not even close to matching up with the results I know from people in real life. Hoping there truly turn out to be fewer sufferers as we go through the variants. 
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I am fully vaccinated and have had my first booster. Was in the process of scheduling Booster #2 about 2.5 weeks ago and got sick. Repeated home tests negative. 2 weeks ago today I could not get out of bed. A week ago today I did not want to get out of bed (but did for a telehealth appointment). Now 2 clinic visits, several medications and a chest x ray later I am very slowly recovering from pneumonia ( i have cra**y lungs). Doctor and I are pretty sure it was Covid.
Lesson learned: shoulda/coulda/woulda gotten the PCR test in the first few days.
Second lesson learned: glad I was vaxxed and I donât know how this would have gone if I hadnât been.
I will be masking for the immediate future.
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My shipment - via DHL - also arrived today. Ordered on Ebay on 4/29. Same expiration data November 3, 2022
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There is this out of Ontario, and is all about long covidâŠhttps://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/Documents/nCoV/ipac/2022/04/post-acute-covid-syndrome-pacs.pdf?sc_lang=en
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