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Tangentially related but I’m on day 9 of COVID infection which is easily the longest I’ve been sick in years. I got two shots of Pfizer last one on the 13th of

Tangentially related but I’m on day 9 of COVID infection which is easily the longest I’ve been sick in years. I got two shots of Pfizer last one on the 13th of July. If the vaccine has kept this relatively mild then I’m very glad. It sucks. My main symptoms are a stuffed up face, cough, sore throat, aching body and an extremely fuzzy head that seems to come and go. I had a slightly raised temp at the start but otherwise it’s been normal and no problems breathing. Annoyingly my first test was negative even though I was symptomatic so I was wandering around being infectious for seven days. I’m now in isolation and my wife and kids are quarantined. Thankfully my wife tested negative yesterday, she was a couple of weeks ahead of me in terms of getting vaccinated so hopefully a combo of that and me having a relatively mild case means she stays healthy. I’ve got at least another 13 days of being stuck by myself in an apartment to go before I can rejoin the world. TLDR; please get vaccinated, this sucks.

Rezwoodly 5y ago
Uh, you did get vaccinated and still have these symptoms. You could also fairly end your TLDR with 'did get vaccinated, this sucks'. It seems we are still learning about the efficacy of the vaccines, and the nature of the virus. From this pov I understand why some are hesitant to be vaccinated in this phase of the pandemic
- mrgordon 5y ago
  You missed the point. The virus is usually much worse without the vaccine.
  - andrew_ 5y ago
    Please provide data for that claim.
    - meheleventyone 5y ago
      From our chief epidemiologist over here in Iceland: “ Þórólfur wrote in his response to RÚV yesterday that the figures change quickly and that now the non-vaccinated infection rate is twice as high rather than three-times, the hospital admission rate is five-times higher, and the rate of admission to intensive care is also five-times higher than for vaccinated people.” https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/19/unvaccinated-five-times-more-likely-to-need-hospital https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/19/unvaccinated-five-times-...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - boboche 5y ago
      Look at the death rates now compared to last year’s wave in countries that have a higher vaccination rate. Not saying its a miracle or perfect, but the numbers are speaking. I’m not for booster shots or being vaccinated x times, heck, I had a problem with requiring 2 shots for something that is not 95%+ effective. But after doing the maths of probability of infection, probability of sick or long term covid vs vaccination issues… I didn’t like the conclusion but I’m not in denial and trying to find information to confirm my initial bias, I took the second shot. All this said, I won’t accept anything else before a full year or higher % now.
- walterbell 5y ago
  From Bloomberg today, https://archive.is/fy4Wf https://archive.is/fy4Wf > In lieu of answers, what has emerged is a host of case studies providing somewhat different pictures of breakthrough infections. Variables including when the surveys were conducted, whether the delta variant was present, how much of the population was vaccinated and even what the weather was like at the time make it hard to compare results and suss out patterns. It’s difficult to know which data might ultimately carry more heft. > For the time being, there are simply more questions than answers. Are breakthrough infections ticking up because of the delta variant, waning immunity or a return to normal life? Are vaccinated people more vulnerable to severe illness than previously thought? Just how common are breakthrough infections? It’s anyone’s guess. “It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data,” Frieden said. “But there is just a lot we don’t know.”
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    > “It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data,” Why can't the public draw their own conclusions and make their own health decisions, based on (imperfect) public data? Why does the data have to be kept secret? (Perhaps the data doesn't support the "public health decisions" and dictates of the state?) If there's a concern that we can't effectively interpret the data, why can't we listen to whatever quack that we prefer and trust on national television that tells us that we really should not wear masks and couldn't wear them effectively, and they'd make us super sick because we'd be stupid about it and are completely untrainable (oh, and they're needed for health workers) -- no, wait, we should all wear masks, even if they're just thin pieces of cotton -- no, wait, even kids should wear at least two masks, even if they're running track and passing out.
    - gjsman-1000 5y ago
      What is the greater evil here? The slight odds of infection when they are likely outdoors, or that they are running track, passing out, getting dehydrated, breathing high levels of CO2, and the unknown long-term health effects of that? It doesn't take much common sense to realize that exposure to virus is bad, masking while running is potentially much worse for everyone and not just the odd infection, and that it should be a choice if there are two evils.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  What about the point of view would make since hesitant to get vaccinated? Without the vaccine likelihood of hospitalization is even higher.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  > From this pov I understand why some are hesitant to be vaccinated in this phase of the pandemic So your take away from someone complaining about the long recovery time from an accident after putting on his seatbelt and having the airbag deploy (which is annoying at the moment) is that we should remove those features because other people in other accidents without them had less severe injuries?
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Yes my point is that it’d be worse without being vaccinated and that my wife who is also vaccinated and spent seven days in close proximity with me whilst symptomatic has not been infected.
  - methodiosmel 5y ago
    My entire unvaccinated family spent the entire time with me while I was symptomatic and were not affected. They ended up getting it a month after I recovered. We all recovered within a few days and over a year and a half later we still have the antibodies (tested ourselves a few weeks ago).
- rvp-x 5y ago
  We have mountains of data about the current vaccine. This amount of disease-tracking is unheard of. Almost any institution in the world has regular discussions about this singular disease. Governments spend huge resources to pinpoint the exact minimum measures that can control the spread enough. My country attempted a 3rd dose, and within 2 weeks they were already reporting data on reduced risk of catching the virus in comparison to 2, 1, and 0 doses. These are studies done with sample sizes of millions of people.
  - loopz 5y ago
    Sampling 3rd dose after two weeks would be statistically insignificant and not enough time to record stats from sickness.
    - OrderlyTiamat 5y ago
      I dont understand, why would that be "statiatically insignificant"? for what analysis?
      - loopz 5y ago
        I replied to the last paragraph of parent poster. If you study the few people getting dose 3 two weeks after, you're not going to learn anything about effectiveness of dose 3.
        edanm 5y ago
        If I understand what you're saying, that's not what was done, at least here in Israel. After the 3rd vaccine, afaik, they compared the rates of hospitalizations of people do did vs. didn't yet get the 3rd vaccine, as compared to what happened the week before. They saw a drop in 3rd-vaccinated, and only in 3rd-vaccinated, implying that it did have an effect. And this wasn't a small population (I don't know exact numbers but I assume several 10s/100s of thousands).
        rvp-x 5y ago
- bluejekyll 5y ago
  Given the timelines mentioned, vaccinated in mid July, got sick mid August, it looks like the peak effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine after the second shot take 15-21 days to kick in. The virus can take up to 12 days before becoming sick/symptomatic. Rough math: (Aug 21) - (9 days sick) - (12 day incubation) = (~July 31 infection date). This would appear to fall in the time period of not yet being fully inoculated, if they were unlucky with the timelines. They got unlucky, which sucks. I wish the best for the GP, but the important thing is that this anecdote doesn’t necessarily represent a breakthrough case. But even if it did, the Pfizer vaccine is 96% effective at protecting people, so 4% are still going to get sick. All of this is inline with all the data I’ve seen at least. For this particular case we don’t even need to discuss the recent data showing Pfizer (and possibly Moderna) dropping to 80ish% effectiveness after four-five months. Literally all the data says people are safer getting vaccinated.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  Virus kicks his ass even though he's vaccinated, and you're drawing the conclusion that the vaccines can't be trusted, rather than unvaccinated exposure to the virus will be 10 times worse... You may not be good at logic.
gunapologist99 5y ago
I am so sorry for your terrible sickness! It's probably impossible to say whether "the vaccine has kept this relatively mild", especially since you got it despite being vaccinated twice. At least earlier strains showed no or very mild symptoms in 80% of the infected, and yours doesn't sound very mild. Maybe you'd be dead if not for the vaccine? or perhaps the vaccine allowed your body to contain it to just your nose, where it replicated like crazy until it overwhelmed your defenses. It seems like there just isn't enough data, but it seems like getting vaccinated is not a silver bullet.
- roland35 5y ago
  "mild" in terms of delta covid mMans you don't need to go to the hospital. Mild covid still can be pretty terrible, but it at least isn't life-threatening!
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Well we can’t test the null hypothesis for me specifically but the data here in Iceland shows that the illness for the population at large is much less likely amongst the vaccinated and much less severe. So it’s not impossible to say at all. And yes my symptoms are mild and suck a lot. The average length of illness in mild cases is 14 days. COVID is worse than most people (including me before getting it) think.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  > yours doesn't sound very mild. Yes his symptoms sound mild. There's a good chance that whatever you think of as severe cold/flu is all clinically mild (unless you've actually had complications and wound up in the hospital). Actual unvaccinated severe COVID-19 is an order of magnitude worse than what you can imagine as severe.
  - peteradio 5y ago
    Very important point. Struggling to take painful breath for days on end is the gist of "severe covid". I'd rather break my arms than experience severe covid.
  - 5y ago
hackandtrip 5y ago
I had a similar experience, with 10-12 days of mild symptoms (up to 40°C fever), but the general feeling of tiredness and the infamous "brain fog" stayed for 3-4 weeks (it's not completely gone yet). Definitely one of the worst sickness I've had, but both me and especially my parents (60+) had no respiratory problems and didn't need urgent treatment. I was waiting for my second dose when I got it and my parents were vaccinated, but still I don't get how we can count on treating it as a flu and just get the virus, considering the lack of knowledge on long-term effects.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  Yeah am pretty concerned about there being long term effects. Two of our friends got it really early on and both still have lingering symptoms.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  Two of my relatives in their 80's just got it without any vaccine and similarly had a nasty flu; they took ivermectin and didn't need any urgent treatment, although O2 levels did drop into the low 90's at times. About five days after diagnosis (and well after the worst days), they received monoclonals. They're still weak but recovering. I know another person (young, in 20's) who had similar symptoms -- brutal flu, similarly believed that ivermectin "saved" him. Of course, it's unknown (but https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-ivermectin-covid-19-coronavirus-masks-anti-science-11627482393 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-ivermectin-covid-19-coronav... ) Most cases seem to be relatively mild. There are always the ones that aren't, though, but it does seem like (in the absence of real, double-blind, public data) the vaccine doesn't have too much of an impact on delta in terms of the harshness of the sickness in breakthrough cases, but it might reduce the overall incidence and prevent the vaccinated from getting sick at all. However, the data always seems very weak, and always lags behind. EDIT: definitely doesn't seem like getting vaccinated reduces the incidence, either: "three-fourths of the nearly 470 cases were in vaccinated people" from a leaked CDC memo: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/93830 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin...
anonymouse008 5y ago
> Annoyingly my first test was negative even though I was symptomatic so I was wandering around being infectious for seven days. This is my hypothesis for why we are seeing such spread after a mass vaccine event. The moral hazard of a vaccine and negative test are more dangerous than Covid itself. 7 days of additional spread are exponentially more detrimental to the goal of stopping spread… which stops hospitalizations, which stops deaths and long covids. Even if the “break throughs” are 1% of cases, if those 1% are 700% more transmissed through false hubris… it’s just like the early days of Covid.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  I don’t know the reason the false negative nor how the rate differs between vaccinated and non-vaccinated nor do I know of any studies looking into it so this seems like a worry you’re concocting out of thin air. Particularly as we know the delta variant is more infectious so is a much more likely reason for any increased spread.
  - anonymouse008 5y ago
    While I agree it’s an intuitive based hypothesis — a close cousin to concocting out of thin air - I don’t think it’s improper to attempt to find the proper weight to assign to additional days in public for its effect on a variants transmission vs it’s inherent mutations. Does that make sense?

Rezwoodly 5y ago

Uh, you did get vaccinated and still have these symptoms. You could also fairly end your TLDR with 'did get vaccinated, this sucks'. It seems we are still learning about the efficacy of the vaccines, and the nature of the virus. From this pov I understand why some are hesitant to be vaccinated in this phase of the pandemic

mrgordon 5y ago
You missed the point. The virus is usually much worse without the vaccine.
- andrew_ 5y ago
  Please provide data for that claim.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    From our chief epidemiologist over here in Iceland: “ Þórólfur wrote in his response to RÚV yesterday that the figures change quickly and that now the non-vaccinated infection rate is twice as high rather than three-times, the hospital admission rate is five-times higher, and the rate of admission to intensive care is also five-times higher than for vaccinated people.” https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/19/unvaccinated-five-times-more-likely-to-need-hospital https://www.ruv.is/frett/2021/08/19/unvaccinated-five-times-...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - boboche 5y ago
    Look at the death rates now compared to last year’s wave in countries that have a higher vaccination rate. Not saying its a miracle or perfect, but the numbers are speaking. I’m not for booster shots or being vaccinated x times, heck, I had a problem with requiring 2 shots for something that is not 95%+ effective. But after doing the maths of probability of infection, probability of sick or long term covid vs vaccination issues… I didn’t like the conclusion but I’m not in denial and trying to find information to confirm my initial bias, I took the second shot. All this said, I won’t accept anything else before a full year or higher % now.
walterbell 5y ago
From Bloomberg today, https://archive.is/fy4Wf https://archive.is/fy4Wf > In lieu of answers, what has emerged is a host of case studies providing somewhat different pictures of breakthrough infections. Variables including when the surveys were conducted, whether the delta variant was present, how much of the population was vaccinated and even what the weather was like at the time make it hard to compare results and suss out patterns. It’s difficult to know which data might ultimately carry more heft. > For the time being, there are simply more questions than answers. Are breakthrough infections ticking up because of the delta variant, waning immunity or a return to normal life? Are vaccinated people more vulnerable to severe illness than previously thought? Just how common are breakthrough infections? It’s anyone’s guess. “It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data,” Frieden said. “But there is just a lot we don’t know.”
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  > “It is generally the case that we have to make public health decisions based on imperfect data,” Why can't the public draw their own conclusions and make their own health decisions, based on (imperfect) public data? Why does the data have to be kept secret? (Perhaps the data doesn't support the "public health decisions" and dictates of the state?) If there's a concern that we can't effectively interpret the data, why can't we listen to whatever quack that we prefer and trust on national television that tells us that we really should not wear masks and couldn't wear them effectively, and they'd make us super sick because we'd be stupid about it and are completely untrainable (oh, and they're needed for health workers) -- no, wait, we should all wear masks, even if they're just thin pieces of cotton -- no, wait, even kids should wear at least two masks, even if they're running track and passing out.
  - gjsman-1000 5y ago
    What is the greater evil here? The slight odds of infection when they are likely outdoors, or that they are running track, passing out, getting dehydrated, breathing high levels of CO2, and the unknown long-term health effects of that? It doesn't take much common sense to realize that exposure to virus is bad, masking while running is potentially much worse for everyone and not just the odd infection, and that it should be a choice if there are two evils.
paulryanrogers 5y ago
What about the point of view would make since hesitant to get vaccinated? Without the vaccine likelihood of hospitalization is even higher.
HWR_14 5y ago
> From this pov I understand why some are hesitant to be vaccinated in this phase of the pandemic So your take away from someone complaining about the long recovery time from an accident after putting on his seatbelt and having the airbag deploy (which is annoying at the moment) is that we should remove those features because other people in other accidents without them had less severe injuries?
meheleventyone 5y ago
Yes my point is that it’d be worse without being vaccinated and that my wife who is also vaccinated and spent seven days in close proximity with me whilst symptomatic has not been infected.
- methodiosmel 5y ago
  My entire unvaccinated family spent the entire time with me while I was symptomatic and were not affected. They ended up getting it a month after I recovered. We all recovered within a few days and over a year and a half later we still have the antibodies (tested ourselves a few weeks ago).
rvp-x 5y ago
We have mountains of data about the current vaccine. This amount of disease-tracking is unheard of. Almost any institution in the world has regular discussions about this singular disease. Governments spend huge resources to pinpoint the exact minimum measures that can control the spread enough. My country attempted a 3rd dose, and within 2 weeks they were already reporting data on reduced risk of catching the virus in comparison to 2, 1, and 0 doses. These are studies done with sample sizes of millions of people.
- loopz 5y ago
  Sampling 3rd dose after two weeks would be statistically insignificant and not enough time to record stats from sickness.
  - OrderlyTiamat 5y ago
    I dont understand, why would that be "statiatically insignificant"? for what analysis?
    - loopz 5y ago
      I replied to the last paragraph of parent poster. If you study the few people getting dose 3 two weeks after, you're not going to learn anything about effectiveness of dose 3.
      - edanm 5y ago
        If I understand what you're saying, that's not what was done, at least here in Israel. After the 3rd vaccine, afaik, they compared the rates of hospitalizations of people do did vs. didn't yet get the 3rd vaccine, as compared to what happened the week before. They saw a drop in 3rd-vaccinated, and only in 3rd-vaccinated, implying that it did have an effect. And this wasn't a small population (I don't know exact numbers but I assume several 10s/100s of thousands).
        rvp-x 5y ago
bluejekyll 5y ago
Given the timelines mentioned, vaccinated in mid July, got sick mid August, it looks like the peak effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine after the second shot take 15-21 days to kick in. The virus can take up to 12 days before becoming sick/symptomatic. Rough math: (Aug 21) - (9 days sick) - (12 day incubation) = (~July 31 infection date). This would appear to fall in the time period of not yet being fully inoculated, if they were unlucky with the timelines. They got unlucky, which sucks. I wish the best for the GP, but the important thing is that this anecdote doesn’t necessarily represent a breakthrough case. But even if it did, the Pfizer vaccine is 96% effective at protecting people, so 4% are still going to get sick. All of this is inline with all the data I’ve seen at least. For this particular case we don’t even need to discuss the recent data showing Pfizer (and possibly Moderna) dropping to 80ish% effectiveness after four-five months. Literally all the data says people are safer getting vaccinated.
lamontcg 5y ago
Virus kicks his ass even though he's vaccinated, and you're drawing the conclusion that the vaccines can't be trusted, rather than unvaccinated exposure to the virus will be 10 times worse... You may not be good at logic.

gunapologist99 5y ago

I am so sorry for your terrible sickness! It's probably impossible to say whether "the vaccine has kept this relatively mild", especially since you got it despite being vaccinated twice. At least earlier strains showed no or very mild symptoms in 80% of the infected, and yours doesn't sound very mild. Maybe you'd be dead if not for the vaccine? or perhaps the vaccine allowed your body to contain it to just your nose, where it replicated like crazy until it overwhelmed your defenses. It seems like there just isn't enough data, but it seems like getting vaccinated is not a silver bullet.

roland35 5y ago
"mild" in terms of delta covid mMans you don't need to go to the hospital. Mild covid still can be pretty terrible, but it at least isn't life-threatening!
meheleventyone 5y ago
Well we can’t test the null hypothesis for me specifically but the data here in Iceland shows that the illness for the population at large is much less likely amongst the vaccinated and much less severe. So it’s not impossible to say at all. And yes my symptoms are mild and suck a lot. The average length of illness in mild cases is 14 days. COVID is worse than most people (including me before getting it) think.
lamontcg 5y ago
> yours doesn't sound very mild. Yes his symptoms sound mild. There's a good chance that whatever you think of as severe cold/flu is all clinically mild (unless you've actually had complications and wound up in the hospital). Actual unvaccinated severe COVID-19 is an order of magnitude worse than what you can imagine as severe.
- peteradio 5y ago
  Very important point. Struggling to take painful breath for days on end is the gist of "severe covid". I'd rather break my arms than experience severe covid.
- 5y ago

hackandtrip 5y ago

I had a similar experience, with 10-12 days of mild symptoms (up to 40°C fever), but the general feeling of tiredness and the infamous "brain fog" stayed for 3-4 weeks (it's not completely gone yet). Definitely one of the worst sickness I've had, but both me and especially my parents (60+) had no respiratory problems and didn't need urgent treatment. I was waiting for my second dose when I got it and my parents were vaccinated, but still I don't get how we can count on treating it as a flu and just get the virus, considering the lack of knowledge on long-term effects.

meheleventyone 5y ago
Yeah am pretty concerned about there being long term effects. Two of our friends got it really early on and both still have lingering symptoms.
gunapologist99 5y ago
Two of my relatives in their 80's just got it without any vaccine and similarly had a nasty flu; they took ivermectin and didn't need any urgent treatment, although O2 levels did drop into the low 90's at times. About five days after diagnosis (and well after the worst days), they received monoclonals. They're still weak but recovering. I know another person (young, in 20's) who had similar symptoms -- brutal flu, similarly believed that ivermectin "saved" him. Of course, it's unknown (but https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-ivermectin-covid-19-coronavirus-masks-anti-science-11627482393 https://www.wsj.com/articles/fda-ivermectin-covid-19-coronav... ) Most cases seem to be relatively mild. There are always the ones that aren't, though, but it does seem like (in the absence of real, double-blind, public data) the vaccine doesn't have too much of an impact on delta in terms of the harshness of the sickness in breakthrough cases, but it might reduce the overall incidence and prevent the vaccinated from getting sick at all. However, the data always seems very weak, and always lags behind. EDIT: definitely doesn't seem like getting vaccinated reduces the incidence, either: "three-fourths of the nearly 470 cases were in vaccinated people" from a leaked CDC memo: https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccine/93830 https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19vaccin...

anonymouse008 5y ago

> Annoyingly my first test was negative even though I was symptomatic so I was wandering around being infectious for seven days. This is my hypothesis for why we are seeing such spread after a mass vaccine event. The moral hazard of a vaccine and negative test are more dangerous than Covid itself. 7 days of additional spread are exponentially more detrimental to the goal of stopping spread… which stops hospitalizations, which stops deaths and long covids. Even if the “break throughs” are 1% of cases, if those 1% are 700% more transmissed through false hubris… it’s just like the early days of Covid.

meheleventyone 5y ago
I don’t know the reason the false negative nor how the rate differs between vaccinated and non-vaccinated nor do I know of any studies looking into it so this seems like a worry you’re concocting out of thin air. Particularly as we know the delta variant is more infectious so is a much more likely reason for any increased spread.
- anonymouse008 5y ago
  While I agree it’s an intuitive based hypothesis — a close cousin to concocting out of thin air - I don’t think it’s improper to attempt to find the proper weight to assign to additional days in public for its effect on a variants transmission vs it’s inherent mutations. Does that make sense?