Y’know, I’m a child of the 80’s and I remember the cold war. Therefore, there is no way in HECK that I’m injecting anything in me called Sputnik
Yeah, especially knowing that they seem to be using their general population as a Phase 3 trial.
But I wasn’t exactly clamoring for Sinovac either.
Sputnik sounds like it ought to be fairly effective. It’s the same technology as AZ and J&J, except it uses two different adenoviruses for the first and second dose, iirc. So… Probably more effective but more risky?
The Sinovac is just a killed virus, which ought to be less effective than catching covid, which seems to be less effective than the RNA vaccines. But it seems to confer enough immunity to matter (about 50%). I’m reading mixed stories about the Sinopharm vaccine, which might be more effective.
I continue to find myself amazed at what humans have been able to figure out vaccine-wise in the last century. The history of vaccines might become my next new reading interest.
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yeah, i’m not afraid of the one in a million blood clot (the time has passed for that anyway). i just don’t want to get covid with lasting horrible effects. long-covid is what I fear more than death.
Some interesting vaccine facts
Inoculation is not the same thing as vaccination. Inoculation is giving somebody a mild infection of the actual virus. Vaccination has no live virus, or in the case of the new mRNA vaccines, no virus at all. They mean the same thing in common usage, which is a shame, because they’re quite different. That literally kills me
Vaccine. Vaca. That sounds like the Spanish word for cow, doesn’t it? Well, the first vaccine for smallpox was made from the bovine version of the disease. Hence the name.
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I’m still a little upset my appointment was canceled, though. Taking a shower is literally a higher risk than the J&J vaccine.
Cowpox.
Prior to the discovery that inoculating someone with cowpox protected them from smallpox, specialists infected people with a tiny, carefully administered dose of smallpox, to resulting (usually) in a mild infection and full immunity. The death rate from that was very non-trivial, but it was worth the risk where smallpox was endemic.
Cowpox was the first viral-vector vaccine. I think the Ebola vaccine is the second, and the covid vaccines are next. It was a long time before scientists could create a viral-vector vaccine.
They are taking “first do no harm” extremely seriously. I think they can afford to do it because there currently seems to be enough RNA vaccine to go around.
Personally, i think the US should give all its J&J and AZ vaccine to Covax. They can’t deal with the cold chain that the nRNA vaccines require, but we can. And the whole world needs to be vaccinated to stop the pandemic.
My coworker is a legit, published expert on vaccines. I ask her a lot of questions but she often gets really technical and I’m like “Whoa! Unless you want to get into the nitty gritty of actuarial notation, layman answer, please.”
so tempted to be a jerk on fb and correct people bragging about getting “vaccinated” to tell them, “no bitch, you’ve been inoculated”, right now.
But by dothemath’s definition, they have been vaccinated, haven’t they?
Cool!
I read a lot about vaccines as a kid, and have read way too many papers about them in medical journals recently, but I’ve never talked to an actual expert. I’m a little jealous of your access.
dammit, i would have looked stupid. i read that wrong.
so i just look stupid on here. whatevs.
(i wasn’t really gonna do that anyway)
Yeah. I’m very grateful that since my career path veered away from pure actuarial work, I’ve gotten to work with a lot of great nurses, doctors, pharmacists and people with advanced public health degrees.
I am in line for shot #2. This location looks much more organized than the debacle I experienced with shot #1.
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Done! It was maybe a 20 minute wait this time. Waiting my mandatory 10-15 minutes post shot now
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Daughter has appointment today for first shot. They just opened up MA from 55+ to 18+ today.
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That’s a big jump LOL
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I got one of my kids (17 yo) a shot on Saturday, seeing how that goes before getting the shot for the 16 yo.
Not sure what I’m going to do for my 14 yo autistic son. I’d love to get him vaccinated.
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