As studies have shown, that one was actually better for most people than dose No. On average, then, mRNA-vaxxed people can probably expect to have an annual experience that’s pretty similar to the one they had with their first COVID booster. As the alphabet soup of variants began to sweep the world in early 2021, she told me, vaccine makers started to tinker with alternate formulations, sometimes combining multiple versions of the spike protein into a single shot-“and they’re all comparable.” (If anything, early data suggest that bivalent shots containing an Omicron variant spike may be easier to take.) The same goes for flu vaccines, which are also retooled each year: When measured across the population, the frequency and intensity of side effects remain more or less the same. But Kathleen Neuzil, a vaccinologist at the University of Maryland School of Medicine who has studied the performance of COVID vaccines in clinical trials, pointed out to me that the mRNA shots’ ingredients have been swapped out before without altering the rate of side effects. It’ll take a while for data to confirm that, especially considering that more than a month into this fall’s rollout, fewer than 15 million Americans have received the updated shot. The good news, at least, is that experts told me they don’t expect this bivalent recipe-or future autumn COVID shots, for that matter-to be worse, side-effect-wise, than the ones we’ve received before. Read: America created its own booster problems “I don’t know if we’re going to continue to get strong buy-in from the public if they have this sort of reaction every year,” says Cindy Leifer, an immunologist at Cornell University. Now I’m getting texts and calls from family members and friends-all up to date on their previous COVID vaccines-admitting they’ve been dillydallying on the bivalent to avoid those symptoms too. Back in the spring, when I spoke with several people who hadn’t gotten boosters despite being eligible for many, many months, several of them cited the post-shot discomfort as a reason. But it’s not hard to see that gnarly side effects will only add to the many other factors that work against COVID-vaccine uptake, including lack of awareness, sloppy messaging, dwindling access, and spotty community outreach. If this is how every autumn will go from now on, so be it: A few hours of discomfort is still worth the rev-up in defenses that vaccines offer against serious disease and death. “Sorry,” I yelled back from the kitchen, where I was prepping four days’ worth of meals between work calls after returning from an eight-mile run. “Why don’t you feel anything?” my spouse howled at me from the bedroom, where his sweat was soaking through the sheets. As usual, the same injections caused me so few symptoms that I wondered if I was truly dead inside. When he got the flu shot and the bivalent COVID jab together a few weeks ago, he ended up taking his first day off work in more than a decade.
#SIDE EFFECTS OF PFIZER FIRST DOSE REDDIT FULL#
Every immunization I’ve watched him receive-among them, four doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine-has absolutely clobbered him with fevers, chills, fatigue, and headaches for about a full day. But if my immune system is a bashful wallflower, rarely triggering more than a sore arm in the hours after I get a vaccine, then my spouse’s is a party animal.
I am, fortunately, speaking of physical reactions rather than ideological ones my partner and I are both shot enthusiasts, a fact we verified on our first date. For as long as my marriage lasts, my household will be divided by reactions to vaccines.
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