#pro vax
Illustration for NBC news, about teenage children who wish to get vaccinated against their parents wishes.
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“I’m not getting the vaccine because it’s my body, my choice”.
The phrase “my body, my choice” is a good argument when it comes to abortion rights and sexual consent. That is a choice that will only affect either solely your body (in abortion’s case) or you and your willing partner(s).
But vaccines are not the same thing.
Saying “my body, my choice” as an excuse not to get vaccinated fuels the false assumption that getting vaccinated is only to protect yourself. It’s the assumption that it’s okay to not get the vaccine because you think you’ll be okay not taking it.
The truth is, the vaccine is meant to protect both yourself AND the people around you. Maybe you’ll be fine without it. But what if you spread it to someone who won’t be?
As life slowly goes back to normal, you’re gonna come into contact with people. It’s inevitable. Without the vaccine you could contact and unknowingly spread it to another.
Maybe it is your body, your choice. But you’re also taking away someone else’s choice not to get sick.
Purposely not getting the vaccine is an act of selfishness.
(Anti vax and pro life people don’t fucking clown on this post )
A PSA for anyone getting the Covid vaccine, just so you know what to expect, some people experience no side effects, but it’s also not uncommon for people to feel like they have cold/flu-like symptoms for a day or two after getting the vaccine. For most people the symptoms are slightly worse after the second shot. The hospital I work at is recommending that employees get the vaccine the day before they have a day or two off. They have provided some extra PTO days in part because of this. I took a day off after each shot and was glad I did. This should not discourage anyone from getting the vaccine, but is just information to keep in mind when scheduling you or your loved ones vaccines. I highly recommend OTC pain relievers like Tylenol, Advil, or their generics. Tylenol relieved all of my symptoms. There’s no prize for toughing it out, just take them and they will make it so much easier.
For me, I got my first shot in the morning and about 14 hours later I started to feel muscle aches and pains, especially in my neck. I went to bed and then woke up feeling worse; headache, lightheadedness, a temp of 99.2 (higher than normal, but not technically a fever), and worse muscle aches and pains. I started taking Tylenol and I felt much better. The symptoms lasted for about 24 hrs. After my second shot, I felt symptoms much faster, about 6 hrs after the shot, I kept up with the Tylenol a little more aggressively this time and it kept the symptoms at bay, still wouldn’t have wanted to run a 5k or give a big work presentation or anything. Over all I would say the symptoms last about 36 hrs.
And I feel like I have to put this in here, just in case it crosses people’s minds, “What’s the point of getting the vaccine if it’s just going to make you sick?” You may feel sick, but you are not infected. You feel sick because the vaccine has “tricked” your immune system into thinking you are infected so that it starts to produce antibodies, but you are not actually infected. The symptoms from the vaccine last a day or two. In contrast Covid can last for weeks or months. The symptoms from the vaccine will not land you in the hospital or, more importantly, the morgue like Covid can. Also, you won’t be able to transmit the virus or the symptoms to anyone around you.
Hopefully being informed can lead to us all making smart choices that help us get out of this pandemic as soon as possible.I think we all know at least a few people who need to hear this perspective
This is basically exactly what happened to my wife after her second shot. It’s normal, it’s fine, get your shots anyway!
FYI it is literally impossible for the vaccines to infect you with covid. The vaccine has no viral particles in it, only mRNA. The types of vaccines that have a risk (usually negligibly small risk for the ones that make it to market) are made of viral particles that have been rendered harmless. This vaccine is not one of those vaccines. There is no covid virus, dead or otherwise, in the vaccine. The reactions described above are just your immune system figuring out how to make antibodies that will kill covid.
The vaccine, without a doubt. In DND terms, think of it as a potion that gives you a +15 modifier to your saving throw to avoid getting sick, to avoid spreading it to others, and if you fail the getting sick saving throw, you retain that modifier to avoid severe illness/hospitalization. If you fail THAT roll, you still retain the huge bonus to your death save.Now, some people have very bad immune systems… vaccines are less reliable with those folks, but do still help. And, of course, rolling a 1 is certainly a thing.
Every person who voted for anti vaxxer and demonizer of autism Jill Stein owes every American autistic person one hundred dollars. Sorry. I don’t make the rules.
Caricatures of Death Personified
So I put off getting my flu shot in 2018…
Y’know, I ain’t around these parts too much anymore (Yahoo can go huff a dong), but I just wanted to tell y’all my tale of the 2018/2019 holiday season…
December 17-20: Got the flu (later confirmed to be one of the strains protected by this season’s vaccine). Felt shite, took cold meds, still felt shite but not so much that I could justify not starting the Q1 spreadsheets at work.
Dec 21: Knew the crackles in my lungs were pneumonia. Couldn’t keep my blood oxygen above 90%. Went to the ER that night. They wanted to send me home. I said “I know something is wrong, I would be very uncomfortable going home.” They managed to find a bed in the hospital, said “fine, we’ll give you observation until tomorrow.”
Dec 22: Decompensated quickly. Parents apparently came up north, though I don’t remember seeing them before I woke up again. Couldn’t get aortic O2 saturation above 65% so I ended up intubated.
Late Dec 22-Early Dec 30: Completely unconscious, with the first two days on paralytics so that the ventilator did 100% of my breathing. The 36 hours on either side of my sedation are completely blank in my memory.
At some point my secondary infection (which was never discerned, though extensive testing for bacteria and fungi was done) caused me to become critically ill, and there were preparations made to fly my to Mayo for ECMO. Thankfully, the high-dosage steroid treatment they gave me when I started getting worse helped, and I began improving slowly.
Dec 31: I start to see the world again. My first “memories” are strange delusions brought on by the anesthetics. I thought I had been in a coma for 6 years, and that I was in Cleveland. Why the fuck would I be in CLEVELAND?
I remember seeing the news, something about New Year’s Eve. I fell back asleep, into Seroquel dreams.
Jan 1: My memories start genuinely coming back. I discovered I was too weak to extend my arm fully, and too shaky to eat Jell-O. The Jell-O DID get delightfully wobbly.
Seriously though, have you ever gone from being exceptionally strong to literally being unable to eat unless you did little T-rex arms? It’s a funny mental picture, but frustrating as hell. I would have been humiliated if I had more brain cells to spare.
Jan 2:Little Raven’s Birthday. Finally get out of ICU. Moved up to the general wards. Still can’t breathe easily. Food is vile-tasting. Can barely eat. Choke down a lemon bar and cry about how much better Brendan’s were and how much I miss my brother and how I refuse to make my parents go through that again.
Jan3:Manage my first wobbly steps with a walker. The floor hurts my knees and feet. The blood in my eyes is finally being cleared by my body.
Jan 3-5: Slow improvement. Slow for an otherwise-healthy young adult, at least. It feels like forever. My dad and I watched an unbearable amount of cross-country ski qualifying races for the Olympic teams. There’s a terrifying night-vision cam in my hospital room, which wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t have a creepy smiley face.
Jan 5-9: Transitional care, getting physical and occupational therapy. I finally got home to my apartment (and cat!) that afternoon. I spent the next week regaining my strength and seeing specialists to try and find out why I got so sick. Consensus so far is “flu sucks and you’re unlucky?” I’m hoping to have better answers next month at my secondary follow-ups.
I aged my husband and parents about a decade during my hospital stay. I missed a month of work and am still fixing problems that arose with the backlog.
My Christmas dinner was a 10% dextrose solution, since I was still paralyzed and couldn’t have anything down my NG tube yet. New Year’s Eve drinks? “GIVE ME SOME FUCKING WATER!” - but not being able to have any, because I was still overloaded with fluid due to the standard protocol to prevent hypoperfusion when someone goes into septic shock.
Just to make it clear: I would not have survived without the tens of thousands of hours of training and practice that my medical team devoted their lives to acquiring. I would not have survived without the millions of hours of research and trials that allowed the machines that kept me monitored, cooled when my fever continued to spike, and breathing in a life-sustaining way when my lungs weren’t able to exchange gasses.
I am a fat bitch, but I am physically active, eat fairly decently, and don’t smoke or drink excessively. I am not someone who “should” be threatened by deadly complications due to influenza-caused pneumonia.Yet I was.
And YOU could be, too. Get yer flu shot, if you can. If you can’t, yell at others until they do.
It’s not too late in the season, trust me. People still die in March. People like you.
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