COVID: How many boosters are enough?

[PurpleRayne89]

If you’re vaccinated with all three jabs. When do you draw the line if we are expected to get a 4th or 5th booster?

When, If ever will you say it’s enough and refuse to be injected again until they develop something more long lasting.

What are you general thoughts on the vaccine?

No arguments, all opinions welcome and will be respected. Let’s discuss this in a mature fashion.

Im also guessing there’ll be a flu/Covid combo vaccine coming, that we can have it annually. I get the flu shot every year, early autumn, so this won’t change things for me.

@Awalkintime

4 a year is standard for Depo injection and no one bats an eyelid at that. Not sure why the frequency of this injection is such an issue when others are ignored.

It might be an issue for me because the last one made me feel too ill to work for 36 hours. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. I can’t afford to lose a day’s pay every time I have a jab if they’re going to be frequent.

I've had four. I can't see why not

I’ve had 2 jabs and a booster. I would follow medical advice for the next one. I wonder if comparing with a flu jab is a wrong approach. Flu is very seasonal so we don’t need protection for the whole year, just for certain period so we have a flu jab before this period. Covid is different it is present throughout the year.

@thepeopleversuswork

It matters to those of us who feel too ill to work after the jab, and who don’t get sick pay.

I have a terrible needle phobia, and had a proper panic attack queuing for the booster which was awful. I would have a fourth if mandated but really wouldn’t be keen.

My other question is around how flexible employers will be as time goes on. My work were happy for people to go to vaccine appointments in work time (I’m in Scotland so we were just given them for the first two, we didn’t get to choose) and also sympathetic to people being poorly afterwards. I was “lucky” that I had the booster on a Saturday, because I felt so rotten the next day I would absolutely have had to call in sick. I guess better than people being off with covid maybe - but most people I know who have covid right now have had three jabs.

Oh, and I do get full sick pay, but it is very inconvenient for staff to be off (teaching).

[quote waterlego]@thepeopleversuswork

It matters to those of us who feel too ill to work after the jab, and who don’t get sick pay.[/quote]
But... hate to be the one to say it... but if you don't get sick pay and you get COVID you're going to be much sicker and with the risk of becoming seriously or fatally sick.

Also you say "those of us who feel too ill to work after the jab" as if there are certain people who automatically get sick after every jab. It doesn't work like that. Reactions to vaccines are massively varied and unpredictable and will vary according to all sorts of factors including what vaccine you have, when you have it, your underlying health status etc. It's not as black and white as you will get sick from every jab...

People compare Covid to flu because epidemiology wise it is quite like the severe new strains of flu that hit the world through the 20th century.
Asian flu?
Spanish flu?

The Spanish flu didnt disappear. We built up resistance to it and death rates dropped and now we live with it with more vulnerable people getting flu boosters annually.

Having a 4th soon. I'm ok with it, whatever I need to do

I'll have whatever is recommended and be grateful.
I'm 62 and asthmatic and I've just had covid.
Thanks, I presume, to the 2 vaccines and 1 booster, my symptoms were similar to a cold - runny nose, sneezing, bit of a cough and weirdly, stomach pains lasting a day.
If I'd contracted covid two years ago it may have been a totally different story.

@GiantSpider

I've had three jabs so far. I'm prepared to follow government advice on future boosters (partly because I want to be able to travel abroad this summer!).

This is sad and if people and many people are saying the same. We should not let this coercion happening. It will only be enough if people decide is enough but people seemed to be happy to comply with endless boosters if offered.

@thepeopleversuswork, I had Covid (Delta variant, I think) before vaccinations and had it mildly. Yes, I had to have time off work, but mainly because of having to isolate! I felt mildly ill for a couple of days. So then it might come down to how many times I would get Covid in the average year vs how many times I might feel ill after a booster per year.

I take your point about being affected differently by the jab at different times (same goes for Covid, I guess). But the reaction I had to the Pfizer has put me off having it again, because I can’t know in advance whether I’m going to feel ill again or whether I’ll be completely fine next time. I don’t feel inclined to take the chance.

However, I am by nature a rule-follower and conformist so I’d say the chances are fairly high I’ll have it again at some point. I just really don’t want to contemplate it at the moment.

@Gladioli23

As often as required, which I imagine will settle down to annually, potentially a 2-in-1 with flu.

I agree.

I’ve had none, and I won’t be having any. My reasoning is:

I caught covid very early on, felt a bit grim for a few days but nothing paracetamol and Netflix couldn’t fix. So I was ‘lucky’ in that I wasn’t living with the fear of what might happen if I got it. I’ve had far worse colds.

Over the next 8 months or so, I knew quite a few people who got covid, a mixture of ages and health status. And like me, no one became anything even approaching seriously ill. So this didn’t tally with the scaremongering in the media to me. My DM is in local government and she has full council meetings every month where covid stats are discussed. The excess deaths in my county since the pandemic began are the grand total of zero, as stated in official local monthly government meetings. Yet that doesn’t tie in with the stats I see when I look for that information myself online. So to me, that’s evidence that the danger has been massively embellished to put it politely.

When the vaccines first became available for people of my age group, I felt quietly confident that it was unnecessary for me to have it in terms of my own risk. People I knew that were getting the vaccine often felt really quite ill afterwards, for a week or so, about the same as when I had covid. And of course since then there have been thousands of serious vaccine injuries reported to yellow card and VAERS, people my age or younger who were at very little risk from covid, then having life changing after effects from the vaccine.

But of course there’s the greater good argument, protecting other people etc. I think as time has gone on, that’s also been pretty well rubbished, there are articles in the BMJ stating that the vaccines make no difference to transmission, or a very negligible amount. So that doesn’t really stand up either.

I then caught covid a second time in September last year, again a week of lying around watching Netflix and I was fine again. I am fit and active, 40 years old with a healthy BMI. Fun fact here, if you’re triple jabbed and overweight and get covid, you’re still far more likely (80%) to be hospitalised from covid than someone who is of a healthy BMI, regardless of their vaccination status.

So I have no reason to think if I get covid a third time I will be hospitalised or die from it. Ah yes but what if there’s another variant, I hear you say. Well if there is, previous vaccines aren’t going to help you much against futuristic variants, as a doctor friend put it ‘that’s now how vaccines work’.

Add to that that I’m a natural hermit anyway, and I’m either outside with my horse or in my house with my kids, so I don’t see myself as posing a huge risk to anyone.

It’s annoying not being able to travel, but I’m happy to accept that and quietly carry on with my life.

*that’s NOT

As long as I need them to travel, but I have to admit the idea of feeling as grotty as I have for all three of mine again doesn't fill me with joy if I have to do it every 6 months.

@siblingrevelryagain

For me, enough will be when the pain, inconvenience and expense outweighs any benefit.

Right now, it’s about an hour or two out of my day, it smarts slightly on impact and leaves me feeling a bit bleurgh for a few hours, and costs me nothing upfront. So as long as scientists I trust tell me we need another jab I’ll have another jab. And another. And another.

I don’t understand the pushback from people who previously had the vaccine but seem to have reached breaking point after 2 or 3. If I thought I might die and a doctor offered me dialysis, or chemo or any other regular treatment to keep me alive or prevent illness (like a daily insulin injection), I can’t imagine saying “I’ve had enough now, you can stick your life saving treatment because you promised I’d only need a few, and now the science has changed I’m out”

I'm one of the people you don't understand. I've had 3 vaccines and have complied with all Covid requirements.

I don't see categorising all variants as Covid helpful.

Alpha, Delta and Omicron are all very different in how they transmit and effect people.

Omicron is not causing half as much harm as Delta. Future harmful variants aren't likely to replace Omicron as Omicron is so contagious.

Therefore the need for vaccines is reducing. Vaccines are expensive and if not needed then wasteful.

I wouldn't have another booster unless my freedoms were curtailed. I know I'd be fine catching Omicron (and I've probably already done so given how rampant it's been). Given vaccines don't stop the spread, I see no reason why I'd need another.

@thepeopleversuswork

Genuine question and not trying to be goady but why does it matter?

People routinely get vaccinated against all sorts of diseases.

Why should having multiple COVID jabs be such a dealbreaker?

There's no logic to this at all: what makes you think that another COVID jab will be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Do you think a COVID jab is a fundamentally different beast from all other vaccines developed?

Because it’s still only a proved for emergency use, and the manufacturers have no liability? Pretty big difference to other vaccines.

I’ve had the two jabs but won’t get any boosters. Just don’t think they are necessary, and to quote a PPs pet peeve, I don’t personally find a flu jab necessary as I don’t have a compromised immune system.
I’ll have a booster only if I’m required to for work.

For as long and as often as the virologists, vaccinogists and epidemiologists think it's a good idea.
Why ever wouldn't you?

When I had the MMRV vaccine I almost died so I don’t think very highly of mandatory vaccines, in general and especially for covid, unless you’re in the vulnerable category.

@montysma1 The JCVI, the gov own vaccine advisory board recommended NO vaccines for healthy teens and children, yet the gov overruled them.

www.thelancet.com/journals/lanepe/article/PIIS2666-7762(21)00258-1/fulltext?s=08#

Having remained covid free while holed up with my covid positive dc (and not isolating from him at all) I would be content for further boosters until it is totally dampened globally and then hope to receive annual boosters as I do my flu jab annually also.