Anxious about taking covid vaccines

[MattyT123]

I had a letter today from the NHS here in the UK, an invitation to get vaccinated.
In this area they vaccinate with Astrazeneca, in a town 1 hour away they use Pfizer.

So many conflicting reports make me anxious and confused, on many NHS pages on social media you get comments directing you to the government site MHRA where a lot of people have listed side effects of the vaccines.
Scare stories of blood clots and horrible feelings after taking them including heart problems make it seem risky.
People being described as "sheep" and downplaying of covid makes it all confusing, especially when there aee some "medical professionals" start making claims against covid or the vaccine.

I've had the flu before and survived, had the flu jab once and felt horrible for a couple of weeks, achy and headaches and pain in the arm.
Had tetanus jabs and for typhoid but didn't react to them.
Still anxious to know how I'd react to the covid vaccines.

Does the vaccine have bad effects on people with high blood pressure and heart conditions? Those who had angina?

I always try to keep myself healthy and go for walk also sometimes cycling.

[CurfewX]

Humans, in general, are very poor at risk assessment.  It is important to take a look at the risks of getting COVID - including the long-term symptoms that people are experiencing - relative to the issues that people are experiencing from the vaccines.  If you do so from a factual standpoint, you'll find that FAR fewer people are experiencing effects from the vaccine, and almost NO ONE is dying from any of these effects.

The clear-cut path is to get any vaccine that you can get, but if you are concerned, you should discuss getting a vaccine that you perceive as having less risk associated.

Being healthy and exercising is great for you, but has no effect on whether you will or will not get COVID.  

Also, keep in mind that the reporting system for side effects is a self-report system, and nothing in the reports verifies that the event reported is definitively related to the vaccine.

[AnnieBrooke]

Regarding that heart thing -- I took my 14-year old to get his second Covid vaccination today, so naturally the nurse and I were talking about those (very rare) cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have been seen mostly in people between 12 and 39 years old after their second shot. She said the problem is treated with antibiotics and once treated, you're well (no lingering damage, like can happen to the heart from getting Covid itself). The other (and most surprising) thing she said is that people more often get this kind of inflammation of the heart muscle from a virus -- often, for example, from strep.

I asked how you would know if you got it, and she said often with the Covid shot there's a couple of days right after when someone might feel punk or have a few symptoms, but myocarditis doesn't come on until at least a couple of days have elapsed, sometimes three or four.

I think the numbers so far have been 300 out of 12 million or something like that have had this complication after a Covid shot, which is so infinitessimal that more people have been struck by lightning (or for that matter have died of Covid itself) than have gotten myocarditis or pericarditis after having the shot. Also, they only see a correlation right now, they don't even have proof of causation.

Try not to read every piece of news and get scared. I know it's not easy! But trust that medical science has done pretty well to get us this far.

[Paxiled]

It is looking like young people are getting this heart inflammation from the mRNA vaccines, meaning the Pfizer and Moderna (or more accurately, the BioNTech and the Moderna).  The blood clots, on the other hand, are from the AstraZeneca and maybe the J&J vaccine, and these predominantly affected women.  However, as noted above by the two very good answers there, given the very large number of people who have been vaccinated, and the very small number who have suffered these problems, it isn't likely you'll get any of these problems.  You don't say your age or your gender, so hard to say whether you have any risk at all of these two problems.  But the thing you don't hear when people talk about complications are, covid has all the same complications and they may be permanent, though we don't know that yet.  The latest one is damage to brain cells, and if that's true, that would be a permanent condition of having had covid.  I wouldn't downplay the risks of any medication, because they all have some pretty awful ones.  There are no safe ones, meaning, some people are going to wish they hadn't taken them.  The most common med we all know about is aspirin, and aspirin has killed way more people than cancer has, so there you go.  No drug is completely safe.  But neither are the diseases these meds treat.  In comparison to pills you probably take when the doc tells you to, the vaccines are almost without any risk at all.  The worst most people get are a sore arm and fatigue for a couple of days and then they're fine and pretty well protected against covid.  If it were me, as for your other question, I'd get the Pfizer, and especially so if you're not a teenager as they're the ones at risk of the heart inflammation.  The reason is, if you have a choice between a vaccine that has shown to be 90% effective or more at preventing getting covid and at being able to pass it on to someone else, and another that was less than 70% effective in European trials and a little above 70% in American trials (probably because the UK had a worse variant at the time), to me it just makes sense to go with the one that's more effective, given you have a choice.  If you didn't have a choice, I'd say get whatever one was available.  There's a bit of human responsibility at play here, because if we don't reach herd immunity from the vaccine variants are going to keep arising and they're going to keep getting worse for us, such as the Indian one that is now becoming the predominant strain in the UK.  Get the jab.  Peace.

[Petersen21]

Before the AstraZeneca vaccine, I was a resilient robust 78 year old with excellent health.  No colds coughs or flu in winter.Only medication is a low dose of thyroxin.
After Astra Zeneca vaccine 6pm 26/3/2021 I went to bed when I came home.  I woke up in extreme pain at 4am, totally inflamed from head to toe.  Hospitalised three times as different damage from spike proteins emerged.  The paperwork with the vaccine said it made our bodies produce the spike proteins via its genetically engineered vaccine.
Here are the issues since then, and we are now in July 18th 2021.
Heart inflamed and enlarged
Severe headaches with no previous history of them
Brain clot in cerebellum affecting my balance
Thyroid overactive for the first time in my life!!Normally slightly underachieve
Kidney problems in spite of me not being a candidate in any way, lifestyle nor in blood tests, blood pressure 120/70 or under, weight 70 kilos for past 50 years, drink only rain water - no soft drinks, no commercial fruit juices, only fresh home grown fruits and vegetables, organic meat, grass fed, organic dairy and eggs.  Whole of life as a country bred and raised Australian.
Gastric when not in past history
weight loss of 6 kilos and not putting it back on since
Partial paralysis of face, throat, tongue, inside mouth, lips with inflamed skin splitting, difficulty eating and swallowing,
partial paralysis of bladder making incontinence an embarrassing issue needing nappy pants that hold two litres!!
Swollen, inflamed gritty red eyeballs difficult to see through very puffy eyes
swollen left leg
loss of taste
inflamed skin that splits on face and legs
constant cough developing into pneumonia
yet no fever.
The formerly healthy lady of 55  in the hospital bed opposite me had the Pfizer, went into a coma after the Psizer vaccine, and woke up paralysed in her whole body.  She has been paraplegic since and going she will get over it, poor thing.
We were forbidden to talk about it in hospital.
Workplace Health and Safety Australia have sent letters to employers saying not to report side effects from employees receiving their mandatory vaccines.
We can not find statistics. Personal experience and witnessing friends suffering from heart damage and painful inflammation in whole body plus blood clots prompt is to say to our friends, wait until there is proper research, and safe vaccines developed that have none of these nasty symptoms.
Virologists say it takes years to develop effective vaccines. Even the inventor of the technology used in the vaccines warns that hthey should not have been released until tested and researched properly.  Fauci ignored his advice and pleadings and went ahead recklessly.  
Now we who have had the vaccines are the guinea pigs who are reporting the side effects, if we are still alive, and not paralysed.
Disillusioned Aussie

[Paxiled]

Um, I'm very sorry this happened to you, but facts are still facts.  You're also confusing your vaccines.  AstraZeneca is a pretty standard vaccine using a dead virus to deliver the instructions to make the spike protein.  The mRNA vaccines by Moderna and BioNTech use a technology that has been around for decades, although it hadn't yet been used in a vaccine.  None of this is new technology, in other words.  It is true nobody had ever gotten a covid vaccine before because covid didn't exist before, and it is true these vaccines were made very quickly, but the reason for it isn't that they invented new technology, they didn't, it was off the shelf stuff, but never before did a country as wealthy as the US pay private companies to make a vaccine.  That's why it was so quick, the market for it was guaranteed whether or not the vaccine turned out to work.  As it happened, they did work, but all vaccines have cause severe illness in some of the people who took them.  All drugs no matter how many years it took to develop them cause severe disease in some.  Usually it's irreversible, because nobody has ever required anyone who made a medication or a vaccine know how to deal with the downsides of it in order for it to be administered to the public.  The fact is, every drug you have ever taken kills people.  It is an accepted risk for the benefit received, and often that benefit doesn't even exist.  Every drug ever made isn't truly understood until a decade out when enough people have taken it for enough time for the downsides to become known.  I realize almost nobody knows this, and the pharmaceutical industry and medical practitioners don't tell us this, but it is true.  In the US, after five years and then a decade committees of practitioners almost all of whom are paid by the pharmaceutical industry are convened by the FDA to see if an approved drug actually works and is safe to take.  This isn't known when it is first approved because clinical trials are always small and always of short duration.  So again, it is terrible this happened to you, but covid could have caused all of this to happen as well.  From your description, you might very well have had covid and not known it and still don't know it, especially as you report a loss of taste.  Allergic reactions happen.  There are additives in all drugs that can cause horrific outcomes.  Statins were researched for years before approval, and they cause liver disease and joint pain.  Aspirin, invented either by the ancient Egyptians or ancient Greeks, causes internal bleeding.  I could go on, but it would cover every medication known.  Again, for some people, they are going to be much worse than the problem they were taken to treat, but for most people, they will not only help but save lives.  So for the current vaccines, which are saving millions of lives right now but are having some of the same downsides as every other medication ever made.  We are always guinea pigs when we try to alter nature by getting surgery, having a medical device implanted, or take a medication.  Every time.  It's a hard choice but we make it hoping it will help us and not hurt us.  Most of the time it does, and when it doesn't, it is a tragedy.  Better regulation and better doctors would help a lot, but not eliminate this problem.  Antibiotics cause a ton of chronic problems, but I doubt any of us would want to go back to when they didn't exist.  Life is always hard, and eventually it gets all of us.  You are lucky enough to have gotten old, meaning you managed to live this long, but as another older person myself, it makes us more susceptible to all sorts of things.  Let me add, eating organic meat, dairy and eggs doesn't make them healthful to eat.  They are not.  It is better than the alternative, but you can't make red meat healthy to eat more than occasionally.  It is what it is.  Adult humans are taught by lacking the enzyme that digests dairy that we are force feeding this to ourselves because we like to eat it, not because it's human food.  It is what humans do, and eventually there is a price to be paid.  I have no idea what is causing your problem, but yes, the vaccines are causing some problems.  This is a very bad thing, but they are also the only way to defeat covid, which is a far more bad thing for far more people.  We take risks.  People used to inoculate themselves against smallpox before the vaccine and if it worked, it was great, and if it didn't, you got smallpox, which wasn't so great.  But smallpox was incurable and so people did it anyway.  This is life.  So while I am crushed this has happened to you, and hope you find a way through it, the rest of your argument isn't factual.  It is just what happens when we try to alter our bodies to defeat nature.  Peace.

[Paxiled]

I wanted to add just again for accuracy, Dr. Fauci was only involved with one vaccine, the Moderna one, because the technology used was invented with US backing and funding decades ago and Fauci has been around a long time.  They were trying to find treatments for diseases for which we had none, such as HIV at the time, and trying to find cures, but as it turned out, the first product that worked is the covid vaccine.  The vaccine you took was created by scientists at Oxford University in England, not by Fauci.  This vaccine isn't even approved for any kind of use in the US.  You have it because Australia didn't buy much vaccine, as your populist gov't believed your status as an island would allow you to close down and crush the virus but obviously if you do that forever your economy goes into the toilet.  But it's not Fauci's fault.  You seem to have read some conspiracy theories, perhaps in Murdock owned properties or on Facebook or the like, but the vaccines are all different.  The only two that are very much alike are the mRNA vaccines because both of them were made by scientists who had worked with the US gov't on creating that technology.  None of them use genetically altered covid virus, which is what you seem to suggest.  You are correct that quite a lot of people were concerned about the speed of creating these vaccines.   I was one of them as well, and yet when it came to my turn I took it as quickly as I could get it.  Again, if indeed the vaccine did this to you, that's awful, and I hope it gets fixed, but spreading conspiracy theories won't help you get better but might convince someone else not to get vaccinated and therefore get the virus.  Because that's pretty much how it's going.  

[GuitarRox]

Peterson21, I am sorry this happened to you. There are those who report adverse reactions from these vaccines as well as any vaccine. With the large number of people vaccinated, that is bound to be the case. Doesn't matter if it is rare when it happens to you or your loved one though.  I'm not one that believes everyone has to be vaccinated if they don't want to be (pro choice on all health matters by principal, at every level) although I hope that they are for their and everyone else's benefit.  I don't know about what is going on in Australia or other parts of the world in terms of the public approach to vaccination, information dissemination but can certainly understand when you've had a bad experience like you have the desire to question and want to know more.  It does reassure me that MOST people that have these vaccines have no repercussions from doing so.  Again, doesn't matter when you have a serious situation like you did but remembering that it is rare.  I think most of the vaccinated folks here would tell you they don't know anyone that had anything other than some mild discomfort post vaccination.  That's the case for me.  But I can understand how you feel and hope that you recover fully. Everyone should always use caution when making a healthcare decision weighing the pros and cons. For me, it is a pro to be relatively safe now from a serious covid complication as well as the idea that we could eventually get to herd immunity. So it was worth it, but I didn't wind up in the hospital three times from it.  

[cathy54321]

I am so sorry that you have had to endure this at 78. I went through a horrible reaction to the H1N1 vaccine 12 years ago. Anyone going through this knows the hell on earth it is. I still to this day would require pages to fully describe the illness and what a long term illness can do to a person. It affects you physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I am so sorry. You deserve high recognition for taking the vaccine. Especially considering what it did to you. I can totally relate. I wish you healing more than anything.
You know, in my search to find doctors who are helping patients with vaccine reactions I have come across Dr. Ho  and Dr. Eric Osgood. They are advocating for vaccine injured people and helping them. The conversation is finally changing.
It is absolutely reprehensible that the hospital forbade you to talk about this. That is wrong on so many levels and they should be reprimanded for that. Vaccine injuries happen. People with these injuries should be studied and helped. Not gaslit and forbidden to talk about it.

[Dolly210833]

As far as I know these vaccines do not particularly cause side effects in people who have high Blood pressure or heart disease. I am 87, have high BP but just felt some tiredness after the 1st and 2nd dose. Reactions do occur in a small minority unfortunately and this can not be predictted

[shadowmed]

I can understand your confusion about the types of vaccines.

What I can tell you in all honesty is that Covid is real, serious and dangerous.  I have lost my father and a sibling (younger than me) to this virus.  My sibling was stronger than me, active, and full of life.  They survived flu on many occasions.

Whatever you factor into your decision making, please do not assume that Covid is just like flu.  Some people are mildly affected but some are seriously ill and some die.  I have also had flu - some bad bouts of it too that made me feel dreadful - but I am pretty sure I would not survive Covid.

[Paxiled]

We have to consider who the flu kills -- almost exclusively the very old and the very young.  Covid can not only kill anyone at any age but also cause long-term harm the flu doesn't cause, and it's also mutating fast and getting worse and worse and will continue presumably do that until we all mask, social distance, and get vaccinated.  Which we're not doing, and so it goes.

[MattyT123]

Thank you all for your answers, it helped me a lot in understanding and dealing with the anxiety of taking it, yesterday, I had my second dose. Thanks!