Item — HN Reader

Meta: Let say I'm 30 years old, healthy, vaccinated with JJ over 6 months ago. Denmark, Sweden, Finland have banned Moderna for younger than 30. Some countries were recommending it to people over 50. Whole communication is a mess.

Should I get a booster shot? What are the pros and cons? Is there any data on that? I asked a friend doctor and she said that I should get a test for antibody count (a lab one, not garbage test you can buy anywhere)

I was quite sick from the last shot so I'd like to avoid it. I probably had Covid in April 2020. (no tests, I had a unusually mild cold-like symptoms and my partner lost the sense of taste for a few days)

Risks (Yes, I know some of them are extremely small)

- Booster won't help with stopping transmission

- myocarditis[1], allergy reaction (boosters are only Pfizer and Moderna, which I haven't taken), driving to and from, catching COVID and other diseases in the walk-in centre.

- I could spread COVID to people in the queue for booster shots, doctors and nurses.

[1]hence the ban it for younger males in some countries.

9 comments

The risk of getting a myocarditis from Covid19 is 4 times higher, than from the vaccine. Billions of people got mRNA vaccines in the last year. Probably hundreds of millions of people got Covid19 last year. Can you find an overall number of deaths by vaccination versus deaths by Covid19 somewhere? Germany recommends a second vaccine shot with an mRNA vaccine for everybody who JJ as their first shot. That is only 4 weeks after the original shot.

Generally yes, but for young men, it looks like the risks of getting myocarditis is higher from the Moderna vaccine than from covid. It is not the case for Pfizer/BioNTech.

In every case, the benefits still seem to outweigh the risks but it is recommended that young men get the Pfizer/BioNTech shot over Moderna.

> The risk of getting a myocarditis from Covid19 is 4 times higher

That's not true for people under 40 who vaccinated with Moderna, see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01630-0/figures/2

Do you have any source? I couldn't find data that would show it by the age group.

One that I found

Norway

Total vaccinated with mRNA vaccine = 3.765.354

Total myocarditis + pericarditis = 274 (0.0073%)

One case in 13,743

Not published yet https://youtu.be/YdVymGK3OzM?t=1095

He's given his age and sex, are you sure the 4x higher number is accurate with that additional context?

I'd get it -- J&J is already known to be weaker coverage, and Omicron spreads so easily that the odds you get COVID are fairly high if you interact with people regularly. If you're looking at it from a sickness perspective, the expected value of sickness without the shot is probably higher (lower chance of many days of feeling bad vs high chance of a single day).

Single person anecdote: I was quite sick from J&J and had zero symptoms from my booster. So just know it's not necessarily guaranteed you'll be sick from this one too if that's your main concern.

Sickness from the shot is not my main concern. I'd love to see the whole risk profile for my case. I have a feeling that governments are doing "booster for everybody" for political reasons. They don't want to single out particular age group.

Can you elaborate on these "political reasons"? I've heard other people say this, too, but I can't follow the reasoning. What is the government's ulterior end result of "booster for everybody" besides increased public health?

The only conspiracy I can at least follow along is the one where government is funneling money to their buddies at evil BigPharma, however there are plenty of easier ways to do this than a nation-wide vaccination campaign.

All the restrictions that were imposed in my country hit everybody equally. Which doesn't make sense from the risk reward perspective. For people in age group 0-30 the risk of death is close to zero. For age group 80+ is more than 15%. Orders of magnitude difference. The government tried to do a lock down for 65+, but there was a huge backlash (why they can go out but I cannot?), so the ordinance only said it's a recommendation for 65+ to stay indoors. Only thing they did is "Hours for Seniors". Only 65+ can go to shops in morning hours - 10-12 am, even though it was illegal.

There is a strong argument that boosters are pointless for young people (or even bad due to small myocarditis risk for young males), but politicians are scared of making mandatory vaccinations for 50+ only.

(Based on an interview with a well known sociologist)

Same for me. I had J&J and now moderna booster. Other than mild body pain and tiredness, booster was pretty smooth. Maybe because it's a half dosage

I don't know, I got all three shots of Moderna (two doses at 1 month interval in the summer + booster last week):

1) first dose: nothing

2) second dose: some (minor) pain in the arm I received the shot, that lasted only the morning after I got the dose (that I got around 21:00, so I probably was sleeping when it began)

3) booster (half dose): same (a little stronger) pain in the arm, nothing relvant but this time it lasted a couple days + and it was accompanied by some - cannot really describe it - slight fogginess in my brain, again nothing serious, just the feeling of not being 100% prompt/reactive

Given that this time it was half dose, I tend to believe that while in July I was probably in a better overall status before the dose due to the season (or whatever).

Exactly the same happened to my wife (we had together all the shots).

Cons: you might be sick for a day. (Had very bad reactions to the shots and this one lasted 1 day - but I caught something else before/after...)

Pros: seems to help against Omikron. And given the speed at which it spreads you don't have time to wait for updated shots or alike.

JJ was particularly bad in not catching it, and even worse after 6 months. Get a booster or have a close to 100% chance to catch Omikron.

Official communication is often skewed by availability. E.g. Germany didn't order enough BionTech but got plenty of Moderna so they announced that Moderna is way better. Just check the numbers and forget about anything else in the news. Numbers are like a weather forecast. Read it, prepare, put it aside.

The lack of transparency since day one of the pandemic is, in my opinion, the main reason for so many people to be against all measures, including vaccination mandates. From making assertions about the virus before the science was out (science rarely ever speaks in certainty), to straight out lies. From science, to pharma, to state medical officers, to government, to media, we're stuck in a terrible game of phone.

What did they lie about? lol. Cherry-picking everything

Could you cite exactly where "they announced that Moderna is way better"? All official sources I can find say that Moderna and BioNTech are "gleichwertig" (equivalent).

E.g. "Das Vakzin von BioNTech sei der Mercedes und der von Moderna der Rolls-Royce, sagte Spahn."

> https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/corona-booster-spahn-modern...

This came out the moment that the deliveries of BionTech were low. Weekly estimates are available at

> https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateie...

The recommendations usually follow that curve. And given the current availability: good luck getting a BionTech shot.

Related: I am pretty happy how open the underlying data is. Data quality is sometimes shit (hey RKI/Gesundheitsämter, looking at you) but overall the stuff is open.

Ah, and...

KW49, 2021-12-06 until 2021-12-12 had originally 3M BionTech shots available, with KW50 blocked for kids. At the same time 10M Moderna shots were available, or 20M booster shots.

2 weeks earlier, when those order volumes became clear, Spahn advertises for Moderna.

A few weeks later and we got an extra 3M BionTech shots.

Official medical sources have been clear. But StiKo & politicians an thus media communication is skewed.

I recently pondered the should I bother boosting thing. I had covid in 2020 and 2x pfizer. I decided to get a pfizer booster - seems a bit less side effecty than moderna, and while I wasn't really worried about getting omicron myself I figured I'd be less likely to pass it to family at Xmas (I'm in London with crazy infections presently). Also it renews the vax pass thing so it should be ok for summer in the EU who are talking about a 9 month validity from the last shot. Anyway... maybe get a pfizer booster.

(Random aside - it took me till now to figure my past injections hurt because I tensed the muscle - if you relax it you feel way less)

FWIW your reaction to previous vaccines/doses doesn't predict your reaction to future vaccines/doses.

Up until my second COVID vaccine I had never had any reaction to any vaccine other than a bit of pain in the injection site. My first COVID shot caused zero symptoms. So I was surprised when my second shot caused a day of flu-like symptoms. My booster, however, caused no symptoms other than swollen lymph nodes in one armpit.

I had J&J in April, and it kicked my butt for a solid 24 hours. I got Moderna's booster in early Nov and had I not gone for a 12 mile run the morning afterwards, I probably wouldn't have noticed it. Obviously everyone will have different reactions, but thought I'd share my anecdote.

Get a Moderna. Omicron isn't the only variant that you have to worry about, Delta is still ravaging people (and the booster is much more effective against it).

Often the booster is a half dose, so you may not be as affected by a booster as you were from the original shot(s).

Another pro you might not hear about much is sleep. I slept like a baby the night I had each shot.