I got my COVID-19 Vaccine, Bivalent booster yesterday

[MightyGiants]

I got in around two yesterday, and as of this posting, I am none the worse for wear.   Some slight arm soreness has been the only issue.   I was able to do my 8-mile walk this morning.   

The new booster is formulated against the original strain and adds Omicron 4 and 5 (the current dominant variants).   These newer Omicron variants have been pretty effective at bypassing immunized people's defenses (along with people who had prior Covid infections) and getting them sick (although if you are immunized, you still have a pretty good chance of not having to be hospitalized or worse).

I will say the new vaccine hasn't been extensively tested.   For me, that wasn't an issue because I understand and trust the science behind the vaccines.   I tell people that comes from my engineering background.  When you see signs with weight limits on bridges, it's not like they drove heavier and heavier trucks over the bridge until it collapsed, rebuilt it, and then posted the weight signs.  Rather we use science to calculate the load capacity.   Plus, I potentially have in-person jury duty Tuesday, and masking is no longer required.  If I am going to have to potentially spend long periods of time in rooms with strangers or have to sit next to strangers, I want proper protection.  Even though much of NJ is currently listed as low transmission, I have been hearing people still contracting Covid.

For those that might be interested, the recommendation is 2 months removed from your original doses or a booster, although some experts say that 4-6 months may be a more appropriate time frame.  I was 5 months and a week from my last booster so I was in the range.

[Jolly Blue Giant]

I got my second booster shot back in April and am planning on getting this new booster shot pretty soon. Have a lot on my plate right now so don't know exactly when I'll get to it, but I definitely will

Interesting, I went to a jam packed sold out concert last night at the Lakeside Amphitheater in Syracuse (Loverboy, REO Speedwagon, and Styx) and people were on top of people it was so crowded (estimated crowd, 60,000+) and I did not see one single person with a mask all night. It made me feel old though seeing some of my personal favorite rock stars from the 70's with silver hair, wrinkles, and just looking old...like me  ...except they had a ton of energy. They still got it though and brought the house down, just made me feel old. The crowd was almost entirely made up of "boomers" like me with only a sprinkling of GenX and GenZ in the crowd. I used to jam to all of them in my early years. Just made me realize that I'm becoming the dreaded "old man" 

I am not used to all the new ways of doing things at concerts. Absolutely no cash is excepted anywhere and you can no long use tickets or vouchers. You pay for virtual tickets on the internet, download an app with a bar code and a scrolling red line that rolls across it until it is scanned at the gate. Hate it. I was carrying a folding lawn chair and everyone has to go through security after being scanned in. I hid a bag of combos inside my folding chair. I didn't know you had to take the folding chair out of the bag while they checked the bag and then told to open the chair, turn it upside down and shake it. My bag of combos fell out on the bench. The woman looked at me in surprise and said, "really? you're trying to sneak in a bag of combos?"...then she laughed and said she wouldn't tell if I didn't tell. She was still shaking her had and laughing as I went to the next stop where you go through a metal detector. Next stop - I had to use one of the hundreds of portal-potties. Set my chair in a bag down before going in and when I came out, someone had stolen my combos   

So I bought a Mideastern Gyro and 3 falafels for 28 bucks and a 13 dollar can of Bud Lite to wash it down (41 bucks plus - because you have to use a card for everything - you cannot continue with the sale on the little computer screen until you choose how much of a tip you wish to include 7%, 12%, 20% etc. with 7% the least and no option for "no tip" and that goes for a single beer as well) So, grand total was about 55 bucks with tips and taxes    Highway robbery! 

But I got to spend the evening with one of my daughters, her husband, her son (my grandson), and my son and his wife so it was totally worth it as they had a ball and it was something to keep as a memory

The thing that stuck out to me though was the total abandonment of masks and how cash was utterly useless for anything. That and of course, a whole lot of weed being smoked openly and legally

[DaveBrown74]

I got my second booster shot back in April and am planning on getting this new booster shot pretty soon. Have a lot on my plate right now so don't know exactly when I'll get to it, but I definitely will

Interesting, I went to a jam packed sold out concert last night at the Lakeside Amphitheater in Syracuse (Loverboy, REO Speedwagon, and Styx) and people were on top of people it was so crowded (estimated crowd, 60,000+) and I did not see one single person with a mask all night. It made me feel old though seeing some of my personal favorite rock stars from the 70's with silver hair, wrinkles, and just looking old...like me  ...except they had a ton of energy. They still got it though and brought the house down, just made me feel old. The crowd was almost entirely made up of "boomers" like me with only a sprinkling of GenX and GenZ in the crowd. I used to jam to all of them in my early years. Just made me realize that I'm becoming the dreaded "old man" 

I am not used to all the new ways of doing things at concerts. Absolutely no cash is excepted anywhere and you can no long use tickets or vouchers. You pay for virtual tickets on the internet, download an app with a bar code and a scrolling red line that rolls across it until it is scanned at the gate. Hate it. I was carrying a folding lawn chair and everyone has to go through security after being scanned in. I hid a bag of combos inside my folding chair. I didn't know you had to take the folding chair out of the bag while they checked the bag and then told to open the chair, turn it upside down and shake it. My bag of combos fell out on the bench. The woman looked at me in surprise and said, "really? you're trying to sneak in a bag of combos?"...then she laughed and said she wouldn't tell if I didn't tell. She was still shaking her had and laughing as I went to the next stop where you go through a metal detector. Next stop - I had to use one of the hundreds of portal-potties. Set my chair in a bag down before going in and when I came out, someone had stolen my combos   

So I bought a Mideastern Gyro and 3 falafels for 28 bucks and a 13 dollar can of Bud Lite to wash it down (41 bucks plus - because you have to use a card for everything - you cannot continue with the sale on the little computer screen until you choose how much of a tip you wish to include 7%, 12%, 20% etc. with 7% the least and no option for "no tip" and that goes for a single beer as well) So, grand total was about 55 bucks with tips and taxes    Highway robbery! 

But I got to spend the evening with one of my daughters, her husband, her son (my grandson), and my son and his wife so it was totally worth it as they had a ball and it was something to keep as a memory

The thing that stuck out to me though was the total abandonment of masks and how cash was utterly useless for anything. That and of course, a whole lot of weed being smoked openly and legally

I live in NYC, which is both very liberal and is/has been pretty strict on covid relative to the rest of the country. I can confirm that almost nobody wears masks anymore. And that includes elderly people, even in indoor place like the supermarket.

I think the run we had with omicron early this year, which featured fairly extreme transmissibility even among the masked and fully-vaxed/boosted and also very mild illness (especially for the vaxed), people just feel they're obsolete. Rightly or wrongly that seems to be the attitude based on my observations. Ubers and cabs no longer care if you have them on or not, which wasn't the case 7-8 months ago. We were in Spain earlier this past summer, and it was the same there despite being much different in summer of 2021. People seem to have just moved on from constantly masking everywhere they go. I suspect if there is a more virulent strain at some point, people will pivot back, but hopefully that doesn't happen.

[Jolly Blue Giant]

I still see some people wearing masks in stores (very, very few) and of course, anything to do with a medical facility masks are still mandatory here. Here's a picture from the concert to give you an idea of the crowd without a single person wearing a mask - 17,500 people under the pavilion and about 45,000 outside the pavillion in extreme close proximity. They have a mini-hospital there with EMTs and I suspect if I had gone in there the workers would be wearing masks, but I don't know. Generally speaking, masks are history in my neck of the woods

[MightyGiants]

Ric,

One thing to always remember is that outside is like 13 times safer than inside

[Slugsy-Narrows]

I fly and travel a LOT for work. 

Masks in the airport and on planes are almost ZERO!

I just spent the week in Nashville TN for work and then my companies conference.

Almost no one at the conference wore a mask.

At night in and out of bars on Broadway if you saw a mask it caught your eye cause it's not the norm anymore.

It's good to see life getting back to normal and people stop being afraid to live.

Bars were shoulder to shoulder people singing and dancing.  Had so much fun down here this week! 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Ed Vette]

I fly and travel a LOT for work. 

Masks in the airport and on planes are almost ZERO!

I just spent the week in Nashville TN for work and then my companies conference.

Almost no one at the conference wore a mask.

At night in and out of bars on Broadway if you saw a mask it caught your eye cause it's not the norm anymore.

It's good to see life getting back to normal and people stop being afraid to live.

Bars were shoulder to shoulder people singing and dancing.  Had so much fun down here this week! 


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I've been living my life normal too. I get the vaccines and take my Vitamin D and C and I live my life. Already getting Covid and just dealing with a bad cold with a fever actually knocked any fear of a quick death right out of me. 

[MightyGiants]

The only fear that we witnessed was people who were afraid to get vaccinated.  The only concern people who are vaccinated might consider is long Covid.  Beyond that, Covid is not likely to kill a vaccinated person.   It's kind of funny; so many people were afraid of the vaccine and said it wasn't tested enough or we didn't know enough about it long term.  The reason that is funny is what we know even less about is Covid.  We don't know the long-term impacts of getting infected by the wide variety of variants (although the stuff I have heard from people suffering from long Covid is significant).  I can say I am pretty familiar with a wide variety of diseases, and Covid doesn't act like any of the ones we generally deal with.  Not many diseases where one person infected suffers no symptoms, but the next person infected literally dies.  So who knows what else this crazy disease is capable of?

I shared my experience with you guys because I know the new vaccine wasn't tested on people prior to its release.  I thought. It might help those who may be deciding to get the new booster.   .

[LennG]

 Just go back from our trip and cruise late yesterday but wanted to post on this topic.

Has the new booster been approved? We had the original Moderna shots and booster so have they had approval for the new booster? Which one has been approved and would it matter if you started with say Moderna?

We are on a cruise ship of maybe 3000 people and basically, no one wore masks except some, like us, and the entire crew had to mask up. When we were indoors, we still masked up, sometimes being the only ones in crowds of well over 200 people. Outdoors we always removed them. We later learned that the Captain of the ship was retiring after this cruise and he had brought his entire family with him, They all came down with Covid. After that got around, we started to see more and more people wearing masks inside. Can't say what percentage of the passengers had Covid. If they did they were 'suppose' to stay in their cabins for 5 days, but I would bet many still did whatever they normally do on the ship, not caring if they were infected, as long as they weren't very sick. We stuck to wearing maks regardless and hope it helped.
Hopefully, we will be fine and up until now, we are.

[MightyGiants]

Just go back from our trip and cruise late yesterday but wanted to post on this topic.

Has the new booster been approved? We had the original Moderna shots and booster so have they had approval for the new booster? Which one has been approved and would it matter if you started with say Moderna?

We are on a cruise ship of maybe 3000 people and basically, no one wore masks except some, like us, and the entire crew had to mask up. When we were indoors, we still masked up, sometimes being the only ones in crowds of well over 200 people. Outdoors we always removed them. We later learned that the Captain of the ship was retiring after this cruise and he had brought his entire family with him, They all came down with Covid. After that got around, we started to see more and more people wearing masks inside. Can't say what percentage of the passengers had Covid. If they did they were 'suppose' to stay in their cabins for 5 days, but I would bet many still did whatever they normally do on the ship, not caring if they were infected, as long as they weren't very sick. We stuck to wearing maks regardless and hope it helped.
Hopefully, we will be fine and up until now, we are.

Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine are being administered under the same emergency authorization that the original vaccine started under.

[LennG]

We are looking to get this shot next week. But the only ones in our area are the Pfizer shots. We have had only Moderna shots so far and Moderna boosters, so would it make any difference if we now got the Pfizer shot instead? from what I have read the Moderan is in short supply right now and we really did not want to mix and match. Would this be any sort of problem?

[MightyGiants]

We are looking to get this shot next week. But the only ones in our area are the Pfizer shots. We have had only Moderna shots so far and Moderna boosters, so would it make any difference if we now got the Pfizer shot instead? from what I have read the Moderan is in short supply right now and we really did not want to mix and match. Would this be any sort of problem?

Len,

The official answer is it's okay to mix.  I have heard nothing that would make me think that is untrue

[LennG]

THanks

[Ed Vette]

I got my second booster in July so I guess I have to wait a couple more months to get the third vaccine booster.

[LennG]

We got our new booster today, Moderna. As of now, just have some sore arms.

My wife was speaking to her cousin who sort of insisted that these shots need to go into your right arm and not the left. (we did left arms).

Any theory to this?