I have no idea which vaccine I actually got, but it came as two shots that had to be taken a couple of weeks apart. I got the first shot and was absolutely fine, and then I actually did get covid. I actually went and had a blood test which confirmed it, although apparently I looked like death itself so it wasn't really necessary.
I cannot believe how unimaginably ill I was. I could barely climb the stairs, I had absolutely no idea what was going on half the time because my brain was just gunk, and I had constant coughing fits that felt like my respiratory system was attempting to turn itself inside out.
I eventually got better on my own and later on had the second shot.
I've had covid again since then and was barely any better than the first time.
So now I'm on a list of extremely vulnerable people alongside my 70 year old parents, immunocompromised individuals and infants. Apparently my immune system is rubbish.
So I have absolutely no time for people that refuse to take shots.
I got vaccinated as soon as I could and wore good masks when I went out. My adult son brought it home, so I caught it anyway. I didn't wear the mask at home. It was like the flu for me, which I had several years before.
I'm mad at our government, the billionaires, and the media for polarizing this for political gain. I'm less mad at the people who fell for it because stupid gonna stupid. I was surprised, however, at how many fell for it. That was the beginning of my awakening to just how many stupid people there are.
Got three shots of vac. Two were part of two does one vaccine thingie, third one was standalone (another vaccine).
The first two kicked my ass. I got fever, exhaustion, weakness and joint pains lol. Both times. On one hand, yay, free day from work. On the other tho it wasn't fun. Turns out sick days ain't fun if you're actually sick for most of them.
Third one was fine. It was also I believe a year later, so maybe my immune system finally kicked in. If I had covid at some point, I didn't know it.
The first few Covid vaccines made my eyes bleed, like get blood in the white part of my eyes, and messed up my cycle for months. My eyes don’t bleed anymore but it still tends to mess up my cycle. I still get Covid boosters since I’m immune compromised
The feeling sick part is your immune system. :) Most of the feelings we associate with getting sick are the immune response rather than the actual sickness.
The tired feelings are your body telling you to stop moving because it's busy, and also burning energy doing stuff. Joint pain is mostly various tissues getting puffy to make it easier for immune cells to move around. (For sickness. Crunchy ankle is different)
The first two were staggered to maximize the immune response if I recall right, and they also had a bit more kick to them that we tapered down as we learned more about how it all worked.
By the time the next round came about everyone had internalized the vaccine, been exposed and just kicked the living shit out of the virus a few times, and the virus mutated to be a bit weaker.
I feel like I have a little extra right to be pissed off about this. I volunteered to be part of the first round of trials for the vaccine because I needed to feel like I was doing something to help. I literally risked my life to help develop this safe vaccine and now so many people are throwing that away.
Thanks for your service!
Hope it went fine for you. First round of human trials can often be...rough.
I was not offered to participate in trials, but was among the first to vaccinate in the general population. Took my first shot at like the second day the vaccine got available. Thought of it then as a massive victory for humanity. Apparently, stupidity can absolutely overpower the most brilliant of minds.
Loud idiots, the lot of them. They're even profiting off you and everyone who got vaccinated and they'll never believe it. But such is survivorship bias. One of the reasons we can't have nice things.
I took the vaccine 2 times as soon as it was available and then on the third round I had a severe adverse reaction and was in the hospital for a few days with myocarditis.
I had family members face time me and say “ I told you it was dangerous, now look where you are “
I still encourage people to take the vaccine. I believe my reaction was because I got the flu shot and covid vaccine in the same day.
I still have not had Covid. A few doctors have told me that if I were to get it I’d probably die because of how severe my reaction was to the vaccine. Each time I had it, I had severe pain in my left arm and weird sensations. Then the third time it got me.
Both my second and third shot had me sick as fuck for 6 hours, then suddenly just vanished. I later got covid and could barely move for a week. I'm really not sure I would've survived covid if I hadn't had the shots.
I work for this lady sometimes who has long covid. She has trouble getting upstairs without taking a break. She refused to take the vaccine, still does, and still calls it a hoax. Not taking the vaccine is the biggest win in her life. At least that's what it feels like when she talks to me. And that is still pretty much the only thing she talks to me about.
I wasn't part of the trials, but I was probably one of the first hundred or so people in my county vaccinated. I work in our 911 dispatch center and they were able to secure the vaccine for us and other essential first responder type roles, and I remember a lot of my doctor friends were still trying to figure out where they could get the vaccine at the time.
I worked nights at the time, went to the vaccine clinic after my shift. I remember they made us sit around for like 20 minutes to make sure we didn't have any kind of immediate adverse reaction, no one did and I went home and went to bed. I woke up feeling fine, then a couple hours later I had some fatigue and chills and I ended up crashing early. Woke up feeling fine, and the only side effect from subsequent doses was that my arm was sore for a few days.
I figure if I worked a normal day shift schedule, and still got the vaccine in the morning the side effects probably would have hit me about when I was going to sleep anyway and I would have slept through them.
No, and I got COVID multiple times via family, including losing small for a time. I suspect the lack of vaccine side effects was itself a clue that it didn't activate anything in my particular immune system. I was doing everything I was supposed to do. Vaccine, boosters, N95 masks, social distancing, not eating out, no haircuts, only really shopping at the grocery store, etc. All that obviously worked for others, and I'm glad, but didn't work for me.
When it happened, my mum kept telling me about how she had heard of all these cases of people dying after taking the vaccine as a way to scare me from taking it. I had to keep telling her that there would be 100 times more people that could potentially die from my choice to not take it, especially if I was an asymptomatic carrier.
She wasn't wrong; people were dying after taking the vaccine. But that's not because the vaccine killed them, it just wasn't able to help them. Also at the time it was infuriating. Most people seemed to have about a week's attention span where they followed guidelines, but after two weeks they no longer cared and COVID was "over". They didn't want to hear that this could take years, because they wanted to party and their motivated reasoning kicked in. Lost a lot of faith in humanity.
Since nobody asked: I got the shot and then contracted Covid while vacationing in the middle of nowhere. It was still really really bad, sickest I've ever been from a virus. If I wasn't vaccinated, then I'd be dead now.
I got it November 2019 (I'm pretty certain) as a healthy early-20s in prime fitness and I nearly died alone in my apartment. I have never been that sick before.
Yeah, I got it in February 2020, and I thought I was gonna die. Me and my roommate, for 12 days in my apartment in Brooklyn. Even my cat got sick. It was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve had meningitis.
I definitely got vaccinated for several years after that. I got it five more times, but it was never worse than a mild cold.
You must have got the first version then, the biggest trap was the cytokine storm of a healthy immune system in heavily exposed younger people overreacting.
We forget how dangerous the initial, alpha and especially Delta variants were before omicron out competed them all.
There was a lot of people who weren't aware of how horrible that first one was. We were among the 2019 wave before they even called it Covid, it was easily the worst sickness to land on us. No surprise people suffered long-covid or died after that.
I also got the shot and still got it. Thankfully I was home and had family to help. I was out of it for about 4 days. The only times I was awake was when I was coughing so hard I would pass out again. It was the sickest I'd ever been and while I probably wouldn't have died from it, I'm incredibly grateful I didn't have it worse.
There's some real batshot politics going on in Europe right now, but every time I feel I'm going under, I look across the Atlantic and I see an army laid low with 'flu, a diarrhoea outbreak and a measles outbreak in 2026, and I think, y'know, maybe it isn't so bad here.
I'm sorry you all have to endure this. It must make you feel like you are going insane. To deal with such blatant and brutal gaslighting anti-intellectualism.
I think the absolute worst part is that I am the one being treated like I'm stupid for being college educated or for just having common sense.
Its like trying to talk and every time you do 20 toddlers scream and shit thier pants at the same time.
There's a minority in the US that is both loud and smells. Unfortunately, they drown the rest of us out, and make a bad taste in everyone else's mouth that I can't blame them for.
The Anti-intellectualism has been a thing for years though, it's suddenly exploded because it hit critical mass and they finally got one of thier guys elected while the rest of us were looking the other way (or in my case, too young to vote.)
Now? Being stupid is being smart. Being contrarian is being patriotic, money is God. Up is down, the sky is green.
I heard a teacher say Moscow was in Ukraine yesterday. No amount of pointing to it on a fucking map could convince her otherwise.
I wouldn't worry about the future too much, if you know what I mean.
Boomers are still largely sticking their heads in the ground, and they're in the best position currently to do anything about it. Even my own mother, a lifelong democrat and trump hater, an educated woman (a librarian to boot) still thinks that climate change won't really have much effect until I'm her age (about 30 years).
Humanity is still a good many years out from being ready to accept the responsibility of what we've done, and there are probably a lot less than a good many years until it starts having a profound effect on everyone's day to day life.
Currently dying of heat in Zagreb. It used to be way less extreme and colder, and I am not even that old. In the last 6 years it has gotten exponentially worse year on year.
You have no idea. It’s unbelievably disappointing and frustrating. But it has reinforced (re-introduced?) that all politics is local and community resiliency and care is really super important. Even if all you can do it bake sourdough or mow lawns, or help with WiFi troubleshooting…do it. That’s how we survive this. There are infinite possible futures, we just have to imagine and live the one we want.
I like to repost my mother-in-law's posts about how she 100% guaranteed Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine. (From 3 months before the start of the Ukraine war.)
Ouch, I said that too. I honestly thought Putin wouldn't be that stupid, because the guerilla war that followed the occupation would be insanely costly.
Is your aunt dead or does she get to live with the shame and ridicule? If she is dead, then this a definitely a way harder flex than if she isn't.
I deleted my Facebook because I would be going scorched Earth on everyone, mostly family, in my friends list. I don't associate with most of them IRL, but at least I haven't put in writing my true feeling about them and people that think like them. My thoughts are abundantly clear on Lemmy behind the veil of anonymity.
RFK blames Faucci for the measles outbreak and is calling people bad parents for not vaccinating their kids against measles.
When called out about his anti-vaccine rhetoric he's been spouting the last few years, he's crashing out and being defensive about how people are twisting his words / that's not what he said / etc.
how people are twisting his words / that’s not what he said / etc.
Someone should send him footage of exactly what he said, or links to X posts or w/e form he said it in.
Wakefield, father of the anti-vax movement, actually did have his words twisted though - it was never "vaccines are bad", it was specifically the combined MMR being administered to young children that he opposed (claiming they should instead be spread out), in no small part because he owned separate vaccines for each.
Measles was one item. The other was the highly politicized and performative congressional hearing over Fauci's diary where they are foaming at the mouth about all his "lies". One such "lie" was his questioning the usefulness of masks in like Dec 2019. They address that as if that was his unwavering position to this day.
One such "lie" was his questioning the usefulness of masks in like Dec 2019.
It was more like Feb or March 2020 and was deliberate in order to try to stop the panicked public hoarding masks so that medical workers could have them.
There was also the factor of if the general public would even be able to use them in a functional manner. Which I can say from some of the stupid ways I saw people wearing them, is not an unfounded worry.
Which would be an absolute waste in the early days while mask production was still ramping up and the vast, vast majority of people still had zero exposure since it was still in the early days of spreading.
And that is exactly the level of nuance they are incapable of addressing. They just cry about his "lies" and when pressed for details it's the pathetic "do your own research" or "watch the videos". Hell you could even point out explicitly that his mask comment was so early and given the context it's completely understandable. They might avoid that one tiny specific topic for a bit, but they'll eventually come back to some grand "fauci lied about everything". And they can't comprehend the actual issues that matter.
They remembered that Faucci exists and that the country was overtaken by the tyranny of us wearing 4 inch pieces of paper on our faces so we don't kill sick people.
One of my favorite parts of the covid vaccine thing, other than not getting covid, was how the goalposts kept being dragged a month or two back when the shots didn't kill me. My favorite interaction was someone telling me the jab would kill me in 30 years. I was 40 at the time. Im sure something will get me in 30 years, lol.
You know, if someone told me ten years ago that the phrase "I'm vaccinated" would turn me on as much as "Want me to suck your dick?" I would have called them insane.
"I've been vaccinated so many times I've lost count. Yeah, I'm such a dirty slut for the vax. Pfizer, Moderna, they've all been inside me. Sometimes I don't even know their names - if it's mRNA I let them put it in."
And, as always, everyone's forgotten that poor NovaVax exists.
Being serious for a moment: NovaVax is made in the "traditional" away vaccines have been made, which is good if you know someone who's anti mRNA vaccines. It has less and less severe side effects than Pfizer or Moderna. It's not quite as effective as the mRNA vaccines - but it tends to last a bit longer as well. It provides a different 'template' for recognizing covid, so it broadens your protection in that way.
One drawback is that if you want NovaVax in the spring, you need to get it early, as the batches tend to expire around April. (I time my shots for mid-May [max summer protection] and mid-to-late October [max winter protection].) I think I've had 3 Modernas, 4 Pfizers, and 4 NovaVaxs to date ...
And Pfizer is just the large scale producer, not the developer. That would be BioNTech, who licensed Pfizer to produce their vaccine. A classic tale of US-American hijacking of the laurels.
Lol, this guy thinks that they looked at our vaccine records 😂 🤣 big dawg they gave us all the same vaccines. You don't remember that every dude had to go through every station? It wasn't like "OK you go through stations 1, 4, and 5 for mumps, flu, and xyz because you've already had xyz vaccines." It was every dude getting every shot.
They did, or at least they did for us in the Canadian Forces. The medical staff were a bit surprised as I had some Asian exclusive stuff due to some of my travel when I was younger. We didn't go to individual stations, instead we all got sat in the chair one at a time and they essentially conveyor belted those needles into us.
That brings back memories of a reddit comment I'm going to paraphrase poorly: the US handling of COVID was so shitty that you couldn't get approval for it as a medical trial on ethics grounds.
The most tested and trusted vaccine in history, pushed into service after years of development leveraging SARS-1 and MERS, demonstrated efficacy, and we're just not going to fucking use it?
Then, despite knowing everything we know about vaccines and germ theory and how disease spreads, we're just going to make the flu vaccine optional, but only for one branch of the military? And people INSTANTLY started getting the flu with at least one death from it. At least we have a brand spanking new datapoint about what happens if vaccines got Thanos-snapped.
I am more than half convinced that there's a group of people at a high level in the US that are treating this whole thing like that story from the bible about the soldiers drinking water and going into war with a smaller army is proof that god helps them. That would go a long way towards explaining the advanced munitions usage as well.
About what? The dangers of using a stupid profile pic template on social media half a decade ago? It's sad how desperate these anti-vaxxers are for a win.
It took me a minute to figure out what you meant there. Becaus3 I didn't immediately fathom a world where a maga would think we would be anti Vax the moment someone anti Vax turns pro Vax.
Because that is absolutely moronic. Doesn't make a lick of sense. Wtf are these people on? How do I avoid taking it, ever?
The dems really should try reverse psychology on these idiots. It would actually work.
Republicans would happily vote for universal healthcare, abolishing ICE, and universal basic income if prominent Dems just publicly denounced those things.
That's what I don't get though, a good thing is a good thing. It's like when they pretended the ACA was something else instead of "obamacare" so they'd like it... We weren't all "Ohhhhh you stuuuuuuupid Republicans, you love the ACA but it's actually (drumroll) Obamacare in disguise!!" we were just happy more people had access to Healthcare that wasn't going to bankrupt them.
On Facebook you can put a frame around your profile pic to spread one of the approved messages. Now it's no longer relevant, the only new people getting the shot will be children.
The same guy that came out with the smash hit song "Earth is Flat NASA Lies". I'm not going to link his shitty YT account, but that's the kind of dunce that says this kind of shit. The internet has all the information humans will ever have, and somehow people are dumber because of it.
Flat earthers all need to try this one weird trick. Around the 5th or 6th floor of beachfront hotels you can start seeing the curvature of the Earth versus straight lines. An example would be a railing on about balcony, line the ocean up in the center and sure enough two edges will be dipped down below that. My problem is so many of them like this gentleman have something to sell, it's all a grift
They'll just come up with some nonsensical excuse. Look at the ones that setup experiments in 'Behind the Curve'. They setup I think 2 different experiments that show results you would expect from a spherical earth and they hand wave it away. You can't logic someone out of a belief they didn't logic their way into.
I went to school with this clown. He was always a peice of shit troublemaker that couldn't pass a single class if his life depended on it. He tried to fight teachers. Not surprised at all this is how he ended up.
I love how it's always 'nasa lies' with these people, ignoring ancient greece entirely. Also weirdly hand waving the planets we can see with a few pieces of glass...
I lost a friend trough covid, before there was a vaccine
One day some day I met some ex colleague, and out of the nowhere he told me how proud he was that he didnt got vaccinated. We didnt even talked remotely about covid.
I just looked I'm into the eyes and told him I wish that he would have died instead of my friend.
So yeah. I will never stop laughing about "proud anti vaxxers" who died, because those people are scumbags who think they are an solution nobody asked about.
Honestly I don't care about such people. There is plenty of science to prove the benefits of vacins. Just try to find someone with Polio. They know they don't just endanger themselves, they know they endanger other people as well. They put elder people and babies at risk. And why? Because they want to be edgy or one up to people who actually put in the effort to get an education?
Probably unpopular opinion, but both sides are wrong here. Not necessarily to the same degree. As usual with any issue that is presented as binary, black vs white, with nothing in between.
Of course, vaccines in general are incredibly helpful. A lot of us wouldn't be here today if we weren't vaccinated for various diseases as children.
However, that alone should not be the sole focus of the discussion. It ignores a lot of crucial context.
Vaccines are safe and effective because they go through extensive testing that usually takes years. During the pandemic, at least one major company - namely Pfizer - skipped most of that process, and then lied about results. Not to save lives, but to make money. To be the first to get that government contract.
Regardless of the entire pro- vs anti-vax discourse, this is something Pfizer should be held accountable for. People died needlessly because the CEO wanted another yacht. And because some governments let him.
The problem on the pro-vax side is that people are largely ignoring that, and so are essentially advocating for corporate interests. The anti-vax's side's problem is more obvious, so no need to repeat it.
Both sides are blindly arguing about one thing while ignoring everything else. As is usual with public discourse in 2026. That's what the elites want. People arguing whether vaccines work or not, instead of holding companies like Pfizer accountable for profiting off a pandemic, and putting those profits before people's lives.
This wasn’t “vaccines work” this was vaccine misinformation prettied up with “vaccines work”.
The idea that a vaccine can be hand waved through the checks and such out in place to ensure safety standards are met, by simply lying about the numbers, is pure fiction and meant to spread the idea that vaccines are a Wild West.
You can disagree with what I said, but I quite literally took an entire paragraph to make sure it's clear that I'm not denying vaccines work, or that they work quite well.
The part they skipped was the whole waiting ages before even getting a response from regulating bodies thing. They got fast tracked on all the paperwork so they could get to trials quicker. There was tons of money and political will behind getting the vaccines tested ASAP.
The thing that it was never tested for (at least when released) was transmission prevention. Nobody ever claimed it was tested for transmission prevention. It was tasted for safety and efficacy in preventing severe COVID in the person receiving the vaccine. Later studies confirmed that for most variants, it also reduced transmission rates, but for Omicron in particular it only reduced them for a short period after the shot. That testing is what people were yelling about 4 years ago. And nobody lied about it, despite the claims that are circulating.
I actually never heard about this one, so can't really comment.
I was mostly referring to the following two things:
Number of 'adverse reactions' that wasn't disclosed until long after vaccinations
Pfizer and FDA agreeing to publicize the clinical trial data very slowly over decades, until about year 2100
Now, taking a closer look at both, it seems I may have read misinformation and gravely misunderstood the situation. For some reason, even people with PhDs in medicine are spreading what now looks to me like false claims online, which is troubling.
First one - 'adverse reactions' seems to be a pointless statistic, since it's all kinds of adverse reactions, regardless of nature or link to the vaccine. So now I'm not sure why it's even included in the documents. In any case, I can't find any source for links between Pfizer's vaccines and these reactions, so I'll have to assume they never occurred or were negligible.
Second - I'm a little confused here. Many sources claim Pfizer's clinical trial data was going to be published so slowly (taking several decades in total) due to FDA's FOIA office only having 10 staff members.
Now that sounds odd. Shouldn't all these documents be published ASAP? Surely it's not standard procedure to publish half of the data long after everyone affected is dead? And in the end, they did publish it all almost immediately after a court order, so it looks like it was entirely possible.
All in all, there are some circumstances that look suspicious, which is just enough to form believable-sounding, but probably false theories. Especially by medical doctors, who are supposed to be the source of truthfull information.
While I can't say I'm 100% convinced Pfizer did nothing wrong - I also can't say there's nearly enough evidence to claim it did. Admittedly, I should have read more on the subject before posting. I'll definitely have to review my usual sources for presence of misinformation. I'll also happily read more if anyone has anything good to share.
No, they fucking didn't. The skipped parts of the vaccine development process with Operation Warp Speed was just bureucratic hurdle. Clinical trials were NOT skipped.
I don't believe there were any deaths from the Pfizer vaccine in the United States. The only deaths I know of are from the Janssen vaccine, which was pulled off from the market rather quickly.
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I have no idea which vaccine I actually got, but it came as two shots that had to be taken a couple of weeks apart. I got the first shot and was absolutely fine, and then I actually did get covid. I actually went and had a blood test which confirmed it, although apparently I looked like death itself so it wasn't really necessary.
I cannot believe how unimaginably ill I was. I could barely climb the stairs, I had absolutely no idea what was going on half the time because my brain was just gunk, and I had constant coughing fits that felt like my respiratory system was attempting to turn itself inside out.
I eventually got better on my own and later on had the second shot.
I've had covid again since then and was barely any better than the first time.
So now I'm on a list of extremely vulnerable people alongside my 70 year old parents, immunocompromised individuals and infants. Apparently my immune system is rubbish.
So I have absolutely no time for people that refuse to take shots.
I got vaccinated as soon as I could and wore good masks when I went out. My adult son brought it home, so I caught it anyway. I didn't wear the mask at home. It was like the flu for me, which I had several years before.
I'm mad at our government, the billionaires, and the media for polarizing this for political gain. I'm less mad at the people who fell for it because stupid gonna stupid. I was surprised, however, at how many fell for it. That was the beginning of my awakening to just how many stupid people there are.
Got three shots of vac. Two were part of two does one vaccine thingie, third one was standalone (another vaccine).
The first two kicked my ass. I got fever, exhaustion, weakness and joint pains lol. Both times. On one hand, yay, free day from work. On the other tho it wasn't fun. Turns out sick days ain't fun if you're actually sick for most of them.
Third one was fine. It was also I believe a year later, so maybe my immune system finally kicked in. If I had covid at some point, I didn't know it.
The first few Covid vaccines made my eyes bleed, like get blood in the white part of my eyes, and messed up my cycle for months. My eyes don’t bleed anymore but it still tends to mess up my cycle. I still get Covid boosters since I’m immune compromised
The feeling sick part is your immune system. :) Most of the feelings we associate with getting sick are the immune response rather than the actual sickness.
The tired feelings are your body telling you to stop moving because it's busy, and also burning energy doing stuff. Joint pain is mostly various tissues getting puffy to make it easier for immune cells to move around. (For sickness. Crunchy ankle is different)
The first two were staggered to maximize the immune response if I recall right, and they also had a bit more kick to them that we tapered down as we learned more about how it all worked.
By the time the next round came about everyone had internalized the vaccine, been exposed and just kicked the living shit out of the virus a few times, and the virus mutated to be a bit weaker.
I feel like I have a little extra right to be pissed off about this. I volunteered to be part of the first round of trials for the vaccine because I needed to feel like I was doing something to help. I literally risked my life to help develop this safe vaccine and now so many people are throwing that away.
Thanks for your service! Hope it went fine for you. First round of human trials can often be...rough.
I was not offered to participate in trials, but was among the first to vaccinate in the general population. Took my first shot at like the second day the vaccine got available. Thought of it then as a massive victory for humanity. Apparently, stupidity can absolutely overpower the most brilliant of minds.
happens every time theres a global pandemic. exact same stupid shit happened with the spanish flu epidemic 100 years ago.
Loud idiotic minority, don't forget that
Loud idiots, the lot of them. They're even profiting off you and everyone who got vaccinated and they'll never believe it. But such is survivorship bias. One of the reasons we can't have nice things.
Thank you for what you did. It was brave.
I took the vaccine 2 times as soon as it was available and then on the third round I had a severe adverse reaction and was in the hospital for a few days with myocarditis.
I had family members face time me and say “ I told you it was dangerous, now look where you are “
I still encourage people to take the vaccine. I believe my reaction was because I got the flu shot and covid vaccine in the same day.
I still have not had Covid. A few doctors have told me that if I were to get it I’d probably die because of how severe my reaction was to the vaccine. Each time I had it, I had severe pain in my left arm and weird sensations. Then the third time it got me.
Both my second and third shot had me sick as fuck for 6 hours, then suddenly just vanished. I later got covid and could barely move for a week. I'm really not sure I would've survived covid if I hadn't had the shots.
I work for this lady sometimes who has long covid. She has trouble getting upstairs without taking a break. She refused to take the vaccine, still does, and still calls it a hoax. Not taking the vaccine is the biggest win in her life. At least that's what it feels like when she talks to me. And that is still pretty much the only thing she talks to me about.
You're right in your feelings
I'd be enraged
I wasn't part of the trials, but I was probably one of the first hundred or so people in my county vaccinated. I work in our 911 dispatch center and they were able to secure the vaccine for us and other essential first responder type roles, and I remember a lot of my doctor friends were still trying to figure out where they could get the vaccine at the time.
I worked nights at the time, went to the vaccine clinic after my shift. I remember they made us sit around for like 20 minutes to make sure we didn't have any kind of immediate adverse reaction, no one did and I went home and went to bed. I woke up feeling fine, then a couple hours later I had some fatigue and chills and I ended up crashing early. Woke up feeling fine, and the only side effect from subsequent doses was that my arm was sore for a few days.
I figure if I worked a normal day shift schedule, and still got the vaccine in the morning the side effects probably would have hit me about when I was going to sleep anyway and I would have slept through them.
Thank you for taking that risk so the rest of us could have something to safeguard against covid
And just so we are all clear: were there any noticeable side effects?
No, and I got COVID multiple times via family, including losing small for a time. I suspect the lack of vaccine side effects was itself a clue that it didn't activate anything in my particular immune system. I was doing everything I was supposed to do. Vaccine, boosters, N95 masks, social distancing, not eating out, no haircuts, only really shopping at the grocery store, etc. All that obviously worked for others, and I'm glad, but didn't work for me.
When it happened, my mum kept telling me about how she had heard of all these cases of people dying after taking the vaccine as a way to scare me from taking it. I had to keep telling her that there would be 100 times more people that could potentially die from my choice to not take it, especially if I was an asymptomatic carrier.
She wasn't wrong; people were dying after taking the vaccine. But that's not because the vaccine killed them, it just wasn't able to help them. Also at the time it was infuriating. Most people seemed to have about a week's attention span where they followed guidelines, but after two weeks they no longer cared and COVID was "over". They didn't want to hear that this could take years, because they wanted to party and their motivated reasoning kicked in. Lost a lot of faith in humanity.
I felt really tired the next day. That was it.
Since nobody asked: I got the shot and then contracted Covid while vacationing in the middle of nowhere. It was still really really bad, sickest I've ever been from a virus. If I wasn't vaccinated, then I'd be dead now.
I got it November 2019 (I'm pretty certain) as a healthy early-20s in prime fitness and I nearly died alone in my apartment. I have never been that sick before.
Yeah, I got it in February 2020, and I thought I was gonna die. Me and my roommate, for 12 days in my apartment in Brooklyn. Even my cat got sick. It was the sickest I’ve ever been in my life, and I’ve had meningitis.
I definitely got vaccinated for several years after that. I got it five more times, but it was never worse than a mild cold.
You must have got the first version then, the biggest trap was the cytokine storm of a healthy immune system in heavily exposed younger people overreacting.
We forget how dangerous the initial, alpha and especially Delta variants were before omicron out competed them all.
There was a lot of people who weren't aware of how horrible that first one was. We were among the 2019 wave before they even called it Covid, it was easily the worst sickness to land on us. No surprise people suffered long-covid or died after that.
I also got the shot and still got it. Thankfully I was home and had family to help. I was out of it for about 4 days. The only times I was awake was when I was coughing so hard I would pass out again. It was the sickest I'd ever been and while I probably wouldn't have died from it, I'm incredibly grateful I didn't have it worse.
There's some real batshot politics going on in Europe right now, but every time I feel I'm going under, I look across the Atlantic and I see an army laid low with 'flu, a diarrhoea outbreak and a measles outbreak in 2026, and I think, y'know, maybe it isn't so bad here.
I'm sorry you all have to endure this. It must make you feel like you are going insane. To deal with such blatant and brutal gaslighting anti-intellectualism.
I am going insane.
I think the absolute worst part is that I am the one being treated like I'm stupid for being college educated or for just having common sense.
Its like trying to talk and every time you do 20 toddlers scream and shit thier pants at the same time.
There's a minority in the US that is both loud and smells. Unfortunately, they drown the rest of us out, and make a bad taste in everyone else's mouth that I can't blame them for.
The Anti-intellectualism has been a thing for years though, it's suddenly exploded because it hit critical mass and they finally got one of thier guys elected while the rest of us were looking the other way (or in my case, too young to vote.)
Now? Being stupid is being smart. Being contrarian is being patriotic, money is God. Up is down, the sky is green.
I heard a teacher say Moscow was in Ukraine yesterday. No amount of pointing to it on a fucking map could convince her otherwise.
I am. Going. Insane.
I wouldn't worry about the future too much, if you know what I mean.
Boomers are still largely sticking their heads in the ground, and they're in the best position currently to do anything about it. Even my own mother, a lifelong democrat and trump hater, an educated woman (a librarian to boot) still thinks that climate change won't really have much effect until I'm her age (about 30 years).
Humanity is still a good many years out from being ready to accept the responsibility of what we've done, and there are probably a lot less than a good many years until it starts having a profound effect on everyone's day to day life.
it's already having a significant effect today, at least here in Croatia (Europe) with each summer having worse heatwaves than the last.
Currently dying of heat in Zagreb. It used to be way less extreme and colder, and I am not even that old. In the last 6 years it has gotten exponentially worse year on year.
You forgot the screw worm infestation and the bacon recall ...
Why do you need to recall bacon? Were the pigs fed diarrhoea salad too?
Help
You have no idea. It’s unbelievably disappointing and frustrating. But it has reinforced (re-introduced?) that all politics is local and community resiliency and care is really super important. Even if all you can do it bake sourdough or mow lawns, or help with WiFi troubleshooting…do it. That’s how we survive this. There are infinite possible futures, we just have to imagine and live the one we want.
I wish I could go back to Europe
Every year I post a screenshot of my aunt's rant about everyone dying from the covid vaccine in 3 years.
Every year people tell me that's not polite, and every year I reply that admitting you were wrong is free.
I like to repost my mother-in-law's posts about how she 100% guaranteed Russia wouldn't invade Ukraine. (From 3 months before the start of the Ukraine war.)
Ouch, I said that too. I honestly thought Putin wouldn't be that stupid, because the guerilla war that followed the occupation would be insanely costly.
But I'll admit I was wrong.
To be fair, the guerrilla war that followed the occupation is, indeed, very costly
Yea, we thought it wouldn't happen because of all the bad things that would happen to Russia as a result.
And all those bad things happened, and more.
But we forgot that when it's about a dictator's grip on power being on the line, none of that matters. It's all about the dictator's grip on power.
And Putin is indeed an idiot who’s allowed his ego to blind him
being wrong in ways that kill people, naturally, is polite
Is your aunt dead or does she get to live with the shame and ridicule? If she is dead, then this a definitely a way harder flex than if she isn't.
I deleted my Facebook because I would be going scorched Earth on everyone, mostly family, in my friends list. I don't associate with most of them IRL, but at least I haven't put in writing my true feeling about them and people that think like them. My thoughts are abundantly clear on Lemmy behind the veil of anonymity.
Oh no, she's alive. She occasionally posts weird US political shit while living in the UK..
Plus "bassturd" is awesome
I wonder what it's like compared to a treble turd
A couple octives lower, less strings, but still poop.
Mmm, I need those strings though. It's like flossing for the other end.
Mine are thicker with deeper ridges for max floss.
What’s the latest antivax gotcha going round? I’m blissfully out of the loop.
RFK jr recently backtrack on his anti-vax stance, when loads of people are getting MEASLES, likely anti-vax republicans.
when hes been responsible for samoan deaths, 86 children died.
RFK blames Faucci for the measles outbreak and is calling people bad parents for not vaccinating their kids against measles.
When called out about his anti-vaccine rhetoric he's been spouting the last few years, he's crashing out and being defensive about how people are twisting his words / that's not what he said / etc.
Someone should send him footage of exactly what he said, or links to X posts or w/e form he said it in.
Wakefield, father of the anti-vax movement, actually did have his words twisted though - it was never "vaccines are bad", it was specifically the combined MMR being administered to young children that he opposed (claiming they should instead be spread out), in no small part because he owned separate vaccines for each.
It doesn’t matter to a narcissist, having proof is irrelevant to them, they are literally delusional
RFK is a fucking moron and continues to flip flop.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/02/rfk-jr-measles-vaccination
Measles was one item. The other was the highly politicized and performative congressional hearing over Fauci's diary where they are foaming at the mouth about all his "lies". One such "lie" was his questioning the usefulness of masks in like Dec 2019. They address that as if that was his unwavering position to this day.
it was a distraction hearing, in light of some epstein files coming out
It was more like Feb or March 2020 and was deliberate in order to try to stop the panicked public hoarding masks so that medical workers could have them.
There was also the factor of if the general public would even be able to use them in a functional manner. Which I can say from some of the stupid ways I saw people wearing them, is not an unfounded worry.
Which would be an absolute waste in the early days while mask production was still ramping up and the vast, vast majority of people still had zero exposure since it was still in the early days of spreading.
Conservative MP Craig Kelly
And that is exactly the level of nuance they are incapable of addressing. They just cry about his "lies" and when pressed for details it's the pathetic "do your own research" or "watch the videos". Hell you could even point out explicitly that his mask comment was so early and given the context it's completely understandable. They might avoid that one tiny specific topic for a bit, but they'll eventually come back to some grand "fauci lied about everything". And they can't comprehend the actual issues that matter.
They remembered that Faucci exists and that the country was overtaken by the tyranny of us wearing 4 inch pieces of paper on our faces so we don't kill sick people.
Lol we remember when they were wearing four inches of paper on their ears.
or cutting a hole in that paper so they can spread the germs.
Or golden diapers.... Yea...
Measles cases are peaking higher than any time in the last 30 years?
but why would you want to remove your "I'm vaccinated" profile picture?
I suppose measles is technically getting them, but I don't think that's what they meant
One of my favorite parts of the covid vaccine thing, other than not getting covid, was how the goalposts kept being dragged a month or two back when the shots didn't kill me. My favorite interaction was someone telling me the jab would kill me in 30 years. I was 40 at the time. Im sure something will get me in 30 years, lol.
You know, if someone told me ten years ago that the phrase "I'm vaccinated" would turn me on as much as "Want me to suck your dick?" I would have called them insane.
"I've been vaccinated so many times I've lost count. Yeah, I'm such a dirty slut for the vax. Pfizer, Moderna, they've all been inside me. Sometimes I don't even know their names - if it's mRNA I let them put it in."
And, as always, everyone's forgotten that poor NovaVax exists.
Being serious for a moment: NovaVax is made in the "traditional" away vaccines have been made, which is good if you know someone who's anti mRNA vaccines. It has less and less severe side effects than Pfizer or Moderna. It's not quite as effective as the mRNA vaccines - but it tends to last a bit longer as well. It provides a different 'template' for recognizing covid, so it broadens your protection in that way.
One drawback is that if you want NovaVax in the spring, you need to get it early, as the batches tend to expire around April. (I time my shots for mid-May [max summer protection] and mid-to-late October [max winter protection].) I think I've had 3 Modernas, 4 Pfizers, and 4 NovaVaxs to date ...
And Pfizer is just the large scale producer, not the developer. That would be BioNTech, who licensed Pfizer to produce their vaccine. A classic tale of US-American hijacking of the laurels.
I was gang-vaccinated when I went into the military. Didn't stand a chance.
That is actually a thing btw. They sit you down in a chair, check your vax records and update you with everything you need all at once.
Lol, this guy thinks that they looked at our vaccine records 😂 🤣 big dawg they gave us all the same vaccines. You don't remember that every dude had to go through every station? It wasn't like "OK you go through stations 1, 4, and 5 for mumps, flu, and xyz because you've already had xyz vaccines." It was every dude getting every shot.
They did, or at least they did for us in the Canadian Forces. The medical staff were a bit surprised as I had some Asian exclusive stuff due to some of my travel when I was younger. We didn't go to individual stations, instead we all got sat in the chair one at a time and they essentially conveyor belted those needles into us.
That brings back memories of a reddit comment I'm going to paraphrase poorly: the US handling of COVID was so shitty that you couldn't get approval for it as a medical trial on ethics grounds.
The most tested and trusted vaccine in history, pushed into service after years of development leveraging SARS-1 and MERS, demonstrated efficacy, and we're just not going to fucking use it?
Then, despite knowing everything we know about vaccines and germ theory and how disease spreads, we're just going to make the flu vaccine optional, but only for one branch of the military? And people INSTANTLY started getting the flu with at least one death from it. At least we have a brand spanking new datapoint about what happens if vaccines got Thanos-snapped.
I am more than half convinced that there's a group of people at a high level in the US that are treating this whole thing like that story from the bible about the soldiers drinking water and going into war with a smaller army is proof that god helps them. That would go a long way towards explaining the advanced munitions usage as well.
You guys got a chair?
I walked past a line of vaccinators while in a line of other sorry SOBs, and we all got vaxxed one after another, assembly line style.
It was a nice chair. Or at least it was at St. Jean Sur Richilieu.
“Talk dirty to me”
“I believe in basic science…”
“Hnnnngh, I’m gonna explode”
Sounds about right.
About what? The dangers of using a stupid profile pic template on social media half a decade ago? It's sad how desperate these anti-vaxxers are for a win.
Prestigious health science man is put in kangaroo court and refuses to play ball.
"Guess that means all science is wrong!"
???
3. "Bet you regret getting vaccinated now!"
???
Yeah that's what I was saying with my #2
What a shitpost.
Warned about what
Why are people deleting their vaccinated status?
No one is. MAGA-pilled people act against their own self-interest to own the libs, they think the left must do the same.
Now that RFK is pushing people to get vaccinated, they think the libs must be embarrassed being pro-vaccine.
Thank you. I actually understand the fascist mind for this moment in time, at least.
My condolences.
It took me a minute to figure out what you meant there. Becaus3 I didn't immediately fathom a world where a maga would think we would be anti Vax the moment someone anti Vax turns pro Vax.
Because that is absolutely moronic. Doesn't make a lick of sense. Wtf are these people on? How do I avoid taking it, ever?
The dems really should try reverse psychology on these idiots. It would actually work.
Republicans would happily vote for universal healthcare, abolishing ICE, and universal basic income if prominent Dems just publicly denounced those things.
That's what I don't get though, a good thing is a good thing. It's like when they pretended the ACA was something else instead of "obamacare" so they'd like it... We weren't all "Ohhhhh you stuuuuuuupid Republicans, you love the ACA but it's actually (drumroll) Obamacare in disguise!!" we were just happy more people had access to Healthcare that wasn't going to bankrupt them.
They aren’t. Do not engage with dipshits and their dipshittery.
On Facebook you can put a frame around your profile pic to spread one of the approved messages. Now it's no longer relevant, the only new people getting the shot will be children.
The same guy that came out with the smash hit song "Earth is Flat NASA Lies". I'm not going to link his shitty YT account, but that's the kind of dunce that says this kind of shit. The internet has all the information humans will ever have, and somehow people are dumber because of it.
Flat earthers all need to try this one weird trick. Around the 5th or 6th floor of beachfront hotels you can start seeing the curvature of the Earth versus straight lines. An example would be a railing on about balcony, line the ocean up in the center and sure enough two edges will be dipped down below that. My problem is so many of them like this gentleman have something to sell, it's all a grift
There is no way to reason with a flerf. They are either lying/trolling, so won’t WANT to reason, or complete idiots, who are uncapable of doing so.
They'll just come up with some nonsensical excuse. Look at the ones that setup experiments in 'Behind the Curve'. They setup I think 2 different experiments that show results you would expect from a spherical earth and they hand wave it away. You can't logic someone out of a belief they didn't logic their way into.
There was a funny one where someone debunked flat earth using the flat earther's own photograph where you could see the curvature if you zoomed in.
I went to school with this clown. He was always a peice of shit troublemaker that couldn't pass a single class if his life depended on it. He tried to fight teachers. Not surprised at all this is how he ended up.
I love how it's always 'nasa lies' with these people, ignoring ancient greece entirely. Also weirdly hand waving the planets we can see with a few pieces of glass...
Why make fun of someone that died? Sure the person might be stupid antivaxxer, but still a person that passed away.
I lost a friend trough covid, before there was a vaccine
One day some day I met some ex colleague, and out of the nowhere he told me how proud he was that he didnt got vaccinated. We didnt even talked remotely about covid.
I just looked I'm into the eyes and told him I wish that he would have died instead of my friend.
So yeah. I will never stop laughing about "proud anti vaxxers" who died, because those people are scumbags who think they are an solution nobody asked about.
And the world is a better place
Every antivaxxer who dies is a win for society
Honestly I don't care about such people. There is plenty of science to prove the benefits of vacins. Just try to find someone with Polio. They know they don't just endanger themselves, they know they endanger other people as well. They put elder people and babies at risk. And why? Because they want to be edgy or one up to people who actually put in the effort to get an education?
Probably unpopular opinion, but both sides are wrong here. Not necessarily to the same degree. As usual with any issue that is presented as binary, black vs white, with nothing in between.
Of course, vaccines in general are incredibly helpful. A lot of us wouldn't be here today if we weren't vaccinated for various diseases as children.
However, that alone should not be the sole focus of the discussion. It ignores a lot of crucial context.
Vaccines are safe and effective because they go through extensive testing that usually takes years. During the pandemic, at least one major company - namely Pfizer - skipped most of that process, and then lied about results. Not to save lives, but to make money. To be the first to get that government contract.
Regardless of the entire pro- vs anti-vax discourse, this is something Pfizer should be held accountable for. People died needlessly because the CEO wanted another yacht. And because some governments let him.
The problem on the pro-vax side is that people are largely ignoring that, and so are essentially advocating for corporate interests. The anti-vax's side's problem is more obvious, so no need to repeat it.
Both sides are blindly arguing about one thing while ignoring everything else. As is usual with public discourse in 2026. That's what the elites want. People arguing whether vaccines work or not, instead of holding companies like Pfizer accountable for profiting off a pandemic, and putting those profits before people's lives.
That's not an unpopular opinion. That's a truckload of bullshit with no sources or coherency.
Which, ironically, is a lie. Spread by the far-right antivaxx crowd.
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/10/scicheck-its-not-news-nor-scandalous-that-pfizer-trial-didnt-test-transmission/
Uh, gonna need a source on “skipping and lying” because those aren’t things that just get hand waved by regulating bodies.
Source: he's an antivaxxer but doesn't want to be immediately laughed out of the room
Damn, even saying 'yep, vaccines work' gets you an anti-vax label in 2026. Crazy times.
This wasn’t “vaccines work” this was vaccine misinformation prettied up with “vaccines work”.
The idea that a vaccine can be hand waved through the checks and such out in place to ensure safety standards are met, by simply lying about the numbers, is pure fiction and meant to spread the idea that vaccines are a Wild West.
You can disagree with what I said, but I quite literally took an entire paragraph to make sure it's clear that I'm not denying vaccines work, or that they work quite well.
There's absolutely nothing stopping you holding both positions at once.
The part they skipped was the whole waiting ages before even getting a response from regulating bodies thing. They got fast tracked on all the paperwork so they could get to trials quicker. There was tons of money and political will behind getting the vaccines tested ASAP.
The thing that it was never tested for (at least when released) was transmission prevention. Nobody ever claimed it was tested for transmission prevention. It was tasted for safety and efficacy in preventing severe COVID in the person receiving the vaccine. Later studies confirmed that for most variants, it also reduced transmission rates, but for Omicron in particular it only reduced them for a short period after the shot. That testing is what people were yelling about 4 years ago. And nobody lied about it, despite the claims that are circulating.
I actually never heard about this one, so can't really comment.
I was mostly referring to the following two things:
Now, taking a closer look at both, it seems I may have read misinformation and gravely misunderstood the situation. For some reason, even people with PhDs in medicine are spreading what now looks to me like false claims online, which is troubling.
First one - 'adverse reactions' seems to be a pointless statistic, since it's all kinds of adverse reactions, regardless of nature or link to the vaccine. So now I'm not sure why it's even included in the documents. In any case, I can't find any source for links between Pfizer's vaccines and these reactions, so I'll have to assume they never occurred or were negligible.
Second - I'm a little confused here. Many sources claim Pfizer's clinical trial data was going to be published so slowly (taking several decades in total) due to FDA's FOIA office only having 10 staff members.
Now that sounds odd. Shouldn't all these documents be published ASAP? Surely it's not standard procedure to publish half of the data long after everyone affected is dead? And in the end, they did publish it all almost immediately after a court order, so it looks like it was entirely possible.
All in all, there are some circumstances that look suspicious, which is just enough to form believable-sounding, but probably false theories. Especially by medical doctors, who are supposed to be the source of truthfull information.
While I can't say I'm 100% convinced Pfizer did nothing wrong - I also can't say there's nearly enough evidence to claim it did. Admittedly, I should have read more on the subject before posting. I'll definitely have to review my usual sources for presence of misinformation. I'll also happily read more if anyone has anything good to share.
No, they fucking didn't. The skipped parts of the vaccine development process with Operation Warp Speed was just bureucratic hurdle. Clinical trials were NOT skipped.
I don't believe there were any deaths from the Pfizer vaccine in the United States. The only deaths I know of are from the Janssen vaccine, which was pulled off from the market rather quickly.
You're stupid
Don't breed
One quick look at your profile shows that you'd do well to follow your own advice.
Do you have a crush on me?
It sounds like you have a crush on me.