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You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Is President Biden Looking Out For YOU?

Is President Biden Looking Out For YOU?

by | 160 Comments

This post is in: ,

This ad had me in stitches.

So I’ve been holding off sharing some interesting news about the covid vaccine and me.

As you may or may not know, I had Covid almost a year ago (4 days to my Covid-versary). And while my actual 10 days were probably considered mild (though looking back on it, there were a couple of very scary days), the “recovery’ has been year-long. In October, I thought I was through the worst of it, but Dec to March proved to be extremely difficult and my symptoms escalated – debilitating fatigue, severe brain fog, and still some shortness of breath. My general rule was to get all I could get done before noon, because after that I was about useless.

Last Thursday afternoon I received my vaccination. No biggie. Friday came without any real reaction. I had meetings all day and by 4 pm, once I was done, I thought, I’m going to need a nap. But a funny thing happened…I did a couple of chores and then a few more things, and the next thing I knew, it was 10 pm. I felt great. Still didn’t think much of it, I’ve had good days here and there, only to be followed by several really bad days.

But Saturday came and then Sunday and it was like I was fueled by Death Wish Coffee. My mind was not just clear, but racing with things to do, stuff to organize and create, and my physical energy matched it. Now we are at a full eight days of … well … being normal. Although it feels super-charged. I haven’t gone a full week of feeling good since Covid. My fingers are crossed that this is for real, not just for me, but for other long-haulers.

There’s been some anecdotal evidence of the vaccine effect – which people started sending me in March, but I ignored it, not wanting to get my hopes up. But now, well, I’m paying attention.

CNN:

“The issue is thus far that it’s anecdotal,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, during a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 17. “Many people get better anyway, and if you get vaccinated and get better, you are not sure whether it’s the vaccine or the spontaneous recovery. So you’ll have to do a randomized trial in order to determine that.”

Still, though, anecdotal reports can start to stack up, especially for doctors who have been treating long haulers for months.

“It’s getting to be a large number of reports, hundreds of reports of patients that we’ve been caring for with Covid almost a year now,” said Dr. Daniel Griffin, chief of infectious disease at ProHealth and an instructor in clinical medicine at Columbia University. “They are reporting that following vaccination they’re having significant, if not complete, resolution of their long Covid symptoms.

He estimated that as many as 30% to 40% of his long Covid patients said they were feeling better after vaccinations, and the boost in energy and mental clarity appeared to be coming from all three vaccines currently authorized in the US.

Everything changed after she got her COVID-19 vaccine.

“I was like a new person, it was the craziest thing ever,” says Dodd, referring to how many of her health problems subsided significantly after her second shot.

And she’s not alone. As the U.S. pushes to get people vaccinated, a curious benefit is emerging for those with this post-illness syndrome: Their symptoms are easing and, in some cases, fully resolving after they get vaccinated.

“I didn’t expect the vaccine to make people feel better,” says Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine who’s researching long COVID.

“More and more, I started hearing from people with long COVID having their symptoms reduced or completely recovering, and that’s when I started to get excited because this might be a potential cure for some people.”

While promising, it’s still too early to know just how many people with long COVID are feeling better as a result of being vaccinated and whether that amounts to a statistically meaningful difference.

WaPo has a longer article, which I can’t seem to access right now, something funky going on with my subscription.

Anyone else have a similar experience? I know a few of us here have had Covid, but I’m not sure about long-haulers. I have a client whose symptoms are on par with mine, though more severe and I’ve encouraged him to check out the studies (and he’s now scheduled for his vaccine, I’m hoping he’ll have an experience similar to mine).

 

Reader Interactions

160Comments

  1. 1.

    Another Scott

    Really excellent news, TaMara! So glad to hear it.

    I finally got notification that I could make an appointment for my first shot here in Fairfax County, VA. It will be a week from today. I’m so looking forward to it!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  2. 2.

    Jeffro

    Congrats, TaMara – may you continue to feel better and better each day!  This is great news for all of Covid’s long-term sufferers.

    OT but I just had to mention: it looks like Jen Psaki is going to start having one non-Beltway reporter join the WH press pool at each press conference.  Straight from this message board to Uncle Joe’s ears, I swear.  =)

  3. 3.

    Xenos

    I have just been back from the hospital a couple weeks, so I would call this ordinary recovery at this point. But I definitely have some weirdness going on – like low blood pressure that is not responding consistently to medication- that I would love to get cleared up.

    Should be able to get a vaccine in the next month, and am looking forward to it!

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    That’s such great news, TaMara!!!  I had read that previously and have really been hoping that it helps long-hauler.

    Here’s an excerpt from your Washington Post link:

    Arianna Eisenberg endured long-haul covid-19 for eight months, a recurring nightmare of soaking sweats, crushing fatigue, insomnia, brain fog and muscle pain.

    But Eisenberg’s tale has a happy ending that neither she nor current medical science can explain. Thirty-six hours after her second shot of coronavirus vaccine last month, her symptoms were gone, and they haven’t returned.

    “I really felt back to myself,” the 34-year-old Brooklyn therapist said, “to a way that I didn’t think was possible when I was really sick.”

    Some people who have spent months suffering from long-haul covid-19 are taking to social media to report their delight at seeing their symptoms disappear after their vaccinations, leaving experts chasing yet another puzzling clinical development surrounding the disease caused by the coronavirus.

  6. 6.

    WaterGirl

    Forgot to say just how much I love that ad at the top!

    I found this on the same twitter feed:

  8. 8.

    MomSense

    So happy to hear this news!

    Oldest got his pfirst Pfizer yesterday.  Middle gets his J&J one and done on Monday.  Youngest gets his pfirst Pfizer on April 17th.  I cannot wait until we are all vaccinated.

  10. 10.

    JPL

    @Xenos:  A friend said it’s still slow going after two months. Her doctor still wants her to wait a few more weeks.

  11. 11.

    RedDirtGirl

    That is encouraging. I’m so pleased for you TaMara! I’ll take good news where ever I can get it. I’m in the deep dark throes of trying to find an assisted living facility for my 88 yo mom.  Not a lot of good news in that department.

  12. 12.

    Jeffro

    @WaterGirl: Probably both?  I would not be surprised to see non-DC reporters growing in number (and in frequency – I think right now it’s just a Friday thing?)

    Biden & Co really are taking their DC press corpse game to a new level.  GO PSAKI!

  13. 13.

    James E Powell

    Everybody should see that ad. It’s great.

    Invest in America is the line to run with over the next few weeks.

    Why don’t Republicans want to invest in America? Joe Biden says we should invest in America, why are the Republicans opposing this? Joe Biden says investing in American means investing in people, not corporations, why do Republicans hate that?

    And so on.

  14. 14.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    I’ll find out soon as I am sure that I had Covid before there were tests for it (early last February and it was fucking nasty) and I get my shot today (one and done). I’ve got ‘long Covid’ and it has been dragging me down.

    I’m happy to be a lab rat… ;)

  15. 15.

    KayInMD (formerly Kay (not the front-pager))

    Good news! It’s a puzzle why, but wonderful never-the-less. I hope the fact that vaccination improves long covid encourages more people to get the jab, just for the bandwagon effect.

    My older son’s wife got her first shot on Tuesday, and my younger son is scheduled for his first (or possibly his only) on 4/22. That will leave only older son & younger daughter-in-law ‘bare’.

  16. 16.

    Fair Economist

    A common hypothesis for long COVID is that it’s an autoimmune disease, and it’s plausible the vaccine could reorient the immune response away from auto- to focus better on the pathogen.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    @Jeffro:

    OT but I just had to mention: it looks like Jen Psaki is going to start having one non-Beltway reporter join the WH press pool at each press conference.

    Finally, someone who will ask about the cat!

  18. 18.

    Roger Moore

    I’m sure there are a bunch of immunologists eager to study this. I know there are a lot of other diseases where people have problems with chronic problems after they’ve theoretically recovered. My impression from the immunologists I’ve talked to is that this is probably a result of the immune system getting out of whack- what they’re calling chronic inflammation- rather than an actual chronic infection. It’s certainly possible that revving the immune system up again against the same thing that got it out of whack might help it get back into proper working order again. If so, it might be a big deal for people who are dealing with similar syndromes, like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

  19. 19.

    cope

    I just linked to this post in a text I sent to my wife’s best friend, a long-Covid sufferer who, last time we talked, wasn’t sure whether or not to get the vaccine.

    Thanks.

  25. 25.

    West of the Rockies

    I get my Phizer #2 next Thursday.  I’m excited and nervous; I keep having people tell me the second dose kicks your keister.

  29. 29.

    WaterGirl

    @Roger Moore:  Your whole comment is really interesting.

    Question about the part in quotes below:  Would they have to know caused those in the first place, in order for this to help them?

    If so, it might be a big deal for people who are dealing with similar syndromes, like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome.

  31. 31.

    Nicole

    Oh my gosh, this is such good news to read.

    I definitely needed 10-14 days after the high fever broke for the fatigue to go away and the low-grade fever to end, but didn’t have any lingering effects.  My husband had milder symptoms during the active infection but was concerned he was going to be a long hauler because his fatigue didn’t clear up.  He felt much better after his first shot, too.  So, anecdotally, you’re not the only person I know who has experienced the vaccine setting a lot of feeling wrong right again.

    Between mRNA vaccines’ potentials for cancer treatments and the vaccine (maybe) treating long-haul Covid providing insights into autoimmune overreactions- it’s comforting to think some big advances in medicine may come from this year-and-a-half of hell.

  32. 32.

    Super Dave

    @TaMara (HFG): very glad to hear you’re feeling better.

    My 34 year old son had COVID in early March last year. He was the picture of health, fit and trim, a workout buff. Since them, he’s had heart and lung issues, no energy, brain fog, the whole deal. He got his first Pfizer shot 3 weeks ago and the second one day before yesterday. He felt really bad yesterday and says he’s a little better today. However, in the weeks after his first shot, he says that’s the best he’s felt since having COVID, so his story mirrors yours. We’re hoping the second one produces even better effect. The best to you, and other long haulers.

  34. 34.

    raven

    I wonder how much of this is in the mind of the beholder? Everyone seems to have such different reactions and I read about people crying with relief and all that kind of stuff. I got the shots and that was that for me.

  35. 35.

    patrick II

    I wonder how the vaccination helps with the after affects of COVID.  The vaccine technology, as I understand it, kills virus.  I don’t know, but I suspect the virus has been totally eliminated from long haulers.  At least they don’t test positive for it.

    When fighting COVID the body has various defense mechanisms in addition to the antibodies that kill the virus.  I wonder if those other defense mechanisms keep working and only shut down completely when sufficient antibodies produced by vaccination allow the other defense mechanisms to shut down completely.

    Just speculating.

  36. 36.

    raven

    @Super Dave: Hmm, interesting. I know several people who had it and recovered without any long term impact so I wonder how this works for them?

  37. 37.

    Phylllis

    @Nicole: I had COVID in December and have had lingering bouts of being out of breath, no energy, and the brain fog. I felt better after my first shot (Moderna) as well. Get my 2nd tomorrow.

  39. 39.

    TaMara (HFG)

    @raven: At least in my case, mind over matter had nothing to do with it. I wasn’t expecting anything and feeling better completely snuck up on me.

    And especially since I received the J&J, I’d only heard about long haulers feeling better after the double-dose vax.

  40. 40.

    Ruckus

    Great news.

    I would suspect that considering the disease and the various paths it can take that a vaccine that works the way at least Pfizer/Moderna work, they could be effective against long term effects of this disease, even in after the fact vaccine usage.

  42. 42.

    StringOnAStick

    This past week I learned the my husband’s cousin knows someone fairly high up at Moderna, and they are aiming much higher than “just” the Covid vaccine with this new technology.  Major major major major made the point in a thread here that this new technology let’s us write to the human immune system; just think about the potential for dealing with other diseases.

  44. 44.

    JPL

    @Steve in the ATL:  My son was just a few minutes early, and found a parking space and walked in.   Until you have to fill out a form, and they take it, there is not much of a wait at all.

  46. 46.

    Roger Moore

    @dmsilev:

    So, basically the immunology equivalent of ‘have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in’?

    Not quite.  When you get sick, your immune system physically ramps up.  Your body produces huge numbers of new white blood cells to fight the infection, and the metabolic load of that is one of the things that makes you tired.  In addition to proliferating, some of the white cells specialize in fighting the specific disease you’ve encountered*.  When the course of the disease is over, the cells you’ve produced to fight it are supposed to die off, except for a handful of of the specialist cells, which become quiescent as “memory cells” that will recognize the pathogen if your body every encounters it again.  A vaccination is supposed to produce a strong enough immune response to make your body generate those memory cells.

    The problem comes if the immune response doesn’t end when it’s supposed to.  There are all kinds of complex feedback loops involved in ramping up the immune system at the start of the infection and keeping it going during its course.  One part of this is the immune cells looking for the results of other immune cells doing their work, which is a sign they’re supposed to stay active.  When the infection is over, the initial stimulus from the pathogen goes away, but apparently the feedback loops within the immune system are sometimes enough to keep it hyped up.  It’s possible that an immunization might trigger the whole cycle- ramp up and cool down- and thus help shut off the faulty signals that are keeping the immune system activated when it shouldn’t be.

    *This is called the adaptive immune system, and mostly consists of B- and T-cells.  They’re specialist cells that learn to recognize just one kind of virus or bacterium. The “innate” immune system consists of generalist cells that recognize broad categories of threat.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @TaMara (HFG):

    While the J&J is not the same process as Pfizer/Moderna, it is not a traditional vaccine either. (I’m not too sure that very many vaccines now being brought to market are “traditional.”) Science has taught a lot about how things work and how to make vaccines better. It’s one reason that all 3 have both very high efficiency and almost zero negativity, they just get there differently.

  48. 48.

    gvg

    I am guessing there is more than one reason some people are long haulers. One of the stories was a woman who had it but was testing as having no antibodies for it, so she got vaccinated out of fear of getting it again and her long haul symptoms surprised her by disappearing. If all the long haulers were not forming antibodies, it would already have been known.
    Some people do keep testing positive, if they do things like check the intestinal tissues. They don’t seem to remain infectious and it has been assumed these were inactive viral fragments, but maybe not. There seem to be multiple patterns.

  49. 49.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @StringOnAStick: I don’t remember whether it was Moderna or one of the others, but I saw a news report a few days ago that in lab tests it was extremely successful in generating an immune response to AIDS, and I believe malaria as well. Could be a game-changer for both, as well as a number other illnesses.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @Roger Moore: wow, thanks for that!

    When we were sick when we were little, my mom explained that the “the good germ soldiers” were fighting “the bad germ soldiers”.  We had to rest while they were fighting, and we had to drink lots of fluids to flush all the bad germ soldiers out of our system when they lost to the good germ soldiers.

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @WaterGirl: ​
     

    Question about the part in quotes below: Would they have to know caused those in the first place, in order for this to help them?

    It depends on how much they learn. If all we learn is that giving the body the same alarm signal it’s already seen can help to produce the all clear that it ignored before, then yes, we’d need to figure out what had made the immune system hyperactive to begin with. But if it helps us to figure out how to send an all clear signal without having to send the alarm, it could help everyone with a similar syndrome.
    A big thing is that it may help to convince people that syndromes like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are real. There are still a lot of doctors who think they’re psychosomatic. With long COVID, we have a similar syndrome that’s widely recognized to be a real thing with a clearly recognized triggering event. That will make it much easier to convince skeptics that similar syndromes are also real, and knowing how long COVID can be fixed will help to point in the direction of a cure.

  53. 53.

    Ruckus

    @West of the Rockies:

    It can. The symptoms seem to be fairly similar, just the degree of symptoms is what changes.

    My experience was that it’s reasonably severe but not dangerous or debilitating for long. For me, about 12 hrs after my second shot of Pfizer, I started with the following, shot site felt tender/painful for about another 8 hrs. I felt for approx 36 hrs like I had no energy or strength, but moving didn’t actually hurt/change at all, it was just perception. Shot on Friday, weekend basically lost, woke up Monday and felt like nothing had happened. Never felt like this before.

  55. 55.

    Cermet

    First, very happy for all those with long haul issues getting better after the vaccine! That is just like double iciing on a already wonderful cake!

    There are virus that can avoid our immune system by hiding in parts of the body that allow the virus to avoid the immune response for awhile – HIV is a perfect example. Long haulers might be getting re-infected from these reserves. The nRNA vaccine gets the immune system back up and it destroys the virus in the body and manages to finally remove the virus from its hidden sites. One possible explanation.

    Get my second dose of Pfizer tomorrow; took me 4 weeks to recover from the damage it inflicted on my arm muscle; no matter, I don’t care. I’ll take the severe pain and sleepless nights for a few weeks any day over covid. The muscle will grow back but covid kills or creates long term damage ill health effects many here are reporting.

  56. 56.

    JoyceH

    @James E Powell: ​
     

    What I love about the ad is that they either got the same voice guy who does those ominous scary-scary right wing ads, or someone who sounds just like him.

  57. 57.

    trollhattan

    @Ruckus: ​
     
    The kid got her J&J jab on Monday and has had “really crappy” training sessions afterwards with her running squad. That’s my sole feedback source. Wait, her buddy–same shot, same day–is apparently a hypochondriac because she thought she was coming down with the Covid and called 911. They coaxed her down suggestion is was a panic attack. Which I’ll guess it was.

    Felt kind of crappy a couple days following Pfizer #2, but that was about it. The smallest of prices to pay for freedom(TM).

  58. 58.

    Falling Diphthong

    Congrats, and I am hopeful about the mRNA vaccines for other diseases.

    PSA for anyone else who’s had cancer: A rare side effect of the vaccines seems to be something called radiation recall, in which your body decides to produce radiation side effects without the bother of your needing to go to a hospital and get blasted with actual radiation. Usually a rare chemotherapy side effect, but I seem to be roughly the third person to call my oncologist alarmed about severe inflammation appearing in the area where I had cancer treatment, and then answering ‘why yes I had the covid vaccine a couple of weeks ago.’ There’s a paper at the NIH about it. (NIH was Pfizer and I had Moderna.)

    Offered up because it is rather terrifying to suddenly have the cancer location going haywire–I hadn’t connected it to the vaccine at all–and once the nurse on the phone offered the phrase “radiation recall” I was like “Oh. Yes, that’s exactly what this is like, my body recalling its response to radiation. So I now know what to expect, and that it won’t get worse than radiation was and will go away with time.”

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    “Recession? Not sure about that.”

    Neighborhood friends listed their house (checks watch) 20 hours ago. Six people are seeing it this afternoon and one has already written an offer.

    Yikes.

  60. 60.

    WaterGirl

    @Roger Moore:

    A big thing is that it may help to convince people that syndromes like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia are real. There are still a lot of doctors who think they’re psychosomatic.

    Fuck every single one of those doctors.  They should lose their licenses, all of them.

    Thanks much for the explanation.  And all of your explanations lately!

  61. 61.

    zeecube

    Also anecdotal:  My brother reported after his shot that he felt he was shot up with speed.  Spring-cleaned his whole house.  I had a completely different reaction to my second shot of Moderna:  24 hrs of lethargy and could barely stay awake.

  63. 63.

    Joy in FL

    I love that video ad. I really wish I could just send President Biden a postcard saying Thank You and know he would actually see it.

    And I’m so glad TaMara, that you are feeling good at last. I join everybody else in hoping it lasts forever for you.

  64. 64.

    Roger Moore

    @Sister Golden Bear: ​
     

    it was extremely successful in generating an immune response to AIDS, and I believe malaria as well.

    Both of those are going to be very tough nuts to crack. AIDS is very nasty indeed because it attacks the very parts of the immune system that are supposed to protect against it, so it’s possible that vaccinating against it would actually make you more susceptible. Malaria is nasty for a different reason. It’s not that difficult to make a vaccine against it, but it’s a master at learning to escape your body’s immune response.

  66. 66.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    A friend of mine, and a polio survivor, pointed out that Covid was like polio. Yes, *really*. Lots of people had asymptomatic cases; only a few were bad, and not that many people (percentage-wise) died from it.

    (She’s good at checking facts; I’m too fatigued to check right now, but she’d want me (and anyone seeing this) to know better if she was mistaken.)

    And an interesting bit: the Salk shots prevented an active infection, but didn’t stop the spread. It was the Sabin oral vaccine that caused the body to start killing the virus where it lay latent, in the gut.

    I’m taking that as a reason to hope that the vaccines are going to wipe out long Covid. I wouldn’t wish Chronic Fatigue on Donald J Trump (junior or senior – I didn’t say they don’t *deserve* it, I just said I’m not the kind of man who’d *wish* it on them) – I hope you can therefore understand how happy I am for you, and so many others, TaMara. In some ways, we’re living in extraordinary times.

  68. 68.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott:

    Thanks for that. Because real estate is local-regional I can report we have had a dearth of single-family detached building since the Great Recession and that combined with the influx of Bay Area work-from-home refugees, prices are bending upward bigly.

    While it’s eye-rubbing to watch, nobody is going underwater stretching to finance their purchase because 1. lenders simply don’t do sub-prime here and B. so many damn cash offers.

    I could not afford to move into my neighborhood from elsewhere, that’s for certain.

  69. 69.

    Roger Moore

    @WaterGirl: ​
     
    The physical toll of building up your immune system is amazing to me. I had a first-hand experience of this when I was getting ready to donate stem cells. Before you donate, they give you G-CSF (granulocyte colony stimulating factor, trade name Neupogen), which is one of the signals your body uses to amp up your immune system. That stuff is nasty. In addition to fatigue, it makes your bone marrow physically expand and push on your bones, which hurts. I was able to tough it out with a bit of Tylenol, but I was told I could get a prescription for opiate painkillers if I wanted.

  72. 72.

    Nicole

    @WaterGirl: 

    Fuck every single one of those doctors. They should lose their licenses, all of them.

    Medicine can be really… conservative. When I went in for my 6 weeks of radiation, they told me not to wear deodorant during that time. Because they didn’t tell me “why,” I googled, and found out data from a few years ago indicates that actually it doesn’t affect the radiation at all. And this was one of the big hospitals in NYC, which, one would think, would be up on the latest research. In fact, the recommendation against anti-perspirants doesn’t seem to be grounded in any actual science. But, that’s what they were always told, and that’s what they assumed to be true.

    (And because I was a chicken, I didn’t say anything and did what they said and felt bad about being stinky during my sessions. Which is not nearly as serious as someone with CFS being told its all in their head, but it reminds me medical practice can be really slow to catch up with science. It’s very aggravating sometimes.)

  73. 73.

    Nora Lenderbee

    I’m getting the jab on Wednesday. Only a 50-mile round trip. I’ve driven so little this past year that I’m actually looking forward to it.

  74. 74.

    Benw

    Awesome news, TaMara!

    That means you were raising ducklings on 50% functionality? You are a superhero!

  75. 75.

    Another Scott

    @trollhattan: Yup.  We’re seeing the same thing here in NoVA.  Low inventory, houses snatched up quickly, lots of agents advertising for business, including walking door-to-door.  There’s a lot of demand and not a lot of inventory – especially in places where people want to be (nobody wants to think about 90-120 minute commutes in traffic any more, and not everyone can work remote).

    I think (channeling M^4) that zoning is probably going to have to change to solve the problem.  2-3 houses per acre isn’t sustainable any more (if it ever was).  Until then, it’s going to continue to be painful for folks starting out and looking for their first home.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  76. 76.

    CaseyL

    Oh, TaMara, that is excellent news!  Maybe now you’ll be able to keep up with the ducklings :)

    I’ve heard about this phenomenon, too, but haven’t heard enough to know whether it’s statistically significant, or so individual a response as to be anecdotal.  If it’s actually a widespread thing, that would be amazing.

    The “reset auto-immune system” is jump up and down intriguing, since there are so many auto-immune diseases.  My own thought, off the top of my head where all the air is, is that long haul Covid is still active Covid, and the vaccine finally gets rid of it root and branch.

  77. 77.

    Anonymous At Work

    @Tamara
    CDC has Long COVID studies up and running in various parts of the world, including southern Florida. Look for them and/or places studying it.

  80. 80.

    NotMax

    @Roger Moore

    Stepsister’s husband is currently part of a drug trial for treating ALS. His is in pill form though, so a different tributary of Science River. No way to discern if he’s in the drug or in the placebo group.

  81. 81.

    Almost Retired

    TaMara, so glad you’re feeling better.  I know anecdote isn’t evidence, by my office suite mate (back when I still went to the office) has had the same experience.  She contracted COVID early – even before the lockdown in Los Angeles – and recovered quickly from the worst of it.  But she suffered persistent low level fatigue, migraines and recurrent brain fog into 2021.  Not a good combination for a busy litigator.  She got the pfizer shot early, and felt almost instantaneously better.  It’s been several weeks now, and the long-hauler symptoms have not returned.

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    @WaterGirl:

    Fuck every single one of those doctors. They should lose their licenses, all of them.

    I think they’re not doing right by their patients, but I have a shred of sympathy for them.  These kinds of chronic syndromes are very difficult to diagnose clearly- they’re generally a kind of catch-all for people who have chronic problems that can’t be tied to a specific disease- and don’t have a well-understood cause or treatment.  And psychosomatic problems do exist.

    That said, I think it’s very significant that these kinds of diseases seem to be more common among women than men.  There is definitely a problem with doctors taking women’s complaints less seriously and being more likely to claim their problems are psychological.  I have no doubt the medical establishment would take chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia more seriously if they were predominantly found in men.

  84. 84.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Another Scott: one objection (from a dumb guy who gets sleepy when people start using charts):

    aybe prices are too high based on fundamentals (due to extremely low supply and record low mortgage rates), but there is very little evidence of speculation (not like the loose lending of the housing bubble).

    I’ve seen a couple of headlines in the last couple days that “investors” are buying single family homes in the hope of making a profit. That in itself makes me a little nervous. Also, even if prices don’t sink 26% like they did in the Great Crash, how many people are ready for a “correction” of 10% in the housing market, and even more so in the stock market? I remember how many for sale signs when up in the McMansion-y neighborhoods in my town in 2007, before things really went to hell, when some (relatively) young people were shocked to find out that stocks can go down, significantly.

    Counterpoint to my own objection: Matt Ygelsias posited the other day that what we’re seeing is a delayed recovery from the Great Crash.

  87. 87.

    Another Scott

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Agreed that “investors” snapping up houses is a concern.  Someone suggested a “non-occupancy” tax that might have an impact on places like NYC and London that have empty high-rises owned by people in Macao and St. Petersburgh who are desperate to find places to park their money…  Dunno how it would impact the 3BR/2BA Ranch market.

    Things feel very different from 2002-2006 around here.  No TV ads with dancing bankers throwing cash around like confetti, only a couple (rather than a dozen) TV shows on flipping houses, almost no “cash out your equity to buy that boat that you’ve had an eye on” stuff.

    I’m not sanguine, and feel for people who need to buy a home, but it doesn’t feel like a bubble yet.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  88. 88.

    LeftCoastYankee

    @TaMara (HFG):

    Glad to hear this happened for you.  I had Covid last April, and have had similar issues where I’d get tired too quickly and felt fog-headed.

    I got my Pfizer 1st shot 2 days ago, and felt like a fog had been lifted, and I’m not tiring way too fast like before.

    A pretty good trade: a sore arm for feeling normal again.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Roger Moore:

    Before you donate, they give you G-CSF (granulocyte colony stimulating factor, trade name Neupogen), which is one of the signals your body uses to amp up your immune system. That stuff is nasty. In addition to fatigue, it makes your bone marrow physically expand and push on your bones, which hurts. I was able to tough it out with a bit of Tylenol, but I was told I could get a prescription for opiate painkillers if I wanted.

    I’m so glad you said that. I was an early donor, when they were still developing it, and they dismissed my reporting of pain in my bones, after asking if I had any pain, and I didn’t trust any of them after that. I knew it hurt (although no one told me the bone marrow was physically expanding) but that’s exactly what if feels like.

  90. 90.

    Roger Moore

    @Another Scott:

    Agreed that “investors” snapping up houses is a concern. Someone suggested a “non-occupancy” tax that might have an impact on places like NYC and London that have empty high-rises owned by people in Macao and St. Petersburgh who are desperate to find places to park their money… Dunno how it would impact the 3BR/2BA Ranch market.

    I doubt it would do much.  Most of the investors buying single family homes are planning on renting them, not letting them sit for 11 months of the year while they’re living in one of their other homes.

  92. 92.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I’m so sorry you’ve had such a bad year, TaMara, and thrilled that you’re feeling much better! Hope it continues for you.

    Also, love the Biden ad. Thanks for linking it.

  93. 93.

    Mary G

    So happy to hear this, TaMara!

    FTFNYT does a great story on a COVID hero:
    Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World From the Coronavirus

    She has never made more than $60,000 a year, was fired from more than one lab because her university thought she was nuts and mRNA had no potential.

    For her entire career, Dr. Kariko has focused on messenger RNA, or mRNA — the genetic script that carries DNA instructions to each cell’s protein-making machinery. She was convinced mRNA could be used to instruct cells to make their own medicines, including vaccines.

    But for many years her career at the University of Pennsylvania was fragile. She migrated from lab to lab, relying on one senior scientist after another to take her in. She never made more than $60,000 a year.

    By all accounts intense and single-minded, Dr. Kariko lives for “the bench” — the spot in the lab where she works. She cares little for fame. “The bench is there, the science is good,” she shrugged in a recent interview. “Who cares?”

    Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and infectious Diseases, knows Dr. Kariko’s work. “She was, in a positive sense, kind of obsessed with the concept of messenger RNA,” he said.

    Dr. Kariko’s struggles to stay afloat in academia have a familiar ring to scientists. She needed grants to pursue ideas that seemed wild and fanciful. She did not get them, even as more mundane research was rewarded.

    “When your idea is against the conventional wisdom that makes sense to the star chamber, it is very hard to break out,” said Dr. David Langer, a neurosurgeon who has worked with Dr. Kariko.

    Dr. Kariko’s ideas about mRNA were definitely unorthodox. Increasingly, they also seem to have been prescient.

    “It’s going to be transforming,” Dr. Fauci said of mRNA research. “It is already transforming for Covid-19, but also for other vaccines. H.I.V. — people in the field are already excited. Influenza, malaria.”

    For Dr. Kariko, most every day was a day in the lab. “You are not going to work — you are going to have fun,” her husband, Bela Francia, manager of an apartment complex, used to tell her as she dashed back to the office on evenings and weekends. He once calculated that her endless workdays meant she was earning about a dollar an hour.

    For many scientists, a new discovery is followed by a plan to make money, to form a company and get a patent. But not for Dr. Kariko. /blockquote>

    She better get the Nobel Prize is all I can say.

  95. 95.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Roger Moore: now now, we all know that women suffer from hysteria…

    (KIDDING—I have a wife and two daughters, any one of whom who would set me on fire in my sleep if I were serious….)

  98. 98.

    WaterGirl

    @Roger Moore:

    I have no doubt the medical establishment would take chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia more seriously if they were predominantly found in men.

    I also have no doubt about that.

  101. 101.

    BC in Illinois

    From the Twitter Thread of Tobias Wilson-Bates @PhDhurtBrain

    Being vaccinated does NOT mean you can gyre and gimble in the wabe.

    REMEMBER that the borogoves are STILL all mimsy And the mome raths outgrabe.

    Responses:

    I understand not gyring; that’s just being reasonable. But to gimble is my passion and cannot be denied. You can tell the wabe I’ll double-mask if that’ll make it feel safer.

    + + +

    Bullshit. I’ve got a fucking vorpal sword.

    Vorpal swords don’t stop viruses! How many times do I have to say this?!

    + + +

    I am definitely going to continue being ware of the jabberwocky, but then I’m known for being antisocial and will frequently shun the bandersnatch as well as the jub-jub and others

    Being vaccinated does NOT mean you can go snicker-snack, leave it dead, and with its head go gallumphing back. Mimsy borogroves, my mome raths.

    + + +

    You are, however, permitted to get frabjous so long as everybody involved is completely vaccinated.

    Callooh! Callay!

  102. 102.

    Arclite

    But Saturday came and then Sunday and it was like I was fueled by Death Wish Coffee. My mind was not just clear, but racing with things to do, stuff to organize and create, and my physical energy matched it. Now we are at a full eight days of … well … being normal. Although it feels super-charged. I haven’t gone a full week of feeling good since Covid. My fingers are crossed that this is for real, not just for me, but for other long-haulers.

    I didn’t have COVID, but I’m looking for something to make me feel this way in general.

  103. 103.

    Captain C

    Somewhat on-topic, I’m getting my second jab tonight. I’ll be calling for car service in about 5 minutes. Not chancing the subways for this.

  108. 108.

    Kay

    Ryan J. Reilly
    @ryanjreilly
    · 6h
    When setting Rachel Powell’s conditions of release, Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said Powell “must wear a mask whenever she leaves her residence.”
    So Powell, who was an anti-masker before she stormed the Capitol, is wearing a mesh mask to her workplace. #bullhornlady

    It’s weird how they’ve seized on the pandemic mask as the symbol of their oppression. It’s been the easiest part of this whole thing and it seemed intuitive and sensible- I thought “of course- a mask”, they were like “tyranny, ahhh!”
    There’s just no common ground here. I don’t get it at all.

  112. 112.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Steve in the ATL: I just spent a significant amount of money getting my father’s pre-war Leica cleaned and tuned up. Haven’t taken any pictures yet, though.

  113. 113.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Coming in late after my piano lesson.

    I’m so glad for you, TaMara! The science of it is not obvious, but I’m glad that the vaccine helped.

  114. 114.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott:

    13 Pounds, now that’s a lens (best said in an Aussie accent).

    Guy showed up on the sidelines of one of the kid’s HS soccer games with a Sony A1 and the G Master 400/2.8. That’s one hellova lens, but maybe not quite an Apo-Telyt. I bet if focuses faster, though. Yours for a mere $12k–camera available at a slight upcharge.

  116. 116.

    trollhattan

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Have a IIIc that would benefit from a CLA but nobody local does such demented things any longer. Shutter still functions, to my amazement.

  118. 118.

    rikyrah

    @Mary G:

    Just as I read it

    I was talking with a friend Just last night that someone is going to win the Nobel Prize when this is all said and done.

    I think that I just read a story about who that will be.

  119. 119.

    Cermet

    @Mary G: Agreed; she is directly responsible for saving, at the least, 10’s of millions of lives and preventing far greater numbers of illness. If a vaccine for covid had to be developed from scratch, it isn’t unlikely that it would have taken four to five years  Also, MERS research played a role in helping scientist to understand the covid virus, and defeat it.

  127. 127.

    Ruckus

    @Falling Diphthong:

    I think that also depends a lot on the stage, location and type of cancer. I never felt anything directly from my cancer, some of the medical workup however was special, to say the least. My sister died from cancer and her treatment was far worse on her than the cancer, up to the very end, other than she didn’t die as soon. Now that’s not true for many that I know have had various cancers. And I had 9 weeks of radiation treatment and had no real side effects. Now that same treatment method has been adjusted to 2 weeks and from what I’m told works as well, with no side effects and the treatment centers can put 3 times more people through per year. Effectively it’s almost like everyone getting the vaccine, the survival rate goes up.

  128. 128.

    Roger Moore

    @Kay:

    It’s weird how they’ve seized on the pandemic mask as the symbol of their oppression

    I totally get it.  The mask is an obvious, visible sign of the pandemic, so refusing to wear one is an obvious, visible sign of resistance to public health measures.  It’s all about the performance to them.

  129. 129.

    HumboldtBlue

    I got the first shot today. And no, I was not staring down the top of the pretty little Latina who checked me in at CVS.

    And here’s a former police dog.

  130. 130.

    Gin & Tonic

    @trollhattan: Gus Lazzari, TLC Camera Repair, somewhere in North Carolina. You send him your camera and wait patiently. Very patiently. Very, very patiently.

  132. 132.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Fair Economist:

    A common hypothesis for long COVID is that it’s an autoimmune disease, and it’s plausible the vaccine could reorient the immune response away from auto- to focus better on the pathogen.

    Hmm, that would square with the sufferers being mostly women.

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    Wow, I had no idea you had such terrible lingering effects! So glad the vax helped! Thanks, science!

  134. 134.

    Brachiator

    So happy to hear this, TaMara!

    Hope things continue to go well!!

     

    ETA: I am not only coming late to the thread, I have been in an Internet-free, news-free zone all day. Not even any phone calls or messages. I am catching up on everything.

    To see some good news with respect to Covid stuff is especially nice.

  136. 136.

    Ruckus

    @LongHairedWeirdo:

    I’ve know a few people with polio over the decades, I was born before any vaccine came on the market. I very much remember actually taking the vaccine. As you say many didn’t noticeably have polio and have the emergence of the symptoms later in life, although a friend in the complex I live in did have noticeable symptoms as a youngster and has those symptoms once again.

  140. 140.

    VeniceRiley

    I’m hearing a lot of this from folks with long covid.  happy to hear it’s working for you as well.

  141. 141.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The mask is a visible symbol on your face. If liberals are for it, they have to be against it. It’s too good an opportunity for symbolic division not to pass up.

    I think Trump instinctively understood that, which is why he encouraged anti-maskers from the beginning.

  142. 142.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    I have symptoms that are almost impossible to diagnose. They come and go almost like at a whim (not my whim for sure!) and locations vary wildly and so there really isn’t anything to look at, measure, when getting checked out. Hell they found an aneurysm and then found an MRI from 2 yrs before that showed it and it hadn’t changed. So now I get regular MRIs to check on it, although they said if it bursts I’ll likely know before anyone else. I asked if I could have had it for a long time and they haven’t got a clue. Life would suck if it wasn’t that the alternative is worse.

  143. 143.

    J R in WV

    Wow, TaMara, what great news!

    So glad for you and yours ~!!~

    And such great news for so many people afflicted by this nasty virus…

  144. 144.

    ColoradoGuy

    Just speculation here, but I wonder if Covid does so much of its damage by disordering the immune system’s Friend/Foe detection, analysis, and response system. In the first week, it silences the immune response so the host spreads the virus without knowing it, and then, as the virus is cleared out, it leaves a residue of confusion so the immune system starts attacking the host. It isn’t AIDS, but Covid definitely damages and seems to randomly reprogram the immune system so it’s not working properly afterwards. This damage doesn’t happen to everyone, but  there are a significant proportion of people who become long-haulers.

    The vaccine might be a strong clear signal that clears out the damaged data left behind by the wild type infection. Looks like the research community is going to discover a lot of new things about the immune system that was not known before.

  145. 145.

    Brachiator

    @Major Major Major Major:

    A common hypothesis for long COVID is that it’s an autoimmune disease, and it’s plausible the vaccine could reorient the immune response away from auto- to focus better on the pathogen.

    Hmm, that would square with the sufferers being mostly women.

    All this is really wild. Women are somewhat less likely to get Covid-19 or to die from it. And yet some women seem more likely to suffer from long-Covid.

    One study noted:

    Middle aged women have a higher risk of experiencing a range of debilitating ongoing symptoms, such as fatigue, breathlessness, muscle pain, anxiety, depression, and “brain fog” after hospital treatment for covid-19, suggest the findings of two unpublished studies available as preprints.
    Seven in 10 patients admitted to hospital with covid-19 reported “long covid” symptoms an average of five months after discharge in the larger PHOSP-COVID study, and symptoms were more prevalent in women aged 40-60. White ethnicity, two or more comorbidities at admission, and receiving invasive ventilation while in hospital increased the risk, but severity of acute covid-19 disease did not seem to affect the likelihood of experiencing long covid symptoms.

    Still, this is a relatively small study of 1,077 patients, even though I think that so far other studies have been seeing similar results.

  146. 146.

    SWMBO

    @West of the Rockies: ​
      My son and I got our second Pfizer a week ago. Much like the first one. Slight fever, chills, tired, achy. Like you’re almost getting a cold. I asked him on the way to getting McDonald’s how he was feeling. “Fine.” I told him my arm was a little sore, he said, “Mine too but it’s worth it.”
    His teacher sent me a text today saying he got his second shot today. So far everyone has had relatively mild (compared to Covid) reactions.

  147. 147.

    trollhattan

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Heh, I can believe it. Because IIIs are not “collectable” like Ms I’ll likely stand pat due to cost and hassle, but feel a twinge of responsibility to get the lovely lump working.

  150. 150.

    randy khan

    The really fascinating NY Times magazine article on COVID-19 long-haulers a few weeks ago included several hypotheses about why it was happening. There was one I’d call the shingles hypothesis – even when you’ve recovered, in some cases there still are remnants of the virus in your system that cause the long-term symptoms, much like the chicken pox virus, which hangs around and cause shingles later in your life (but, of course, different in many ways as well). If that’s true, then it would make sense that the vaccine, which kicks your immune system into overdrive against COVID-19, would have an impact on long-haulers’ symptoms.

  151. 151.

    Ken

    @Another Scott: Dunno how it would impact the 3BR/2BA Ranch market.

    Where I live, the 3BR/2BA Ranch market is entirely dominated by builders, who buy and demolish them, then put up a 6BR/4BA Two-story priced in the low seven figures. There is no such thing as what used to be called a “starter home” in this area.

  158. 158.

    sralloway

    @West of the Rockies: Did mine. First 12 hours, fine. Then – chills, night sweat, and a body that felt it was on the losing  side of a bar fight circa 1966. No sleep from midnight to 5 a.m. That evening, all was well. I’m an oldster at 70.

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